UKC

Wild life-ing

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 bouldery bits 03 Feb 2022

Forget wild camping, wild swimming, wild running, wild cooking, wild charades.....

Just 'rewild' your whole pointless existence!

It's all just posturing until the end, isn't it?

https://www.theguardian.com/rewild-your-life/2021/nov/19/six-ways-to-rewild...

No, I don't know what my point is either. 

 im off 03 Feb 2022
In reply to bouldery bits:

I thought reawakening you're movement was gunna be something else.

 The New NickB 03 Feb 2022
In reply to bouldery bits:

Don't forget to start your barefoot journey by buying some shoes from our sponsor.

 DerwentDiluted 03 Feb 2022
In reply to bouldery bits:

'Eat like your ancestors' sounds great. I'm sure my life will be made much better with rickets, scurvy and a surfeit of lampreys.

 timjones 03 Feb 2022
In reply to DerwentDiluted:

I believe that it depends how far back you go and that there is evidence that our hunter gatherer ancestors were healthier than our more recent ancestors that moved away from living close to the land.

cb294 03 Feb 2022
In reply to timjones:

... and there is clear evidence for cooking both vegetables and meat on campfires 250ky ago, and evidence for brewing/fermenting from about 100ky ago

Paleo diet, yeah sure!

That said, cutting alcoho, refined sugar, salt, and processed fats is certainly healthy.

 Stichtplate 03 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

> That said, cutting alcoho, refined sugar, salt, and processed fats is certainly healthy.

with the added benefit that when Death finally comes knocking at your door, you’ll welcome his cold and boney embrace with a profound sense of relief.

cb294 03 Feb 2022
In reply to Stichtplate:

Absolutely!  This is why I am looking forward to ending my dry Jan 10th to Feb 10th next week!

As a biologist I also consider the shape of my teeth and the length of my gut, and do not go vegetarian. Better meat less often seems the better idea, sweetening my the du marche with honey rather than sugar, you get the idea....

Anyway, if there is one thing I have never been accused of (the times I was cutting weight for sports aside) it is asceticism!

CB

 timjones 03 Feb 2022
In reply to Stichtplate:

> with the added benefit that when Death finally comes knocking at your door, you’ll welcome his cold and boney embrace with a profound sense of relief.

To be fair I doubt that cutting any of those apart from the salt would leave me feeling deprived or less happy.

 jimtitt 03 Feb 2022
In reply to timjones:

> I believe that it depends how far back you go and that there is evidence that our hunter gatherer ancestors were healthier than our more recent ancestors that moved away from living close to the land.

You mean they were healthier when they died in their mid-twenties?

3
 mondite 03 Feb 2022
In reply to jimtitt:

> You mean they were healthier when they died in their mid-twenties?

There is a fair amount of evidence indicating the general health level of an early farmer was a lot worse than that of a hunter gatherer (such as average height dropped, more visible signs of ill health on bones etc), the hours worked were a lot longer (although this one is somewhat of a guesswork based on the hunter gathered groups which have survived since its unclear how representative they would be).

Whilst in the long run settled communities win out once you learn effective agriculture and can so can start providing surplus food to allow for specialists in different trades at least initially it seems a bad move and there is lots of debate about why it happened.

cb294 03 Feb 2022
In reply to mondite:

This.

I find the argument put forward by Harari quite good (at least as a topic for a pub discussion) that we domesticated cows and pigs, but that wheat domesticated us: More individuals of the domesticated species than ever before, and a much wider distribution, but the price is a shit quality of life for each individual!

CB

 timjones 03 Feb 2022
In reply to jimtitt:

> You mean they were healthier when they died in their mid-twenties?

Did they die in their mid-twenties?

 jimtitt 03 Feb 2022
In reply to timjones:

Well the average lifespan was in the 30-35 range so loads died earlier. It seems that the detection of humourous asides died much earlier on UKC

cb294 03 Feb 2022
In reply to timjones:

A bit later and much happier than their farmer descendants!

Comparing absolute lifespans between today and back then is pointless, you need to compare before and after the agricultural revolution. Obviously, a hunter gatherer society could not have developed antibiotics etc. that have driven the most recent life span increase.

CB

 jimtitt 03 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

And one has to always look a bit sideways about some archeological "facts", unless the hunters dedicatedly carried the remains of the mammoth victims we'll never know from excavating settlement sites.

 Rob Exile Ward 03 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

Is that true? Thomas McKeown made a compelling case that increases life expectancy was down to improved nutrition, cleaner water and sanitation.

Post edited at 22:38
cb294 03 Feb 2022
In reply to jimtitt:

No need to turn to archaeology, just look at areas that today (OK, mostly until a few decades ago) hosted related hunter/gatherer and agriculturalist groups, e.g. closely related Khoi/San tribes in the Congo basin or Melanesian tribes in the highlands of PNG.

Less time per day spent on provisioning, more time for social interactions, lower energy expenditure, and generally better health into older age in the HG groups. I would summarize that as a better life for the hunters.

The eventual success of the farmers was probably due to the possibility to generate a divertible surplus not available to HGs that could support specialist classes including rulers, soldiers, artisan and -importantly- priests and also, if you survived, zoonotic diseases.

