> “Surviving at those latitudes requires highly specialized technology and extreme cooperation,” Marean agrees. That implies that these were modern humans, rather than Neandertals [sic; UK spelling] or other early members of the human family. “
Hasn't the idea been debunked that neanderthals were ape-like idiots incapable of cooperation or sophisticated tools?
They weren't ape-like idiots, but nonetheless newly arrived Homo Sapiens used noticeably more sophisticated tool-making techniques. This is one of the ways archaeologists are able to distinguish Neanderthal sites from, say, Cro-magnon sites. It is also thought that modern Homo Sapiens lived in groups much larger than Neanderthals did.
Nonetheless, Neanderthal were smart/skillful enough to survive in Europe during the Ice Ages. That's not the mild climate of today, but a harsh place that will kill you in hours unless you go in with some serious know-how and preparations.
Neanderthals were baddass, they probably made better tools out of stone than homo sapiens sapiens typically did. But their minds were kind of... too narrowly focused. AFAIK, you could draw a plausible parallel between them and the dwarves of Tolkien fantasy.
True, although the harshness of Ice Age Europe varied over time. It wasn't some hellish landscape but a thriving ecosystem with all sorts of wildlife and other food sources.
The difference is that Neanderthals had hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to the environment of Ice Age Europe. They had even evolved actual physical adaptations to help them with the cold.
But the humans who moved into the Arctic only had a few thousand years at most to adapt, if that. Neanderthals certainly weren't dumb and primitive, but as you said they were narrowly focused. Modern humans were able to rapidly adapt their lifestyles and technology to allow them to thrive in extreme environments such as the Arctic.
It amazes me that ancient people put up with such harsh conditions. Why not just move south, where it's warmer. I suppose part of the issue is lack of knowledge of other places, but still. Why stay in such a harsh, difficult place?
Colder climates often produce an abundance of food, relative to warmer climes, and less competition. Mammoths, specifically, are terrific targets. Bringing down just one could feed a tribe for weeks, and they had almost no other predators. And besides food, the carcass had an abundance of skin and fur, powerful tendons for "rope", ivory that could be carved into more subtle shapes than stone - all sorts of uses, relative to small game. A rabbit might feed a family one day, and you're competing with all sorts of dogs, cats, and predatory rodents for them.
The human survival advantage is primarily intelligence. Intelligence is what made it possible for a coordinated, armed group of human hunters to bring down mammoths, when even sabertooth tigers and wolf packs couldn't do it. No competition for the biggest food source on legs? That's a huge win from a survival perspective.
Winters are long, summers short. The result is a relatively unproductive ecosystem. There are an estimated 175,000 to 200,000 moose in all of Alaska. There are an estimated 76,000 in Maine, a state about 5 percent the size of Alaska.
If far-north Alaska could grow moose as efficiently as mid-continent Maine, there would be about 3.8 million of the big ungulates here. Many Alaskans wish it was so. They'd like a moose behind every spruce, but it will never happen.
Alaska is not a rich land; it is a harsh land. Before the white invasion, only about 75,000 people survived here on what the land would yield. Today, the Alaska population is approaching 10 times that number. The Native population alone is double what it was before white contact. The idea people are going to go back to living off the land come an apocalyptic collapse of the U.S. economy is a myth.
Speaking as a hunter, your assertion that northern climates (I live in the north) produce more game is false. Deer populations, to use one example, thrive in warm temps. Also, compare the African savannah and its abundance of game animals to, say, northern Canada.
The real reasons are probably topography and game habits. The north is generally pretty flat and the ground is often frozen, making travel easy. And in cold temperatures, game often clusters together for warmth and follows predictable movement patterns because there are only so many places to find food. And finally, snow makes it easy to track game of any size.
These are all important in modern hunting too. Not much has really changed in that regard.
Northern climates, offer(ed) predictability for a very long time. In ancient times, you will probably not get human population explosions, but they will thrive in the North.
It was easier for populations to blow up in southern climates but then there were resets(generational disasters) -- specifically famine.
