Meet the Hadza: Tanzania’s last click-speaking hunter-gatherers. Their ancient language, Hadzane, holds secrets of human evolution, resilience, and sustainability. Why does their story matter for our future? 🌍✨ #Indigenous #LinguisticDiversity #Hadza #HunterGatherers #CulturalHeritage
https://theurbanherald.com/hadza-tribe-click-language-tanzania/
#HunterGatherers
Nice enough piece on what to learn from nomadic #huntergatherers about 'education'. This is based in the work of #PeterGray who argued #play was the main mode of governance for #egalitarian h-gs: no one's the boss giving orders, people join the game because they want to, it's fun. This corresponds with the #BaYaka concept of #massana -- collective forms of play which bring more joy to participants. This gathers together childsplay in the forest having fun and sacred ritual.
"If the #African #archaeology of modern human origins has forced evolutionary and social anthropology into dialogue, it is appropriate for African #huntergatherers to lead off in that process. The introduction focusses on evolutionary models of #groupritual and how the gap between the ethnographic present and our speciation might be bridged; the body of the article provides the first cross-cultural comparative review of African hunter-gatherer ritual use of red substances and associated beliefs; while noting differences, the discussion draws out the commonalities and their bearing on evolutionary models."
@ochrewatts
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000588
#Evolutionary anthropologist Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias details #seasonal changes among foraging communities—and distills how the fixed political structures of industrialized societies are an outlier in human history.
#huntergatherers #CentralAfrica #seasonality
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/foragers-seasonality-social-change-flexibility-societies/
How hunter-gatherers slept: sleep and rest in the prehistoric era https://lithub.com/how-exactly-did-hunter-gatherers-sleep-on-rest-and-relaxation-in-the-prehistoric-era
#history #anthropology #science #sleep #HomoSapiens #evolution #prehistory #HunterGatherers
Very interesting #demographic model for historic #African populations reaching back 74,000 years -- that is before ancestors of everyone today began moving out of Africa. This factors in #malaria risk as contributing to movements and success of populations. Even that long ago, even with #huntergatherers.
"Our results show that humans strongly avoided or were unsuccessful in potential malaria hotspots. The effects of these choices shaped human demography for the last 74 kya, and likely much earlier, by fragmenting human societies over time and contributing to the formation of modern population structure."
Important paper on the demography of #grandmothering by Abbey Page and colleagues focused on #Agta #huntergatherers where grandmothers are constrained by late continuing investment in their own offspring.
Abbey says: 'In Agta foragers, grandmothers face three key constraints: (i) They still have dependent children until ~52 years old (ii) They have many grandchildren competing for attention due to high fertility (iii) early death and frailty from 60 years onwards'
'....Grandmothering isn't one-size-fits-all.
It's shaped by local fertility, mortality, and reproductive patterns.
Agta foragers provide a case of constrained grandmothering, not absent, just stretched thin
This challenges universal assumptions and calls for demographic modelling across cultures'
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0385
Our ZOOM session TONIGHT with leading researcher of hunter-gatherers Vivek Venkataraman
🌗 TUESDAY May 20 🌘6:30pm (London UTC + 1)
Vivek Venkataraman
'The meanings and dividends of Man the Hunter'
ZOOM only ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak
Vivek writes:
'The phrase Man the Hunter is associated with sexist theories of human evolution, but wildly disparate use of the phrase has led to unnecessary scientific disagreement and popular misunderstanding. In this talk, which follows a recently posted collaborative paper with other hunter-gatherer scholars, I ask: what does Man the Hunter mean?
I distinguish three historical meanings of Man the Hunter; first, the 1966 conference; second, popularized sexist theories of human origins; and third, the human behavioral ecology of hunter-gatherers. I then trace the historical development of these three meanings of Man the Hunter, situating their origins in evolutionary biology, ethnology, feminist studies, ethology, genetics, and other disciplines. This allows us to ask: how are these meanings connected intellectually? After presenting a surprising answer to this question, I conclude by offering suggestions for improving scientific and popular discourse regarding Man the Hunter.'
Vivek is a biological anthropologist who employs evolutionary approaches to the study of foraging behavior, energetics, and health. He earned his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Dartmouth College and conducted postdoctoral work at Harvard University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. His present research focuses in Malaysia, where he is one of the Principal Investigators of the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OA HeLP), which studies the rise of chronic non-infectious diseases over time due to rapidly changing environments. He is co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Hunter-Gatherer Research.
Everybody welcome!
Please join on ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak
#huntergatherers #sexualdivisionoflabour #manthehunter #gender #anthropology #behaviouralecology #humanorigins
Fiercely egalitarian? Yes they are!
Nothing at all romantic about these mechanisms for #egalitarianism. Just about as politically sophisticated as #Homosapiens ever gets.
