#hominid chronology

[historyfiles]

Human Ancestors Bottleneck: a human genomics analysis has shown that the total population of direct-line human ancestors plummeted to about 1,280 breeding individuals for a span of about 117,000 years, bringing them close to extinction:

[thienvaldram]

Silurian Speculative Ancestry

Edit: Updated to add Silurians from the 30th Anniversary Calendar

Prelude – Meta-Origins of Silurians

It is of note that the Silurians, upon original development, were very much intended to effectively be ‘dinosaur people’. With their reptilian appearance being indicative of the pre-Avian, pre-Jurassic Park reptilian dinosaur conception. Though with JP-style avian dinosaurs being depicted in both Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and Deep Breath among others, as well as the newer designs of the Silurians themselves, make such an origin retroactively very tenuous in Universe.

Their two names from their first couple of stories, ‘Silurians’ and ‘Eocenes’, reflect two eras of history in which they are implied to originate, though both raise massive chronological problems with regards to how their depicted, especially in later works but even in their early ones. The Silurian era (444-415 million years ago) predates the emergence of reptiles entirely (310-320 million years ago) whereas the Eocene (56-34 million years ago) postdates the Dinosaurs but also still predates humanity (300,000 years ago), the homo genus (2.8 million years ago) and Hominids (22 million years ago).

And the ‘Silurian dating controversy’ only gets worse the more Silurian stories got written over time, as various pieces of media date them anywhere between less than 1 million years ago to 65 million years ago to 1 billion years ago (Which is pre Multicellular life). This exacerbated by the idea that the Moon’s capture was the reason for the Silurian hibernation, a theory that was since superseded by the Theia impact theory in modern scientific consensus and either way would have been dated to the early Solar System.

Thus for the interest of Speculative Biology I have thrown out all specific absolute dates and specific geological events associated with the Silurians in favour of hashing together an origin that makes conceptual sense for the Silurians as a prehistoric sentient Earthbound species based on what knowledge of modern biology I happen to have, as well as what jives with the overall ideas of the DWU.

Speculative Evolution

Speciation

Template

Scientific Name – Colloquial Identifier for this writeup (DWU Name/Origin Story)

Genus

Bipeslacertia – Reptilian Kindred (Earth Reptiles)

Species

Bipeslacertia vehemenus – Primitive Ancestor (Primitive Ancestor)

Bipeslacertia volans – “Winged Kindred” (Winged Earth Reptiles)

Bipeslacertia diabolus – Sea Devils (Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia homines – Silurians (Silurians)

Mondasian Parallel Evolution

Bipeslacertia diabolus abastrius – Sea Kings (Mondasian Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia homines abastrius – Lizard Kings (Mondasian Silurians)

Subspecies (Winged Kindred)

Bipeslacertia volans mortuus – “Paleocenes” (Winged Species – Adolescence of Time)

Bipeslacertia volans malakhi – Wyrm Callers (Wyrm infected Paleocenes)

Bipeslacertia volans vivus – Luadans (TM: A Morphology/Reign of the Reptiles)

Bipeslacertia volans aurori – Zori (Reign of the Reptiles/Revelry of the Redacted)

Subspecies (Sea Devil)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sicutsimiae – Late Sea Devils (Comic Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sicuturtus – Early Sea Devils (Normal Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus reditius – “Devolved Ones” (Inhabitants of the Nameless City – HP Lovecraft/Faction Paradox)

Subspecies (Silurian)

Bipeslacertia homines malus – Serad-dur (Serad-dur)

“Scholar” Caste

Bipeslacertia homines augurius – Fair Folk (Fair Folk- The Shadows of Avalon)

Bipeslacertia homines sapentia – “Senior” Silurians (Chibnall’s original classic style redesign – Cold Blood)

Bipeslacertia homines rostrata – “Middle” Silurians (Warriors of the Deep Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines gravius – “Horned Kindred” (Bulky Horned Herbivorous Silurians – TM A Morphology)

Bipeslacertia homines labia – “Early” Silurians (Original Classic Who Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines venefica – The Silurians from the 30th Anniversary Calendar

“Warrior” Caste (Alternatively “Hunter” Caste)

Bipeslacertia homines anguis – “Junior” Silurians (Silurian Hunters – Supremacy of the Cybermen)

Bipeslacertia homines sapiens – “Late” Silurians (New Who Silurians)

Notes

Bipeslacertia vehemenus is considered by the Reptilian Kindred to be an ancestor species and not part of the ‘Reptilian Kindred’ themselves, it is however considered to be in the same genus biologically.

Bipeslacertia volans mortuus was the earliest sapient subspecies to diverge from the Reptilian Kindred and the first to develop a civilisation, but was however rendered extinct by the Wyrm (Alongside the Wyrm mutated Bipeslacertia volans malakhi)

The Reptilian Kindred consider themselves to have five extant ‘Classes/Castes’

Sea Devil

Scholar

Warrior

Winged Kindred

Serad-Dur

And do not consider any greater subgroupings such as the ‘Silurian/Sea Devil two species grouping’ or the ‘Scholar/Warrior single species hypothesis’ as valid, from their perspective, the five main classes are considered the maximal groupings of Reptilian Kindred outside of the sole group that includes all of them, with the term ‘Silurian’ (Alternatively Earth Reptile or Saurian) being used to refer to all five rather than just the Scholar and Warrior castes.

The original Reptilian Kindred diverged from the ancestor of the Helodermatidae family of venomous lizards in the late Cretaceous, with the Bipeslacertia genus itself diverging from the rest of the family with the origin of its bipedal stance in the early Paleocene, just after the KT Extinction Event.

Most accounts of Reptilian Kindred-Dinosaur cohabitation are either later palimpsests (The Reptilian Kindred were a time active power during the Time Wars era, with an individual of Bipeslacertia homines sapiens appearing in the Alliance of Races alongside Rassilon) or instances of Reptilian Kindred bioengineering in the Eocene and Oligocene rather than true Jurassic-Cretaceous era native Reptilian Kindred species.

Their technological civilisation emerged in the Eocene, after the divergence between the “Scholar” and “Warrior” castes of Silurians but before full speciation.

Their full classification is

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Reptilia

Order: Squamata

(Potential Clade: Toxicofera)

Suborder: Anguimorpha

Infraorder: Neoanguimorpha

Clade: Monstersauria

Family: Bipeslacertidae

Genus: Bipeslacertia

The emergence order of distinct subspecies was as follows

Cretaceous (145-65 mya)

Split of Bipeslacertidae from Helodermatidae

Paleocene (65-56 mya)

Bipeslacertia splits from the rest of the (extinct) Bipeslacertiadae genera, they are separately characterised by their bipedal stance as opposed to other lizard species.

Spilt of ancestor species from the rest of Bipeslacertia

Bipeslacertia volans splits from the rest of Bipeslacertia

The Zori split from Bipeslacertia volans before the full development of wings

Silurian-Sea Devil Split

“Paleocenes” split from Bipeslacertia volans, “Paleocene” civilisation forms (mostly) above the clouds.

“Paleocene” extinction at the hands of the Wyrm

Reptilian Kindred Civilisations first form.

Extinction of ancestor species

Eocene (56-34 mya)

Serad-Dur split from Silurians

“Early” and “Late” Sea Devils Split

Scholar-Warrior Split, emergence of Scholar Third Eye

Reptilian Kindred Civilisation reaches technological level

Fair Folk Split after Silurians are transported to Avalon

Oligocene (34-23 mya)

“Senior Silurians” split from Scholar caste

 Scholar Caste splits into “Early” and “Middle” Silurians

The Inhabitants of the Nameless City split from the “Early” Sea Devils and devolve, eventually disappearing entirely under the shallow seas of north Africa.

 “Junior” and “Late” Silurians split

Miocene (23-5.3 mya)

Speciation begins to slow down due to civilisation technological advancement

Reptilian Kindred civilisation enters hibernation due to disaster (Either the newest Moon or a planetoid close passage unrelated to the Moon)

Pliocene (5.3-2.6 mya)

Various apes modified and bred by the Reptilian Kindred begin to develop to fill the ecological niche left by the Reptilian Kindred’s hibernation.

Pleistocene (2.6 mya – 11,700 ya)

Evolution of Homo Sapien Sapiens (humans).

Holocene (11,700 ya – 1712)

Various sporadic reawakenings that are almost always killed off by the newly developed humans.

1500 BCE – Atlantis is destroyed, the Nameless City is forced above the ocean in Africa and the inhabitants are rendered (mostly) extinct

Anthropocene (1712 – 500,000 yf)

(22nd Century) Reptilian Kindred civilisation reawakens and is forced to cohabitate the planet with the human civilisation.

Relinquecene (500,000 yf – 2 myf)

Reptilian Kindred and humanity mostly abandon Earth for the first significant geological time (Previous abandonments had happened temporarily for much shorter timespans), whilst they would make sporadic returns, from this point onwards the Earth was allowed to evolutionarily develop without its previous intelligent species. (This is when the Haemovores evolve)

Perdicene (2 myf – 10 myf)

Earth was lost, and began being known by different names including Ravalox, Orphan 55 and Tellus. This is the point in which the Reptilian Kindred became no longer tied to Earth as a homeworld beyond as a cultural factoid (Unlike humanity who consistently returned and remained conceptually tied to it until its destruction in 10 myf and the start of the Posthuman era).

This document for the most part, only covers the Extant subspecies of Reptilian Kindred and does not account for the unknown species and subspecies that went extinct prior to the Anthropocene (nor the other extinct Bipeslacertiadae genera) with the exception of Bipeslacertia vehemenus, identified only due to Vastra’s devolution into one during ‘The Evolution Episode’ due to exposure to temporal radiation and Bipeslacertia volans mortuus, an early intelligent extinct species documented by Bernice Summerfield and Peter Summerfield.

The Mondasian Parallel Evolution species (The Lizard Kings or Bipeslacertia homines abastrius and Sea Kings or Bipeslacertia diabolus abastrius) which were documented by both the Homo Sapien contra (Mondasians) and the Mondasian Cybermen are considered to be parallel evolutionary counterparts of their Earth twins and aren’t included, it is speculated their evolutionary tree is identical to that of Earth’s.

Despite being considered distinct castes by the Reptilian Kindred, the ‘Early’ Sea Devils (The Sea Devils), the ‘Middle’ Sea Devils (Warriors of the Deep) and the ‘Late’ Sea Devils (Legend of the Sea Devils) are considered to all be local or climate variations of the same subspecies of Sea Devil, Bipeslacertia diabolus sicuturtus.

I basically ignored most direct years given in DWU sources when doing this in favour of trying to work out something that conceptually made the most sense (IMO). Since DWU sources give Silurian origin or even civilisation years as far back as 450 mya, in the Ordovician, Pre-Reptiles, which is not conducive to trying to actually do speculative biology with, and the less said about 'They predate complex life entirely' the better.

I went with Eocene - Miocene because references to the Dinosaurs can always have been post-Cretaceous genetic engineering stuff (They have the tech) but references to "apes" should be theoretically constrained to early human evolution in the Miocene and Pliocene, and the idea that the Silurians existed for the entirety of the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene and Miocene was... kinda ridiculous IMO for this exercise.

Subspecies Visualisation

Bipeslacertia vehemenus – Primitive Ancestor (Primitive Ancestor)

Subspecies (Winged Kindred)

Bipeslacertia volans mortuus – “Paleocenes” (Winged Species – Adolescence of Time)

Bipeslacertia volans malakhi – Wyrm Callers (Wyrm infected Paleocenes)

[No visualisation]

Bipeslacertia volans vivus – Luadans (TM: A Morphology/Reign of the Reptiles)

But the wreck, first seen from the air by a migratory tribe of the flying kindred en route from the tropical swelter of the Oriental Archipelago to the temperate climes of the Austral Spur, had confirmed to the profile of no known vessel from any of the saurian kindred, and Morrahaurm had been the only specialist available. And so, with many misgivings, she had embarked.

(Winged Kindred - The Book of the Enemy)

The globe was held by a creature like a mythical devil incarnate! Its oily green, needle-fanged head hovered just above the luminous sphere, the hellish red eyes darting from side to side in search of the intruder; and where the shoulders should have been were hunched lumps that made the man think of folded wings. The body and shuffling feet were invisible; the claws appeared in silhouette on the surface of the globe that the monstrosity held before it. A little it resembled a gigantic lizard, and the fanged snout, if not the same one, was at least practically identical with the one Sanders had seen in the room of horror. Only now it had lost its super- natural and diabolical aspect, appearing still hideous but only in a reptilian, scaled way. It propelled itself on hissing, leathery wings, and its sinuous body was clad in a blue, silken robe. About its ugly brow was a jewelled diadem; its claws were alight with jewels.

(Luadans - Reign of the Reptiles)

Bipeslacertia volans aurori – Zori (Reign of the Reptiles/Revelry of the Redacted)

He was a Zori, a subspecies of the Reptilian Kindred with vestigial wings on their backs that were useless on Earth, but perfectly adapted to low- gravity environments.

