tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/hunter-gatherers-4085/articlesHunter gatherers – The Conversation2023-07-26T09:25:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2097522023-07-26T09:25:47Z2023-07-26T09:25:47ZExtensive Mesolithic discovery in Bedfordshire shows the importance of pits for understanding early Britain<p>In Britain, the Mesolithic period (10000BC to 4000BC) was the last time people lived exclusively as hunter-fisher-gatherers. The recent discovery and excavation of a series of large <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/03/discovery-25-mesolithic-pits-bedfordshire-astounds-archaeologists">Mesolithic pits at Linmere, Bedfordshire</a>, is important for rethinking how historians have previously considered life and society during this period.</p>
<p>Twenty-five monumental pits, up to 5m wide and 1.85m deep, have been identified in a series of linear alignments, probably extending beyond the excavated area. Radiocarbon dating on associated bones, including deer, marten and auroch (massive, extinct wild cattle), indicate that these pits were dug 8,500 years ago. Their purpose is unclear, but they show signs of having been re-excavated, perhaps over many centuries. This suggests that they were of considerable continued importance. </p>
<p>Mesolithic archaeology in Britain has, historically, largely been understood through finds of stone tools. These finds have the context of massive environmental change over 6,000 years – from <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/deglaciation/#:%7E:text=The%20last%20period%20of%20significant,process%20by%20which%20ice%20evaporates.">final deglaciation</a>, to reforestation and separation from the continent due to rising sea levels, all in the wake of the last ice age.</p>
<p>Other materials, including wood and bone, have been found at sites such as the wetland <a href="http://www.starcarr.com/">Star Carr</a> in north Yorkshire and submarine <a href="https://maritimearchaeologytrust.org/projects-research/bouldnor-cliff/">Bouldnor Cliff</a> just off the shore of the Isle of Wight. These have provided a clearer insight into Mesolithic life, but such sites are rare.</p>
<h2>The Mesolithic’s image problem</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00293652.2022.2137841">Recent archaeological work</a> has sought to provide greater nuance to this block of time. But the <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.1711">pronouncement</a> of the early and influential archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler in 1954, that Mesolithic people were “as squalid a huddle of marsh-ridden food gatherers as the imagination could encompass” has cast a long and unwarranted shadow over this period.</p>
<p>The following Neolithic period (4300BC to 2000BC), in contrast, is characterised by a shift to farming and a penchant for monumental architecture. In terms of economy, settlement dynamics and relations to the wider world, it is often seen as a marked departure from the preceding Mesolithic period. As one archaeologist <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquaries-journal/article/abs/social-foundations-of-prehistoric-britain-themes-and-variations-in-the-archaeology-of-power-by-richard-bradley-23-155-cm-pp-viii-197-24-figs-harlow-longman-archaeology-series-1984-isbn-0582491649-695-pb/C8BD06A00C1E97C4B885C2060B0138B9">pithily remarked</a>: “[Neolithic] farmers have social relations with one another while [Mesolithic] hunter-gatherers have ecological relations with hazelnuts.”</p>
<p>Today there is mounting evidence of substantial built Mesolithic structures, including houses from the 9th millennium BC, found at Star Carr. Previously regarded as extremely rare, some of these structures, such as those at <a href="https://archaeologicalresearchservices.com/projects/howick/">Howick, Northumbria</a>, may have served multiple generations. </p>
<p>In this context, the alignment of four large Mesolithic pits (previously interpreted as totem pole holes) near Stonehenge is perhaps not as unusual as originally thought. Their structured arrangement was maintained for centuries, in contrast to many smaller individual Mesolithic <a href="https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/digging-and-filling-pits-in-the-mesolithic-of-england-and-ireland">pits found elsewhere</a>.</p>
<p>More intriguing, perhaps, is the comparison with the curved pit alignment at <a href="https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.34.1">Warren Field, Aberdeenshire</a>. Here, individual pits of 2.5m wide date from between 8210BC and 6690BC. Their orientation suggests a significant link with the midwinter solstice. In Britain, such practices have usually been associated with the belief systems of sedentary farming communities.</p>
<p>Re-dug and maintained over millennia, the pits at Warren Field may be evidence for the longest-functioning prehistoric structures in Britain. The pits here – as at Linmere – were originally presumed to be Neolithic until radiocarbon dating proved otherwise. How many similar features may pass without notice, on the presumption that they are from a later time, can only be guessed.</p>
<h2>What Linmere tells us about Mesolithic people</h2>
<p>Linmere, like so many important archaeological sites in Britain, was discovered through commercial archaeology, conducted ahead of construction and development. Britain excels in such work, although the limits on resources available for such investigations prevent a complete picture of the extent or character of the Linmere pits.</p>
<p>However, they attest to the diversity of pit use during the Mesolithic period and further show that some pits were set apart by their structure, scale and lasting interest. </p>
<p>The repeated attention and action of communities over centuries suggests enduring symbolism and underlying world views that archaeologists had previously tended to associate with farming communities, rather than Britain’s prehistoric hunter-gatherers.</p>
<p>Though we still don’t know what these pits were for, they <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/hgr.2017.9">add to a small but growing body of evidence</a> attesting to the unique, complex and intriguing social and belief structures of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers living on the edge of Europe.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pits are important for rethinking how we have previously considered life and society during the Mesolithic period.Vince Gaffney, Anniversary Chair in Landscape Archaeology, University of BradfordChris Gaffney, Professor of Archaeological Science, University of BradfordJames Walker, Archaeological Research Assistant, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047722023-05-30T12:24:25Z2023-05-30T12:24:25Z‘Man, the hunter’? Archaeologists’ assumptions about gender roles in past humans ignore an icky but potentially crucial part of original ‘paleo diet’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528374/original/file-20230525-25-e5g7ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=743%2C0%2C4100%2C2866&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What if prehistoric men and women joined forces in hunting parties?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/tribe-of-hunter-gatherers-wearing-animal-skin-royalty-free-image/1194512906">gorodenkoff/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the most common stereotypes about the human past is that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199551224.013.032">men did the hunting while women did the gathering</a>. That gendered division of labor, the story goes, would have provided the meat and plant foods people needed to survive.</p>
<p>That characterization of our time as a species exclusively reliant on wild foods – before people <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1501711112">started domesticating plants and animals</a> more than 10,000 years ago – matches the pattern anthropologists observed among hunter-gatherers during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Virtually all of the large-game hunting they documented was performed by men.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528430/original/file-20230525-27-1kn0er.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="stone points with centimeter ruler" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528430/original/file-20230525-27-1kn0er.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528430/original/file-20230525-27-1kn0er.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528430/original/file-20230525-27-1kn0er.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528430/original/file-20230525-27-1kn0er.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528430/original/file-20230525-27-1kn0er.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528430/original/file-20230525-27-1kn0er.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528430/original/file-20230525-27-1kn0er.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stone Folsom points, which date to between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago, are associated with the prehistoric hunting of bison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UMMAA 27673, 39802, 30442 and 37737, Courtesy of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>It’s an open question whether these ethnographic accounts of labor are truly representative of recent hunter-gatherers’ subsistence behaviors. Regardless, they definitely fueled assumptions that a gendered division of labor arose early in our species’ evolution. Current employment statistics do little to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0300">disrupt that thinking</a>; in a recent analysis, <a href="https://data.bls.gov">just 13% of hunters, fishers and trappers</a> in the U.S. were women.</p>
<p>Still, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ph0ZKGEAAAAJ">as an archaeologist</a>, I’ve spent much of my career studying how people of the past got their food. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21979">I can’t always square my observations</a> with the “man the hunter” stereotype.</p>
<h2>A long-standing anthropological assumption</h2>
<p>First, I want to note that this article uses “women” to describe people biologically equipped to experience pregnancy, while recognizing that not all people who identify as women are so equipped, and not all people so equipped identify as women.</p>
<p>I am using this definition here because reproduction is at the heart of many hypotheses about when and why subsistence labor became a gendered activity. As the thinking goes, women gathered because it was a low-risk way to provide dependent children with a reliable stream of nutrients. Men hunted either to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-013-9173-0">round out the household diet</a> or to use difficult-to-acquire meat as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.20005">way to attract potential mates</a>.</p>
<p>One of the things that has come to trouble me about attempts to test related hypotheses using archaeological data – some of my own attempts included – is that they assume plants and animals are mutually exclusive food categories. Everything rests on the idea that plants and animals differ completely in how risky they are to obtain, their nutrient profiles and their abundance on a landscape.</p>
<p>It is true that highly mobile large-game species such as bison, caribou and guanaco (a deer-sized South American herbivore) were sometimes concentrated in places or seasons where plants edible to humans were scarce. But what if people could get the plant portion of their diets from the animals themselves? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528375/original/file-20230525-25-zpqjbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="caribou grazing among lichen" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528375/original/file-20230525-25-zpqjbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528375/original/file-20230525-25-zpqjbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528375/original/file-20230525-25-zpqjbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528375/original/file-20230525-25-zpqjbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528375/original/file-20230525-25-zpqjbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528375/original/file-20230525-25-zpqjbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528375/original/file-20230525-25-zpqjbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Herbivores can consume and digest some plant material that humans usually can’t.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/reindeer-caribou-close-up-of-a-male-animal-royalty-free-image/1352155127">pchoui/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