In addition to being easier to work, ivory is lighter than stone and wears differently / lasts longer than wood: important if you are surviving by nomadic hunting practices in an extremely hostile environment. Skin boats, which were eventually perfected by arctic peoples, used bones or ivory for structure.
I should add that the tribes who lived in the frozen lands eventually went out to sea and became whale hunters - an even larger food source, with even less competition.
It seems like the real question is, why move north in the first place? Following big game? Sick of your war-mongering neighbors to the south? Less competition for resources?
Humans have always tended to sprawl out. Arguably, all successful animals do as they reach the carrying capacity of their local environment and seek out adjacent territories. I don't think they were moving fast or far enough to notice the weather changing; by the time the next generation comes of age, a slightly colder climate is just "how it's always been." Repeat until Arctic.
If it's all you know you don't necessarily have any reason to believe it's any better elsewhere. And moving is probably more dangerous than staying put assuming you have relative shelter and food.
I don't totally disagree with your sentiment yet I am sure these people traveled extensively across their ranges. If by staying put you meant "confined their travels to the known habitats of their prey" then I will agree with you.
I do agree that after generations of following their prey knowledge of warmer or different climates would fade from their collective conscious.
What amazes me is that people can't imagine how primitive the world must have been 45,000 years ago. How far back does recorded history go? 6000-8000 years? 600 years ago most humans thought the world was flat.
There's some crazy statistic that 80% of Americans live within 50 or 100 miles where they were born.
Depends on what you mean by "primitive". 45,000 years ago, humans were every bit as intelligent as they are today. They may not have had agriculture or other technological advances, but mentally, they were sophisticated.
Look at it this way... using only stuff they found on the ground, they were able to successfully and repeatably hunt animals that weighed 5-8 tons, were faster than humans, had multiple natural weapons that could easily kill a human, and were both herd-oriented and highly intelligent by herbivore standards. Do you think you could do that? That doesn't sound primitive to me. That sounds really sophisticated.
Genetically that's more or less true. However, developmentally they were likely to suffer from various issues that limit intelligence. Things like poor diet/starvation, parasites, and limited socialization can have a dramatic impact.
But what if they weren't starving? What if they had a rich social structure, where children could learn from directly observing their leaders?
I'm not convinced they were starving "cavemen". If they couldn't cut it, Mother Nature would just kill them off - unlike modern, "civilized" people. They had better use of their brains than we do in day-to-day survival.
There is a large gap between survival and having a well-balanced diet for 13+ developmentally critical years. As strange as these sounds, the US actually has problems in this area resulting in a noticeably shorter population. There where likely successful tribes in the short term 45,000 years ago where people actually grew to 6 feet in height, but the average case is likely worse.
One thing to consider is population growth was fairly slow overall. Just 5% every 100 years and 2 people grow to ~6.8 billion in 45,000 years and there where far more than 2 people back then.
This surprising reappraisal of American and European physiques is the work of researcher John Komlos of Munich University. 'Much of the difference is due to the great social inequality that now exists in the United States,' Komlos told The Observer last week. 'In Europe, there is - in most countries - good health service provision for most members of society and plenty of protein in most people's diets. As a result, children do not suffer illnesses that would blight their growth or suffer problems of malnutrition. For that reason, we have continued to grow and grow.'
All I've seen indicates that hunter gatherer populations were more likely to be taller than most historical peasant populations. As a consequence of a peasant's diet being less nourishing.
Sure, peasant populations where often really short relative to us for a range of reasons. But, but that says little about 45,000 era hunter gather lifestyles.
PS: I have wondered if part of the disdain historic rulers had for the lower classes was not just education, but also poor nutrition lowering IQ's. Diet can easily make a 30 point difference in IQ which is huge.
You are not using facts to prove your point. It's basically the same sort of ignorance that people use to deny global warming. "I not convinced that humans can change the climate". If you have some facts that you'd like to share, please do. Making up really clever shit that can't be verified doesn't help. In fact, it could be the same human flaw that explains why it took us 45,000 years to get where we are today.
Am I in the middle of a fuck wad nerd debate? I time travel 45,000 years into the past. Will I be able to survive? If not that proves humans were just as smart then as they are now. Where's that pg "Life is Short" article?