Revelry of the Redacted (The Book of the Snowstorm)

Subspecies (Sea Devil)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sicutsimiae – Late Sea Devils (Comic Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sicuturtus – Early Sea Devils (Normal Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus reditius – “Devolved Ones” (Inhabitants of the Nameless City – HP Lovecraft/Faction Paradox)

They were of the reptile kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile, sometimes the seal, but more often nothing of which either the naturalist or the palaeontologist ever heard. In size they approximated a small man, and their fore-legs bore delicate and evident feet curiously like human hands and fingers. But strangest of all were their heads, which presented a contour violating all know biological principles. To nothing can such things be well compared - in one flash I thought of comparisons as varied as the cat, the bullfrog, the mythic Satyr, and the human being. Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet the horns and the noselessness and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories.

Subspecies (Silurian)

Bipeslacertia homines malus – Serad-dur (Serad-dur)

“Scholar” Caste

Bipeslacertia homines augurius – Fair Folk (Fair Folk- The Shadows of Avalon)

[No Specific Description]

Bipeslacertia homines sapentia – “Senior” Silurians (Chibnall’s original classic style redesign – Cold Blood)

Bipeslacertia homines rostrata – “Middle” Silurians (Warriors of the Deep Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines gravius – “Horned Kindred” (Bulky Horned Herbivorous Silurians – A Morphology)

Her mass alone would have made Morrahaurm the most conspicuous individual on board, even without the horns and crest majestically adorning her high forehead. Among her own she was known as a beauty, a graceful dancer and no mean athlete: here she was simply a bulky, lumbering target.

(The Book of the Enemy)

Bipeslacertia homines labia – “Early” Silurians (Original Classic Who Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines venefica – The Silurians from the 30th Anniversary Calendar

“Warrior” Caste (Alternatively “Hunter” Caste)

Bipeslacertia homines anguis – “Junior” Silurians (Silurian Hunters – Supremacy of the Cybermen)

Bipeslacertia homines sapiens – “Late” Silurians (New Who Silurians)

Notes on the Meta-history of Earth Reptiles

The natural evolution of most species on Earth was a by-product of the anchoring of the thread, when the Time Lords locked down the rational Universe and rewrote all of history to suit their new rules. In the pre anchoring Universe, humanity was created using Time Lord Looms by the Original Mammoths, a powerful, psychic and magical sapient species that rivalled the Time Lords in the pre-Universe.

Whilst we have pretty much no knowledge of the Silurians from that era, we do know that they were a Time Active power in the Alliance of Races during the Time Wars era, shortly after the anchoring. Implying some kind of time active power, which would explain their appearances in eras of Earth history predating the one in which they originally developed in the Time Lord dominated rational Universe. It is, however, also of note that the vast majority of other more recent (in Universe) accounts depict the Silurians as a mildly advanced mostly stagnant species with very little space travel capabilities most likely indicating at some point between Gallifrey’s ancient past and relative present that the Silurians time active civilisation was erased from history. It is possible they experienced some equivalent of the Ghost Point (The point in which humanity became culturally sterile and stopped meaningfully advancing as a civilisation) though more extreme as humanity was still able to traditionally, if not conceptually, advance whereas the Silurians grew complacent and stagnant for presumably millions of years.

It is of note that New Who consistently depicts the Silurians as both coexisting natively with Dinosaurs and knowing humanities Ape ancestors despite an ~60 million year gap between the two eras. There are numerous potential explanations for this including human evolution occurring over a much longer period in the DWU relative to real life, the effects of the Last Great Time War on the history of Earth, genetic engineering resurrection of Dinosaurs in the Eocene-Miocene and potentially Silurian related dates being actually in months rather than years.

[random-thought-depository]

Here's another post written mostly so I can have a reference post to link to in a different post I plan to write soon. Some notes on bonobo-like human childhood and development, which is biologically different from ours:

TL:DR version:

Bonobo-like humans basically mature faster than us, but it isn't a simple acceleration; they pass development milestones in a different sequence. Bonobo-like human children basically develop precociously by Homo sapiens standards so bonobo-like humans have shorter childhoods than us, but they reach puberty later than us chronologically and much later than us relative to the rest of their development.

Different TL:DR version: first 15 years of a bonobo-like human's life in a nutshell:

Birth to 14 years old: pre-pubescent childhood; almost everything that isn't sexual or reproductive function develops precociously by Homo sapiens standards; most physical and intellectual development happens in this phase.

14-15 years old: fast puberty, development of sexuality, sexual function, reproductive potential, and secondary sex characteristics.

15 years old and older: adulthood.

Notes about bonobo-like human childhood and puberty:

Bonobo-like humans got a couple of selection pressures to keep the shorter childhoods of their last common ancestor with us and develop faster instead of stretching it out.

They were much more strongly shaped by female sexual selection than us. Bonobo-like women who are planning to conceive today will often do things like ask a prospective male gene donor's mother and other people who knew him in childhood how easy/hard he was to take care of as a kid, or just choose male gene donors whose childhood behavior they had a chance to observe themselves, with an eye toward preferring to make children who will be relatively easy to care for. This behavior is common enough and has been going on long enough to be a significant selection pressure.

Also, bonobo-like humans have much later menopause than us and tend to form reproductive hierarchies where the fertility of younger women is behaviorally suppressed and younger women assist in caring for the children of older women. This means prime childbearing age for bonobo-like human women is 40-60, and a non-trivial percentage of bonobo-like human pregnancies happen when the mother is in her early to mid sixties, and a woman who gives birth in her sixties is obviously at considerable risk of dying or becoming disabled within the next 10-20 years. Bonobo-like humans mostly mitigate this by having a social structure that encourages lots of alloparenting, but a shorter childhood also helps.

So...

Bonobo-like humans and Homo sapiens are most similar as infants. A bonobo-like human newborn more-or-less looks and behaves exactly like a Homo sapiens newborn. Humans and chimpanzees are also more similar as babies than as adults IIRC, so I think this would be a common pattern for hominids, so e.g. sapiens and bearfolk babies are probably also pretty similar.

When bonobo-like human children get to the point of taking supplementary non-milk food, they will shift away from frequent suckling pattern of young infants and toward a pattern of less frequent and more regular suckling. This makes things a lot more convenient for the mother, as now she can nurse them a few times per day on a semi-regular schedule and leave them for significant parts of the day in the care of non-lactating relatives who can feed the baby non-milk foods. If the mother works outside the home, this is often the point where she returns to her job, though many bonobo-like mothers opt to stay home until their child weans (so usually at least for a few years) for more intensive socialization with their children at a young age.

In the first years of life bonobo-like human children will start to develop precociously compared to Homo sapiens children: they start to walk, talk, etc. earlier than sapiens children. I think this may be the stage of life at which bonobo-like human children show the most pronounced development acceleration compared to sapiens children, and their language development may be particularly accelerated because of their more intensive self-domestication.

Despite their tendency to select their mates with an eye toward making easy to manage children, bonobo-like human mothers tend to be very attentive and loving and doting with their actually existing children. Bonobo-like human parenting (by mothers and their various co-parenting helpers) is usually gentle and tends to be more respectful of children's preferences and presumed intellectual capacities than Earth human parenting. One manifestation of this is bonobo-like human mothers usually let their children self-wean. This means bonobo-like humans have pretty late weaning ages, similar to some hunter-gatherer societies on Earth. This is one of the major exceptions to the "bonobo-like humans mature faster than ours" thing, though it's basically a cultural difference, not a biological one. Self-weaning timing is highly variable, as it depends on the temperament and choices of the child. Bonobo-like human girls usually self-wean when they're around three years old, while with bonobo-like human boys it's more variable and usually later, most often at 4-6 but often later than 6.

This gender difference in weaning times is because of sex-antagonistic selection. Bonobo-like women have strong lactational amenorrhea response, i.e. while they're lactating their period stops and they're functionally temporarily sterilized until their child weans (normal menstrual cycle resumes after weaning). This means a bonobo-like woman is likely to reproduce more if her children wean early. On the other hand, a bonobo-like woman's children will often have different fathers, and this means a bonobo-like male will tend to get more of his genes into the generation after next if his child is his reproductive partner's last child. This means genes on the Y chromosome that cause boys to behave in ways that somehow discourage their mothers from making more children tended to be selected for. This male reproductive strategy is particularly effective in bonobo-like humans because of how bonobo-like human reproductive hierarchies work; a lot of bonobo-like human mothers go into one of their pregnancies with a future family planning matrix of "if this kid weans early I'll give them a younger sibling, but if they wean late I'll probably be peri-menopausal by then and they'll probably be my last child."

I think the same sex-antagonistic selection might also cause some other differences in behavior between bonobo-like human girls and bonobo-like human boys. I think bonobo-like human boys might tend to form closer bonds to their mothers and have higher needs for social interaction with and emotional support from their mothers (and by spill-over, might tend to show the same pattern with other familiar childhood caretakers too, especially the female ones). Basically, I think bonobo-like humans boys might tend to be more momma's boys, while bonobo-like human girls might tend be more independent. The stronger momma's boy tendency of bonobo-like human boys would tend to discourage their mothers from making more children, as their mothers would tend to think "I can't make more kids, my son needs lots of attention!" This means that, ironically, despite their low-key female-privilege society, bonobo-like human family dynamics might often appear to a Homo sapiens observer to be sexist in a more conventional way; I can just imagine some feminist-leaning sapiens woman watching in disgust as a bonobo-like human mother dotes on and cooes over her son after telling his sister to go clean the kitchen. Though at least this probably wouldn't be as bad as our version of this family dynamic, as in bonobo-like humans it'd be a response to genuine differences in psychological needs between girl and boy children.

Bonobo-like human children are often raised more-or-less communally in group homes, though even in such environments they'll usually get the most attention from their own mother and have an especially close relationship to her. Even if they are raised in smaller co-resident cooperative child-care units non-co-resident friends, neighbors, relatives, etc. of their mother will often take significant roles in their care and rearing. There's a lot of diversity in bonobo-like human cooperative child-care arrangements, but generally bonobo-like humans tend to have bigger cooperative childcare units than us, do lots of alloparenting, and have a very "it takes a village to raise a child" approach to the care and rearing of children. I talk about some other aspects of how bonobo-like human cooperative childcare systems work in that post I linked to at the beginning of this post.

Bonobo-like women usually not starting to make kids until their 40s is downstream of the bonobo-like human affection-submissiveness response to older women and the selection pressures that created on the behavior of still fertile older women, but the cultural/intellectual/ideological side of it is bonobo-like humans have an ideal of motherhood that stresses the mother's responsibility for the socialization and practical and moral education of her children so they think of course you'd want mothering to be done by a woman who's at least middle-aged and has the knowledge, life experience, and emotional intelligence that comes with that. This influences bonobo-like human child-rearing in various ways. One example is that it means bonobo-like human mothers tend to like to spend a lot of time with their children, and bonobo-like human society has a lot of institutions set up to facilitate that, e.g. a lot of bonobo-like humans work from home, a lot of bonobo-like human work-spaces and public spaces are more baby/child-friendly than the equivalent spaces in our society, and bonobo-like humans have a lot of formal and informal institutions for financially supporting mothers who want to focus on caring for and educating their children full-time (one "horseshoe" between bonobo-like human society and the sort of social order favored by patriarchal conservatives is bonobo-like human society has lots of people who could be roughly described as stay-at-home moms, though being a stay-at-home mom doesn't imply the same vulnerability in bonobo-like human society that it does in ours because of the bonobo-like human affection-submissiveness response to older women and because of various institutional features of their society). Another example is that, compared to our society, homeschooling is more common in bonobo-like human society, especially in rural areas where brick and mortar schools are sometimes inconveniently distant.

Bonobo-like human child development continues basically a few years ahead of Homo sapiens child development up to 11-12 or so, at which point the next major exception to the "bonobo-like humans mature faster" thing becomes apparent. Younger teenage bonobo-like humans stay prepubescent, but basically everything except the sexual and reproductive functions continues to develop somewhat ahead of its pace in Homo sapiens. Bonobo-like humans do a lot more of their physical and intellectual development before puberty. I think interacting with bonobo-like human 13-14 year olds might feel quite weird to a sapiens; they'd be pretty close to the same size as adults by that point but lack secondary sex characteristics, they'd give you the impression of weird eunuch-like asexual almost genderless adults or older high school kids and you'd have trouble telling the boys and the girls apart. In bonobo-like humans, basically every part of the "growing up" process that isn't related to sexual and reproductive function happens before puberty; for bonobo-like humans the beginning of sexual and reproductive function is the capstone of growing up, not the beginning of a distinct and prolonged adolescent stage.

Bonobo-like human puberty finally happens at around 15, and because it's basically just the process of sexual and reproductive function coming online when it finally happens it happens fast; it's more like the experience of a trans person going on HRT than adolescence as we know it. My tentative model is the basic process of beginning of reproductive function and "sexual awakening" happens in a few months or less, but the build-up of muscle (in boys) or body fat (in girls) to create the full adult physique takes longer, and it often takes a while for a person who underwent this process to fully sort of out their new feelings.