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<h2>Animal prey as a source of plant-based food</h2>
<p>The plant material undergoing digestion in the stomachs and intestines of large ruminant herbivores is a not-so-appetizing substance called digesta. This <a href="http://www.twincitiesnaturalist.com/2009/10/secret-insides-of-deer-stomach.html">partially digested matter</a> is edible to humans and rich in carbohydrates, which are pretty much absent from animal tissues.</p>
<p>Conversely, animal tissues are rich in protein and, in some seasons, fats – nutrients unavailable in many plants or that occur in such small amounts that a person would need to eat impractically large quantities to meet daily nutritional requirements from plants alone.</p>
<p>If past peoples ate digesta, a big herbivore with a full belly would, in essence, be one-stop shopping for total nutrition.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528432/original/file-20230525-23265-otdlhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="two bison skulls facing camera" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528432/original/file-20230525-23265-otdlhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528432/original/file-20230525-23265-otdlhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528432/original/file-20230525-23265-otdlhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528432/original/file-20230525-23265-otdlhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528432/original/file-20230525-23265-otdlhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528432/original/file-20230525-23265-otdlhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528432/original/file-20230525-23265-otdlhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Killing a bison could provide a source of both protein and carbs, if you consider the digesta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UMMAA 83209 a and b, Courtesy of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>To explore the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21979">potential and implications of digesta</a> as a source of carbohydrates, I recently compared institutional dietary guidelines to person-days of nutrition per animal using a 1,000-pound (450-kilogram) bison as a model. First I compiled available estimates for protein in a bison’s own tissues and for carbohydrates in digesta. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21979">Using that data, I found</a> that a group of 25 adults could meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommended daily averages for protein and carbohydrates for three full days eating only bison meat and digesta from one animal.</p>
<p>Among past peoples, consuming digesta would have relaxed the demand for fresh plant foods, perhaps changing the dynamics of subsistence labor. </p>
<h2>Recalibrating the risk if everyone hunts</h2>
<p>One of the risks typically associated with large-game hunting is that of failure. According to the evolutionary hypotheses around <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0300">gendered division of labor</a>, when risk of hunting failure is high – that is, the likelihood of bagging an animal on any given hunting trip is low – women should choose more reliable resources to provision children, even if it means <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9780203974131-26/foraging-differences-men-women">long hours of gathering</a>. The cost of failure is simply too high to do otherwise.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528376/original/file-20230525-27-h86n7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Circa 1850 artist's rendition of hunters under wolfskins approaching buffalo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528376/original/file-20230525-27-h86n7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528376/original/file-20230525-27-h86n7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528376/original/file-20230525-27-h86n7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528376/original/file-20230525-27-h86n7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528376/original/file-20230525-27-h86n7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528376/original/file-20230525-27-h86n7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528376/original/file-20230525-27-h86n7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What 19th-century ethnographers recorded might not be a good representation of prehistoric conditions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hunters-hiding-under-white-wolf-skins-while-stalking-news-photo/3089698">MPI/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>However, there is evidence to suggest that <a href="https://giscenter.isu.edu/Research/Projects/BisonPaper.pdf">large game was much more abundant</a> in North America, for example, before the 19th- and 20th-century ethnographers observed foraging behaviors. If high-yield resources like bison could have been acquired with low risk, and the animals’ digesta was also consumed, women may have been more likely to participate in hunting. Under those circumstances, hunting could have provided total nutrition, eliminating the need to obtain protein and carbohydrates from separate sources that might have been widely spread across a landscape.</p>
<p>And, statistically speaking, women’s participation in hunting would also have helped reduce the risk of failure. My models show that, if all 25 of the people in a hypothetical group participated in the hunt, rather than just the men, and all agreed to share when successful, each hunter would <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21979">have had to be successful only about five times a year</a> for the group to subsist entirely on bison and digesta. Of course, real life is more complicated than the model suggests, but the exercise illustrates potential benefits of both digesta and female hunting.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528377/original/file-20230525-27-dduale.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="black and white 1924 photo of two Inuit hunters with caribou carcass" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528377/original/file-20230525-27-dduale.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528377/original/file-20230525-27-dduale.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528377/original/file-20230525-27-dduale.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528377/original/file-20230525-27-dduale.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528377/original/file-20230525-27-dduale.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528377/original/file-20230525-27-dduale.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528377/original/file-20230525-27-dduale.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Winter in the Arctic offers Indigenous hunters more chances to kill herbivores than to find edible plants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/two-inuit-hunters-in-canada-strip-the-meat-from-a-pair-of-news-photo/50851064">Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Ethnographically documented foragers did routinely eat digesta, especially where herbivores were plentiful but plants edible to humans were scarce, <a href="https://www2.dmu.dk/1_viden/2_publikationer/3_fagrapporter/rapporter/fr528.pdf">as in the Arctic</a>, where prey’s stomach contents was an important source of carbohydrates. </p>
<p>I believe eating digesta may have been a more common practice in the past, but direct evidence is frustratingly hard to come by. In at least one instance, plant species present in the mineralized plaque of a Neanderthal individual’s teeth <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.09.003">point to digesta as a source of nutrients</a>. To systematically study past digesta consumption and its knock-on effects, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/507197">including female hunting</a>, researchers will need to draw on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd0310">multiple lines of archaeological evidence</a> and insights gained from models like the ones I developed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raven Garvey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If hunter-gatherers went beyond nose-to-tail eating to include the undigested plant matter in a prey animal’s stomach, assumptions about gendered division of labor start to fall apart.Raven Garvey, Associate Professor of Anthropology; Curator of High Latitude and Western North American Archaeology, Museum of Anthropological Archaeology; Faculty Affiliate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027742023-04-03T13:58:22Z2023-04-03T13:58:22ZArchaeology shows how hunter-gatherers fitted into southern Africa’s first city, 800 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517897/original/file-20230328-18-wuvyra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Archaeologists excavate inside and outside Little Muck Shelter, in the Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Tim Forssman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Where the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers meet, forming the modern border between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, lies a hill that hardly stands out from the rest. One could easily pass it without realising its <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Mapungubwe/">historical significance</a>. It was on and around this hill that what appears to be southern Africa’s <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416508000585?casa_token=P89TPB8OTZQAAAAA:z6ePLUM4rXsAeoe1cIT8Rlak97kN_WKb6U6WDUj3-CdoENgY51DhYgQjwZWa607Bt8zUqcM-xh0">earliest</a> state-level society and urban city, <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1099/#:%7E:text=Mapungubwe%20is%20set%20hard%20against,abandoned%20in%20the%2014th%20century.">Mapungubwe</a>, appeared around 800 years ago.</p>
<p>After nearly a century of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416508000585?casa_token=P89TPB8OTZQAAAAA:z6ePLUM4rXsAeoe1cIT8Rlak97kN_WKb6U6WDUj3-CdoENgY51DhYgQjwZWa607Bt8zUqcM-xh0">research</a>, we’ve learnt quite a lot about this ancient kingdom and how it arose among early farmer society and its involvement in global trade networks. However, before farmers settled the region, this terrain was the home of hunter-gatherer groups, who have hardly been acknowledged despite, as it seems, their involvement in the rise of Mapungubwe.</p>
<p>My <a href="http://harproject.co.za/">team</a> and I have been working in northern South Africa at sites that we believe will help us recognise the roles played by hunter-gatherers during the development of the Mapungubwe state in a bid to generate a more <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0067270X.2023.2182572">inclusive representation of the region’s past</a>. </p>
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<p>Our primary study site is called <a href="https://youtu.be/-pXqChyJK_s">Little Muck Shelter</a>. It is in the <a href="https://www.sanparks.org/parks/mapungubwe/">Mapungubwe National Park</a> and about 4km south of the Limpopo River. The shelter is fairly large with a protected area under a high ceiling and a large open space in front. It also has many paintings on its walls, including elephants, kudu, felines, people, and a stunning set of giraffes. This art was produced by hunter-gatherers and it is generally considered to refer to the spirit-world and the activities of shamans therein.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517893/original/file-20230328-418-niw4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517893/original/file-20230328-418-niw4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517893/original/file-20230328-418-niw4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517893/original/file-20230328-418-niw4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517893/original/file-20230328-418-niw4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517893/original/file-20230328-418-niw4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517893/original/file-20230328-418-niw4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517893/original/file-20230328-418-niw4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Two beautifully painted giraffe are at the centre of the site in orange and red. These have been traced using digital software to limit contact with the art which may lead to damage.</span>
