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Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / May 2006



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Article: Muggings were rife in New Stone Age

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Robert Karl Stonjek - 11 May 2006 23:46 GMT
Muggings were rife in New Stone Age
11 May 2006
Emma Young
IF YOU are worried about being attacked or killed by a violent criminal, just be glad you are not living in Neolithic Britain. From 4000 to 3200 BC, Britons had a 1 in 14 chance of being bashed on the head, and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries.

Grisly figures from the first systematic survey of early Neolithic British skulls reveal that life then was no rural idyll. "It's certainly more violent than we'd considered," says Rick Schulting of Queen's University Belfast, UK, who conducted the study with Mick Wysocki at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.

The discovery of craniums from the New Stone Age with signs of human-inflicted trauma is nothing new but this is the first clue to the overall frequency of violence. Schulting and Wysocki have so far identified and studied the remains of about 350 skulls, mostly from southern England. The pair found healed depressed fractures in 4 to 5 per cent of the skulls, and unhealed injuries in about 2 per cent - suggesting the person died from their wounds, or at some point in the attack.

Most of the fatal blows were to the left side of the head, which would make sense if two right-handed people were fighting, says Schulting. The injuries were mostly caused by blunt objects, although some of the skulls seem to have been hacked by stone axes and there is some evidence that ears were chopped off. Schulting presented the work at last month's annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Full Text from NewScientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025514.900?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg1902
5514.900


Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Day Brown - 12 May 2006 06:03 GMT
> *Muggings were rife in New Stone Age*
> 11 May 2006
[quoted text clipped - 31 lines]
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025514.900?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg1902
5514.900
 
> <http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025514.900?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg1902
5514.900
>
I'm well into "Constant Battles" by Steven LeBlanc, which also takes to
task the idea of the 'noble savage', outlining similar evidence he
claims is all over the world at all times. [there is an exception he
does not seem to know of] But he also cites the 'parry' injuries to the
forearm as proof of assault. LeBlanc says that 25% of the Yanamomo and
New Guinea highlanders died of violent assault before the influence of
white men put a stop to it... largely thru the introduction of new food
technologies that reduced the competition for territory.

Regarding the exception, Steven Pinker reports that forensic exam of
skeletons in yeoman farmer graveyards only show 5% of the rate seen in
tropical hunting tribes. see "The Blank Slate".
spiznet - 12 May 2006 17:48 GMT
> > *Muggings were rife in New Stone Age*
> > 11 May 2006
[quoted text clipped - 43 lines]
> skeletons in yeoman farmer graveyards only show 5% of the rate seen in
> tropical hunting tribes. see "The Blank Slate".

In other words, there never was peaceful co-existence until settled
crops and farming...
hmmm. Interesting. Of course the social benefits of peacefulness during
farming culture is extreme! Property, safety, you are waiting around
for months while these crops grow, they must have societal calmness.

So peace is the exception and not the rule!

-Spiznet
Day Brown - 13 May 2006 06:03 GMT
> In other words, there never was peaceful co-existence until settled
> crops and farming...
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> So peace is the exception and not the rule!
Well certainly, like at Little Big horn, there can be a good year, and
the warriors of all tribes will gather for a barbi. Then too, you can
have a pandemic sweep thru, and it dont matter how brave the warriors
are, the best survival rate is among hermits.

European folklore, like Hansel & Gretel, are full of tales of witches or
farm families living alone in the woods. And the ice ages must have
often crashed the population, which is why so few Neandertals have ever
been found, and a big settlement had maybe a few dozen people.

The Mammoth bone Longhouses along the Don were 100 miles apart. That was
not convenient enough for warfare either, most especially during the ice
age winters.

But in the tropical zones, the populations were higher, and warfare went
on almost all the time. I'm about 1/3 thru LeBlanc, "Constant Battles"
in which he says warfare was universal and forever. But he has yet to
take note of the above- admittedly small and isolated populations.