Also seriously exciting is this new paper from @zhgarfield with Sheina Lew-Levy on leadership and transmission of 'opaque culture' (read #ritual #secret knowledge) in 23 'egalitarian' hunter-gatherer groups
This is the major type of teaching that matters with #huntergatherers. I will take a good look at whether these are truly GENDER egalitarian groups. That is basically determined by women's ritual secret knowledge and performance of ritual action.
🌊🏞️ Study documents the oldest true long-distance seafaring in the #Mediterranean before the invention of boats with sails 🚣♂️⛵
Researchers have discovered that #huntergatherers crossed at least 100 km of open water 8,500 years ago to reach the Mediterranean island of #Malta. This is an impressive feat for hunter-gatherers, who likely used simple canoes. The results are published in the journal
Read more ▶️ https://uni.koeln/DG56A
Recording of our excellent talk with #ChrisKnight and #JeromeLewis on 'When Eve Laughed'
A great introduction to our Spring Term, talk by Chris Knight and Jerome Lewis on their forthcoming book
'When Eve Laughed: the Origins of Language'
The Oldest Three-Dimensional Map In The World Discovered In A Paleolithic Cave Near Paris
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https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/01/the-oldest-three-dimensional-map-in-the-world-discovered-in-a-paleolithic-cave-near-paris/ <-- shared article
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https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.12316 <-- shared paper
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #cave #archeaology #3dmapping #Segognole #quartzitic #sandstone #megaclast #lagdeposit #France #ParisBasin #carving #shelter #water #hydrology #watercourses #hydrology #map #historic #geomorphology #geomorphometry #model #3dmodel #Paleolithic #huntergatherers #NoisysurÉcole #hydrographic #rivercourse #prehistory
I finished reading “Reindeer Moon” by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas last night.
if you like prehistoric fiction, this was a good entry in that genre.
It was very detailed and made me feel like I had time travelled.
#Prehistory #AmReading #HistoricalFiction #HunterGatherers #Bookstodon #Anthropology #Adventure #Books #Paranormal
Exciting new paper here assessing ages for #puberty onset and #menarche among #UpperPalaeolithic #huntergatherers (from Russia, Czechia, Italy).
'Our results revealed that while puberty had begun by 13.5 years of age for the majority of individuals, there was a lot of variability, with the adolescents from Arene Candide (AC1 and AC16), both aged around 16 years when they died, taking several years longer to progress through puberty than their peers. Assessing the age of menarche was challenging due to the paucity of female adolescents, but based on the available evidence, it appears to have occurred between 16 and 17 years of age. For some, full adulthood had been achieved by 17–22 years, similar to the patterns seen in modern wealthy countries and in advance of historic populations living in urbanized environments.'
#adolescence #lifehistory #humanevolution #anthropology #archaeology #burials
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004724842400085X?dgcid=raven_sd_via_email
Day 13: our leading scholar #IanWatts takes us to the heart of #Hadza cosmology by following the zigzag trail of the mysterious entity !o!oko, cannibal grandmother and mantis trickster and transformer.
Stories and beliefs associated to the Mantis among the Hadzabe of Tanzania compare with the well-known figure of the Mantis among the /Xam Southern #San #huntergatherers. This suggests great antiquity of the concepts related to #lunar time.
The word itself -- !o!oko -- is probably very ancient with double alveolar-palatal click (pop sound from taking your tongue quickly away from the alveolar ridge). The -ko ending implies femaleness, but this entity has gender fluidity.
#13daysofXmas #RAGtoptalks
#egalitarianism #gender #trickster #IndigenousCosmology
Women's ability to move, as nomadic #huntergatherers, not be trapped by #settlement, able to choose where to live (Draper, Townsend, Dyble et al, demographic effects Page et al) plus women's decision-making on movement based on resources available, general #consensus decision-making (Venkataraman)
https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-ju-hoansi-can-tell-us-about-group-decision-making
An earlier review of 2022 studies on #Neanderthal #family life. Social structure according to #genetics looks like #patrilocal with #females moving out of groups.
We are close to 💯 per cent certain that #Homosapiens did the exact opposite -- daughters stayed with their mums, and sons-in-law came into the group to do #brideservice. We are so sure here because it's what #African #huntergatherers do. As a result, our lineage flourishes (thanks to grandmothers), Neanderthals dwindled (lack of grandmothers?) and numerous Neanderthal women could have moved into the incoming African origin groups.
#humanorigins #anthropology #Pleistocene #kinship
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2822%2901755-9
Great piece from #BrennaHassett
Rather than being too 'simple' and 'poor' to invent rank, #egalitarian #huntergatherers are 'too complex to allow one person or group of people to take charge'.
(Stupid AI generated image shows almost all men hanging around camp, which is in fact totally unrealistic. As usual where are women, children, grandmothers who would be the heart of the camp?!)
https://slguardian.org/the-hunter-gatherer-guide-to-keeping-society-equal/
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