#and prehistory

[bcstag]

Flying Colors Ep. 4

Meet Socks!

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[psalidodont]

paleozoic menagerie

[gwyndisabilityblog]

Taking care of the disabled and injured is human nature actually. We have evidence of our ancestors caring for folks with disabilities. We're a cooperative species that takes care of their own. If our starving, weary, and hunted ancestors could care for the disabled members of their tribe, in this era of modern medicine and abundant resources we absolutely can afford to do the same.

[pansylair]

Wishing much love, kindness, and a happy Gregorian New Year to all as we go into 2025 along with some more slice of life Neanderthal art! 💛💛💛 :-)

[hambonous]

Too Early

I wonder if our ancestors ever had artistic doubts...

[soranatus]

THYLACINE REIGN 🦴 By Valentino Lasso, an Illustrator, Visual Developer, and Character Designer (Lasso’s Website) (Instagram)

[river-taxbird]

The most common mistake people make when thinking about prehistory and how to avoid it.

In "The Dawn of Everything, A New History for Humanity" David Graeber gives what I think might be the best piece of advice I've ever heard for understanding deep human history, and that is to get your mind out of the Garden of Eden.

People speculating about prehistory before modern archeology were quick to frame early humanity as existing in a "state of nature", either with pure innocent tribal communism, or being brutish barbarous cavemen, then something happened to bring us from the state of nature into "society". Did we make a Faustian bargain by domesticating plants and animals? Why is evidence of intergroup violence in prehistory so rare? How did we fall from the innocent state of nature? This, of course, smacks of the biblical creation story, so even if people don't believe it literally, they seem to have a hard time letting go of it spiritually even in a secular context.

This is pretty much nonsense, of course. Humans have existed for over 2 million years. Anatomically modern humans have existed for at least 300 thousand years. Behaviourally modern humans (with symbolism, art, long distance trade, political awareness) have existed for at least 50 thousand years, from our best evidence, but possibly a lot longer. The time between the Sumerians inventing writing and urban living 5,000 years ago and now is only a narrow slice of human history.

If we want to understand human history properly, we shouldn't understand people of the past as fundamentally different from us. They were intelligent, politically aware people doing their best in the world they found themselves in, just like we are today. We didn't fall from innocence with the development of behavioral modernity, religion, farming, war, money, capitalism, computers, or anything else. The world has changed a lot, but people have been experimenting with different ways to live for as long as there have been people, like this example I've posted before about disabled people's role in late pleistocene Eurasian society.

People have been the same as we are now for at least the last 50 thousand years. We have lived in countless different ways and will continue to experiment. There was no fall, and we don't live at the end of history.

[ofruinsandmyth]

A 4,500-year-old highway network, lined with well-preserved ancient tombs, in Saudi Arabia .

[incognitopolls]

Hypothetical: time travel is real, but you only get to use it ONCE (one round trip to the past and then back to the present), purely to observe– you can't change anything, and you won't catch a disease or get injured by animals/natural disasters/etc. You can stay as long as you want, but will still die within your expected (modern) life span (i.e. no "Observing all of human history only counts as one use! 🤓" and so on).

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[thesilicontribesman]

Paleolithic Decorated Horse's Jaw Bone, 'Ice Age Art Now' Exhibition, Cliffe Castle, Keighley, Yorkshire

[lackadaisycal-art]

They were probably self portraits all along 🗣🗣🗣

"The puzzling proportions of the Venuses’ bodies may be explained if we think about the perception of one’s body in the prehistoric era. Today, we are well aware of how our bodies look from the outside – the abundance of mirrors, reflective surfaces, cameras, and media representation allows us to see ourselves from every possible angle and perspective.

In the hunter-gatherer society, however, one of the few chances to get familiar with one’s body was simply lowering one’s gaze to inspect it. This angle inevitably led to distorted proportions. Take a look at your own limbs and torso: you will notice the shrunken feet and shortened arms, similar to those on prehistoric figurines."

[memories-of-ancients]

Mammoth tusk with carvings, Ukraine, 19,000 years old

from The National History Museum of Ukraine

[museum-of-artifacts]

The Utroba Cave, in Bulgaria, is a natural horizontal fissure in a rock that has been further cut and shaped by human hands more than 3000 years ago to resemble a womb. At midday, light seeps into the cave through an opening in the ceiling, projecting an image of a phallus on to the floor

More: https://thetravelbible.com/top-artifacts-from-the-stone-age/

[ouzel-time]

Just a reminder that while prehistoric fish are cool, there are plenty of neat babies still around!

[thebeetleguy]

The fun thing about marine biology is the prospect that we could find some million year old fish species at the bottom of the ocean that’s super important to science and it’s just. A guy.

Coelacanths are a great example of this. Really ancient species that we, until recently, assumed was extinct. Finding them was like pretty important and they’re just A Fish. I really enjoy this.

[dieletztepanzerhexe]

Nordiskt Amatörarkeologiskt Utgrävningsläger 2024 Åland, Geta 

Excavation of a stone-age dwelling site