Nobody Cares about Pre-History

[Free]

Cool.

Scientists Find Evidence of Vehicles From Tens of Thousands of Years Ago

Scientists have discovered footprints and drag marks left behind by an ancient vehicle dated to over 22,000 years ago.

futurism.com

Uncannily preserved in the sands of New Mexico, archaeologists have discovered the oldest evidence yet of a vehicle used by humans: drag marks, along with footprints, left in the ground that have been dated to 22,000 years ago.

As detailed in a study published in the journal Quaternary Science Advances, these marks were left behind by a type of sledge known as a travois. Think of it as a wheelbarrow without the wheels.

Typically comprising two wooden poles held in each hand at the front, and intersecting at the back in a V or X-shape, a travois would have been pulled across the ground, carrying meat, game or other supplies. Their usage is well-known to scientists — but this is by far the oldest example, predating the invention of the wheeled vehicle in Mesopotamia by some 17,000 years, according to researchers.

"There's nothing this old," study author Matthew Bennett at the University of Bournemouth told New Scientist.

 

[Free]

The big mystery of how agriculture began in numerous locations across several continents in approximately the same timeframe.

The Biggest Technological Development in Human History Happened All Across the World Around the Same Time, by Groups of People With Zero Contact With One Another

Around the world, on separate continents with no contact with each other, multiple groups of ancient humans invented farming simultaneously.

futurism.com

 

[Erich Templar]

The big mystery of how agriculture began in numerous locations across several continents in approximately the same timeframe.

The Biggest Technological Development in Human History Happened All Across the World Around the Same Time, by Groups of People With Zero Contact With One Another

Around the world, on separate continents with no contact with each other, multiple groups of ancient humans invented farming simultaneously.

futurism.com

"...within a few thousand years of each other...". That's an interesting definition of "the same time frame".

 

[Free]

"...within a few thousand years of each other...". That's an interesting definition of "the same time frame".

If you can adequately explain how people spread out all over the Earth, with issues of vast distance and the various land barriers and things like oceans being in the way, without methods of transportation beyond their feet and communication beyond face to face, could have organized and transmitted a large, unwritten corpus of knowledge on cultivation, crop production, livestock, and the establishment of sedentary lifestyles required for it, over a period of a mere couple of thousand years, I'll happily rethink my use of the phasing "same time frame."

And sorry, but "ALIENS" won't cut it.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

You can actually see across the Bering Strait and it can be crossed in a small one-man boat. So you only need someone to make that crossing once in a couple of thousand years to spread the technology from the Old World to the New World.

 

[Beebo Brink]

You can actually see across the Bering Strait and it can be crossed in a small one-man boat. So you only need someone to make that crossing once in a couple of thousand years to spread the technology from the Old World to the New World.

That "no contact with each other" is treated as a statement of fact rather than what it truly is: conjecture based on the only facts we have now, and subject to change. After all, it used to be a "fact" that humans didn't reach North America until about 13,000 years ago and every year new evidence emerges pushing that date farther and farther back.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

If you can adequately explain how people spread out all over the Earth, with issues of vast distance and the various land barriers and things like oceans being in the way, without methods of transportation beyond their feet and communication beyond face to face, could have organized and transmitted a large, unwritten corpus of knowledge on cultivation, crop production, livestock, and the establishment of sedentary lifestyles required for it, over a period of a mere couple of thousand years, I'll happily rethink my use of the phasing "same time frame."

And sorry, but "ALIENS" won't cut it.

I beg your pardon!

 

[Dancien]

I can hear this picture.

 

[Free]

I beg your pardon!

 

[Erich Templar]

If you can adequately explain how people spread out all over the Earth, with issues of vast distance and the various land barriers and things like oceans being in the way, without methods of transportation beyond their feet and communication beyond face to face, could have organized and transmitted a large, unwritten corpus of knowledge on cultivation, crop production, livestock, and the establishment of sedentary lifestyles required for it, over a period of a mere couple of thousand years, I'll happily rethink my use of the phasing "same time frame."