In bonobo-like humans puberty is (as I said) the capstone of "growing up" and once puberty is concluded the individual is fully physically adult, including having undergone some minor skeletal changes that IIRC in Homo sapiens often don't occur until our twenties (those changes basically foreclose future bone growth IIRC - also, if bonobo-like humans have wisdom teeth, 14-15 would be when they erupt).

Bonobo-like human culture strongly associates puberty and the beginning of adulthood, tentatively to the point that the bonobo-like human legal system doesn't even have a concept of a strictly chronological age of adulthood. In bonobo-like human society if you want a quick and ironclad legal certification of adulthood you go to a doctor and have them do some medical exams certifying that you're not physically a child anymore. Note though that there's some exceptions to this where different standards are applied in edge cases (e.g. precociously pubescent children and people who never go through puberty because of some genetic condition), and the bonobo-like human legal consensus is roughly "if you don't have a doctor's note, being able to show functional social adulthood is fine," and bonobo-like human communities usually treat a person as basically a social adult from the conclusion of puberty onwards; lots of people don't bother with a medical certification of adulthood and get by fine (in practice this does kind of cash out to a semi-formalized official chronological age of adulthood, though instead of being "you have to be this old to be an adult" it's "if you're this old you're officially classified as an adult by default and won't be expected to prove it if you e.g. apply to be a first responder or apply to join a sex worker co-op"). The upshot of all this is in bonobo-like human society the age of 15 is usually when you're given the social and legal rights of an adult.

I'm not sure how the post-recontact bonobo-like human legal system handles e.g. Earth human families who bring their 15-17 year old kids with them when they visit or immigrate to the bonobo-like human world, but they'd probably have some kind of special arrangement for that, a symmetrical reverse of how I expect our in-universe post-recontact future society will probably find some way to legally classify 15-17 year old bonobo-like humans as adults or emancipated minors to avoid the sort of diplomatic incidents and legal disputes that treating them as legal dependent minors might cause.

YMMV on whether you consider a 16 year old bonobo-like human a real adult, but they're an adult in approximately the same way Sil from Species, a Star Wars Clonetrooper, Martin Brundle from The Fly II, the monster from Frankenstein (the novel where he's an intelligent and articulate being, not the movies where he's a dumb brute), etc. are adults; sci fi has a lot of intelligent beings that have adult-like knowledge and intelligence and are basically treated by the narrative as adults despite being younger than 18.

I will admit I chose this set-up to remove some of the squickier potential implications of how bonobo-like human society works (though it's far from ideal for avoiding controversy - I considered making bonobo-like humans hit puberty at 17-20 and otherwise go through more Homo sapiens-like development, but that felt really obviously designed around not offending twenty-first century Western liberals in a way that might compromise verisimilitude, and this more alien set-up is more interesting and makes them feel more like a real different species IMO - well, arguably they're not a different species cause they can make babies with us, but I think you probably can tell what I mean). I kind of like to get a bit meta with this and suggest proto-BLH women might have deliberately preferentially mated with males who'd gone through puberty late cause they wanted to spare their children potentially traumatic early sexualization.

I'm going to talk a little bit about gendered aspects of the experience of bonobo-like human puberty now, I haven't figured out what the situation regarding gender variance is in bonobo-like human society (I think they'd be pretty tolerant of it, but I haven't figured out the details) so I'm just going to talk about what happens with cisgender perisex bonobo-like girls and bonobo-like boys.

Bonobo-like humans were made more neotenous than Homo sapiens by their more intense self-domestication, and in bonobo-like humans women are firmly the less neotenous sex. Bonobo-like boys aren't visually changed very much by puberty. Bonobo-like humans of both sexes keep the same body hair pattern as children all their lives, so bonobo-like boys don't get more hair or hair in new places. They get some facial structure change, but not very much. They get some increased muscle mass because of the increase in testosterone, but it's nothing visually dramatic. For bonobo-like boys the beginning of sexual and reproductive functioning and the associated genital changes and sexual awakening are the really big directly biological puberty-related change. Bonobo-like girls though...

Bonobo-like women have gotten selection pressure for the busty voluptuous "thick" body type because it's a trigger for the sexualized version of the affection-submissiveness response. It's probably going to take a while after the hormonal changes for a 15 year old bonobo-like girl to build up that body fat, but, like... Imagine going from a boyish-looking 14 year old flat-chested asexual prepubescent to an adult woman with an adult sex drive and approximately the body type of Jennifer Atilemile in, like, maybe less than a year! That's probably a common experience of bonobo-like 15 year old girls! My brain is reeling a bit trying to imagine what that would be like from the inside!

Also, bonobo-like girls have to deal with the beginning of menstruation, but that's gentler for bonobo-like girls; severe menstrual cramps and the like are less common in bonobo-like humans cause of many thousands of years of their female ancestors preferentially allowing themselves to be impregnated by males whose female relatives had easy periods as a favor to their potential daughters, and also the bonobo-like human menstrual cycle is like twice as long as ours but their actual menstrual bleeding phase is the same length as ours so they spend a lot less time experiencing menstrual bleeding.

I have an idea that the norm in bonobo-like human society is for prepubescent people to have a gender-neutral presentation, with prepubescent girls and boys wearing the same styles of comfortable practical clothing and cutting their hair in the same ways (relatively short, in styles that prioritize comfort and being low-maintenance), and puberty is when bonobo-like humans start to sometimes wear fancier more decorative clothing that is often gendered, often let their hair get longer, etc..

A little note on youth after puberty: I have an idea that bonobo-like human society may have less stereotyping of younger adults as reckless and hot-headed, and some of this is their more intense self-domestication selected for better impulse control, lower aggression, a bigger neocortex, etc. so youthful hot temper, recklessness, and impulsivity is genuinely less of a thing in their species, but also some of it is more charitable common assumptions about the rationality of the actions of younger adults (similar to how they tend to make more charitable assumptions about the rationality of children). That said, bonobo-like human culture does have basically the same stereotype-with-basis-in-fact we do of 15-30 year old males being an especially potentially socially volatile demographic which lots of troublemakers come from - the intersection of that and the eroticized version of the affection-submissiveness response to older women creates some interesting customs, e.g. there's a lot of villages and small towns where when a male reaches adulthood the local matrons will start encouraging him to develop a habit of regular casual sexual hook-ups with them as a prophylactic against him drifting out of values-alignment with them.

[wizfurb]

BBC Ghosts 04x04 - Robin’s “William”

Note: Idk if the show has any plans on expanding on some of the past ghosts, but I thought it’d be fun to make up an OC based on one of Robin’s friends he mentions in 04x04. I’m going off the assumption he was just listing them randomly rather than in chronological order necessarily <3 This isn’t like a proper fic (though I may write one someday) but it does run a bit long, buckle in folks :3

Words: 1.5k not a proper fic my ass how did i end up writing this much

Intro:

William was a Victorian hobbyist palaeontologist/archaeologist who died in 1860 when he was around 30. Darwin’s On The Origins of Species had just come out the year before. And a few years earlier, previously uncategorised fossils had just been formally declared as belonging to another species of human altogether-- Neanderthals. 

William was deeply fascinated by the past. However, because he was raised as a woman in his youth (and a common one at that) he had little formal education in the way of science. Once he set out on his own, under a new/correct identity, he learned everything he could from books, seminars he could sneak into, writing to others in the field and self-funded excavation (nevermind that he had never actually found anything, yet). 

How he died: 

Suffice to say, like much of the scientific world, he became obsessed with the concepts of evolution and ancient hominids. So when he heard a rumor that strange bones had been unearthed at some country estate not too far from him he had to investigate. He begged the owners of Button House for the chance to excavate some of the land. Despite the handsome payment offered, they firmly refused, objecting that they wanted no part in this heathen practise.

But William was determined. He set up camp at the edge of the woods so as to not be seen and began his excavation in secret. Soon he had dug a pit as deep as he was tall, but had little definitive findings to show for it. One day, as he was emerging from the pit after a long dig a loud CRACK filled the air, and his shoulder throbbed. Ironically, the bullet wound probably wouldn’t have killed him, but the fall back into the pit did—his head hitting the ground at just the wrong angle. The perpetrators—hunters who mistook him for an animal, residents finally taking care of the intruder, he did not know—  left him where he died, filling in the pit and absolving themselves. The irony of a fossil hunter being buried was not lost on him.

The in between:

During his afterlife, William had a hard time determining if he was in Heaven or Hell. After the initial freak out about death and the existence of ghosts, William was naturally ecstatic to meet Robin. But he despaired the fact that he couldn't record any of his findings, or prove himself share them with the scientific community 

Still, he takes to interviewing Robin constantly, asking about his life when he was alive, and the developments he saw in death (he had to hold back from overtly examining Robin’s features/body, that would hardly be polite). Robin is initially kind of wary of him. After all it isn't often people sought him out for deep discussions, and William asked so much, Robin “have other things to do you know” (he didn’t, but everyone needs me time, so they find a balance).

He talks a bit about himself too. How he feels about his field, not caring to hide just how much passion he has. He firmly believes in the cause, the value of learning about past peoples and in turn learning about ourselves. He thinks it’s ridiculous that so many people regard evolution and hominid study as a heathen craft, doesn’t understand why religion and science can’t co-exist. 

(Robin doesn’t understand it either but he doesn’t understand a lot of what William says anyway. He talks very quickly and uses big science words. But he comes to like the way he says them, and especially likes that he takes the time to explain).

William asks Robin if his people had any such beliefs, stories to make sense of how the world works. Robin tells him about the moon, of course. He tells him about all the legends he watched his friends immortalise on cave walls. He tells him of the camp fires in the sky, the animal spirits that live inside your chest and thump against your rib cage when you’re scared or excited. William concludes that he doesn’t mind being in purgatory, he’d gladly listen to Robin forever. And not just to study. For all he knows now, William must be the greatest scientist in his field. But more than that he just likes being with Robin. He’s very funny, very intelligent, he doesn’t have the words to communicate it, but he understands more about humanity than scientists ever will. William had lived a solitary life, no friends, just passing colleagues that didn’t even value his work or him half the time. In death he found a kindred spirit.

Nonetheless, William never stops being fascinated with the idea of finding Robin’s bones. When he asks Robin about it, Robin claims “Nothing to find. Animals come eat me. Bear, wolf, bird— I very popular. So popular even family scared to come get me. Till one day I come back and nothing left”.

William is fascinated to learn Robin’s people buried their dead. He will not give up on the hope that Robin’s bones—the very bones that brought William here in the first place—are out there somewhere. He asks Robin if his bones might have any identifying features, like a fracture that might have healed strangely or teeth marks from a bad animal attack. Robin puffs up proudly, says “Me good hunter! Never get hurt like that. Back then, you break bone you usually die, so”. William settles for examining Robin’s teeth, and only gets playfully bitten a few times.

How he got sucked off moved on:

They are friends for years and years and years. For the first time in his life—death— William feels valued as a person, and more fulfilled everyday as student of history. And, though he is confident in himself, Robin, too, appreciates that William values him as an equal, as a human, not some savage half-man. They explore the grounds together, talk about the animals they find, share stories, lay on the grass and stargaze. William teaches Robin about constellations, and Robin is enraptured. Something about seeing shapes, animals, in the sky, trying to make meaning of something so vast and unknowable, it’s familiar. It feels like a piece of home (and gives him an idea).

Like always, it’s sudden. The Button’s are having work done in the gardens again, to put in another fountain or some such, when they find him. The constabulary are called, his bones exhumed and taken away. William should probably be more horrified at seeing his own bones, but he’s mostly just annoyed he can’t interact with his now unearthed notebook. The workers suggest a more thorough search of the area, lest they come across any more surprises and have to halt their work again. And that’s how it happens. 

Meer metres from William’s digsite all those years ago is another, smaller concentration of bones. Some are animal, and some are most definitely not. A worker uses a gloved hand to pick up a very human jaw fragment, the molars a little too big and round and— “Robin!” William shouts. He circles the worker, taking in the teeth at all angles before turning back to his friend, positively shaking with excitement. 

William grips Robin’s jaw (and while Robin makes a surprised grunt, he and William clearly have no hang ups about touch/personal space anymore), quickly but gently prying it open to get a better look. There! The second molar with a large brown crack down the middle, and the chipped canine! Keeping a hand on that familiar jaw, William’s voice is somehow soft and filled with fervour when he says “Robin that’s you. They found you!” and realises “...I almost found you”. 

Robin furrows his heavy brows and looks at the jaw, “Me?”.

William is smiling so hard, his jaw would probably hurt, were he alive. “Yes, you! And look at these-” he points to the pit “-these stone bits! They’re not natural. Someone did bury you, you must have just missed it”. Robin laughs, laughs so hard it catches and brings them both to their knees looking into that godforsaken pit. To think, one of the biggest questions of his afterlife answered, thousands of years later, by some fancy man obsessed with bones. 

Robin pokes William in the chest, where the animal spirits live, and says with a rough fondness “You. You found me”. William’s eyes are as wide and bright as the full moon, and before Robin fully realises what is happening, that brightness encompasses William’s whole body, till all that remains of William is his tattered journal still covered in dirt at the bottom of the pit.