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<p>The results from our research shows two things. First, hunter-gatherers lived in the area while the Mapungubwe Kingdom arose. Second, during this time they were part of the economy that assisted with the appearance of elite groups in society, and they had access to this wealth. When combined this tells us that we cannot think about Mapungubwe’s history without including hunter-gatherer societies. They were present and a part of these significant developments.</p>
<p>Why is this important? One of the foundational developments that took place that led to the rise of the Mapungubwe Kingdom was the accumulation of wealth. It drove the appearance of hierarchies in society and marked prestige. These trade goods were valuable items usually possessed by elite groups. And yet, hunter-gatherers, through exploiting their own skills, were able to obtain related goods at a time when these items were contributing to significant transformations in society. That they had access to wealth during this period likely shows us that their role in local society was valued and they were entrenched in the local economy in a way that we’ve not previous recognised.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rock-art-as-african-history-what-religious-images-say-about-identity-survival-and-change-198812">Rock art as African history: what religious images say about identity, survival and change</a>
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<h2>Unearthing evidence of trade</h2>
<p>We were attracted to Little Muck Shelter because of previous work at the site in the late 1990s that showed intense trade between hunter-gatherers and farmers took place from the shelter. To understand this better, we needed a larger archaeological assemblage to verify, or refine, what we thought might be taking place. </p>
<p>We also wanted to more closely examine the depths that dated between AD 900 and 1300, during which the processes leading to Mapungubwe began and ultimately concluded, in order to clearly show a hunter-gatherer presence during this period as well as their participation in local economic networks.</p>
<p>To do this, we needed to dig. Archaeological excavations are a slow and meticulous process that involve the careful removal of layers of artefact-bearing deposits with a very strict control of depth and location within an excavation trench.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517895/original/file-20230328-490-ahjvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517895/original/file-20230328-490-ahjvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517895/original/file-20230328-490-ahjvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517895/original/file-20230328-490-ahjvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517895/original/file-20230328-490-ahjvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517895/original/file-20230328-490-ahjvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517895/original/file-20230328-490-ahjvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517895/original/file-20230328-490-ahjvsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Field team member Siphesihle Kuhlase shows a broken bangle while others remove deposit in search of artefacts.</span>
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<p>Following this is a lengthy period of analysis that adheres to rigorous protocols to ensure consistency in identifying artefact types, their production techniques or methods, how they were used, and what they were made from.</p>
<p>We then piece all this evidence together in our attempt to understand past ways of living. From our results, we were able to trace a hunter-gatherer history that intertwined with the rise of Mapungubwe. </p>
<p>Our first and important task was to show that hunter-gatherers were still around when Mapungubwe appeared. To date, we’ve examined about 15,000 stone tools from a sample of our excavations and identified a set of finished tools that are the same as those produced by hunter-gatherers for millennia before farmer groups appeared. We believe that this consistency in cultural material over such a long span of time clearly shows that hunter-gatherers were living in the shelter when farmers were in the area.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518128/original/file-20230329-18-sklool.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Stone tools, glass and shell beads, bone points, pieces of copper jewellery and pottery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518128/original/file-20230329-18-sklool.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518128/original/file-20230329-18-sklool.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518128/original/file-20230329-18-sklool.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518128/original/file-20230329-18-sklool.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518128/original/file-20230329-18-sklool.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518128/original/file-20230329-18-sklool.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518128/original/file-20230329-18-sklool.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A range of artefact types found at hunter-gatherer sites like Little Muck Shelter. Stone scrapers (A) and backed tools (B), which were used for producing goods and hunting, respectively, glass beads (C), traded into central Africa from the east African coastline, and larger ostrich eggshell beads (D), bone points or needles (E), broken pieces of copper jewellery (F) and pottery (G), and a grooved stone used to either sharpen metal tools, round ostrich eggshell beads, or finish and polish bone tools (H).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Forssman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We then wanted to look more closely at the trading economy. From the moment farmer groups appeared in the region, during the early first millennium AD, hunter-gatherers shifted their <a href="https://harproject.co.za/?p=203">craft activities</a>. Rather than mostly producing goods made from hide, wood and shell, they began making mostly bone implements and did so until the end of the Mapungubwe Kingdom at AD 1300. This suggests that the interactions hunter-gatherers had with farmers from when they first arrived stimulated change in their crafted wares.</p>
<p>Why did they change their crafting activities? At the same time that these shifts took place, we recorded the appearance of trade wealth in the form of ceramics and glass beads, initially, and then metal. These goods were never made by hunter-gatherers and are common at farmer settlements, indicating exchange between these two communities. It indicates that hunter-gatherers responded to new market opportunities through emphasising their own skill sets.</p>
<p>Our work to identify more evidence that shows a hunter-gatherer involvement in these processes continues. We are trying to find out in what other ways they were involved and whether they themselves developed a more complex society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:tim.forssman@ump.ac.za">tim.forssman@ump.ac.za</a> receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa and the Palaeontological Scientific Trust. </span></em></p>Hunter-gatherers were an important part of the development of the Mapungubwe Kingdom in southern Africa – a fact that history has tended to neglect.Tim Forssman, Senior Lecturer, University of MpumalangaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1988122023-02-22T15:32:01Z2023-02-22T15:32:01ZRock art as African history: what religious images say about identity, survival and change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510268/original/file-20230215-15-yt0qm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After colonial contact, indigenous Africans acquired horses and guns, and raided settlers as a means of resistance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Sam Challis</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To “read” the history of times before writing, scholars have traditionally used excavated evidence. Remains like dwellings, burials and pots can reveal a lot about how people lived long ago. In southern Africa, there is another archive to “read” too: rock art. Rock art is primarily a record of spiritual beliefs – but also reflects the events that these beliefs made sense of.</p>
<p>Hunter-gatherers in the region, ancestors of today’s San or BaTwa, made rock art for thousands of years before African herders and farmers arrived from the north 2,000 years ago and European colonists followed by sea 350 years ago.</p>
<p>As a result of these contacts between groups of people, ethnic and economic boundaries became increasingly blurred. Rock art changed too, in technique and subject matter.</p>
<p>Rock art tells a tale of people meeting, negotiating, fighting, trading with and marrying one another. The tale is told not in simple narrative, but in spiritual beliefs. Our recent <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/722260">paper in Current Anthropology</a> outlines the nature, scale and effects of contact between people in southern Africa, and the ways in which indigenous people produced images that engaged with change. It shows that contact and colonisation, in time, created a “disconnect” with the past that can be understood by looking at changes in rock art. </p>
<p>The disconnect apparent in the rock art reflects the disconnect in indigenous society more generally. It reveals the mixing and changing – and survival – of different people’s beliefs about the universe. It charts southern African history and, although it is “written” in terms of spiritual beliefs, it is the only record that shows what happened from the San perspective.</p>
<p>It often shows the struggle to resist subjugation, and it depicts beliefs about the forces that could be summoned to resist.</p>
<h2>Shifts in rock art</h2>
<p>What the San painted or engraved on rock was their vision of what happened in a trance state. The artists entered this trance state in order to establish <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/12/1099">connections with animals and spirits in the landscape</a>, to influence their movements, and to derive the power to make rain and heal the sick. </p>
<p>Rock art was never unchanging, but new traditions and styles appeared when African farmers arrived in southern Africa from about 2,000 years ago, and when pastoralism was later introduced. Further changes came with the <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134215">arrival of Khoe-speakers about 1,000 years ago</a>. These Khoe-speaking herders were themselves descended from earlier mixing between hunter-gatherers and east African pastoralists.</p>
<p>Changes appeared in the rock art’s content – for example the animals and materials portrayed – and in the artistic techniques used.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two images of antelope painted on rock surface" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507048/original/file-20230130-24-3evymd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eland antelope, painted (probably) before and after contact between San and other groups.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Sam Challis</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Eland antelope (the one with the most spiritual power for the San) were once lovingly drafted and shaded. Later they appeared in bright, chalky and vivid colours, rendered in a posterlike and blocky fashion. The drop in pigment quality was likely due to the breakdown of trade networks brought about by marginalisation, then <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262547793_The_forgotten_killing_fields_San_genocide_and_Louis_Anthing's_mission_to_Bushmanland_1862-1863">slaughter</a>, of indigenous people, but still they called on the power of the eland to help them. </p>
<p>We see pictures of cattle and sheep appearing in rock art, and finger-painted and engraved patterns associated with girls’ initiation, common to pastoralist and hunter-gatherer societies. The images show that people’s identity (ethnicity) and the way they survived (economy) weren’t divided into clear groups. Hunters were not necessarily all San, and all San were not necessarily hunters. The blurring of boundaries between groups increased with time. </p>
