Unable to get a good dating on this mantid petroglyph in Iran (owing to sanctions against Iranian science! radiocarbon for example).
#Huntergatherer art again connects to those mantid creatures. This piece does not mention the importance of the mantis #trickster/game guardian in Southern Africa
Anyone who wants to know about the #archaeology and #anthropology of how we became human, follow my colleague @ochrewatts
He's a world expert on our earliest #symbolic record in the #African #MiddleStoneAge -- specifically the red #ochre pigment record -- and has encyclopedic knowledge of #huntergatherer #myth and #ritual practice with pigments
Here are a few of his key contributions
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000588
Oldest whale bone tools discovered in Europe reveal Stone Age humans used marine resources 20,000 years ago
A recent study has revealed that humans living on the Atlantic coast of modern-day France and Spain were crafting tools from whale bones as far back as 20,000 years ago—much earlier than previously thought...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/05/oldest-whale-bone-tools-discovered-in-europe/
Follow @archaeology
17,000-year-old skeleton reveals earliest evidence of Stone Age ambush and human conflict
In a recent discovery revealing one of humanity’s earliest known episodes of conflict, researchers have uncovered evidence that a young man buried nearly 17,000 years ago in what is now northern Italy was killed in a violent ambush...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/05/skeleton-reveals-earliest-evidence-of-ambush/
Follow @archaeology
A very good discussion with Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias and Karen Kramer on the #huntergatherer sexual division of labour debates, and why we impose our ideas about status for women. Do you imagine women need to hunt to have power?...because the Hadza wouldn't think so.
If these guys displayed such obnoxious behaviour in a civilized #egalitarian #African #huntergatherer society, they would be taken down mercilessly with #laughter and merriment -- almost always by older #women.
If they continued to throw their weight about with obnoxious #dominant #male behaviour, they would be taken OUT. Certainly in the Kalahari that could be done by a child with a poisoned arrow. Most likely by a bunch of hunters doing it together.
But if these guys had grown up in such a society, it's extremely unlikely they'd behave like such assholes. For tens and hundreds of thousands of years, women simply selected against obnoxious male dominance.
It is only a recent historic aberration in the life of our species, and most normal human beings know it.
A 
for the hot topic of factors involved in #gender #egalitarianism here. Being friends and pupils of the late, great #JamesWoodburn, we feel his use of 'egalitarian' reflects the dynamic quality of #huntergatherer #gender relations (authors who discuss the issues are mentioned, off the top of my head! I will try to fill in details/sources later)
Woodburn had some brilliant stuff on gender buried in unpublished notes which we are getting some access to. In his classic 1982 article here, he's addressing egalitarianism among men
#anthropology #politics #gender
https://libcom.org/article/egalitarian-societies-james-woodburn
1/
Day 9: #HelgaVierich talks about ancient stories from the #Kalahari. This material is super important for anyone who wants to know about #huntergatherer #gender relations.
How do children learn to be human? Adults model behaviour and instruct morals by examples, with the help of the stories. These can be original myths, biblical and folktales, or sometimes parables, coming-of-age adventures, and legends, that illustrate good as well as bad outcomes. Here one such tale is recounted, as told to an anthropologist by a Kua storyteller in the southeastern Kalahari four decades ago. This features the Creator, a termite mound, a Buffalo wife, foolish humans, and poisonous farts. Enjoy.
#13daysofXmas #RAGtoptalks
#egalitarianism #IndigenousCosmology
Day 6: the brilliant #DenizSalali
talks about her decade of fieldwork with BaYaka children and how they become active and autonomous people in an egalitarian #huntergatherer society of the #Congo rainforest.