Sure, I could grab my spear and join the human herd. Is there some reason to believe that humans can no longer refigure out how do something that the did 45,000 years ago. Don't many types of animals kill this way (ie in packs)? Humans simply grabbed sharp objects. We also tied them to long sticks so we could attack from a safe distance.
It's one thing to learn to hunt from zero. It's another thing to do it with tools and techniques that had been handed down for thousands of years. How do you make a spear from scratch, using only raw materials found in nature, that's effective enough to bring down a creature the size of a mammoth? You have to select the right kind of wood with the right character, harden it with fire correctly, find the right kind of flint and chip it just so to make a head, find the right animal sinews and preserve them the right way to tie the head to the spear, learn to strike with it so it hits vulnerable spots and doesn't break, because it'll take you days or weeks to make another...
I knew a guy once who did his PhD work on chipping flint, reproducing the techniques used by various Stone Age people. He loved chipping flint and making tools. They were sharp, and dangerous, and fragile, and took hours or days to make (not counting the failures). He spent years studying and refining his technique.
Making a high-quality spear, good enough to kill mammoths effectively? That takes years to perfect. It's an intellectual challenge on par with writing software, based on tradition and teaching akin to our school system. It's not easy or trivial! It's not primitive, at least not in the demeaning way it's being expressed here.
Those "primitives" were every bit as smart as you, every bit as hardworking, and their techniques on par with ours in terms of rigor and effort. What they didn't have was tens of thousands of years of additional development, so they had to know everything about survival. They didn't get their mammoth wrapped in plastic.
Says somebody who probably doesn't hunt? They'd have to figure out how to do it before they starve. With no elders around to teach them. Its not a sure thing at all.
More like, are you ready to massacre the pre-historic human population with the bacteria and viruses that your immune system is fully adapted or vaccinated against?
I think the narrative that most humans thought the world was flat would be like 600 years hence people thinking most humans in 2016 believed climate change to be a conspiracy.
What we have is surviving evidence from a few people thought the world flat. But that evidence does not necessarily reflect popular belief.
Also for people inland, they may not even have had a reason to entertain the idea at all. That is most people may not have even considered the question.
Obviously lots of early seafaring peoples held no such beliefs. Greeks, Phoenicians, Vikings, middle eastern traders, chinese traders, etc...
Historically, the ancient Greeks knew Earth was round. Pythagoras and Aristotle documented that belief, and Erostothanes actually measured the circumference quite precisely. Pythagoras and Aristotle were well known to every educated mind in Europe at the time.
Among the illiterate masses, flat earth might have been a thing.
To add to this, while as you say, it's possible flat earth might have been a thing amongst the illiterate, we have lots and lots of evidence that shows that the idea of a spherical earth had not been forgotten in Europe at the time either (with numerous older sources, but just to specifically address "600 years ago...):
Dante's Divine Comedy, finished in 1320, for example, goes into a lot of detail about the difference between the hemispheres such as how it affects which stars are visible and the concept of time difference and where he imagines the sun rises and sets over different parts of the world, and how gravity changes as Dante travels through the earth to arrive at other side.
It's first four known printed editions incidentally all pre-date Columbus first voyage, being published in 1472, 1477, 1482 and 1491 in Foligno, Venice and Florence, and adding up to hundreds of copies.
We also know that Columbus had read Claudius Ptomely's work, as well as Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi which depicts the world as a globe. For some books we know this specifically because he owned printed editions and scribbled extensively in the margins.
These books were circulated in some numbers: Columbus did not have to dig up obscure hand written copies or somehow otherwise come across old, forgotten knowledge that nobody else had. He grow up at a time when Italian publishers were churning out rapidly increasing numbers of copies of classical texts all over the place, and works by authors like Ptolemy and d'Ailly (and Dante) who explicitly described the world as round were printed in multiple editions and sought after.
We also known that Ptolemy's work had been sought after in Europe for hundreds of years before that, with adaptations of his Geography, which reflects a round earth, regularly being made and amended and updated with additional information. The first printed edition of his Geography to include engraved maps was made in Bologna in 1477.