<p>As time went on, all these people became subject to extermination policy, slavery and marginalisation. But rather than being passive receptors of change, they used their religion, comprising multicultural beliefs, to survive. This can be seen in the rock art they created.</p>
<h2>Spiritual concepts of water</h2>
<p>Conceptions of the rain, in the form of images of water bulls and water snakes, are particularly useful for examining cross-cultural influences. </p>
<p>For African farmers, snakes were associated with water. Hunter-gatherers and herders with whom they came into contact acknowledged this because they, too, already had beliefs about water and the animal entities embodied by it. </p>
<p>People from different language groups may have gathered together for girls’ initiation ceremonies at sites where the great water snake emerged. At these locations, this spiritual creature’s body, the <a href="http://www.driekopseiland.itgo.com/">undulating rock</a>, is covered with markings to appeal to it – the markings that also appear on the initiates’ tattoos, face paint, clothing and bags. </p>
<p>The control of water, to make rain for pasture and crops, was traded (bartered for cattle) between groups, very likely for centuries. Rock art images of water snakes, water bulls and domestic cattle intertwine and superimpose one another; sometimes water snakes have cattle horns. Often, water bulls or water snakes were depicted being killed to make their blood – the rain – fall. </p>
<p>Water was also extremely important to those wishing to combat the encroaching colonists. By this time the people of southern Africa, regardless of background, held many <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280623580_Binding_beliefs_the_creolisation_process_in_a_%27Bushman%27_raider_group_in_nineteenth-century_southern_Africa">beliefs in common</a>. The people or entities that lived underwater could be called upon to influence situations: torrential rain to wash away the tracks of stolen animals, for example. </p>
<h2>Raiding and escape</h2>
<p>By the time colonists arrived, hunter-gatherers had sheep, and <a href="https://dsae.co.za/entry/sintu/e06478">isiNtu-speakers</a> (African farmers) had adopted aspects of hunter-gatherer beliefs, and vice versa. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painted image of human with some animal features" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510269/original/file-20230215-4182-kb2qti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Xhosa warrior painted in the Windvogelberg mountains of the Eastern Cape, possibly as a ‘commission’ including war medicine obtained from the San.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Brent Sinclair-Thomson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>San were increasingly marginalised from well-watered pasture suitable for domestic herds of African herders and farmers. Some became herders themselves, some mixed with farmers and some became raiders. Then, with the expansion of settler farms in the 18th century (which they also raided) they were <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-bandit-slaves-and-the-rock-art-of-resistance-165107">decimated, hunted and enslaved</a>.</p>
<p>In the rock art, baboons became a symbol of protective power to enable raiders to escape unharmed. The root of a powerful medicine, <em>so-|oa</em> or <em>mabophe</em> – closely associated with baboons – enabled stock thieves to pass unnoticed, and “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15740773.2017.1487122">turned bullets to water</a>”. We see this in the paintings of people taking on the power and features of baboons, appearing alongside horses and cattle.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-bandit-slaves-and-the-rock-art-of-resistance-165107">South Africa's bandit slaves and the rock art of resistance</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Horses, the magical vehicles of violence, passage and escape, were kept and cared for by their new owners – the raider groups. They painted themselves in scenes before, during and after raids, not as a diary entry but as part of the [<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam-Challis/publication/280623828_Re-tribe_and_resist_the_ethnogenesis_of_a_creolised_raiding_band_in_response_to_colonisation/links/5efb0cf6299bf18816f37af0/Re-tribe-and-resist-the-ethnogenesis-of-a-creolised-raiding-band-in-response-to-colonisation.pdf">ritual</a>] of ensuring the outcome was favourable and the memory made positive. </p>
<p>We can now see changes in rock art, from “traditional” animals like rhebok and eland, to those showing rain bulls being killed, rain snakes captured, people with shields and spears, or riding horses alongside baboons, <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/722260">in a new light</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Challis receives funding from the South African NRF African Origins Platform and is a member of the Bradshaw Foundation Rock Art Network</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brent Sinclair-Thomson received funding for this research from the South African National Research Foundation African Origins Platform. </span></em></p>Changes in southern African rock art reflect the mixing of groups of people after they came into contact with each other.Sam Challis, Senior Researcher, University of the WitwatersrandBrent Sinclair-Thomson, Support staff, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1870042022-09-12T20:27:32Z2022-09-12T20:27:32ZThe book that changed me: Hugh Brody’s The Other Side of Eden showed what hunter-gatherer societies can teach us today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480999/original/file-20220825-24-lkjkvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C138%2C2355%2C1458&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Inuit hunters:</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kevin Frayer/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many years before I encountered Hugh Brody’s writing, I read Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894). This was the first book I remember that significantly influenced my life. I read it many times, and still regularly re-read Kipling. The Jungle Book is a colonial version of the “wild child” story: it explores the withdrawal of human care, and acceptance into a different world of nurture and home set amongst danger, enmity and death.</p>
<p>The child raised by wolves finds himself appalled and confused by the insistent hierarchies of colonial Indian human society, instead negotiating his unique place with the non-human inhabitants of the jungle.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483113/original/file-20220907-14-9imv53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483113/original/file-20220907-14-9imv53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483113/original/file-20220907-14-9imv53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483113/original/file-20220907-14-9imv53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483113/original/file-20220907-14-9imv53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483113/original/file-20220907-14-9imv53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483113/original/file-20220907-14-9imv53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483113/original/file-20220907-14-9imv53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michael Adams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Isabella Wild.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I was born in India, and the Jungle Book rubbed shoulders on the bookshelf with worn copies of Salim Ali’s The Book of Indian Birds (1941), E.P. Gee’s Wildlife of India (1964), and Jim Corbett’s Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944) and the poetically beautiful My India (1952). </p>
<p>The wildlife guides were the factual complements to the poetry and drama of Kipling’s and Corbett’s stories. Wild societies where humans and animals share space. Journeys in the remote landscapes of colonial India. The deep knowledge and wisdom of local hunters. </p>
<p>These stories were signposts on a circuitous pathway eventually leading to a PhD in geography, investigating the relationships between Aboriginal people and conservation agencies in Australia.</p>
<p>The year I submitted that thesis, anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Hugh Brody published <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/129787.The_Other_Side_of_Eden?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=ms7iKtBddD&rank=1">The Other Side of Eden, subtitled Hunters, farmers and the shaping of the world</a> (2001).</p>
<p>I was back from months of fieldwork in Cape York, living with people who, when they could, lived from the land. Brody worked for decades in Canada’s far north, documenting Inuit and Indian perceptions of their lands and the impacts of colonial relations.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480993/original/file-20220825-22-46v46k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480993/original/file-20220825-22-46v46k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480993/original/file-20220825-22-46v46k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480993/original/file-20220825-22-46v46k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480993/original/file-20220825-22-46v46k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480993/original/file-20220825-22-46v46k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480993/original/file-20220825-22-46v46k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480993/original/file-20220825-22-46v46k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>Reading The Other Side of Eden did three things – it gave me a radical new way to understand the position and history of Indigenous peoples, and specifically hunter-gatherers, in the world today. It reminded me of the debt I have for the generosity, friendship and gifts of wisdom from my Aboriginal co-workers. And it reinforced the power of story.</p>
<p>The Other Side of Eden takes readers deep into the world of Arctic peoples. Brody uses immensely detailed ethnographic observation of hunting practice, arctic travel, language, child-rearing and many other elements of culture to demonstrate the wrongness of conventional views about such peoples. </p>
<p>Despite the massive expansion of agricultural peoples all over the world, hunter-gatherer societies have persisted, in areas considered marginal to the dominant societies. It is these hunters who are intimately tied to place, unlike the restless farmers always seeking growth as their populations increase.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-me-how-h-h-finlaysons-the-red-centre-helped-me-see-country-and-what-we-have-done-to-it-177151">The book that changed me: how H.H. Finlayson’s The Red Centre helped me see country – and what we have done to it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Care and respect</h2>
<p>“All humans have been evolving for the same length of time”, writes Brody, so it is not a question of hunters being further back on some linear trajectory of development: it is a choice. Brody writes,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the hunter-gatherer mind is humanity’s most sophisticated combination of detailed knowledge and intuition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hunter-gatherers “oppose hierarchy and challenge the need to control both other people and the land itself”. He continues, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the egalitarian individualism of hunter-gatherer societies, arguably their greatest achievement and their most compelling lesson for other peoples, relies on many kinds of respect.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brody makes a strong case for the difference between respect and control: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rather than seeking to change the world, hunter-gatherers know it. They also care for it, showing respect and caring for its wellbeing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All these communities have rules about the treatment of animals, plants and the land itself – specific, overt rules about which animals or plants can be taken at which time and in which place and in which way. </p>
<p>These processes of respect can be interpreted functionally (for example by not disturbing an animal during the breeding period), but Brody emphasises that they are also about relationships: if people do the right things “the creatures and plants they eat will feel welcome and know they are respected”.</p>
