Ashley Strickland
CNN
March 10, 2020
Above is a link to a good report on recent archaeological evidence about human prehistory. Below are excerpts of key conclusions from that report. These findings are the results of only one of many excavations over many years and at many places around the world.
“Modern hunter-gatherer societies, like those in
southern Africa's Kalahari Desert, use ostrich eggshell beads to begin and
maintain a relationship with other groups. The process is called hxaro,
‘kindling and cementing bonds within and between communities,’ according to a
new study. The word hxaro has become synonymous with ‘beadwork’ and ‘gifts.’“So it stands to reason that the network
exchanging them has a time-honored foundation.”
...
“‘Humans are just outlandishly social animals,
and that goes back to [sharing this] information that would have been useful
for living in a hunter-gatherer society 30,000 years ago and earlier,’ said
Stewart. ‘Was Ostrich eggshell beads and the jewelry made from them basically
acted like Stone Age versions of Facebook or Twitter 'likes,' simultaneously
affirming connections to exchange partners while alerting others to the status
of those relationships.’”
...
“Stewart also believes the beads were exchanged
during a time of climate shifts, between 25,000 and 59,000 years ago. This way,
they could turn to each other when the weather worsened, sharing and pooling
resources. Not only were the beads shared and exchanged over large distances,
but also long periods of time. It hints at why modern humans survived.”
...
“‘These exchange networks could be used for
information on resources, the condition of landscapes, of animals, plant foods,
other people and perhaps marriage partners.’"
Archaeological artifact extrapolation and inference, and ethnographic present analogy are not direct evidence of prehistoric behavior. However, they do
provide insight into how human groups related to each other before the beginning of sedentary
agriculture and urbanism.
We
in the West like to think of human nature as “red in tooth and claw,”* as the 19th Century Social Darwinistic saying goes. That is, this thinking goes, we were brutes until we settled down and became
civilized. Before that, many of us like to think, we were dirty, tribalistic, cutthroat
competitors.
Something
I natter on often is my firm belief that our true human nature is cultural not
biological - one of learned beliefs and behaviors supporting cooperation, and
conflict avoidance and amelioration. This is who we are at bottom and were for
the vast majority of the 200,000 years of human existence. We changed relatively
recently, beginning between 10-15,000 years ago.
We
turned away from a face-to-face cooperative way of relating to each other when
we started growing food, amassing surpluses, living in increasingly dense settlements, and
succumbing to authoritarian rulers and high gods.
