Jens NotroffAug 10

Hunter-gatherers made this?! 🤯🤔

What really puzzles me is the disbelief that hunter-gatherers somehow could be capable of cultural achievements.

Does this come from an outdated idea equalling #HunterGatherer with #primitive?

🧵 A fundmental misunderstanding ...

Show threadJens NotroffAug 10

We're the same humans after all.

With the same intellectual abilities, innovative drive, and practical capabilities. Even 10,000, 20,000 or 300,000 years ago.

We still *are* these humans.

Show threadJens NotroffAug 10

Hunter-gatherers made this.

https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/lascaux/en

Show threadJens NotroffAug 10

Hunter-gatherers made this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/science/mammoth-bones-circle.html

Show threadJens NotroffAug 10

Hunter-gatherers made this.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0277927

Show threadJens NotroffAug 10

Hunter-gatherers made this.

https://www.science.org/content/article/stonehenge-other-ancient-rock-structures-may-trace-their-origins-monuments

Show threadJens NotroffAug 10

Hunter-gatherers made this.

https://theconversation.com/stone-age-megastructure-under-baltic-sea-sheds-light-on-strategy-used-by-palaeolithic-hunters-over-10-000-years-ago-223665

Show threadJens NotroffAug 10

Hunter-gatherers made this.

https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/presse/informationen/fup/2023/fup_23_291-aelteste-siedlung-amnya-nachgewiesen/index.html

Show threadJens Notroff
We're still the same humans. With the same intellectual abilities, innovative drive, and practical capabilities.
Aug 10 at 5:37pmWeb
Show threadSara Joy Aug 10
@jens2go they probably had a lot more time on their hands too. Of course they had skills, created art, thought, dreamed.
Show threadJens NotroffAug 10

@sarajw Good point! Tme really doesn't seem to be much of an issue in this case:

https://time.com/archive/6637219/anthropology-the-original-affluent-society/

Anthropology: The Original Affluent Society

Imagine a society in which the work week seldom exceeds 19 hours, material wealth is considered a burden, and no one is much richer than anyone else. The trespasser is unknown, there are no...

Time
Show threadSara Joy Aug 10

@jens2go I came across this article too: https://rewild.com/in-depth/leisure.html

Does make you wonder sometimes, what am I doing, really. Too many of us now to just hunt and gather, though...

Hunter-gatherers have more leisure time.

Some people say that the advent of farming gave people more leisure time to build up civilization, but hunter-gatherers actually have far more leisure time than farmers do, and more still than modern people in the industrialized world.

Rewild.com
Show threadCullen McHaelAug 11

@jens2go I more and more suspect this kind of confusion about ancient deep time peoples must be arising from seeing the world through the lense of white exceptionalism.

They think that modernity is required to achieve anything, where by modernity they mean whiteness, even if they don’t consciously acknowledge it. It’s orientalism pure and simple, just couched as skepticism.