Nobody Cares about Pre-History

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[Beebo Brink]

Another article on atlatl usage and how it equalized hunting for both men and women.

How Ancient Dart Launchers Changed the Game for Early Female Hunters - Atlas Obscura

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I am amazed that nobody mentioned here the temple ruins of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey yet, which is around 12.000 years old, so build 6000 years before Stonehege.

It is an outstanding complex because human supposedly didn't grew crops back then nor had writing system. This came later. There are also much longer documentaries about it on Youtube, this here is for introduction:


And this for a deep dive.

 

[Free]

I am amazed that nobody mentioned here the temple ruins of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey yet

We were waiting for you!

 

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[Beebo Brink]

Pushing back the timeline of human cleverness, yet again.

Kalambo Falls, Zambia: Archaeologists unearth oldest known wooden structure in the world | CNN

Archaeologists have unearthed the oldest known wooden structure, and it’s almost half a million years old.

The simple structure — found along a riverbank in Zambia — is made up of two interlocking logs, with a notch deliberately crafted into the upper piece to allow them to fit together at right angles, according to a new study of cut marks made by stone tools.

Geoff Duller, a professor of geography and Earth sciences at the University of Aberystwyth in the United Kingdom, was part of the team that made the discovery in 2019. He said the structure, excavated upstream of Kalambo Falls near Zambia’s border with Tanzania, probably would have been part of a wooden platform used as a walkway, to keep food or firewood dry or perhaps as a base on which to build a dwelling. A digging stick and other wooden tools were found at the same site.

 

[Free]

As a counterpoint to Göbekli Tepe, and to show how we keep pushing back human "history," let's look at the discovery of Karahan Tepe.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Bronze Age hexagonal 'pyramid' not like anything 'found before in the Eurasian steppe' | Live Science

 

[Free]

More evidence that humans were in North America over 20,000 years ago

That means people must have been in the Americas even longer than we thought.

arstechnica.com

People really were walking around in the southwestern US during the middle of the last Ice Age, according to a recent study that double-checked the dates on a set of surprisingly ancient human footprints at White Sands National Park.

Many thousands of years ago, someone walked along the muddy shore of an ancient lake at what’s now White Sands. They crushed ditchgrass seeds and grains of conifer pollen beneath their feet with every squishing, slippery step. Bournemouth University archaeologist Matthew Bennett and his colleagues (including the authors of the current study) unearthed eight layers of tracks at the site in early 2020; they radiocarbon-dated the ditchgrass seeds from the oldest layer of footprints to 23,000 years old and the youngest layer to around 21,000 years old.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Same topic, different reference.

New Mexico footprints are oldest sign of humans in Americas, research shows | Archaeology | The Guardian

 

[Beebo Brink]

Sneak Peek Into Neanderthal Cooking Habits Reveals They Were Just As Intelligent As Homo Sapiens

Our hominin cousins mastered fire and used it to cook food, just as we did millennia later.

www.iflscience.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

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[Argent Stonecutter]

It's not actually true that no animal survives a broken leg long enough for it to heal. A study of small mammals in North America showed up to 35% of some species had healed fractures, including long bone fractures.

 

[Beebo Brink]

At the risk of being pedantic (who me?), that's a VERY dated definition of civilization. By Mead's standard, hominids had civilization before we had evolved into homo sapiens. The modern usage of the term refers to the complex organization of human groups, not to humane, altruistic behavior traits.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Civilization is the art of living in cities.

And, yes, altruistic behavior predates the evolution of primates let alone hominids.

 

[Soen Eber]

Hell, we even have documented evidence of dogs & cats looking after each other, offering food, and so forth. Alturism just seems to be baked in for some animals.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

So I just did some Googling to try and recall who I was quoting there, and found two possible hits:

"There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.” — Roger Zelazny, "The Great Book of Amber" (presumably originally somewhere in the Amber series but everyone seems to reference the collection).

"Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does not know everyone else.” — Julian Jaynes. "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (I read this book multiple times, even if it's probably mostly nonsense... especially given Jaynes' later work).

 

[Beebo Brink]

First known Neanderthal family found in cave in Russia - The Washington Post

Chagyrskaya Cave is perched high on a hillside, overlooking a flood plain where herds of bison and other animals once probably grazed, Roberts said. The researchers found stone tools and bison bones buried in the cave alongside the remains.

Genetic data obtained from teeth and bone fragments showed that the individuals included a father and his daughter, along with a pair of second-degree relatives, possibly an aunt or an uncle, a niece or nephew, Roberts said. The father’s mitochondrial DNA — a set of genes passed from mothers to their children — was also similar to two of the other males in the cave, he said, indicating they probably had a common maternal ancestor.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Large-scale warfare occurred in Europe ‘1,000 years earlier than previously thought’ | Archaeology | The Guardian (archive.ph)

Reanalysis of more than 300 sets of skeletal remains uncovered in Spain – radiocarbon dated to between 5,400 and 5,000 years ago – indicates that conflicts took place long before powerful states formed in the region.

The number of damaged bones and the disproportionately high percentage of males suggest the wounds resulted from a period of conflict, potentially lasting at least months, the authors of a study, published in Scientific Reports, said.