<p>Describing a hunting companion, Brody says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He often travelled alone, over great distances, hunting day after day. Everything he killed he treated with care and respect. No kill was careless, nothing was wasted; everything was known, understood.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like Brody, I was a white man from the south (<em>qallunaat</em> in his case, <em>migaloo</em> in mine), and also like Brody, I worked on land claims. While Aboriginal people shared much specific knowledge about their Country necessary for that work, they also, through metaphor, emotion and example, worked to help me understand the limitations of my worldview and the beauty and intricacy of theirs. </p>
<h2>‘Heart teachings’</h2>
<p>In my writing I did not engage with this – what I think of as “heart teachings” – for many years, instead dutifully conforming to the “objectivity” and “evidence” demanded of academics.</p>
<p>But I did engage with it in my teaching. I combined Brody’s title with the title of my thesis, and wrote a subject called Redefining Eden: Indigenous Peoples and the Environment. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482940/original/file-20220906-14-cd3fh8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482940/original/file-20220906-14-cd3fh8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482940/original/file-20220906-14-cd3fh8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482940/original/file-20220906-14-cd3fh8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482940/original/file-20220906-14-cd3fh8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482940/original/file-20220906-14-cd3fh8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482940/original/file-20220906-14-cd3fh8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482940/original/file-20220906-14-cd3fh8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Academic Vanessa Cavanagh, an Aboriginal woman with Bundjalung and Wonnarua ancestry, addresses students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this subject, Aboriginal guest lecturers described continuities of customary harvest practice and caring for Country from the deep past, as well as their experience of contemporary conservation and environmental management. More than 1,000 undergraduates completed that subject, I received numerous comments about how the subject influenced them, and my Indigenous teaching partners and I received several teaching awards.</p>
<p>Brody is a wonderful writer, and one of the great strengths of The Other Side of Eden is the skilled and poetic weaving together of field notes and personal anecdotes – lived ethnographic experience – with scholarship, and that’s what we did in our teaching.</p>
<p>Many Aboriginal co-teachers shared stories of their lives, giving a window into a world few are privileged enough to experience. Those stories grounded and made real the theoretical material we investigated.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-this-grandmother-tree-connects-me-to-country-i-cried-when-i-saw-her-burned-129782">Friday essay: this grandmother tree connects me to Country. I cried when I saw her burned</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Most hunter-gatherer societies have experienced catastrophic, world-ending impacts from colonial oppressors, and have persisted through those changes. As broader society recognises and begins to face new forms of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/04/ipcc-report-now-or-never-if-world-stave-off-climate-disaster">world-ending</a>, what are the lessons from Indigenous and hunting societies?</p>
<p>There are clues in Brody’s work: “The hunter-gatherer seeks a relationship with all parts of the world that will be in both personal and material balance”, and </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the balance of need with resources; the reliance on a blend of the dreamer’s intuition with the naturalist’s love of detailed knowledge; and the commitment to respectful relationships between people [and others].</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brody also acknowledges that “we” can’t just take these lessons (like we took everything else) – it is about making space for Indigenous lives and territories, making restitution for ongoing colonial impacts.</p>
<p>Like Edward Said’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=Orientalism&qid=">Orientalism</a> (1978) and Linda Tuhiwai-Smith’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/225063.Decolonizing_Methodologies?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=adEl5CJEIt&rank=1">Decolonising Methodologies</a> (1999), The Other Side of Eden is paradigm-shifting.</p>
<p>Brody argues for a more balanced view of humanity. Hunting peoples do not seek to change their worlds to the extent that farmers do; they seek ways to make Country productive for all its inhabitants, human and otherwise. </p>
<p>All over the world, the territories of Indigenous peoples continue to map onto the regions of richest and most persistent biodiversity and intact ecosystems. That is not a coincidence, and Brody gives readers the tools to understand why.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Adams is Honorary Principal Fellow in Human Geography at the University of Wollongong. He has received funding from several sources for research on Indigenous environmental relationships.</span></em></p>All over the world, the territories of Indigenous peoples map onto regions of the richest and most persistent biodiversity. A book about hunter-gatherer Arctic peoples shows why.Michael Adams, Honorary Principal Fellow, Human Geography, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1588872021-04-15T15:11:06Z2021-04-15T15:11:06ZSouthern African hunters may have used symbolism in choosing bones to craft arrows<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395001/original/file-20210414-15-1oqdgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The San associated elands with rain, and the power to influence game during a hunt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Henk Bogaard/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Animals have long played an important <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26301860?seq=1">symbolic role</a> in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/089279302786992766">human societies</a>. They feature prominently in myths and folklore throughout the world. In some cases animals are used metaphorically: they express clan identity and are used to illustrate concepts of leadership, healing and protection.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249296">newly published study</a>, scholars in South Africa and the United Kingdom – myself among them – have discovered a possible link between the animal bones people used to make tools, like arrowheads, and the symbolic importance that people attached to those animals in the past.</p>
<p>The study focused on what is today the Tugela River catchment area of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Here, about 1,200 years ago, immigrant Nguni farmers came into contact with Bushman hunter-gatherers. Ethno-historical records show that animals played <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/21822">an important role</a> in both cultural groups as symbols and metaphors to express ideas. Early interactions between these two groups, as happened in our study area, resulted in the dynamic exchange and assimilation of ideas and symbols.</p>
<p>We wanted to know whether the symbolic importance of certain animals translated into the technological domain at this time and place. That is, whether people were selecting the bones of specific animals and not others to use as raw material for their tools. And, if so, we wanted to know which animals they were selecting. </p>
<p>In several other parts of the world, such as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47299-x">Canada</a> and Russia, people used the bones of animals that were important within their respective cultures to make tools. Nothing like this has been documented in southern Africa and we wanted to find out whether this was because this practice was not followed in the region or whether it was simply undocumented. </p>
<p>To find out, we used a method known as <a href="https://www.spectroscopyeurope.com/article/zooms-collagen-barcode-and-fingerprints">ZooMS</a>. This analyses the collagen proteins found in animal bones. Collagen proteins are unique to different groups of animals. So, we could “fingerprint” samples from modern animals and then recognise them in archaeological samples of unknown origin.</p>
<p>The study found that there was selective targeting of animals for tool manufacture at some sites, with a narrowing of the range of selected species after about AD 1,000. Certain groups of antelopes appear to have been deliberately avoided. This suggests bones weren’t used just because they happened to be available. We hypothesise that distinctive animal behaviours, such as that of the rhebok, were appropriated by people to serve as metaphors through which to understand human society. And we believe this symbolism was expressed through people’s tools as a means of harnessing the “power” of the animal. </p>
<h2>Animal symbolism</h2>
<p>The Bushmen (or San) <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02561751.1933.9676328">believed</a> that animals such as the eland, rhebok and hartebeest possessed supernatural powers. These could be harnessed by shamans during certain ceremonies to bring about rain or influence the movement of game. In some cases, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2800744?origin=crossref&seq=1">items of clothing</a> made from these animals would be worn during healing and rain-making ceremonies. </p>
<p>Animals were also frequently depicted in San rock art. A <a href="https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/6163">clear emphasis</a> was placed on those species believed to be particularly powerful, such as eland, rhebok and roan.</p>
<p>Among the Nguni, spirits of the ancestors were <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277300306_Hirst_M_Cook_J_and_Kahn_M_1996_Shades_Witches_and_Somatisation_in_the_Narratives_of_Illness_and_Disorder_among_the_Cape_Nguni_in_the_Eastern_Cape_South_Africa_Curare_192_255-282">commonly ascribed</a> the behavioural traits of certain wild animals, among them elephants, rhinoceros, lions and baboons. </p>
<p>Forty-three species are known to have been divinatory animals among the Nguni: some of these species’ bones regularly formed part of diviners’ kits because they were believed to confer those animals’ “powers” to the diviners. </p>
<h2>The archaeology of KwaZulu-Natal</h2>
<p>The Tugela River catchment area was <a href="https://www.sahumanities.org/index.php/sah/article/view/198">first occupied</a> by hunter-gatherers from about 7,000 years ago. Once farming communities began settling the area in the fifth century AD, hunter-gatherers started moving out of the mountainous areas to live nearer the farmer settlements. There, they benefited from trade in pottery and agricultural produce in exchange for wild animal skins and services rendered. </p>
<p>When farmers and hunter-gatherers came into contact, they <a href="https://sahumanities.org/index.php/sah/article/view/225">adopted</a> parts of each other’s material culture as well certain words and concepts linked to divinatory animals. The Nguni regarded the Bushmen as spiritual mediators, able to intercede with the supernatural world to bring about rain and other boons. </p>
<p>Even the caves the Bushmen occupied were seen by the Nguni as places of power. On the other hand, the new domestic animals introduced by the Nguni farmers were quickly assimilated into hunter-gatherer cosmology. They replaced eland and other antelopes as a favoured rock art motif. </p>
<h2>Technology for answers</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394977/original/file-20210414-21-7x5xiq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Using technology to analyse which animals’ bones were used in hunting tools, the researchers were able to draw several conclusions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dr Justin Bradfield</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We extracted small amounts of collagen from 84 bone arrowheads excavated from 11 archaeological sites spanning a 6,000-year period in the Tugela River catchment region. We then identified the taxonomic tribe of animal represented in the bone arrowheads.</p>