William’s death was the adventure of his life. But for Robin those—what? 30 odd years? were a blink of an eye. He stares at where the light disappears. He almost sighs, but huffs out another laugh instead, and heads inside to tell the others.

Later, when the moon is high and thousands of little campfires sparkle in the sky, Robin picks out a star. And later, much later, 132ish years later, he points at the star and remembers. 

[demi-shoggoth]

2022 Reading Log, pt 20

96. Strange Sea Creatures by Erich Hoyt. This book was something of a disappointment for me. Hoyt has written other books about deep sea life that are better than this—Creatures of the Deep most notably. The thing is, this book is short; only about a hundred pages, with some very nice photography but a paragraph or so of information on each depicted organism. This was published during the lockdown portion of the pandemic, so I wonder if this project was abridged due to publisher issues, or was perhaps a children’s book that was expanded a bit and sold as an adult book. The pictures are nice, and the information is good, but there’s just not as much of it as you would expect from the price tag.

97. Momo: The Strange Case of the Missouri Monster by Lyle Blackburn. I’ve talked in this series before about how Blackburn is one of my favorite of the “true believer” strain of cryptozoologists; he does his due diligence with research and knows how to weave a good yarn. This yarn is about the flap of hairy hominid sightings in Louisiana, Missouri (how’s that for a confusing town name?) the summer of 1972, dubbed “Momo” for “Missouri Monster” by the press. The book also covers other Midwest sightings of Bigfoot-style monsters before and since, the flap of UFO sightings in the area at the time and the efforts to link Momo to ETs, and the parts of the story we know are hoaxes. This book is also pretty short, but it feels like a relatively complete coverage of a section of American folklore.

98. A Short History of Drunkenness by Mark Forsyth. Noticing a pattern? I was sick, so books that required a lot of attention span were off the table. This is a social history of drinking more than it is of alcohol, being a look at various places drinks were served, the culture of who drank, when and how, and what the rest of your evening might be like. It covers some similar ground to Girly Drinks with stuff like the prevalence of female gods of alcohol, and how the Greek symposium was a men-only affair. The book also discusses cultures where drink was socially disapproved of but still present, like the Caliphates, and cultures where drink is integrated into the fabric of the government, like imperial and Stalinist Russia.

99. The Story of Trees and how they changed the way we live by Kevin Hobbs and David West, illustrated by Thibaud Hérem. Similarly to Remarkable Trees, this book looks at trees one species at a time, and discusses their impacts on human culture as well as their biology. What sets this book apart is the consistency; 100 trees, each with an original illustration, that showcase the whole of the tree (bark, leaves, color, outline) like a spotter’s guide. This book is lovely, and well formatted. The arrangement of trees is roughly chronological, so woods used by prehistoric people are clumped towards the beginning and trees that have particular relevance to the 21st century are towards the back. The book does cheat a little in order to have a dry sense of humor, for example placing cinchona and juniper back to back to make a nice gin and tonic. The book is also very British. One pleasant surprise was seeing my alma mater recommended as a place to see trees compared to a global stage. I knew instinctively that UC Davis has a nice arboretum, but I always thought of it more as “walking path to get to the office” rather than “major botanical institution”.

100. Spiders: The Ultimate Predators by Stephen Dalton. This is kind of the book I was hoping Strange Sea Creatures would be; a wildlife photography book that still has a decent amount of biological information. The photos are truly spectacular—Dalton was a pioneer of photographing insects back in the 1970s, and this book was a project in part for him to tackle his arachnophobia head on. The spiders are organized by hunting style rather than by phylogenetic placement, which helps keep the book from feeling dated (it’s from 2008, and spider taxonomy has already undergone some radical revisions in the past decade-and-a-half). There’s also a chapter about advice for photographing small, skittish subjects, a lot to do with lighting and shutter speeds, which went mostly over my head but would probably be useful for people with more experience.

[booksir]

Concise, well-balanced, and comprehensive, ESSENTIALS OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Seventh Edition introduces you to physical anthropology with the goal of helping you understand the big picture of human evolution. Supported by vibrant visuals that include abundant illustrations, photographs, and photo-enhanced maps, the text focuses on human evolution and biology to help you master basic biological principles of physical anthropology so you’ll be able to better understand human origins and our place in the biological world. Offering balanced coverage of the topic areas you’ll cover in class (heredity and evolution, primates, hominid evolution, and contemporary human evolution) this edition emphasizes the chronology of fossil finds instead of just describing the fossils and the sites where they were found. The authors also interpret each fossil within the framework of the story of human evolution. New features like “Why It Matters” further emphasize the fossils’ evolutionary significance, and often even propose the relevance of chapter materials to our everyday lives. The seventh edition provides thorough coverage of cutting-edge advances in molecular biology and expanded coverage of population biology and human variation. It also includes powerful learning tools, including a robust text website. Altogether, ESSENTIALS OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Seventh Edition, integrates up-to-date coverage of the latest finds and relevant technologies in a format and writing style designed to help all students master the material.

[ugc-blog]

Dating Methods in Archaeology

Archaeology, the study of human history through the excavation and analysis of artifacts and structures, utilizes various dating techniques to determine the age of archaeological finds. Some of the different types of dating techniques in archaeology include:

Relative dating: This technique involves determining the relative age of artifacts or archaeological sites in comparison to one another without assigning specific chronological dates. Relative dating techniques include stratigraphy, which involves studying the layers of soil or rock to determine the sequence of deposition and the relative age of artifacts within those layers, and seriation, which involves arranging artifacts based on changes in style or design over time.

Absolute dating: This technique provides a specific chronological age for artifacts or archaeological sites. Absolute dating techniques include:

Radiocarbon dating (also known as Carbon-14 dating): This method is used to determine the age of organic materials, such as wood, charcoal, and bone, up to approximately 50,000 years old. It is based on the decay of the radioactive isotope Carbon-14, which is absorbed by living organisms during their lifetime and decays at a known rate after death.

Dendrochronology (tree-ring dating): This method uses the growth rings of trees to establish a sequence of years, which can then be correlated with archaeological samples to determine their age. This method is particularly useful for dating wooden artifacts or structures.

Thermoluminescence dating: This method is used to date materials that were heated in the past, such as ceramics and burnt stones. It relies on the fact that certain minerals accumulate energy over time through exposure to natural radiation, and when heated, they release this stored energy in the form of light, which can be measured to determine the time since the material was last heated.

Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating: This method is similar to thermoluminescence dating, but it measures the accumulated energy in sediments rather than heated materials. It is used to date sediments, such as those found in caves or buried archaeological sites.

Potassium-Argon dating: This method is used to date volcanic rocks and minerals that contain potassium, which decays to argon at a known rate. It is commonly used to date hominid fossils and early human artifacts. These are some of the main dating techniques used in archaeology to determine the age of archaeological finds. Archaeologists often use a combination of relative and absolute dating techniques to establish a more comprehensive understanding of the chronological context of archaeological materials and sites.

[writer59january13]

Remorseless sweaty palms

despite being prescribed glycopyrrolate.

Though the angst riddled psyche of mine crafted youth, long since receded, ebbed in the past, infringement, impingement, and indecent wracking wrath of mental illness, that even as a middle aged mwm of lxiv bold faced roam min times, I can acclimatize, characterize, empathize, harmonize, italicize, and massage sympathy for prevailing physiological symptoms of =>

Sweaty Palms

an ur...bane curse

worse than mega death

aggravating enough fo' me

to resort tit take or meth

speed dilly, and then not

getting ticked off watching Seth

Thomas - thee clock man

ewe fact chore er, and his hands

incrementally inch to...

regarding the aforementioned

relentless frenzied state.

No idea when the chronic onset

of sweaty palms first burst forth

upon thy totally tubular

handsome grooves that criss cross

the flat skin surface of my hands.

These lines called 'palmar flexion creases'

develop before birth.

This modern day bipedal hominid i.e. human

primate attests (like the average person)

two main lines across the palm,

but some have a single 'Simian crease'.

Profuse outpouring of perspiration

(as if Biblical Flood gates opened)

oft times directly related to adrenaline

coursing through every pore sans the underside of my hands)

reflexively followed by swiping said clamminess (in vein)

on clothing or woolen pocket size cloth

brought along with me everywhere I go

(cuz a lamb might not part ways with mother

Mary (of story book fame),

and this chap would shear lee feel sheepish

toting extremely cumbersome

to tote in the event this intimation

predicated on decades worth of experience,

when in the throes potential

such ordinary action strongly shaking,

grasping or holding hands took place

occurred sopping wet

clangorous human clapper,

(which frenzied trickling akin

to a vicious feedback loop),

my psyche feels under staccato

rat-a-tat siege from an

unknown invisible enemy),

the natural inclination

to withdraw myself

from bad company of others helps

stave of self-consciousness.

This avoidance of socialization

subsequently impedes any promotion

of a hankering viz genuine friendship,

employment and desiring carefree

bona fide affectionate

bonding with family of origin and/or

thy two precious progeny.

Understandable per the human reaction

to shrink away and recoil quickly

when pressed to touch

what feels like a wet noodle.

Ah…courtesy of Google

I now know sweaty palms sports

a dignified name known as palmar

Hyperhidrosis.

Here all along (meaning the majority

of my LXIV chronological

hash tagged buzz feeding

orbitz around the sun)

this plague constitutes

a bona fide medical condition.

Also reassuring to realize,

this generic guy need not

count himself alone

in the sopping wet wilderness re: this plague.

Such problematic health condition

impacts, comprises, and affects

one to two percent of the world’s population.

One Doctor Rafael Riesfeld

purportedly knuckles down and makes hand over fist handsome income.

Will power alone seems

a dauntlessly futile endeavor

to rid oneself of this disruptive condition.

Try as one might to put a lockdown

on the propensity for sweat glands

(synonymous with the term eccrine)

are pack within sub surfaces of

hands, forehead and feet.

As linkedin to the sympathetic

nervous system, the body electric

under stress activates said glands.

Profuse moisture dripping

like a faulty faucet

severely affected everyday activities

of my existence since a young adult.

Frustration to complete a simple task

such as opening a doorknob,

using the laptop, and even writing

concomitantly associated

with droplets of water soiling

green sleeves to appear near saturated.

Without fail interpersonal ambitions

hi-jacked when wet as a dishrag hands

found me disinclined

to experience social rejection.

Though sprung from overactive

predisposition to anxiety, these secret

tory organs get exacerbated

with the honorable privilege of

being gifted with panic attacks,

offers little consolation.

your prospective clammy handy dandy

blues clues budding friend

where chocolate candy melts in my hands not my mouth.

[trans-xianxian]

are you talking abt like, homo sapiens and neanthertals n the like? i never rlly thought abt it tht way, i just mostly think that we all kind of blended out into one big human species? if tht makes sense? like, its rarer to be full homo sapiens than not, like some ppl have more neanthertal in them thn others. either way i like your thoughts! do u have more of them abt this?

okay anon I hope you are ready because you've unlocked one of my oldest and deepest hyperfixations and I'm going to make you listen to me talk about science just like I did to every adult at like age 4, except its a lot less cute and impressive now because I am 18 and I have learned a lot more words. I'm so sorry

I'm going to lay out all of the "facts", and then go into my Thoughts, but first I would like to preface with two things:

1. I am not a scientist. I'm just some guy who watches a lot of documentaries and has a lot of questions and a lot of feelings. I am, by no means, an expert on any of this. a lot of the scientific stuff I'm about to get into is from memory that I've fact checked the hell out of to make sure I'm not telling you blatant untruths, so there's probably stuff I'm missing! stuff I haven't heard about yet! again, I'm just some guy

2. anthropology and the discussion around human evolution and the hominid family tree is HIGHLY controversial within the scientific community (why I put quotations around the word 'facts')... there is so much we don't know and so much information is just. missing and so much we Can't know. ever. so so much of the science around this is honestly just guess work! highly informed guess work, but guess work nonetheless! almost Nothing about human evolution can me unanimously agreed upon (the "out of africa" theory isn't even 100% accepted by everyone, but that's a different conversation), Especially when it comes to other species of hominids and how we think about modern human beings and our behaviors (humans want to be super extra special so So bad and they want to use science to prove it). and, like everything, it is effected by bias. the modern viewpoint on things, which is so often also dominated by a western viewpoint on things, and racist and sexist practices and perspectives, have a huge impact on the discussions around human evolution and the hominid family

what I'm saying is, look at every single "fact" that I'm about to present you with, with a critical mindset. I will do my best to represent as many sides of the discussion as possible before I get into my own thoughts. and any time I say something is the first of it's kind or the first to do something add "that we currently know of" in your brain. I will try to do this in the most chronological order possible, but its a family tree, not a time line. there's a little bit of jumping around that has to happen

first I'll just lay out some basic info (both facts and common/likely theories) about everybody in the section of the family tree Before it starts to gets super complicated and controversial:

- chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, and our evolutionary family tree diverged from theirs about 7 million years ago

- ardipithecus ramidus is the oldest confirmed bipedal hominid species, who lived about 4.4 million years ago. they disprove the theory that walking upright happened when we left the trees to walk the plains, as they lived in forests and were adapted to both life in the trees and walking upright on the ground. they had more hand like feet resembling that of a monkey which were good for climbing and maneuvering in trees, but had hips and pelvis' suited for walking upright on the ground. it is believed that, unlike chimps and others in the family tree before them (them being ardipithecus ramidus), they could have been monogamous, having families similar to our own

- ardipithecus ramidus had a few split offs from their place in the family tree, but the most notable, and the only one to survive, was australopithecus afarensis, who lived 3.7 million years ago. this is where our ancestors fully left the trees and began to look a little bit more like us. they had feet more like ours, suited for large amounts of walking rather than climbing, and it is believed that they probably survived by traveling in groups of about a dozen

- australopithecus afarensis splits into two major groups; the genus homo (that's us!), and the genus paranthropus. the two major players here that lived along side each other, perhaps in direct competition with one another, were paranthropus boisei and homo habilis, who existed at the same time 2.4 million years ago for about 600 thousand years

- paranthropus boisei was stockier, where homo habilis had more slender bodies. evidence shows that homo habilis may have used very basic stone tools to strip meat from bone (that they likely scavenged, not hunted)

- homo erectus, living 1.8 million years ago, is where things start change into something that looks a lot more like modern humans (in more ways than one). they had much less body hair, and from their bones we can tell they were likely very good runners and, subsequently, skilled hunters. this is where we begin to use tools to hunt, meaning eating a lot of meat, meaning bigger brains. this is where the more social and compassionate parts of our evolution come in, where culture begins to form. evidence from a skull found with no teeth, but belonging to an individual who likely died of old age rather than starvation, suggests they were cared for beyond the point that they could care for themselves

- we know, for the most part, what happens next. homo erectus traveled to asia. some still in africa evolve into homo heidelbergensis, who end up in europe and evolve into neanderthals (about 200 thousand years ago). a little later, homo sapiens, or "modern humans", also evolve from homo erectus still in africa.

- modern humans met neanderthals in eurasia 100 thousand years ago, and lived along side them for about 10 thousand years. the first modern humans also appear in southeast asia about 100 thousand years ago

but this is where it starts to get more complicated and controversial, where my timeline family tree bullet points end, and where a little bit of jumping around has to happen

we know from dna evidence that homo sapiens directly interacted and interbred (not just lived in the same place at the same time) with two other species of hominids - the neanderthals and the denisovans (who probably diverged from us around 800 thousand years ago). we know that the dna from both of those groups is still present in many modern humans today. but the large controversy comes when the suggestion of other hominid species living along side modern humans is made

examples being the red deer cave people, who some suggest aren't even a separate species of their own, and homo floresiensis, or "the hobbit", both found in asia and considered to have been more "primitive" groups. both survived to as recently as 14 thousand years ago, FAR past when modern humans arrived in asia, and far past when it was initially believed that we were the only hominids left

another example, this time in africa, is homo naledi. their skeletons appear very primitive, and based on the way their morphology, it was first presumed that they fit into the family tree somewhere at least 2 million years ago. but that was wrong. very wrong. testing proved that they lived as recently as 300 to 200 Thousand years ago

and there's more! so much more! endless controversy about what makes something a separate species or how they behaved. things that contradict what has long been seen as specifically homo sapien behavior (making art, burying or honoring the dead, having sophisticated language). and of course there are so many questions and so much speculation about why we survived when none of the other groups did and what kind of relationships we may have had with them

and so now onto my thoughts, which is what you asked for in the first place but now you have all of this. I am so sorry. I don't even know where to BEGIN with all of this because there is just So Much

I guess firstly, though, is that all of the controversy makes me think about how humans have this deep seated belief that we are super extra mega special from everything that is and was on the planet. there are so many things we will Demand are uniquely human, and it stunts scientific progress and our understanding of the world! scientists are so reluctant to call things that non human animals do art or language or compassion or tool making because "those are human things". and all of this controversy around early hominids and our evolution shows us that those beliefs seep into how we think about and assess our way way back history. it took YEARS for the scientific community to recognize that neanderthals were more than just stupid brutish inferior creatures. they were smart like us! they lived in families and made clothing and art and tools and wore jewelry! a skull cup was found in red deer cave, and evidence showed that the remains of the red deer cave people had been burned and painted. these are behaviors thought to be "uniquely human", and the suggestion that they were even another species, and on top of that a species engaging in behavior thought to be special to modern humans, was SO absolutely controversial. some scientists even suggest that the red deer cave people didn't do that themselves, and that instead modern humans did those "modern human things" to the red deer cave peoples bones

and of course there is the question of how it would have turned out if some of those other species had survived too, and what it was like when they were here with us? how would it have compared to the ways other animals interact with the different species of themselves (the zoo I volunteer at has three different kinds of lemurs in one habitat. they all get along, share the same heated rocks, hang out on the same trees... can they communicate with each other? I imagine they must be able to, in some way, just a little bit. maybe they're even friends)? because so many talk about this like... modern humans already fight so much with each other so how could it have been any better with Other species. they discuss our living alongside other hominids like a competition. like a bloody fight for resources and land and power. the same documentary that suggests friendship between the red deer cave people and us also suggested that breeding between groups could have been like "trading of mates". like it was forceful or violent. like rape. at the same time that we glorify ourselves as the only species who can do all of these Special Human Behaviors, we demonize our ancestors and their other hominid neighbors as animalistic and violent and so obviously incapable of the "sophistication" we have now

but. at our core, at the very Center of humanity, we are story tellers and creators and nurturers... we are habitually, Illogicaly kind. we know where our ancestors lived and who they were because of the art that they left on the walls of caves and the things that they buried with their dead. always I am thinking about that quote about how the first sign of civilization is not a clay pot or a stone tool, but instead a human femur bone that had been broken and then healed. because if you break your leg in the wild, you die. so for the bone to heal, somebody had to take the injured person somewhere safe, had to stay with them and protect them and treat their injury and bring them food and water and take Care of them. THATS who humans are. those are our defining traits, whether we share them with other creatures living and dead, or not. it is not war or conquest or hatred that makes us, but LOVE and ART and CURIOSITY and STORY TELLING and KINDNESS (and if the lemurs at my local zoo can look each other in their similar little faces and see a friend, a tree branch buddy, then why couldn't we? in our infinite kindness and our infinite understanding? humans can be so awful to each other for our differences, in ways that shape the whole world, but mostly we are kind. our success as a species is defined by and thanks to our working together and our love for each other - we stand upright to hold our young while we walk or carry food to our families, we survive on the plains because we stay in groups, we become smarter because we hunt together, share with each other, cooperate. one of my favorite facts about human beings is that we are biologically hardwired to enjoy being caressed at a certain speed. we are designed to love and be loved. and mostly we are kind)

I wonder, for all of the ways that we love and care for each other, how did we love and care for the different reflections of ourselves? the lengths of time that these other species lived alongside modern humans just strikes me. because... that is such a long period of time to learn and to love and to grow together. 10 thousand years next to the neanderthals is SO long to develop with and from them. what knowledge did they share with us? what stories did they tell us? what did they give us that we don't even remember they gave? the suggestion that modern humans did those things to the red deer cave peoples bones makes me think too... one documentary I watched suggested that if that were true, perhaps it was an act of honor and love. maybe modern humans were close with them, maybe we loved them, maybe we mourned them when they died, painted their bones and buried them

and so I ask again, what do we remember that we don't know we remember? what did they teach us that we consider our own? and what did we lose when we lost them? so much is lost to time, always so much is lost to time. thats the eternal curse, that we have to relearn parts of ourselves that we have lost somewhere for some reason. it is what fuels the kind of research that brings us all of this information - the desire to know ourselves

and Speaking of loss, of things we are missing, I wonder if we missed our hominid friends when they were gone. how many generations did it take to forget them? what did we think happened? were we sad? and as for the ones we never met, who never met us, what was it like to dwindle, with nobody else around? were they lonely? were they scared? an individual that is the last of it's kind is called and "endling". it is already so lonely, but how must have it felt, to be the endling of a species with a big enough brain to grasp, even just a little bit, what was happening to you?

[rwby-redux]

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: History

In hindsight, I probably should have called this topic political sciences, or social studies, or the humanities. Literally any of those would’ve been more accurate than simply calling it history. Sort of shot myself in the foot with that one. Oh, well. I guess we’ll just have to make do.

History (as it’s defined by the Redux) is an umbrella term for human geography, economics, legal systems, global affairs, anthropology, civil rights, technology, and resources. Its primary concern is analyzing how all of these studies shaped the actions of people in the past, and the ripple effects that carried those societies into the present. Being an interdisciplinary topic, it’s nearly impossible to talk about any of these studies in isolation without accidentally overlooking crucial details. Anyone who’s ever opened a history textbook knows that with that complexity comes controversy, and RWBY isn’t exempt from that trend. As we’re told by Salem in the show’s debut, modern-day Remnant was forged by that forgotten past, by the omission of the gods and monsters that set things in motion.

It’s often said that history is written by the victors. And if history is indeed a book, then you’ll quickly find that RWBY’s has pages missing.

Let’s start by laying our cards on the table and talking about what facts we do have. RWBY’s canon can be roughly divided into three vague time periods: the era of Humanity v1.0, prior to the gods’ exodus; the era where Salem and Ozma’s first host briefly ruled together, several million years after Humanity v2.0 evolved; and the era characterized by the aftermath of the Great War, about several thousand years after the collapse of Salem’s and Ozma’s apotheotic kingdom. Anything in-between is obfuscated by the show, either accidentally (due to a lack of worldbuilding) or intentionally (as an attempt to make the series “mysterious”).

My first instinct is to start calling bullshit left and right. There is no justification for spoon-feeding your audience crucial lore through a spin-off series, and then waving your hand and saying that the show doesn’t have the time for worldbuilding. If I had to start pointing fingers, I’d lay the blame on the writers for prioritizing animating bloated fight scenes that ate up the episodes’ already-stunted runtime. I say this knowing that some people will balk at the accusation, because there exists a demographic of viewers that does prefer watching the fight sequences with their brains turned off. And I’m not above that. (I could spend an hour raving about the choreography of the fight between Cinder and Neo, or about the coordination of the Ace Operatives in their takedown of the Cryo Gigas. Believe me, I’m not knocking the absurd enjoyment of spectacle fighting.)

My problem is that RWBY’s premise is so deeply-entrenched in rule of cool that it left its worldbuilding malnourished by comparison.

But fine. Let’s, for the moment, give RWBY the benefit of the doubt. What in-world reasons would the series have for its history being believably underdeveloped? (And no, we’re not talking about the erasure of the Maidens and magic. We know that information was deliberately expunged from the annals of history. We’re focusing on the parts of Remnant’s history that deal with ancient cultures, defunct countries, and influential past events.)

The immediate solution that comes to mind is the Creatures of Grimm. As we’re told by numerous sources, the Grimm not only prioritize attacking humans and Faunus, but they discriminately destroy any of their creations. [1]

“With every alternative form of communication that was proposed, there seemed to be the perfect obstacle. The destructive nature of the creatures of Grimm severely limited the reliability of ground-based technologies.” | Source: World of Remnant, Volume 3, Episode 3: “Cross Continental Transmit System.”

This leads to the conclusion that Remnant’s past was physically destroyed, and any traces of it were removed by the Grimm. This would include archeological records—artwork, architecture, books, clothing, jewelry, burial sites, tools, ecofacts, and so on.

The issue I have with this explanation is that it’s not consistent. Throughout the show we see ample evidence of immediate-past and distant-past societies. The remains of Mountain Glenn and Oniyuri still stand, despite the high presence of Grimm at the former (and the presumed presence of Grimm at the latter). Brunswick Farms is relatively intact and provisioned with food and fuel, even though the Apathy are quite literally hanging out under the floorboards. The Emerald Forest even has the derelict ruins of an ancient temple that Ozpin incorporated into the Beacon initiation.

Petroglyphs (parietal stone-carving artwork) of early hominids fighting a Death Stalker. | Source: Volume 1, Episode 7: “The Emerald Forest - Part 2.”

If the Grimm are RWBY’s get-out-of-jail-free card, then they’re certainly not being used to their full effect. The examples I provided tell us in no uncertain terms that Remnant does have an accessible history in the form of archeological artifacts. For fuck’s sake, Oobleck is literally an anthropologist. He teaches history classes at Beacon Academy and has a PhD on the subject.

Similarly, if we assume the format of World of Remnant (a classroom lecture given by Qrow) to be applicable in-world, then that means the history of the last few centuries pertaining to the kingdoms is common knowledge. [2] The existence of this information tells us that Remnant has a flourishing history, and yet we see little of it represented in the show.