Totally forgot about the xviii cent flat earth movement who popularized the "theory". Iirc, that's the main source if disinformation regarding the shape of Earth, rather than ancients believing such.
The main skepticism regarding Columbus was that they knew the Earth was much larger than what Columbus was projecting. It would be a generation before we had the technology and infrastructure to circumnavigate the globe by piggybacking off islands and friendly ports; to attempt to do so over what was assumed to be completely open waters in 1492 was tantamount to suicide. If Columbus hadn't stumbled upon the Bahamas when he did, his crew very likely would've died.
Or hit the mainland in a few more days. But I think your point was that they would have died had they not hit land of some kind before too much longer.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the Inuit were generally involved in trade and border disputes with First Nations groups living south of the Arctic tree line. The "modern" Inuit that made contact with Europeans were a much smaller, more homogenous group than existed mere hundreds of years earlier, after being collectively forced to move south during the Little Ice Age.
You have to know that there's a better place to go to, or have a need/drive to move. If you find a local maxima (shelter and food are available, breeding is still feasible) and everywhere around you seems worse, why would you travel through those harsh conditions without the certainty that there was something better elsewhere?
The same could be said of people today. Many people have the option to move somewhere with better work/lifestyle options but where we are at holds us for reasons like family or simple inertia.
Also likely there would be pre-existing tribes that would have some territorial ownership to good hunting/farming grounds, even if only used nomadically.
The real tragedy is, how little of the animal appears to have been used. The tongue; some of a tusk. That's it. No wonder they went extinct so quickly.
That is far from a tragedy. Aside from the fact that 'how little of the animal appears to have been used' is the exact reason we all have the benefit of this discovery, one should realize this extremely rare find is in no way indicative of how early hominids utilized the mammoth population they preyed upon. I'm not sure if you've experienced current Arctic weather, but feel free to compare it to any refrigeration techniques of say, the 19th century, and then consider that at the time of the kill the world was a colder place. It is not unrealistic to assume that roaming hunter-gatherers would find it more efficient to simply store the meat of a literally gigantic kill at the exact site of the kill; harvesting what they needed, when they needed it. If you can assume that, it's not a far leap to assume that those who made this particular kill were unfortunately deprived the opportunity to fully harvest it.
I'm sure if you were around back then, there would be a zero probability such a 'tragedy' could ever occur. By the way, super interested in all of your current acts of altruism that might directly or indirectly combat the innumerable current 'tragedies' levied by humanity on any other species. I'll donate $1 USD in your username to a charity of your choice for every one you feel compelled to list. To deprive a cause you care so deeply about an influx of capital, I dare say, would be a real tragedy.
Dang, this simple observation about ancient hunting practices sure has stirred up some vitriol. How does a 40,000 year dead hunter create an emotional bond like this? That's a more interesting question.
If you believe your observation about one discovery of the remains of one ancient hunt is an observation of ancient hunting practices in general, you really need to look into the importance of sample size. If you believe any response here to your observation was anything close to cruel, how fair do you really believe your observation of those dead hunters is?
Regardless of how long someone has been dead, or how remote they may be to you, slandering them is not something you should do, especially on such a misinformed basis. To label their acts of survival a tragedy is incorrect, it's not an opinion.
In the article? The bones showed spear damage, jaw damage consistent with removing the tongue, and part of one tusk removed. No other 'butcher marks' were mentioned.
The article mentions that generally, but not speaking to this particular kill, these big game animals were hunted as sources of raw materials for manufacturing (hunting) weapons, clothing, tools as well as for food.
"Elephant hunters in Africa, for example, often target the base of the trunk to cut arteries, causing the animal to bleed to death. The mammoth also had injuries to its jaw that suggest the tongue was cut out."
I think that's the wrong interpretation by quite a ways. No hunter cut a tongue out to injure an animal so it would die (the purpose of the trunk thrusts). Nobody gets close enough to cut a tongue out without the animal being dead already.
Hasn't the idea been debunked that neanderthals were ape-like idiots incapable of cooperation or sophisticated tools?