<p>Antelope species belonging to the <em>Alcelaphini</em> tribe (including hartebeest, wildebeest and bontebok) were the most abundantly represented source of bone arrowheads. Certain species of antelopes, including impala, gazelle, springbok and duiker, were not represented in any of the bone arrowheads. This is despite the fact that these species are abundantly represented in the unmodified food waste at the sites: they account for 66% of the meat consumed. </p>
<p>We also found that at some sites bone points were made from animals – including giraffe and buffalo – that were not represented at all in the unmodified fauna food waste. </p>
<p>This suggests deliberate targeting and avoidance of certain species. We think those animals that were deliberately targeted to make tools represent animals that people considered culturally or symbolically important. Our findings also suggest that the range of species targeted by hunter-gatherers to make their tools narrowed after farmers moved into the area.</p>
<p>We ruled out mechanical properties (that the bones used for tool manufacture were mechanically the best suited to their role as arrowheads) and trade as the reasons for the pattern of raw material selection we identified. </p>
<p>Symbolic significance emerged as the most likely reason for certain animal bones being used in tools to the exclusion of other, readily available animals. For instance rhebok, hartebeest and eland were all well represented in our sample; each is a symbolically important animal in 19th century Bushman folklore. These animals were associated with rain, and the power to influence game during a hunt. So, it’s possible their bones would be used in hunting tools, to imbue the tools with powers to aid in the hunt.</p>
<p>Future research will aim to test our hypothesis by analysing larger numbers of bone tools from the region.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Bradfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In several other parts of the world, people used the bones of animals that were important within their respective cultures to make tools.Justin Bradfield, Associate professor, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1175582019-06-03T10:00:57Z2019-06-03T10:00:57ZHow prehistoric people faced climate change revealed by video game technology<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276782/original/file-20190528-42600-97z989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3199%2C2400&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/people-ice-age-248931799?src=XX3frlPrmJYZyK_KHcr_FQ-1-78">Esteban De Armas/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How will climate change remake our world in the 21st century? Will we be able to adapt and survive? As with many things, the past is a good guide for the future. Humans have experienced climate changes in the past that have transformed their environment – studying their response could tell us something about our own fate.</p>
<p>Human populations and cultures died out and were replaced throughout Eurasia during the last 500,000 years. How and why one prehistoric population displaced another is unclear, but these ancient people were exposed to climate changes that changed their natural environment in turn.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276057/original/file-20190523-187153-18gsjpy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276057/original/file-20190523-187153-18gsjpy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276057/original/file-20190523-187153-18gsjpy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276057/original/file-20190523-187153-18gsjpy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276057/original/file-20190523-187153-18gsjpy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276057/original/file-20190523-187153-18gsjpy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276057/original/file-20190523-187153-18gsjpy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276057/original/file-20190523-187153-18gsjpy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How habitats in prehistoric Eurasia would have looked (a) during a period of relative warmth, and (b) during period of relative cooling ‘T.’ = Temperate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43797-0.epdf?author_access_token=hozqQ6r5u_UpUmK5gyU87dRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PVleaRBThmy23C8kAauLjxnI4pRjg8nqb9Rfw-0UNbEGg5Kgi-XHCRb9fCu8zHzNA-zw4v8U4RDppl5A6RQr4kBPXZ1-B4oAK7GGTC01yLQQ%3D%3D">Allen et al. (2019)</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We looked at the region around Lyon, France, and imagined how Stone Age hunter gatherers 30,000-50,000 years ago would have fared as the world around them changed. Here, as elsewhere in Eurasia during colder periods, the environment would have <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379116305534">shifted towards tundra-like vegetation</a> – vast, open habitats that may have been best suited for running down prey while hunting. When the climate warmed for a few centuries, trees would have spread – creating dense woods which favour hunting methods involving ambush. </p>
<p>How these changes affected a population’s hunting behaviour could have decided whether they prospered, were forced to migrate, or even died out. The ability of hunter gatherers to detect prey at different distances and in different environments would have decided who dominated and who was displaced. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/humans-are-not-off-the-hook-for-extinctions-of-large-herbivores-then-or-now-107727">Humans are not off the hook for extinctions of large herbivores – then or now</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Short of building a time machine, finding out how prehistoric people responded to climate change could only be possible by recreating their worlds as virtual environments. Here, researchers could control the mix and density of vegetation and enlist modern humans to explore them and see how they fared finding prey.</p>
<h2>Surviving in the virtual Stone Age</h2>
<p><a href="https://rdcu.be/bCqoO">We designed a video game environment</a> and asked volunteers to find red deer in it. The world they explored changed to scrub and grassland as the climate cooled and thick forest as it warmed.</p>
<p>The participants could spot red deer at a greater distance in grassland than in woodland, when the density of vegetation was the same. As vegetation grew thicker they struggled to detect prey at greater distances in both environments, but more so in woodland. Prehistoric people would have faced similar struggles as the climate warmed, but there’s an interesting pattern that tells us something about human responses to change.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275734/original/file-20190521-23841-k8bndt.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275734/original/file-20190521-23841-k8bndt.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=253&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275734/original/file-20190521-23841-k8bndt.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=253&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275734/original/file-20190521-23841-k8bndt.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=253&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275734/original/file-20190521-23841-k8bndt.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275734/original/file-20190521-23841-k8bndt.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275734/original/file-20190521-23841-k8bndt.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As the climate warmed and wooded environments spread, finding prey became increasingly difficult.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Creeping environmental change didn’t affect deer spotting performance in the experiment until a certain threshold of forest had given way to grassland, or vice-versa. Suddenly, after the landscape was more than 30% forested, participants were significantly less able to spot deer at greater distances. As an open environment became more wooded, this could have been the tipping point at which running down prey became a less viable strategy, and hunters had to switch to ambush. </p>
<p>This is likely the critical moment at which ancient populations were forced to change their hunting habits, relocate to areas more favourable for their existing techniques, or face local extinction. As the modern climate warms and ecosystems change, our own survival could become threatened by these sudden tipping points.</p>
<p>The effects of climate change on human populations may not be intuitive. Our lifestyles may seem to continue working just fine up until a certain point. But that moment of crisis, when it does arrive, will often dictate the outcome – adapt, move or die.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/imagine-newsletter-researchers-think-of-a-world-with-climate-action-113443?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Imagineheader1117558">Click here to subscribe to our climate action newsletter. Climate change is inevitable. Our response to it isn’t.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Allen conducted this research with colleagues across palaeontology (John Stewart and Chris Stringer), computer games design (Pete Allen, Christos Gatzidis), and psychology (Jan Wiener).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Stewart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Environmental change can be a slow creep towards disaster for species. We studied how prehistoric humans coped to help make sense of the future using video game technology.Peter Allen, PhD Researcher in Human Evolution, Bournemouth UniversityJohn Stewart, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Palaeoecology, Bournemouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1172722019-05-21T13:05:03Z2019-05-21T13:05:03ZDNA from 10,000 year old chewing gum reveals the secrets of Stone Age Scandinavians<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275686/original/file-20190521-23814-3i9ecy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5472%2C3645&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-hand-removing-sticky-chewing-gum-1086001733?src=ctz-ttQ74PBjgFQwmDeeyQ-1-9">iMoved Studio/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Chewing gum may seem like a modern habit but that’s apparently not quite the case. Scientists have recovered DNA that is nearly 10,000 years old from gum that was chewed by people in Scandinavia during the Mesolithic – or Stone Age – period. </p>
<p>This gum was used as glue to make tools – the chewing is believed to have helped make it more pliable and sticky. They may not have chewed it for pleasure, but recreational chewing of resin and gum has been <a href="https://rdcu.be/bCqmQ">known of since ancient times</a>. The gum itself was found at Huseby Klev, a Mesolithic site in western Sweden. </p>
<p>It’s difficult to find DNA from ancient specimens because it is so often degraded. Most samples of ancient DNA are obtained from <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14558">bones</a> or <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2007.247">teeth</a>. Such remains are rare and precious, so grinding them into powder to extract DNA is rarely encouraged. Material that is meant to be chewed but not swallowed has been found in many sites, but is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0047248472900747">often disregarded</a> during excavations.</p>
<p>The knowledge that human DNA can be obtained from bits of old chewing gum is a breakthrough that offers fascinating possibilities for future work. Through this seemingly inconsequential scrap of ancient detritus come several fascinating insights into life 9,800 years ago.</p>
<h2>Diverse and resourceful</h2>
<p>The researchers sequenced the entire genomes of three individuals who had chewed gum and made tools on the site and compared them with contemporary genomes from 10 other sites, spread across Europe from Samara in Russia to La Brana in Spain.</p>