I chalk up the lack of history to a nasty habit of the writers. You see, CRWBY has this infuriating tendency to treat RWBY like “it’s like our world but…” It’s like our world but with magic; it’s like our world but with Dust; it’s like our world but with bloodthirsty monsters. You get the idea. As I said back in the Worldbuilding: Overview, if you make your fictional world a one-to-one analog of your own, you end up either ignoring, underdeveloping, or erasing the history exclusive to that setting. And RWBY is largely bereft of any historical identity that it could call its own. Here, let me pitch a few examples of what I’m talking about:

If slavery was only outlawed less than eighty years ago, why don’t we see Mistral creating legal loopholes to retain the system, like through indentured servitude or penal labor? An empire built on human rights violations doesn’t lose that disregard overnight. While we see plenty of poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Mistral, [3] and we’re told about its infamous criminal underworld, [4] these aspects of Mistrali culture seem rather disconnected from the recent history of the country, and ultimately have no impact on the main characters or the plot.

The Faunus Rights Revolution was a three-year conflict that (presumably) took place across all four kingdoms, and involved countermanding the reparations made to the Faunus after the Great War. From a chronological perspective, this was extremely recent. I know Rooster Teeth has a track record of poorly handling systemic racism. Usually this manifests in characters doing tokenly racist things, like using slurs or refusing to serve Faunus customers. But here’s the thing: a discrimination-based conflict this recent should have more bearing on current events. We should see examples of things like police profiling, higher incarceration rates, a lack of representation in media, social pressure to conceal Faunus traits or assimilate into human culture, fetishization, inadequate healthcare, forced sterilization, a lack of clothing retailers which stock apparel that accommodates Faunus traits, and so on. To put it bluntly: Faunus are an underprivileged minority, and immediate history should be influencing how that plays out in the show.

To reiterate: the Great War was eighty years ago. Meaning that there are likely still people alive that fought during it. How have their attitudes and beliefs shaped the world in the last few decades? Did they pass on any lingering hostilities or biases to their family members or community? What about in the present-day? Do people from Vale that migrate to Mistral ever deal with bigotry? Do people in Atlas harbor any lingering ideologies from that time? Is authentic pre-war artwork from Mantle considered priceless because most artwork was destroyed during Mantle’s suppression of creative expression? Did immigrants from the other kingdoms help rebuild Atlas’ cultural identity by supplying it with the values that they brought with them? What about shifts in culture? Did kingdoms have to ration resources like sugar or cream? Did this result in cultural paradigms, where nowadays drinking black coffee is more prevalent as a result of adapting to scarcity?

Because Vacuo’s natural resources were heavily depleted by invading countries decades before the Great War, did this have a major bearing on technology? Does modern Vacuo have wind farms or solar arrays to compensate for a lack of Dust? How does this affect their relationship with other kingdoms? Mistral loves to pride itself on its respect for nature. [5] Does this attitude ever anger Vacuites from the perspective of, “Yeah, I can really see how much you ‘respect’ nature. You respected it so much that you invaded our country and destroyed our oases.”

As you can see, history can’t be idly ignored. It has long-lasting impacts on the people who lived through it, and it continues to inform the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of people to come. What we get instead are traditions that only exist within the relevance of the immediate past, like the color-naming trend that emerged in response to artistic censorship. Anything which predates it, though? Remnant might as well have sprung into existence a hundred years ago with how little its history exists beyond that context.

It’s frustrating and disheartening. We know precious little about Remnant because its history either exists separately from the story (and is delivered supplementarily through transmedia worldbuilding), or it wasn’t developed in the first place. This doesn’t even take into consideration how much the writers deliberately withhold for the sake of artificially creating suspense. (A suspense, I might add, that frequently lacks payoff, either because it gets forgotten by the writers, or the characters never bother to seek out knowledge from available sources, like Ozma. Seriously, why do these kids never ask any fucking questions? They did this throughout all of Volume 5—Ruby in particular, who I badly wanted to strangle when she said “I have no more questions” back in V5:E10: “True Colors.”)

RWBY didn’t even bother to give us a calendar era, like the BCE/CE one used today. Hell, if the writers wanted to buck the system, they could’ve gone with something similar to Steven Universe or The Elder Scrolls, where eras are divided by significant historical events.

Sorry. I swear, I’m done dredging up examples. I’ve already made my point. As we talk about the other topics in their respective posts, we’ll be able to analyze these problems in greater detail.

Trust me. We’ve only just scratched the surface.

-

[1] Volume 1, Episode 1: “Ruby Rose.” Salem: “An inevitable darkness—creatures of destruction—the creatures of Grimm—set their sights on man and all of his creations.”

[2] World of Remnant, Volume 2, Episode 2: “Kingdoms.” Salem: “In the countless years that humanity has roamed the planet, civilizations have grown and fallen. But four have withstood the test of time: Atlas, Mistral, Vacuo, Vale.”

[3] Volume 5, Episode 6: “Known by Its Song.”

[4] Volume 5, Episode 1: “Welcome to Haven.”

[5] World of Remnant, Volume 4, Episode 2: “Mistral.” Qrow: “There's one common thread that links all these people together, though, and that's their respect for nature. Particularly the sea and the sky.”

[sciencespies]

Neanderthals vanished from Europe thousands of years earlier than we thought

https://sciencespies.com/humans/neanderthals-vanished-from-europe-thousands-of-years-earlier-than-we-thought/

Neanderthals vanished from Europe thousands of years earlier than we thought

Neanderthal fossils from a cave in Belgium believed to belong to the last survivors of their species ever discovered in Europe are thousands of years older than once thought, a new study said Monday.

Previous radiocarbon dating of the remains from the Spy Cave yielded ages as recent as approximately 24,000 years ago, but the new testing pushes the clock back to between 44,200 to 40,600 years ago.

The research appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was carried out by a team from Belgium, Britain and Germany.

Co-lead author Thibaut Deviese from the University of Oxford and Aix-Marseille University told AFP he and colleagues had developed a more robust method to prepare samples, which was better able to exclude contaminants.

Having a firm idea of when our closest human relatives disappeared is considered a key first step toward understanding more about their nature and capabilities, as well as why they eventually went extinct while our own ancestors prospered.

The new method still relies on radiocarbon dating, long considered the gold standard of archeological dating, but refines the way specimens are collected.

All living things absorb carbon from the atmosphere and their food, including the radioactive form carbon-14, which decays over time. 

Since plants and animals stop absorbing carbon-14 when they die, the amount that remains when they are dated tells us how long ago they lived.

When it comes to bones, scientists extract the part made up of collagen because it is organic.

“What we have done is to go one step further,” said Deviese, since contamination from the burial environment or through glues used for museum work can spoil the sample.

Instead, the team looked for the building blocks of collagen, molecules called amino acids, and in particular selected specific single amino acids they could be sure were part of the collagen.

‘Reliable framework’

The authors also dated Neanderthal specimens from two additional Belgian sites, Fonds-de-Foret and Engis, finding comparable ages.

“Dating all these Belgian specimens was very exciting as they played a major role in the understanding and the definition of Neanderthals,” said co-lead author Gregory Abrams, of the Scladina Cave Archaeological Centre in Belgium.

“Almost two centuries after the discovery of the Neanderthal child of Engis, we were able to provide a reliable age.”

Genetic sequencing was meanwhile able to show that a Neanderthal shoulder bone previously dated at 28,000 years ago was heavily contaminated with bovine DNA, suggesting the bone had been preserved with a glue made from cattle bones.

“Dating is crucial in archaeology. Without a reliable framework of chronology we can’t really be confident in understanding the relationships between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens,” added co-author Tom Higham of the University of Oxford.

Certain stone tool use has been attributed to Neanderthals and has been interpreted as a sign of their cognitive evolution, said Deviese.

But if the timeline for Neanderthals’ existence is being pushed back, Deviese added, then Paleolithic industries should be re-examined to determine if they really were the work of the extinct hominid species.

© Agence France-Presse

#Humans

[historyfiles]

Hominid Chronology: Homo naledi

Findings which were announced on 5 June 2023 caused a degree of controversy, with the findings concerning whether or not Homo naledi buried its dead:

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#5yrsago Fossil Necklace: chronologically ordered beads from the planet's history

Katie Paterson's Fossil Necklace is a gorgeous piece whose each bead is a chronologically ordered artifact from a significant moment in our planetary history, signposting events like the cretaceous, the rise of hominids, and more. (this PDF has detailed, piece-by-piece labels)

https://boingboing.net/2013/10/10/fossil-necklace-chronological.html

[hydralisk98]

Urya (Brainstorm #0x1)

Urya is a shared universe @hydralisk98 (aka myself) is developing currently to both enjoy himself/herself but also to preparing his/her mind to shift into that world.

Clearly not ready for use yet but I would like to eventually provide access to the data under open source licensing. 

IDEAS

Main inspirations from fictional works (Secondary inspirations would take up way too much space so I left that alone at least for a little while):

0x10c

Portal 2 + Portal Stories: Mel

The Alchemist

Hypnospace Outlaw

The Stanley Parable

Zachtronics

Inspirations from OTL’s constructs

?

Characters:

Constant “Klara” Booksword

“Nil” aka the main playable person/entity

Sasha

Charles

Sophia

Valence

Themes: 

“God”

Truth

Soul

Choice

Time

Philosophy

Languages

Methodology

Tonalities:

Didactic

Dramatic

Comical

Ironic

Polemic?

Epic?

Media genres: 

Hypertext

Multimedia demos

Video games

Game modifications (probably as total conversions but embracing some of the initial game design as well)

TTRPG campaigns

Addventures / Suggestion forum -ish game

Fictional setting:

Single planet as the initial scope

A few regions or a single country per focus point

Single constellation as the maximum scope

Escapism & personal Joy & Achievement as motivations

Parallel history scheme (There are minor differences mostly up to the initial anchor point)

Mystery + Intrigue plots

Rare magic

2015-equivalent is the initial anchor point

Young adults (15-30 years old) audience as target audience

Grim to noble scale= Neutral (Middle)

Dark to light scale= Grey (Middle)

Recurrent themes= Coming of age / Circle of Life / History repeats itself

Recurrent conflicts= Political intrigues, “Materialism” vs “Spirituality”, “War” vs “Peace”, “Authority” vs “Freedom”, “Xenophilia” vs “Xenophobia”, […]

Most Civs and City-States= Assyria, Morocco, Portugal, Shoshone, Inca, Babylon, Byzantium, Austria, Polynesia, Sweden, Ottomans, Ethiopia, Korea, Maya, Persia, America, Brazil, Netherlands, Songhai, Poland, Indonesia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Guadalcanal, Nendo, Kelowna, Milan, Yerevan, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Zurich, Sidon, Jerusalem, Vatican City, Wittenberg, Buenos Aires, Samarkand, Kabul, Tbilisi, Ormus, Yangon, Cahokia, Mogadishu, Hanoi, Luanda, Antananavario, Melbourne, Sofia, Chennai, Ragusa, Quebec City, Prague, Lusaka, Tyre, Dijon, Konigsberg, Panama City, Riga, Budapest, Algiers

[Work.In.Progress]

Literature processes:

Non-chronological (Flashbacks and anticipations possible)

Non-Linear (Parallel pattern)

High and low levels of language

Stylistic devices: substitution figures, amplification/insistance figures, opposition figures, omission figures, sonority figures?, analogy figures, thought figures (concession, preterition), […]

Point of view= First person perspective BUT with lots of second person and fourth wall breaking instances (so it is very meta fictional)

Values:

“Love” or Acceptance of the divine truth of reality

Choice

Perseverence

Honesty

Knowledge

Ethics’ sense

Originality criteria= Quite null, which is obviously a antithesis

Intrigue/Suspense= Should more driven by “natural” curiosity than actual aesthetics

Lisibility / Complexity= Should stay quite complex and fancy with little compromise towards accessibility as far as simplifying vocabulary and stylistic devices in the original core material goes.

Scenaristic and metaphysical realisms criteria= Should go somewhat far, as to establish a cohesive universe to which we can actually go there PHYSICALLY altrought at least some details should be left unused in the original core material

“Book-Object”= Emphasis towards portraying it in a way that is as balanced as required

Message(s) of the shared universe’s original core material= Introspection and “Activism”?