LeBlanc looks at the chimp warfare and concludes it goes way back in
hominid development. but I dont think it was a universal as he claims.
The mt Tuva eruption, 75,000 years ago seems to have been responsible
for the manifest bottleneck in hominid DNA of only 10,000 *globally*.

With that few people, spread across that much landscape, how you find
anyone to war with? In writing of the Yanamamo and New Guinea highland
tribes, he crunches the numbers to show how it was profitable. but I can
play that game as well, and show when it wasnt.

Besides the mammoth hunters, we have the earliest agrarians at Chatal
Hoyuk, Hacilar, and the other Anatolian cities 10,000 years ago. Sass,
in "The Subtance of civilization" calculates that when grain growing
began, the amount of land needed to support a tribe shrank to just 0.2%
of what hunter/gatherers need.

The result was a series (five I know of) of cities of several thousand
in an era when the hunter tribes were perhaps a few hundred. No way were
warriors going to attack so many defenders concentrated in one place. As
was suggested by the website they had up while the Chatal Hoyuk dig was
going on. Nobody found any evidence of warfare despite occupation that
went on for 1500 years.

The dig also revealed Semite, Caucasoid, and Alpine skulls. The place
also had *lots* of sacred shrines, and was a huge draw for religious
pilgramages. Then as now, energetic talented people would have seen the
new lifestyle, and tired of the domination of alpha male hunters, took
up residence in a community run by *women*.

Which makes sense when you look at the lives of primitive tribes. the
men regard gardens as 'women's work'. Only now, all of a sudden, that
power base produces hundreds of times as much food without having to be
out in bad weather hunting.

Another thing that women do, which we see going on now, is that when
they have the power, they *control* the birth rate. They after all, are
the ones who literally have to bust a.s for the next generation, and
dont do it any more than necessary. Thus the Anatolian cities dont show
boom and bust population patterns.

That is, until about 6200 BCE, when a younger dryas type of chronic
drought set in, and everyone left. Most of them went north and on into
Europe where the rain was more reliable. Thus begins the Chalcolithic
matriarchies that have fueled so much controversy.
John Wilkins - 13 May 2006 08:00 GMT
>> In other words, there never was peaceful co-existence until settled
>> crops and farming...
[quoted text clipped - 66 lines]
> Europe where the rain was more reliable. Thus begins the Chalcolithic
> matriarchies that have fueled so much controversy.
Can you give some refs for all of this? I find it fascinating...

Signature

John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos,
puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

Larry Caldwell - 13 May 2006 18:51 GMT
> > That is, until about 6200 BCE, when a younger dryas type of chronic
> > drought set in, and everyone left. Most of them went north and on into
> > Europe where the rain was more reliable. Thus begins the Chalcolithic
> > matriarchies that have fueled so much controversy.

> Can you give some refs for all of this? I find it fascinating...

Keep your grains of salt handy.  This is mostly mythology, based on the
work of Marija Gimbutas, who was positive that the female fertility
objects common in eastern Europe were evidence of a matriarchal culture.  
She completely ignored the male fertility objects which are just as
common as the female objects.  The culture was apparently obsessed with
sex and fertility, but that is all we know.  

The idea of a culture where women ran things and worshipped a goddess
has been quite popular among the lunatic fringe of the feminist
movement, but there is no evidence that such a culture ever existed.  
You hear people talking about it as fact because that is what they want
to believe.  
John Wilkins - 13 May 2006 23:49 GMT
>>> That is, until about 6200 BCE, when a younger dryas type of chronic
>>> drought set in, and everyone left. Most of them went north and on into
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> You hear people talking about it as fact because that is what they want
> to believe.  
Thanks. That's why I asked. I hear a lot about these matriarchal societies of
the dim past, and particularly the Goddess cults, but never find anything to
back it up. I knew of Gimbutas...

Signature

John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos,
puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

Day Brown - 14 May 2006 04:47 GMT
>> That is, until about 6200 BCE, when a younger dryas type of chronic
>> drought set in, and everyone left. Most of them went north and on into
>> Europe where the rain was more reliable. Thus begins the Chalcolithic
>> matriarchies that have fueled so much controversy.
>
> Can you give some refs for all of this? I find it fascinating...
I dont defend the lunatic fringe feminists. Let me first mention the
unmentionable in Gimbutas's books that go a long ways why *both* the
feminists, and her debunkers are wrong.