<p>Their stone tools largely consisted of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/jfa.2001.28.3-4.253?needAccess=true">small flakes of flint</a>, called microliths, carefully shaped and glued into wooden or bone hafts. Harpoon points made of bone with small barbs of flint glued in have also been found and arrowheads made of flint that have been carefully shaped by the technique of <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6004/659">pressure flaking</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275660/original/file-20190521-23814-o5aujq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275660/original/file-20190521-23814-o5aujq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275660/original/file-20190521-23814-o5aujq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275660/original/file-20190521-23814-o5aujq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275660/original/file-20190521-23814-o5aujq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275660/original/file-20190521-23814-o5aujq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275660/original/file-20190521-23814-o5aujq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rock carvings from Mesolithic-era Sweden. Note the hunter with bow top left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haljesta.jpg">Olof Ekström/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scientists had assumed these <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2003703#sec002">Scandinavian hunter gatherers</a> had mostly arrived in western Sweden from Eastern Europe, as the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-archaeology/article/crafting-bone-tools-in-mesolithic-norway-a-regional-easternrelated-knowhow/8A0F2912B13EF66AEDF7489F3826FBE2">tools almost entirely originated from there</a>. However, the genetic evidence suggests they were more diverse.</p>
<p>These prehistoric people were genetically Scandinavian but more closely related to people from further west and south than to eastern populations, even though they favoured a style of tool-making prevalent in the East. This shows it’s not always safe to make assumptions about where ancient people come from based on their culture.</p>
<h2>Fluid gender roles</h2>
<p>Two of the three individuals whose genomes were successfully sequenced were female. There has been a perception among some archaeologists that females in prehistory were relegated to a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618217313034">purely domestic role</a> and had little to do with “masculine” tasks such as making tools. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275663/original/file-20190521-23817-1fafqe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275663/original/file-20190521-23817-1fafqe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275663/original/file-20190521-23817-1fafqe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275663/original/file-20190521-23817-1fafqe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275663/original/file-20190521-23817-1fafqe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275663/original/file-20190521-23817-1fafqe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275663/original/file-20190521-23817-1fafqe8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An ancient Swedish flake axe made from flint microliths.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skivyxa,_Nordisk_familjebok.jpg">Nordisk familjebok/Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These findings suggest that gender roles were rather more fluid, clearly supporting the idea that <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30638181/Genderlithics.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1558006489&Signature=Sq1MdR5n83QrEv5dfnru7W3jPSw%253D&response-content-disposition=inline%253B%2520filename%253DGenderlithics_womens_roles_in_stone_tool.pdf">females were involved in the prehistoric tool industry</a>. The fact that some of the eight samples of mastic that were found had impressions of milk teeth in them also suggests that some of those chewing the mastic were between five and 18 years of age.</p>
<p>It would be unthinkable in modern times to allow a child of five loose with these sharp and dangerous hunting tools. In perspective though, <a href="https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/80105/1/541602659.pdf">life expectancy</a> was around 30 years, so a teenager would not only be considered fully adult but probably have a family of their own.</p>
<h2>Familiar environment</h2>
<p>The gum that was chewed by the tool makers at Husebey Kelv was birch pitch, a dark, sticky substance, similar to tar, that is <a href="https://www.primitiveways.com/birch_bark_tar.html">distilled from birch bark</a> by heating it to around 420°C without letting air get to it. Because it’s very viscous (it is solid and rubbery at ambient temperature) it can be used to waterproof objects and as a glue. It also tells us something about the environment in which the people lived – birch woods rather than pine forest.</p>
<p>This suggests the people lived in an environment similar to parts of Scotland today, where birch woodland is prevalent. Agriculture had started elsewhere, but there’s nothing to say that these people were practising it. The presence of bones and tools place them as hunter gatherers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275618/original/file-20190521-23838-5ggg0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275618/original/file-20190521-23838-5ggg0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275618/original/file-20190521-23838-5ggg0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275618/original/file-20190521-23838-5ggg0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275618/original/file-20190521-23838-5ggg0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275618/original/file-20190521-23838-5ggg0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275618/original/file-20190521-23838-5ggg0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Swedish birch forests acted as a material inventory for these prehistoric Scandinavians.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/birch-forest-sunlight-morning-108101294?src=ScNFKCURE8G5hiUkZfuBxg-1-8">JanBussan/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The harpoons suggest that <a href="https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/publication/3c1fd58a-9495-4403-ab7d-d22104f2fafb%E2%80%8B">life at Huleseby Klev</a> revolved around hunting marine mammals and fish. One can imagine that the birch pitch would be good for waterproofing boats made from animal hide, or even birch bark canoes.</p>
<p>This research gives us a greater insight into the lives and origins of our recent ancestors. Like all good research, this opens up a whole raft of new questions. </p>
<p>If females were making tools, were they also using them to hunt? What was the life of a Mesolithic child in Scandinavia like? Did Mesolithic people chew gum for recreational, hygienic and medicinal reasons, as other cultures did? Why did Scandinavian populations continue to use the Eastern European technologies rather than a mixture of Eastern and Western? Some of these questions will never have answers, but every new finding sheds a tiny beam of light onto the distant past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117272/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Hoole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>DNA found in chewing gum from 10,000 years ago is helping scientists learn about prehistoric humans.Jan Hoole, Lecturer in Biology, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/885862017-12-05T16:08:33Z2017-12-05T16:08:33ZWhy do we tell stories? Hunter-gatherers shed light on the evolutionary roots of fiction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197591/original/file-20171204-4096-1gtoww5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eldery member of the Agta hunter-gatherer tribe in the Philippines.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From gathering around the campfire sharing tales to binge watching the latest Netflix series, humans are, and have always been, inveterate producers and consumers of stories.</p>
<p>But why do we spend hours listening to and telling stories, often of exploits that never even happened? Clearly, from an evolutionary standpoint, this is time and effort that could be better spent foraging, reproducing or simply doing nothing to save energy.</p>
<p>Perhaps the human proclivity for storytelling is merely a byproduct of our evolved psychology – a series of inputs which manipulate and titillate our cognitive machinery. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker fittingly refers to this as “<a href="https://stevenpinker.com/publications/how-mind-works">evolutionary cheesecake</a>”. But given the ubiquity of storytelling, it may perform an important adaptive role in human societies.</p>
<p>In a new study on hunter-gatherer societies, <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02036-8">published in Nature Communications</a>, my colleagues and I propose that storytelling may function as a mechanism to disseminate knowledge by broadcasting social norms to coordinate social behaviour and promote cooperation.<br>
The type of knowledge in question is “meta-knowledge” – information about other people’s knowledge. This is, in fact, required for any society to function. For instance, it is not enough for people to know that they should drive on a certain side of the road, they also need to know that others possess that same knowledge. Stories may therefore act to ensure that all members of the group know, and consequently abide by, the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404212111">“rules of the game”</a> in a given society.</p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16980">Moralising gods and organised religion</a> may perform a similar function in post-agricultural populations by organising behaviour and promoting cooperation. However, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1007/s12110-016-9260-0">these are often absent</a> in hunter-gatherer societies, despite these groups being highly cooperative. We therefore proposed that hunter-gatherer storytelling may perform a comparable function to moralising gods in such societies.</p>
<h2>Moral tales</h2>
<p>To explore this idea, <a href="https://www.agtaaid.org/">in collaboration with Agta Aid</a>, we collected four stories among the Agta, a Filipino hunter-gatherer population with a high level of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-our-ancestors-were-more-gender-equal-than-us-41902">social and gender egalitarianism</a>. Each story was aimed at regulating social behaviour by broadcasting how to act in different social situations.</p>
<p>One story, “The sun and the moon”, clearly communicated norms of sex equality and cooperation. “There is a dispute between the sun (male) and the moon (female) to illuminate the sky. After a fight, where the moon proves to be as strong as the sun, they agree in sharing the duty – one during the day and the other during the night.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197609/original/file-20171204-19592-yvtx75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197609/original/file-20171204-19592-yvtx75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197609/original/file-20171204-19592-yvtx75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197609/original/file-20171204-19592-yvtx75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197609/original/file-20171204-19592-yvtx75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197609/original/file-20171204-19592-yvtx75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197609/original/file-20171204-19592-yvtx75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sun and the Moon: An Agta story about cooperation and equality between men and women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paulo Sayeg</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We also looked at narratives from other hunter-gatherer societies from Southeast Asia and Africa, and discovered similar themes. Of 89 stories, around 70% concerned social behaviour, in terms of food-sharing, marriage, hunting and interactions with in-laws or members of other groups. </p>
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<p>These stories also possessed a moral dimension, by either rewarding norm-followers or punishing norm-breakers. This is clearly evident in an Andamanese story demonstrating the consequences of not sharing food. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ancestors ate [thunder spirit] Bilika’s food […] Bilika was very angry. He used to smell their mouths to see if they had eaten his food. When he found a man or woman who had done so he would cut his throat. The ancestors were very angry with Bilika, because he killed the men and women when they ate his foods. They all came together and killed Bilika and his wife Mite.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Boost to cooperation</h2>