Narrative model:

Constant writing his bucket list on paper (elements to become Klara or at least the best version of himself/herself), January 2020 in Canada

Constant realizing he doesn’t know how to manifest it into reality

Constant try subliminals unsuccessfully

Constant researches proven methods for manifestation

Constant asking for help

Constant changes his perspective about how to reach his bucket list goals

Constant gets rigorous

Constant finally becomes Klara

Klara is happy and goes onward in life

Actantial model: 

Constant (also known as “Klara”) Booksword as the subject

“Nil” aka the player, Klara herself and the whole universe as the helping factors

Constant himself and doubt(s) as the opposing factors

Overall process of acceptation as the quest

Klara as the recipient

Constant as the sender

Constant’s wishes fulfillment as the object

Easter eggs:

[Work.In.Progress]

Ideal licensing terms=  Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal for the actual media,  MIT License for the actual software written for it

Actual child projects to work on:

Explaining the metaphysics

12-bit computer system and other odd electronic projects

Software and services derived from my world

Naturalistic conlangs based on a specific proto-language family

Naturalistic conlangs unrelated to any specific language family

TO-DO list:

Sketch the metaphysical model used (aka what actual metaphysics work like, think of it like the mythology of that universe but as actual truth)

Finish basic astronomy of the stellar system

Finish geology and climate

Sketch biology and hominids

Develop and get data from game mods and standalone games’ playtroughts to further the decisions afterwards

Sketch human history from the very start of the neolithic era up to the Boltzmann’s brain era of the universe (focus on 10′000 BCE equivalent to the middle of the 6th millennium AD equivalent)

Determine the actual core TL base

Develop over the details of everything particularly interesting or helpful towards the TL shifting

Target games for modding:

Europa Universails III

Europa Universalis IV

Crusader Kings II

Civilization V Complete Edition

Dwarf Fortress

Catalysm: Dark Days Ahead

Game Dev Tycoon

Half-Life 1

Half-Life 2

Lawgivers

Quadrilateral Cowboy

Democracy 3

FreeCiv

Baba is You

Factorio

Minecraft

Hypnospace Outlaw

Portal 2

Garry’s Mod

Quake

Doom

Colossal Cave Adventure

Notices

Feel free to suggest me anything under the autisticcanadian@yahoo.com email address .

November 1st, 2019 4:40am edition

[jui31]

Anthropology Syllabus for IAS Exams

Anthropology is one of the 48 optional courses on the UPSC optional subject list. The UPSC Anthropology syllabus for the IAS Exam emphasises candidates' ability to grasp the topic as a science and apply what they've learned to real-world problems. This subject covers subjects such as human evolution, social systems, cultural evolution, and development.

Anthropology Syllabus for UPSC: –

The syllabus for UPSC candidates who take Anthropology Optional is focused on issues and subjects connected to development and Indian culture. Candidates who work as teachers, social workers, or sociologists, for example, may find the subject simple to prepare. To effectively strategize their preparation, candidates should be comprehensive with UPSC Mains. They should read the UPSC anthropology syllabus several times because proper optional preparation would improve the chances of IAS applicants scoring well in the civil services test.

At the UPSC Notification page, candidates can learn more about the exam dates, openings, eligibility, salary, and exam pattern.

Syllabus for IAS Anthropology

In UPSC Mains, the Anthropology Optional Subject contains two papers (paper I and paper II). Each paper is worth 250 points, for a total of 500 points. The following is the syllabus for IAS Anthropology:

UPSC Anthropology Syllabus (Paper-I)

1.1 Meaning, Scope and development of Anthropology.

1.2 Relationships with other disciplines : Social Sciences, behavioural Sciences, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, Earth Sciences and Humanities.

1.3 Main branches of Anthropology, their scope and relevance:

(a) Social-cultural Anthropology.

(b) Biological Anthropology.

(c) Archaeological Anthropology.

(d) Linguistic Anthropology.

1.4 Human Evolution and emergence of Man:

(a) Biological and Cultural factors in human evolution.

(b) Theories of Organic Evolution (Pre-Darwinian, Darwinian and Post-Darwinian).

(c) Synthetic theory of evolution; Brief outline of terms and concepts of evolutionary biology (Doll’s rule, Cope’s rule, Gause’s rule, parallelism, convergence, adaptive radiation, and mosaic evolution).

1.5 Characteristics of Primates; Evolutionary Trend and Primate Taxonomy; Primate Adaptations; (Arboreal and Terrestrial) Primate Taxonomy; Primate Behaviour; Tertiary and Quaternary fossil primates; Living Major Primates; Comparative Anatomy of Man and Apes; Skeletal changes due to erect posture and its implications.

1.6 Phylogenetic status, characteristics and geographical distribution of the following :

(a) Plio-preleistocene hominids in South and East Africa—Australopithecines.

(b) Homo erectus : Africa (Paranthropus), Europe (Homo erectus (heidelbergensis), Asia (Homo erectus javanicus, Homo erectus pekinensis.

(c) Neanderthal man—La-chapelle-aux-saints (Classical type), Mt. Carmel (Progressive type).

(d) Rhodesian man.

(e) Homo saoiens—Cromagnon, Grimaldi and Chancelede.

1.7 The biological basis of Life : The Cell, DNA structure and replication, Protein Synthesis, Gene, Mutation, Chromosomes, and Cell Division.

1.8 (a) Principles of Prehistoric Archaeology. Chronology : Relative and Absolute Dating methods.

(b) Cultural Evolution—Broad Outlines of Prehistoric cultures :

(i) Paleolithic

(ii) Mesolithic

(iii) Neolithic

(iv) Chalcolithic

(v) Copper-Bronze Age

(vi) Iron Age

2.1 The Nature of Culture : The concept and Characteristics of culture and civilization; Ethnocentrism vis-a-vis cultural Relativism.

2.2 The Nature of Society : Concept of Society; Society and Culture; Social Institution; Social groups; and Social stratification.

2.3 Marriage : Definition and universality; Laws of marriage (endogamy, exogamy, hypergamy, hypogamy, incest taboo); Type of marriage (monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, group marriage). Functions of marriage; Marriage regulations (preferential, prescriptive and proscriptive); Marriage payments (bride wealth and dowry).

2.4 Family : Definition and universality; Family, household and domestic groups; functions of family; Types of family (from the perspectives of structure, blood relation, marriage, residence and succession); Impact of urbanization, industrialization and feminist movements on family.

2.5 Kinship : Consanguinity and Affinity; Principles and types of descent (Unilineal, Double, Bilateral Ambilineal); Forms of descent groups (lineage, clan, phratry, moiety and kindred); Kinship terminology (descriptive and classificatory); Descent, Filiation and Complimentary Filiation;Decent and Alliance.

3. Economic Organization : Meaning, scope and relevance of economic anthropology; Formalist and Substantivist debate; Principles governing production, distribution and exchange (reciprocity, redistribution and market), in communities, subsisting on hunting and gathering, fishing, swiddening, pastoralism, horticulture, and agriculture; globalization and indigenous economic systems.

4. Political Organization and Social Control : Band, tribe, chiefdom, kingdom and state; concepts of power, authority and legitimacy; social control, law and justice in simple Societies.

5. Religion : Anthropological approaches to the study of religion (evolutionary, psychological and functional); monotheism and polytheism; sacred and profane; myths and rituals; forms of religion in tribal and peasant Societies (animism, animatism, fetishism, naturism and totemism); religion, magic and science distinguished; magico-religious functionaries (priest, shaman, medicine man, sorcerer and witch).

6. Anthropological theories :

(a) Classical evolutionism (Tylor, Morgan and Frazer)

(b) Historical particularism (Boas) Diffusionism (British, German and American)

(c) Functionalism (Malinowski); Structural— Functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown)

(d) Structuralism (L’evi-Strauss and E. Leach)

(e) Culture and personality (Benedict, Mead, Linton, Kardiner and Cora-du Bois)

(f) Neo—evolutionism (Childe, White, Steward, Sahlins and Service)

(g) Cultural materialism (Harris)

(h) Symbolic and interpretive theories (Turner, Schneider and Geertz)

(i) Cognitive theories (Tyler, Conklin)

(j) Post-modernism in anthropology.

7. Culture, Language and Communication : Nature, origin and characteristics of language; verbal and non-verbal communication; social contex of language use.

8. Research methods in Anthropology

(a) Fieldwork tradition in anthropology

(b) Distinction between technique, method and methodology

(c) Tools of data collection : observation, interview, schedules, questionnaire, case study, genealogy, life-history, oral history, secondary sources of information, participatory methods.

(d) Analysis, interpretation and presentation of data.

9.1 Human Genetics : Methods and Application : Methods for study of genetic principles in man-family study (pedigree analysis, twin study, foster child, co-twin method, cytogenetic method, chromosomal and karyo-type analysis), biochemical methods, immunological methods, D.N.A. technology and recombinant technologies.

9.2 Mendelian genetics in man-family study, single factor, multifactor, lethal, sub-lethal and polygenic inheritance in man.

9.3 Concept of genetic polymorphism and selection, Mendelian population, Hardy-Weinberg law; causes and changes which bring down frequency-mutation, isolation, migration, selection, inbreeding and genetic drift. Consanguineous and non-consanguineous mating, genetic load, genetic effect of consanguineous and cousin marriages.

9.4 Chromosomes and chromosomal aberrations in man, methodology.

(a) Numerical and structural aberrations (disorders).

(b) Sex chromosomal aberration- Klinefelter (XXY), Turner (XO), Super female (XXX), intersex and other syndromic disorders.

(c) Autosomal aberrations- Down syndrome, Patau, Edward and Cri-du-chat syndromes.

(d) Genetic imprints in human disease, genetic screening, genetic counseling, human DNA profiling, gene mapping and genome study.

9.5 Race and racism, biological basis of morphological variation of non-metric and characters. Racial criteria, racial traits in relation to heredity and environment; biological basis of racial classification, racial differentiation and race crossing in man.

9.6 Age, sex and population variation as genetic marker : ABO, Rh blood groups, HLA Hp, transferring, Gm, blood enzymes. Physiological characteristics-Hb level, body fat, pulse rate, respiratory functions and sensory perceptions in different cultural and socio-ecomomic groups.

9.7 Concepts and methods of Ecological Anthropology : Bio-cultural Adaptations—Genetic and Non-genetic factors. Man’s physiological responses to environmental stresses: hot desert, cold, high altitude climate.

9.8 Epidemiological Anthropology : Health and disease. Infectious and non-infectious diseases, Nutritional deficiency related diseases.

10. Concept of human growth and Development : Stages of growth—pre-natal, natal, infant, childhood, adolescence, maturity, senescence.

—Factors affecting growth and development genetic, environmental, biochemical, nutritional, cultural and socio-economic.

—Ageing and senescence. Theories and observations

—Biological and chronological longevity. Human physique and somatotypes. Methodologies for growth studies.

11.1 Relevance of menarche, menopause and other bioevents to fertility. Fertility patterns and differentials.

11.2 Demographic theories-biological, social and cultural.

11.3 Biological and socio-ecological factors influencing fecundity, fertility, natality and mortality.

12. Applications of Anthropology : Anthropology of sports, Nutritional anthropology, Anthropology in designing of defence and other equipments, Forensic Anthropology, Methods and principles of personal identification and reconstruction, Applied human genetics—Paternity diagnosis, genetic counselling and eugenics, DNA technology in diseases and medicine, serogenetics and cytogenetics in reproductive biology.

WUPSC Anthropology Syllabus (Paper-II)

1.1 Evolution of the Indian Culture and Civilization— Prehistoric (Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Neolithic-Chalcolithic), Protohistoric (Indus Civilization). Pre-Harappan, Harappan and post- Harappan cultures. Contributions of the tribal cultures to Indian civilization.

1.2 Palaeo—Anthropological evidences from India with special reference to Siwaliks and Narmada basin (Ramapithecus, Sivapithecus and Narmada Man).

1.3. Ethno-archaeology in India: The concept of ethno-archaeology; Survivals and Parallels among the hunting, foraging, fishing, pastoral and peasant communities including arts and crafts producing communities.

2. Demographic profile of India—Ethnic and linguistic elements in the Indian population and their distribution. Indian population—factors influencing its structure and growth.

3.1 The structure and nature of traditional Indian social system—Varnashram, Purushartha, Karma, Rina and Rebirth.

3.2 Caste system in India— Structure and characteristics Varna and caste, Theories of origin of caste system, Dominant caste, Caste mobility, Future of caste system, Jajmani system. Tribe-case continuum.

3.3 Sacred Complex and Nature-Man-Spirit Complex.

3.4. Impact of Buddhism, Jainism, Islam and Christianity of Indian society.

4. Emergence, growth and development in India— Contributions of the 18th, 19th and early 20th Century scholar-administrators. Contributions of Indian anthropologists to tribal and caste studies.

5.1 Indian Village—Significane of village study in India; Indian village as a social system; Traditional and changing patterns of settlement and inter-caste relations; Agrarian relations in Indian villages; Impact of globalization on Indian villages.

5.2 Linguistic and religious minorities and their social, political and economic status.

5.3 Indigenous and exogenous processes of socio-cultural change in Indian society: Sanskritization, Westernization, Modernization; Inter-play of little and great traditions; Panchayati Raj and social change; Media and Social change.

6.1 Tribal situation in India—Bio-genetic variability, linguistic and socio-economic characteristics of the tribal populations and their distribution.

6.2 Problems of the tribal Communities—Land alienation, poverty, indebtedness, low literacy, poor educational facilities, unemployment, under-employment, health and nutrition.

6.3 Developmental projects and their impact on tribal displacement and problems of rehabilitation. Development of forest policy and tribals. Impact of urbanisation and industrialization on tribal populations.

7.1 Problems of exploitation and deprivation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. Constitutional safeguards for Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes.

7.2 Social change and contemporary tribal societies : Impact of modern democratic institutions, development programmes and welfare measures on tribals and weaker sections.