The Planet's Melting Glaciers Are Releasing A Treasure Trove Of Ancient Artifacts
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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/the-planet-s-melting-glaciers-are-releasing-a-treasure-trove-of-ancient-artifacts-1.7413713 <-- shared media article / radio audio
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https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/lisa-baril/the-age-of-melt/9781643261515/ <-- shared link to book
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https://secretsoftheice.com/ <-- link to web site, Secrets of the Ice - The Archaeology of Glaciers and Ice Patches
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https://youtu.be/9bpGsHWckCA?si=FE66aJyNHX4pIuln <-- Secrets of the Ice overview video
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[this post should not be considered an endorsement of this book]
#GIS #spatial #mapping #archaeology #hunting #artifacts #melting #climatechange #glacial #ice #snow #otzi #iceman #warming #icepatcharcheology #atlatl #perennialice #ancient #huntergatherer #prehistoric #cultures #glacialarchaeology #arrow #tools #artefacts
#Huntergatherer #children doodling in the corner of an #IceAge cave 14,000 years ago
#anthropology #art #childdevelopment
https://www.science.org/content/article/enigmatic-cave-art-was-made-ice-age-children
This is quite an important paper: no other species than humans shows #Inequityaversion, the basic element of fairness. This is fundamental to #huntergatherer ways of life.
'Disadvantageous inequity aversion (IA), a negative response to receiving less than others, is a key building block of the human sense of fairness. While some theorize that IA is shared by species across the animal kingdom, others argue that it is an exclusively human evolutionary adaptation to the selective pressures of cooperation among non-kin. Essential to this debate is the empirical question of whether non-human animals are averse towards unequal resource distributions.'
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.1452
A superb and scholarly analysis of #African #huntergatherer pigment use by our very own #IanWatts.
World expert on Middle Stone Age #red #ochre, he is extending to #plant #pigments in the #ethnographic record.
#anthropology #archaeology #cosmetics #pigment #ritual #hunting #initiation #blood #symbolicculture #humanevolution
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000588
Study Reveals New Insights Into Native American Shell-Ring Villages
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https://www.heritagedaily.com/2024/10/study-reveals-new-insights-into-native-american-shell-ring-villages/153592 <-- shared technical article
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-72567-w <-- shared paper
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #geoarchaeology #archaeology #midden #shellfish #shellring #SouthCarolina #SouthAtlanticCoast #USA #mollusk #oyster #artefacts #village #domestic #spatialanalysis #climatechange #sealevel #model #modeling #sealevelrise #NativeAmerican #Indian #FirstNation #indigenous #kin #networks #demographics #community #HunterGatherer #subsidence #productivity #sustainability #harvesting #foodsecurity #spatiotemporal #coast #coastal #clams
1/ When it comes to #SocietalCollapse, the focus is often on what factors might lead to it. But it is also relevant to look at how long things might take to recover. I tried to come up with an estimate by looking at each step of #SocietalDevelopment. I break this down roughly into:
* #HunterGatherer to early #agriculture
* Early agriculture to pre-industrial society
* Pre-industrial to industrial #society
You can find more details in this thread and at: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/how-long-until-recovery-after-collapse
Great new piece from Vivek #Venkataraman on what we can learn from #huntergatherer decision-making processes
'For the vast majority of human history, people made group decisions through consensus. It is perhaps the most conspicuous feature of political life among recent hunter-gatherer societies, from the Ju/’hoansi to the Aboriginal peoples of Australia to the Indigenous societies of the early Americas. As an anthropologist, I have observed consensus-based decision-making myself among hunter-gatherers in the rainforests of Malaysia.'
#anthropology #decisionmaking #egalitarian #Ju/'hoansi #Kalahari
https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-ju-hoansi-can-tell-us-about-group-decision-making
Early hunter-gatherers hunted now-extinct elephants at lake in Chile, study finds
Archaeologists have unearthed a prehistoric campsite in South America where early hunter-gatherers butchered an extinct elephant relative more than 12,000 years ago...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2024/05/hunter-gatherers-hunted-elephants-in-chile/
Follow @archaeology
Prehistoric hunter-gatherers had predominantly plant-based diet
A new study conducted by an international team of scientists challenges long-held beliefs about the dietary habits of prehistoric human populations in Northwest Africa...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2024/04/prehistoric-hunter-gatherers-had-predominantly-plant-based-diet/
Follow @archaeology
This research is really sweet -- showing the size and complexity of ancient #African #huntergatherer networks, before farming.
Hunter-gatherer groups in the Congo maintained social networks across vast distances thousands of years before agriculture arrived. The cultural diversity is shown in musical instruments, specialist vocabulary and genetic analyses.
#anthropology #genetics #culturalevolution
https://www.news.uzh.ch/en/articles/media/2024/Hunter-Gatherers.html
Greg Cocks 