And sorry, but "ALIENS" won't cut it.

Ah, no, my point would be that I don't see why it is unlikely that multiple different groups of people could have developed agriculture independently, give a time scale of several thousand years. My assumption would that the climatic situation was such that agriculture become viable around that time, and that it was therefore a thing whose time had come.

 

[Soen Eber]

Ah, no, my point would be that I don't see why it is unlikely that multiple different groups of people could have developed agriculture independently, give a time scale of several thousand years. My assumption would that the climatic situation was such that agriculture become viable around that time, and that it was therefore a thing whose time had come.

Just a guess ...

It doesn't take that much thinking to grab a handful of plants and transplant them closer to where you live, and it must have been attempted hundreds or thousands of times, successfully in small instances, before it caught hold universally. If it all happened within a (relatively) short period of time, a few hundred years, then climate conditions must have been conducive to a population boom, creating a need for a better supply of food.

We didn't see a sudden explosion of agriculture, we saw a sudden need being met by an existing solution which was then exploited, just like we've always seen when a new problem collides with already-existing opportunities being suddenly marshalled.

 

[Beebo Brink]

My assumption would that the climatic situation was such that agriculture become viable around that time, and that it was therefore a thing whose time had come.

We didn't see a sudden explosion of agriculture, we saw a sudden need being met by an existing solution which was then exploited, just like we've always seen when a new problem collides with already-existing opportunities being suddenly marshalled.

In support of both of these propositions -- which I do believe are more likely than extreme long-distance contacts -- is that paleolithic hunter & gatherers were very attuned to the life cycles of plants. They could easily have sowed seeds from plants they preferred, then continued on their way, timing their return to the area when the plants were at a harvestable stage. It's not agriculture per se, but it's more than just passively gathering what is around them.

As the climate warmed, and both plants and animals thrived, it would have become easier and easier for humans to stay in smaller areas to get all the resources they needed to survive. This is just a few steps away from settling down and not migrating at all. Tend more plants, walk less. It has a certain appeal.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I some people vastly overthink this.

It only takes a single person to happen to notice some discarded fruit seeds in a refuse pile starting to grow and think, "Hey, I bet I could do that on purpose". And in only a couple of years they could learn some extremely simple, fundamental practices that would accomplish all they really needed to know to grow a thing reliably. I mean yeah in 2025 we know there's a heck of a lot more you CAN know about growing plants than "cover it with dirt and pour water on it now and then"; but also, little more than "cover it with dirt and pour water on it now and then" can carry you a looooong way when you only have to feed a group that tops out at like a couple of families and you don't care about quality beyond "edible". At that scale you don't need a deep, vast canon of technical knowledge. And that could easily happen in several places within only a few tens of years of each other, let alone hundreds or even thousands.

And once we're talking about groups settling down and getting bigger - well then your growers have all the time in the world to experiment. We're talking about people who also had the patience to notice how long a year is and predict when it's going to start turning cold by exactly which stars are up at at sunset right now. Surely they could watch some plants grow and notice what happens to them under different conditions, and then take advantage of that.

 

[Beebo Brink]

For climate science, the mantra is "faster than expected." For archaeology, the mantra is "earlier than expected."

A Discovery Changes the Origin of Metallurgy: The Last Hunter-Gatherers of Anatolia Were Already Working Copper More Than 9,000 Years Ago

 

[Free]

We've been meme-ing for a long time. A long, long time.

 

[Isabeau]

A Viking woman was buried here with her dog

In a recently excavated boat grave from the Viking Age, a woman was buried with her dog at her feet.

www.sciencenorway.no

What stands out most, according to Reiersen, is the presence of the dog. He refers to Arild Klokkervoll, who has written about animal finds in Iron Age graves in Northern Norway.

"Dogs are the animals most frequently found in these types of graves. They’re often seen as companions in life and in the journey to the afterlife," says the archaeologist.