7.3 The concept of ethnicity; Ethnic conflicts and political developments; Unrest among tribal communities; Regionalism and demand for autonomy; Pseudo-tribalism. Social change among the tribes during colonial and post-Independent India.

8.1 Impact of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and other religions on tribal societies.

8.2 Tribe and nation state—a comparative study of tribal communities in India and other countries.

9.1 History of administration of tribal areas, tribal policies, plans, programmes of tribal development and their implementation. The concept of PTGs (Primitive Tribal Groups), their distribution, special programmes for their development. Role of N.G.O.s in tribal development.

9.2 Role of anthropology in tribal and rural development.

9.3 Contributions of anthropology to the understanding of regionalism, communalism and ethnic and political movements.

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What is the UPSC anthropology syllabus in Ranchi?

Anthropology is one of the 48 optional courses on the UPSC optional subject list. The UPSC Anthropology syllabus for the IAS Exam emphasises candidates’ ability to grasp the topic as a science and apply what they’ve learned to real-world problems. This subject covers subjects such as human evolution, social systems, cultural evolution, and development.

Anthropology Syllabus for UPSC: –

The syllabus for UPSC candidates who take Anthropology Optional is focused on issues and subjects connected to development and Indian culture. Candidates who work as teachers, social workers, or sociologists, for example, may find the subject simple to prepare. To effectively strategize their preparation, candidates should be comprehensive with UPSC Mains. They should read the UPSC anthropology syllabus several times because proper optional preparation would improve the chances of IAS applicants scoring well in the civil services test.

At the UPSC Notification page, candidates can learn more about the exam dates, openings, eligibility, salary, and exam pattern.

Syllabus for IAS Anthropology

In UPSC Mains, the Anthropology Optional Subject contains two papers (paper I and paper II). Each paper is worth 250 points, for a total of 500 points. The following is the syllabus for IAS Anthropology:

UPSC Anthropology Syllabus (Paper-I)

1.1 Meaning, Scope and development of Anthropology.

1.2 Relationships with other disciplines : Social Sciences, behavioural Sciences, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, Earth Sciences and Humanities.

1.3 Main branches of Anthropology, their scope and relevance:

(a) Social-cultural Anthropology.

(b) Biological Anthropology.

© Archaeological Anthropology.

(d) Linguistic Anthropology.

1.4 Human Evolution and emergence of Man:

(a) Biological and Cultural factors in human evolution.

(b) Theories of Organic Evolution (Pre-Darwinian, Darwinian and Post-Darwinian).

© Synthetic theory of evolution; Brief outline of terms and concepts of evolutionary biology (Doll’s rule, Cope’s rule, Gause’s rule, parallelism, convergence, adaptive radiation, and mosaic evolution).

1.5 Characteristics of Primates; Evolutionary Trend and Primate Taxonomy; Primate Adaptations; (Arboreal and Terrestrial) Primate Taxonomy; Primate Behaviour; Tertiary and Quaternary fossil primates; Living Major Primates; Comparative Anatomy of Man and Apes; Skeletal changes due to erect posture and its implications.

1.6 Phylogenetic status, characteristics and geographical distribution of the following :

(a) Plio-preleistocene hominids in South and East Africa — Australopithecines.

(b) Homo erectus : Africa (Paranthropus), Europe (Homo erectus (heidelbergensis), Asia (Homo erectus javanicus, Homo erectus pekinensis.

© Neanderthal man — La-chapelle-aux-saints (Classical type), Mt. Carmel (Progressive type).

(d) Rhodesian man.

(e) Homo saoiens — Cromagnon, Grimaldi and Chancelede.

1.7 The biological basis of Life : The Cell, DNA structure and replication, Protein Synthesis, Gene, Mutation, Chromosomes, and Cell Division.

1.8 (a) Principles of Prehistoric Archaeology. Chronology : Relative and Absolute Dating methods.

(b) Cultural Evolution — Broad Outlines of Prehistoric cultures :

(i) Paleolithic

(ii) Mesolithic

(iii) Neolithic

(iv) Chalcolithic

(v) Copper-Bronze Age

(vi) Iron Age

2.1 The Nature of Culture : The concept and Characteristics of culture and civilization; Ethnocentrism vis-a-vis cultural Relativism.

2.2 The Nature of Society : Concept of Society; Society and Culture; Social Institution; Social groups; and Social stratification.

2.3 Marriage : Definition and universality; Laws of marriage (endogamy, exogamy, hypergamy, hypogamy, incest taboo); Type of marriage (monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, group marriage). Functions of marriage; Marriage regulations (preferential, prescriptive and proscriptive); Marriage payments (bride wealth and dowry).

2.4 Family : Definition and universality; Family, household and domestic groups; functions of family; Types of family (from the perspectives of structure, blood relation, marriage, residence and succession); Impact of urbanization, industrialization and feminist movements on family.

2.5 Kinship : Consanguinity and Affinity; Principles and types of descent (Unilineal, Double, Bilateral Ambilineal); Forms of descent groups (lineage, clan, phratry, moiety and kindred); Kinship terminology (descriptive and classificatory); Descent, Filiation and Complimentary Filiation;Decent and Alliance.

3. Economic Organization : Meaning, scope and relevance of economic anthropology; Formalist and Substantivist debate; Principles governing production, distribution and exchange (reciprocity, redistribution and market), in communities, subsisting on hunting and gathering, fishing, swiddening, pastoralism, horticulture, and agriculture; globalization and indigenous economic systems.

4. Political Organization and Social Control : Band, tribe, chiefdom, kingdom and state; concepts of power, authority and legitimacy; social control, law and justice in simple Societies.

5. Religion : Anthropological approaches to the study of religion (evolutionary, psychological and functional); monotheism and polytheism; sacred and profane; myths and rituals; forms of religion in tribal and peasant Societies (animism, animatism, fetishism, naturism and totemism); religion, magic and science distinguished; magico-religious functionaries (priest, shaman, medicine man, sorcerer and witch).

6. Anthropological theories :

(a) Classical evolutionism (Tylor, Morgan and Frazer)

(b) Historical particularism (Boas) Diffusionism (British, German and American)

© Functionalism (Malinowski); Structural — Functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown)

(d) Structuralism (L’evi-Strauss and E. Leach)

(e) Culture and personality (Benedict, Mead, Linton, Kardiner and Cora-du Bois)

(f) Neo — evolutionism (Childe, White, Steward, Sahlins and Service)

(g) Cultural materialism (Harris)

(h) Symbolic and interpretive theories (Turner, Schneider and Geertz)

(i) Cognitive theories (Tyler, Conklin)

(j) Post-modernism in anthropology.

7. Culture, Language and Communication : Nature, origin and characteristics of language; verbal and non-verbal communication; social contex of language use.

8. Research methods in Anthropology

(a) Fieldwork tradition in anthropology

(b) Distinction between technique, method and methodology

© Tools of data collection : observation, interview, schedules, questionnaire, case study, genealogy, life-history, oral history, secondary sources of information, participatory methods.

(d) Analysis, interpretation and presentation of data.

9.1 Human Genetics : Methods and Application : Methods for study of genetic principles in man-family study (pedigree analysis, twin study, foster child, co-twin method, cytogenetic method, chromosomal and karyo-type analysis), biochemical methods, immunological methods, D.N.A. technology and recombinant technologies.

9.2 Mendelian genetics in man-family study, single factor, multifactor, lethal, sub-lethal and polygenic inheritance in man.

9.3 Concept of genetic polymorphism and selection, Mendelian population, Hardy-Weinberg law; causes and changes which bring down frequency-mutation, isolation, migration, selection, inbreeding and genetic drift. Consanguineous and non-consanguineous mating, genetic load, genetic effect of consanguineous and cousin marriages.

9.4 Chromosomes and chromosomal aberrations in man, methodology.

(a) Numerical and structural aberrations (disorders).

(b) Sex chromosomal aberration- Klinefelter (XXY), Turner (XO), Super female (XXX), intersex and other syndromic disorders.

© Autosomal aberrations- Down syndrome, Patau, Edward and Cri-du-chat syndromes.

(d) Genetic imprints in human disease, genetic screening, genetic counseling, human DNA profiling, gene mapping and genome study.

9.5 Race and racism, biological basis of morphological variation of non-metric and characters. Racial criteria, racial traits in relation to heredity and environment; biological basis of racial classification, racial differentiation and race crossing in man.

9.6 Age, sex and population variation as genetic marker : ABO, Rh blood groups, HLA Hp, transferring, Gm, blood enzymes. Physiological characteristics-Hb level, body fat, pulse rate, respiratory functions and sensory perceptions in different cultural and socio-ecomomic groups.

9.7 Concepts and methods of Ecological Anthropology : Bio-cultural Adaptations — Genetic and Non-genetic factors. Man’s physiological responses to environmental stresses: hot desert, cold, high altitude climate.

9.8 Epidemiological Anthropology : Health and disease. Infectious and non-infectious diseases, Nutritional deficiency related diseases.

10. Concept of human growth and Development : Stages of growth — pre-natal, natal, infant, childhood, adolescence, maturity, senescence.

— Factors affecting growth and development genetic, environmental, biochemical, nutritional, cultural and socio-economic.

— Ageing and senescence. Theories and observations

— Biological and chronological longevity. Human physique and somatotypes. Methodologies for growth studies.

11.1 Relevance of menarche, menopause and other bioevents to fertility. Fertility patterns and differentials.

11.2 Demographic theories-biological, social and cultural.

11.3 Biological and socio-ecological factors influencing fecundity, fertility, natality and mortality.

12. Applications of Anthropology : Anthropology of sports, Nutritional anthropology, Anthropology in designing of defence and other equipments, Forensic Anthropology, Methods and principles of personal identification and reconstruction, Applied human genetics — Paternity diagnosis, genetic counselling and eugenics, DNA technology in diseases and medicine, serogenetics and cytogenetics in reproductive biology.

UPSC Anthropology Syllabus (Paper-I)

1.1 Evolution of the Indian Culture and Civilization — Prehistoric (Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Neolithic-Chalcolithic), Protohistoric (Indus Civilization). Pre-Harappan, Harappan and post- Harappan cultures. Contributions of the tribal cultures to Indian civilization.

1.2 Palaeo — Anthropological evidences from India with special reference to Siwaliks and Narmada basin (Ramapithecus, Sivapithecus and Narmada Man).

1.3. Ethno-archaeology in India: The concept of ethno-archaeology; Survivals and Parallels among the hunting, foraging, fishing, pastoral and peasant communities including arts and crafts producing communities.

2. Demographic profile of India — Ethnic and linguistic elements in the Indian population and their distribution. Indian population — factors influencing its structure and growth.

3.1 The structure and nature of traditional Indian social system — Varnashram, Purushartha, Karma, Rina and Rebirth.

3.2 Caste system in India — Structure and characteristics Varna and caste, Theories of origin of caste system, Dominant caste, Caste mobility, Future of caste system, Jajmani system. Tribe-case continuum.

3.3 Sacred Complex and Nature-Man-Spirit Complex.

3.4. Impact of Buddhism, Jainism, Islam and Christianity of Indian society.

4. Emergence, growth and development in India — Contributions of the 18th, 19th and early 20th Century scholar-administrators. Contributions of Indian anthropologists to tribal and caste studies.

5.1 Indian Village — Significane of village study in India; Indian village as a social system; Traditional and changing patterns of settlement and inter-caste relations; Agrarian relations in Indian villages; Impact of globalization on Indian villages.

5.2 Linguistic and religious minorities and their social, political and economic status.

5.3 Indigenous and exogenous processes of socio-cultural change in Indian society: Sanskritization, Westernization, Modernization; Inter-play of little and great traditions; Panchayati Raj and social change; Media and Social change.

6.1 Tribal situation in India — Bio-genetic variability, linguistic and socio-economic characteristics of the tribal populations and their distribution.

6.2 Problems of the tribal Communities — Land alienation, poverty, indebtedness, low literacy, poor educational facilities, unemployment, under-employment, health and nutrition.

6.3 Developmental projects and their impact on tribal displacement and problems of rehabilitation. Development of forest policy and tribals. Impact of urbanisation and industrialization on tribal populations.

7.1 Problems of exploitation and deprivation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. Constitutional safeguards for Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes.

7.2 Social change and contemporary tribal societies : Impact of modern democratic institutions, development programmes and welfare measures on tribals and weaker sections.

7.3 The concept of ethnicity; Ethnic conflicts and political developments; Unrest among tribal communities; Regionalism and demand for autonomy; Pseudo-tribalism. Social change among the tribes during colonial and post-Independent India.

8.1 Impact of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and other religions on tribal societies.

8.2 Tribe and nation state — a comparative study of tribal communities in India and other countries.

9.1 History of administration of tribal areas, tribal policies, plans, programmes of tribal development and their implementation. The concept of PTGs (Primitive Tribal Groups), their distribution, special programmes for their development. Role of N.G.O.s in tribal development.

9.2 Role of anthropology in tribal and rural development.

9.3 Contributions of anthropology to the understanding of regionalism, communalism and ethnic and political movements.

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