<p>Given that hunter-gatherer stories overwhelmingly contain social content, we next explored whether storytelling does in fact promote cooperation. Nearly 300 Agta, from 18 separate camps, were asked to name the best storytellers. To assess cooperation, individuals were also asked to play a simple <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160131">resource allocation game</a> where players were given a number of tokens (representing rice) and asked to distribute these between themselves and their camp mates. </p>
<p>Overall, levels of cooperation were higher in camps with a greater proportion of skilled storytellers, consistent with storytellers coordinating social behaviour and in turn promoting cooperation. This suggests that storytelling may perform a beneficial group-level function, but it does not explain why individuals would invest so much time and energy in becoming a skilled storyteller. If there is no benefit to being a storyteller, then why not invest this effort in other fitness-enhancing activities?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197590/original/file-20171204-4100-1w8l4t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197590/original/file-20171204-4100-1w8l4t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197590/original/file-20171204-4100-1w8l4t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197590/original/file-20171204-4100-1w8l4t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197590/original/file-20171204-4100-1w8l4t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197590/original/file-20171204-4100-1w8l4t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197590/original/file-20171204-4100-1w8l4t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Camp elder telling stories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, storytellers appear to be rewarded for their services to the community. Skilled storytellers were preferred social partners, both in terms of being selected as a future camp mate and receiving resources from others in the cooperative game. Despite the fact that food-sharing is <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.064">an everyday occurrence in Agta society</a>, skilled storytellers were even more preferred than skilled foragers. </p>
<p>Consistent with this increased social support, skilled Agta storytellers were found to have increased reproductive success relative to unskilled storytellers, with an average additional 0.5 living offspring. </p>
<p>Even in modern, Western society skilled storytellers – ranging from novelists and artists to actors and stand-up comics – have a high social status. There is even some evidence that successful male visual artists (a form of modern-day storyteller) <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00310/full">have more sexual partners</a> than unsuccessful visual artists.</p>
<p>Humans have evolved the capacity to create and believe in stories. Narratives can also transcend the “here and now” by introducing individuals to situations beyond their everyday experience, which may increase empathy and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1239918">perspective-taking towards others</a>, including strangers. These features may have evolved in hunter-gatherer societies as precursors to more elaborate forms of narrative fiction.</p>
<p>Such narratives include moralising gods, organised religion, nation states and other ideologies found in post-agricultural societies. Some are crucial parts of societies today, functioning to bond individuals into cohesive and cooperative communities. It’s fascinating to think that they could have all started with a humble story around the campfire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88586/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Smith receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, as part of the 'Hunter-Gatherer Resilience Project' (<a href="https://www.ucl-hg.co.uk/">https://www.ucl-hg.co.uk/</a>) led by Dr Andrea Migliano.</span></em></p>A new study suggests skilled storytellers may have greater reproductive success than others.Daniel Smith, PhD candidate in Anthropology, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/650182016-09-14T11:37:25Z2016-09-14T11:37:25ZWhy zebra refused to be saddled with domesticity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137405/original/image-20160912-19237-dlsfl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Just a stripey horse? Neigh ...</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-281622710/stock-photo-zebra.html?src=tWar6vP5ZHAoJNCfWRt9gA-1-0">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In many ways, zebra appear very like horses (or ponies, given their size). Yet underlying differences in behaviour have meant that while horses and donkeys have been successfully domesticated, the zebra remains predominantly wild. So how did the zebra avoid the load bearing, farm working, fence jumping fate of its cousins? And which animal ended up with the better deal?</p>
<p>Because of their obvious similarity to horses – and for novelty value – attempts have been made by humans to ride and race zebra. The 2005 movie, <a href="http://www.film4.com/reviews/2005/racing-stripes">Racing Stripes</a>, was the story of a young zebra who wanted to compete in horse races – although the filmmakers were forced to use a horse stand-in for some scenes (the tail gives it away). </p>
<p>The manes and tails of zebra are in fact more similar to those of asses (donkeys) and reflect the <a href="http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm">evolutionary history of the genus Equus</a>. Although horses, assess and zebra all evolved from a common ancestor (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/animal/dawn-horse">Hyracotherium</a>) which lived in Europe and North America around 55m years ago, divergence meant that the zebra and donkey are more closely related to each other than either is to the horse.</p>
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<p>The North American equids (members of the horse family) <a href="http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/2012/11/29/why-did-horses-die-out-in-north-america/#axzz4KE50zAfX">disappeared</a> about 8-10,000 years ago, and in Europe and Asia, Palaeolithic man extensively hunted the herds of wild horses on the open plains. A combination of climatic change, forestation and human predation pushed the animals eastwards to the semi-deserts of central Asia. </p>
<p>The wild ancestor of today’s domestic horses (Equus ferus) <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/mystery-of-the-domestication-of-the-horse-solved">was first domesticated in the western Eurasian Steppe</a>, an area where the <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/mystery-of-the-domestication-of-the-horse-solved">earliest archaeological evidence for domesticated horses was found</a>. Recent research also shows the <a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-05-history-eurasian-wild-horses.html">domestic herds were repeatedly restocked with wild horses as they spread across Eurasia</a>. </p>
<p>Horses were initially kept as a food animal, but their full potential as a means of transport, communication and warfare resulted in them being of increasing importance in the <a href="http://www.equineheritageinstitute.org/shaping-civilizations-the-role-of-the-horse-in-human-societies/">development of human civilisation</a>. In Mongolia, <a href="http://www.amnh.org/explore/science-bulletins/bio/documentaries/the-last-wild-horse-the-return-of-takhi-to-mongolia/article-the-horse-in-mongolian-culture">the land of the horse</a>, the legendary 13th-century warlord <a href="http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/mongols/conquests/khans_horses.pdf">Genghis Khan used the animal to establish a domain</a> that extended from Hungary to Korea, and from Siberia to Tibet: an Asian empire won on horseback. </p>
<p>So, if horses were so important to human civilisation, why not the zebra? <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070718-african-origin.html">Humans originated in Africa</a> so it seems strange that they missed exploiting such a potentially useful animal living on the same continent. </p>
<p>Unlike the Equids of Eurasia, however, the zebra population of Africa was relatively secure and particularly well adapted to its environment. All equids are herbivorous prey species with a <a href="http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Emergency-Response/Just-in-Time/08-Animal-Behavior-Restraint-Equine-HANDOUT.pdf">well developed “flight or fight” response</a>. But to survive in an environment where there is an abundance of large predators including lions, cheetahs and hyenas, the zebra evolved into a particularly alert, responsive animal that flees in the face of danger but also possesses a powerful response if captured. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/14407260">kick of a zebra</a> can break a lion’s jaw. They can be <a href="http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Zebra-Bites-Zookeeper-at-National-Zoo-232342411.html">savage biters</a> and possess a <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/80999/14-zany-facts-about-zebras">“ducking” reflex</a> that helps them avoid being caught by lasso. Familiarity with human hunter gatherers may also have fostered a strong avoidance response in the zebra.</p>
<p>All of this means that zebra are not really “people friendly” and as a species they do not fit the criteria for domestication. According to the English explorer and polymath Francis Galton (a relative of Charles Darwin), <a href="http://www.galton.org/essays/1860-1869/galton-1865-domestication-animals.pdf">these requirements</a> include displaying a desire for comfort, being easy to tend, being useful and showing a fondness for man. </p>
<p>Galton uses the zebra as an example of an unmanageable species, stating that the Dutch Boers repeatedly tried to break zebra to harness. Although they had some success, the wild, mulish nature of the animals would frequently break out and thwart their efforts. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137567/original/image-20160913-4980-1502nie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137567/original/image-20160913-4980-1502nie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137567/original/image-20160913-4980-1502nie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137567/original/image-20160913-4980-1502nie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137567/original/image-20160913-4980-1502nie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137567/original/image-20160913-4980-1502nie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137567/original/image-20160913-4980-1502nie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ride me? Bite me.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-21179662/stock-photo-a-zebra-stallion-shows-his-teeth.html?src=0tyMMW2BsOgISoCak7Dslw-3-29">Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Although it appears <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2763629/Your-eyes-not-deceiving-This-girl-really-riding-think-Prepare-amazed-magic-THE-ZEBRA-WHISPERER.html">possible to tame</a> individual zebra, this species was not a good candidate for domestication. In addition to the intractable nature of the zebra and its strong survival instinct, the fact that this species is “lion fodder” may also have made them appear less attractive “partners” to early humans. </p>
<p>Domestication and selective breeding will <a href="http://www.academia.edu/1785218/From_wild_horses_to_domestic_horses_a_European_perspective">undoubtedly have changed</a> both the physical and behavioural characteristics of the horse, which during the early stages would probably have been smaller, wilder and more similar to the zebra than today’s horse. </p>
<p>And while horses may work harder, live in more urbanised environments and do the bidding of their owners, they also lead safer, more comfortable lives. Domestication saved the horse from extinction. In fact, as a survival strategy, domestication has certainly worked for the global horse population, which numbers 60m.</p>
<p>By contrast, zebra numbers are probably now fewer than 800,000, with humans posing the greatest threat to their survival. Faced with these facts, which would you rather be?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>They look like stripey horses – so why don’t we ride them?Carol Hall, Reader in Equitation Science, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.