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The hunter-gatherers in the study lived in the "Late Holocene (~4000 to 250 BP)", meaning between 2000 BCE to 1825 CE. These people are separated from us by les

by pacbard 11mo ago

The hunter-gatherers in the study lived in the "Late Holocene (~4000 to 250 BP)", meaning between 2000 BCE to 1825 CE. These people are separated from us by less than 150 generations. I don't believe that humans evolve that fast, so the way you think, feel, ache, and so on also applies to them. Would you leave behind your injured and disabled in their situation (which is speculated to be the result of hunting accidents)?

staplers 11mo ago
I don't believe that humans evolve that fast Evidence of animals doing this exists. Unsure why anyone would be surprised theres evidence of humans doing this. It's really wild to me how many humans believe their feelings are so different from animals. Most animals have similar incentives and desires, humans just have "better" tools to achieve them.
- culi 11mo ago
  Grieving orcas have been found to move their dead babies around for many weeks. Chimps will fetch plants like Scutia myrtina, which is toxic in large amounts but acts as a anthelmintics (anti-worm drug), for fellow members of their group when they're sick. Elephants will defend their wounded and even bring food or water to them or help them stand up when they're struggling to. Not sure why you're being downvoted. You're absolutely right. These types of behaviors can be seen all throughout the animal world. Especially for animals showing degrees of eusociality.
  - spookie 11mo ago
    These feelings are also extremely important for the preservation of one's species. No wonder evolution took this approach in multiple occasions, animals tend to get lonely if they aren't kind to one another, leaving themselves open to get killed. The incentive is there to have strength in numbers, and being "emotional" in some ways contributes to further that.
next_xibalba 11mo ago
The costs and benefits faced by ancient humans were very, very different. Maybe a different way to frame the question would be "At what probability of additional death, injury, or suffering (to you or other tribe members) would you abandon your injured/disabled?" Humans of that era did not have anything even remotely approaching modern medicine and most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep. A huge portion of ancient peoples energy and time was dedicating to obtaining calories. That means caring for the injured/disabled imposes a huge cost and risk. We can just as easily find examples of ancient peoples murdering or abandoning their injured, disabled, and weak. I don't think it would be right or fair to judge them through a modern lens. Of course they cared for their loved ones and mourned their deaths. But they were faced with much harsher circumstances to which their cultures and beliefs were suited.
- jvanderbot 11mo ago
  This feels like video game analysis. Unit is likely to die, therefore do not spend resources on unit. Leave unit behind. There is no world in which I would leave a family member or close friend to die in the woods alone, especially if I have no idea what germs are, why people die when they bleed, and am listening to a voice I have heard my whole live cry out in pain. Even if I knew for sure they were going to die, I would sit with them, or move them, or something. Thought experiment: Would you visit your mother or father in the hospital knowing they were going to die that day? I mean there's nothing you can do, why bother??
  - cheeseomlit 11mo ago
    It's not about writing off the injured due to their low odds of survival, its about your willingness to lower those odds for your other loved ones, or yourself. How does your thought experiment change when caring for your mother/father means your children might starve?
    - monknomo 11mo ago
      Look man, modern people die trying to save strangers from drowning. We can just see actual behavior, we don't need bloodless thought experiments
gopher_space 11mo ago
Anthropology started at a time when people thought civilizations evolved in a straight line from savages to England. But it's hard to pretend that the natives sat around a rock grunting at each other when their e.g. bone-setting techniques were essentially modern, so there's a tradition of "not as benighted as you might have thought" articles. WHY that point of view still exists is a question every anthro novice asks, and it turns out that cultural evolution is too attractive an idea for some people to let go of.
- arresin 11mo ago
  But then why did they spend so much time without writing or with the same level of tech for so long?
  - Broken_Hippo 11mo ago
    Go ahead. Invent some new tech that absolutely no one know about or how to do and that isn't based on any known tech. I'm waiting. What's taking so long? Discovering stuff is hard and harder if you don't think you need it. People kept fire going before they knew how to start fires. If you don't know about the concept of flint or lighting dry stuff with sparks, it is really hard to invent fire starting. Writing isn't as useful if you can just learn what you need to know while growing up. A more complicated world later - as are discoveries slowly started to build up - probably created the need. But again, those discoveries are hard and they took time. A really long time, apparently.
    - conover 11mo ago
      I think there is a tendency to project the modern era's speed of technological progress back in time, which isn't reasonable. We went from the Wright Brothers to Apollo 11 in 66 years. The first transistor to the iPhone in ~60 years. That rate of development is...new.
    - arresin 11mo ago
      My thinking is that they didn’t have any time to invent new things. They did chores and then died.
araes 11mo ago
Why is it written BP? These archaeology people / Phys.org really need to cease with that confusing nonsense. BP is supposedly "Before Present" or "Before Physics" modern referring to practical radiocarbon dating with a cutoff date of January 1, 1950. [1] Way too easy to transpose BCE / BC / BP. [1] WP, Before Present: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present It's written like these people were supposedly cave people, yet based on this story's confusing usage, these people were caring for each other after the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South America up to the 1700's. 4000 BP is the "really Late Holocene" 2050 BCE, 250 BP is 1700 AD. Also, the "late Holocene" goes all the way to Y2K (2000 AD). [2] The Meghalayan is the "the current age or latest geologic age." [3] [2] WP, Holocene Era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene [3] WP, Meghalayan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalayan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalayan Really does make me wonder if these people know what they're doing / writing.
datameta 11mo ago
The people they talk about are contemporary to the Babylonions who have already absorbed the urban Uruk civilization that started to peak a millenium prior. The difference isn't biology but resource density and climate favorability leading to higher social organization.
deleted 11mo ago
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by pacbard 11mo ago

staplers 11mo ago

I don't believe that humans evolve that fast Evidence of animals doing this exists. Unsure why anyone would be surprised theres evidence of humans doing this. It's really wild to me how many humans believe their feelings are so different from animals. Most animals have similar incentives and desires, humans just have "better" tools to achieve them.