She shows us *lots* of what she labels "Phallic Wands". But I've seen
porn flicks, and I know dildos when I see them. *NOW* if kings were in
power, would we be finding dildos all over the place? Hello?

No. Kings have a tool that they dont want having any competition, and to
keep it busy, they have harems. And for harems, you need palaces. Go
look at the digs. aint no palaces.

Or look at Goodison & Morris, who on the fly leaf of "Ancient Goddesses"
note the controversy over the absence of any evidence of warfare in the
chalcolithic (matriarchic) digs. So- they choose a virgin tel, and open
it up, specifically looking for the general layer of burn rubble such as
is always left after a place has been raped, pillaged... and burnt in
the globally standard warrior fashion.

All they could find was a *single* housefire that had been ritually
burned. They deduce this because of the artifacts just barely buried in
the corners of the house.

Now, the Romans called this region "Dacia", and tried to conquer it for
hundreds of years, barely holding it for 50. Seems that the
Transylvanian witches, (the "raj") would send girls into the camps to
f.ck with the Romans. And- somehow, the Dacians always knew when the
Romans were coming...

Then too, Dacia was famous for its "fertility rites" at which the men of
all the surrounding villages were invited on every moon to come to one
of the other villages to get laid. Hmm. Now, consider the problem a
warlord has wanting to make a raid. The men react with all the
enthusiasm we'd expect if he wanted to go burn down a whorehouse.

So- the Feminists just dont get it; They dont know how to put out like
the witches did to get what they want. And if they ever do figure that
out, does anyone doubt that they will take over? Hello? And the
debunkers dont get it either, they dont even want to *think* about how
sex will motivate men rather than their bibles.

FWIW, I have been to a ritual organized by witches which arranged for
dudes to get laid by several women over the course of a weekend. If I
was not nearly 67, I mite have been offered their services. But then I
also saw the effect on a macho dude over the several weeks thereafter,
and all of his arrogant aggressive bullschit was... history. all he
could think about was the next time they'd have a ritual. And had a
warchief wanted to back up there for a raid, he wouldda come back with
the chief's head on a stick.

*That* is how matriarchy worked for millennia. It was largely put out of
business by Roman roads which delivered men with STDs faster than the
witches could cure them or develop an effective treatment. But now, the
witches I saw know how to supervise safe sex, so women bring hubbies to
get laid, letting the guys express that instinct, but not come home with
anything later.

Its perhaps also instructive to consider that the Roman word for 'witch'
meant 'poisoner'. Nowadays, we'd call that a biological weapon. Lots of
ancient armies were wiped out, not with the sword, but disease. It was
the *women* who knew how to use these tools. You dont read about it
cause they didnt write about it. They didnt have male egos that wanted
to go down in history. They were having too much fun with sex, drugs,
and rock & roll.
Lorenzo L. Love - 14 May 2006 17:49 GMT
>>> That is, until about 6200 BCE, when a younger dryas type of chronic  
>>> drought set in, and everyone left. Most of them went north and on into  
[quoted text clipped - 65 lines]
> to go down in history. They were having too much fun with sex, drugs,  
> and rock & roll.

Hey, I've been feeling awfully aggressive lately! Were do I go for the  
cure?

Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: one is that God loves you  
and you're going to burn in hell; the other is that sex is the most awful,  
filthy thing on Earth and you should save it for someone you love."
                           Butch Hancock
Day Brown - 15 May 2006 05:52 GMT
> Hey, I've been feeling awfully aggressive lately! Were do I go for the  
> cure?
depends on how smart you are. if you are talented, you are able to use
that aggression as drive and focus to excel at some endeavor.

If not, then you suffer, as Nietzsche put it, 'The rancor of the
powerless', and are a sucker for any demagogue who seems to promise you
empowerment by enslaving others; most especially women.
 
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