culi 11mo ago
Grieving orcas have been found to move their dead babies around for many weeks. Chimps will fetch plants like Scutia myrtina, which is toxic in large amounts but acts as a anthelmintics (anti-worm drug), for fellow members of their group when they're sick. Elephants will defend their wounded and even bring food or water to them or help them stand up when they're struggling to. Not sure why you're being downvoted. You're absolutely right. These types of behaviors can be seen all throughout the animal world. Especially for animals showing degrees of eusociality.
- spookie 11mo ago
  These feelings are also extremely important for the preservation of one's species. No wonder evolution took this approach in multiple occasions, animals tend to get lonely if they aren't kind to one another, leaving themselves open to get killed. The incentive is there to have strength in numbers, and being "emotional" in some ways contributes to further that.

next_xibalba 11mo ago

The costs and benefits faced by ancient humans were very, very different. Maybe a different way to frame the question would be "At what probability of additional death, injury, or suffering (to you or other tribe members) would you abandon your injured/disabled?" Humans of that era did not have anything even remotely approaching modern medicine and most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep. A huge portion of ancient peoples energy and time was dedicating to obtaining calories. That means caring for the injured/disabled imposes a huge cost and risk. We can just as easily find examples of ancient peoples murdering or abandoning their injured, disabled, and weak. I don't think it would be right or fair to judge them through a modern lens. Of course they cared for their loved ones and mourned their deaths. But they were faced with much harsher circumstances to which their cultures and beliefs were suited.

jvanderbot 11mo ago
This feels like video game analysis. Unit is likely to die, therefore do not spend resources on unit. Leave unit behind. There is no world in which I would leave a family member or close friend to die in the woods alone, especially if I have no idea what germs are, why people die when they bleed, and am listening to a voice I have heard my whole live cry out in pain. Even if I knew for sure they were going to die, I would sit with them, or move them, or something. Thought experiment: Would you visit your mother or father in the hospital knowing they were going to die that day? I mean there's nothing you can do, why bother??
- cheeseomlit 11mo ago
  It's not about writing off the injured due to their low odds of survival, its about your willingness to lower those odds for your other loved ones, or yourself. How does your thought experiment change when caring for your mother/father means your children might starve?
  - monknomo 11mo ago
    Look man, modern people die trying to save strangers from drowning. We can just see actual behavior, we don't need bloodless thought experiments

gopher_space 11mo ago

Anthropology started at a time when people thought civilizations evolved in a straight line from savages to England. But it's hard to pretend that the natives sat around a rock grunting at each other when their e.g. bone-setting techniques were essentially modern, so there's a tradition of "not as benighted as you might have thought" articles. WHY that point of view still exists is a question every anthro novice asks, and it turns out that cultural evolution is too attractive an idea for some people to let go of.

arresin 11mo ago
But then why did they spend so much time without writing or with the same level of tech for so long?
- Broken_Hippo 11mo ago
  Go ahead. Invent some new tech that absolutely no one know about or how to do and that isn't based on any known tech. I'm waiting. What's taking so long? Discovering stuff is hard and harder if you don't think you need it. People kept fire going before they knew how to start fires. If you don't know about the concept of flint or lighting dry stuff with sparks, it is really hard to invent fire starting. Writing isn't as useful if you can just learn what you need to know while growing up. A more complicated world later - as are discoveries slowly started to build up - probably created the need. But again, those discoveries are hard and they took time. A really long time, apparently.
  - conover 11mo ago
    I think there is a tendency to project the modern era's speed of technological progress back in time, which isn't reasonable. We went from the Wright Brothers to Apollo 11 in 66 years. The first transistor to the iPhone in ~60 years. That rate of development is...new.
  - arresin 11mo ago
    My thinking is that they didn’t have any time to invent new things. They did chores and then died.

araes 11mo ago

Why is it written BP? These archaeology people / Phys.org really need to cease with that confusing nonsense. BP is supposedly "Before Present" or "Before Physics" modern referring to practical radiocarbon dating with a cutoff date of January 1, 1950. [1] Way too easy to transpose BCE / BC / BP. [1] WP, Before Present: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present It's written like these people were supposedly cave people, yet based on this story's confusing usage, these people were caring for each other after the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South America up to the 1700's. 4000 BP is the "really Late Holocene" 2050 BCE, 250 BP is 1700 AD. Also, the "late Holocene" goes all the way to Y2K (2000 AD). [2] The Meghalayan is the "the current age or latest geologic age." [3] [2] WP, Holocene Era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene [3] WP, Meghalayan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalayan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalayan Really does make me wonder if these people know what they're doing / writing.

datameta 11mo ago

The people they talk about are contemporary to the Babylonions who have already absorbed the urban Uruk civilization that started to peak a millenium prior. The difference isn't biology but resource density and climate favorability leading to higher social organization.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]