Whether that constitutes group selection is another classic of biologists' pub discussions!

CB

cb294 03 Feb 2022
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Note that I said most recent. The factors you name were more important earlier, but that did not really push life expectancy as dramatically.

CB

 mondite 03 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

 

> The eventual success of the farmers was probably due to the possibility to generate a divertible surplus not available to HGs that could support specialist classes including rulers, soldiers, artisan and -importantly- priests and also, if you survived, zoonotic diseases.

Pastorial nomads who sort of sit inbetween in many ways were arguably the most successful until recently often forcing settled communities to support them. It was only with more modern transport and weapons that the settled populations got an advantage.

cb294 04 Feb 2022
In reply to mondite:

Not in general, it really depends on what time points and time scales you talk about.

I find prehistory almost even more fascinating than history, mainly because we know so little about it, and because my own discipline (molecular genetics) finally has developed tools that allow us to replace speculation with actual knowledge!

CB

 mondite 04 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

> Not in general, it really depends on what time points and time scales you talk about.

I should have caveated it with so long as they have horses but that said some of the other pastoral nomads did okay. In Eurasia they did particularly well although always with a lot of interaction with the settled communities to take advantage of their ability to specialise and produce equipment.

> I find prehistory almost even more fascinating than history, mainly because we know so little about it, and because my own discipline (molecular genetics) finally has developed tools that allow us to replace speculation with actual knowledge!

The mix of genetics and other recent technology eg isotope analysis are giving some really interesting results.

Its fun looking at even relatively recent opinions and seeing how they have been overturned now. Remember reading one book on prehistory where pretty much everything was caveated with "could change depending on future discoveries" with the exception of humans shagging neanderthals which was a definite no.

cb294 04 Feb 2022
In reply to mondite:

Yes isotope analysis is another good one!

There has been a major discovery in Northerrn Germany, where the remains of about 1000 soldiers were found in the banks of a moorland stream close to the Baltic coast. Apparently there was a battle for a road or dyke made from oak planks passing that moorland. Assuming documented casualty rates from a bit later, at least 5k but maybe up to 10k combattants must have been involved.

The weird it is that RC dating fixes the time of the battle at around 1250 BC, where we have absolutely no knowledge of any entity that could raise and support armies of that size anywhere in the Baltic region.

Even more bizzarely, isoptope analysis also shows that at least some of the fighters came from as far as Scotland and likely Sicily, suggesting again that someone was rich and powerful enough, and that word spread far enough, to recruit bands of fighters into a larger unit.

The problem is that from classic history and archaeology we have no idea who that powerful economic and political unit was, what made fighting over a Baltic bog worth while (control of the amber trade, presumably), nothing really.

Ask anyone what they think living on the Baltic coast 3ky ago looked like, and people will offer something like the anarcho-syndicalist commune stacking mud at the beginning of the Holy Grail.... Certainly not some chiefdom raising armies across Europe!

CB

 jimtitt 04 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

Someone was rich enough to be using gold and silver drinking straws (with a filter) 5500 yrs ago in the Caucuses so I guess it wasn't all mud huts and yurts or whatever!

cb294 04 Feb 2022
In reply to jimtitt:

Same thing: What language did these people speak, what did they believe, what did they do to afford that (gold and silver mining, presumably...). Still, making some luxury goods is one thing, maybe a village centred on a rich mine could do that, so it is plausible that they become lost in time.

Equipping, feeding, and paying an army requires a much larger political and economic unit, and I find it amazing that we have no idea who these people may have been culturally.

CB

 MikeR 04 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

I remember reading about this (if I'm thinking of the same thing). One thing I took from the article was that it seemed to be heavily relying on an assumed casualty rate.

Is it not possible, or even more likely, that this was just a particularly brutal battle that left a large number (the majority?) of the combatants dead? This would only need opposing armies of a few hundred to a thousand, still large for the time I guess but much less than the 5-10K. Throw in a few wondering mercenaries to account for the Scots and Sicillians (or whoever they were back then).

This is just my amateur musings so happy to be proven wrong.

 mondite 04 Feb 2022
In reply to MikeR:

> I remember reading about this (if I'm thinking of the same thing).

Tollense?

> Is it not possible, or even more likely, that this was just a particularly brutal battle that left a large number (the majority?) of the combatants dead?

Historically it was very rare to get heavy casualty rates in battle.

Main casualties were in the rout afterwards and would mostly be done by cavalry (since otherwise the attackers get knackered and slowed each time they kill someone and the routees have more motivation). Whilst there was some evidence of mounted troops it doesnt seem to be at the level which could carry out a massacre.

I guess there would be a possibility of them being enveloped (eg Cannae) or forced against a natural barrier (eg Towton).

That said there is at least one theory it was more a massacre than a battle with a lightly armed group of merchants or similar attacked by a battleband.

 jimtitt 04 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

> Same thing: What language did these people speak, what did they believe, what did they do to afford that (gold and silver mining, presumably...). Still, making some luxury goods is one thing, maybe a village centred on a rich mine could do that, so it is plausible that they become lost in time.

> Equipping, feeding, and paying an army requires a much larger political and economic unit, and I find it amazing that we have no idea who these people may have been culturally.

> CB

Same aliens that enslaved the people who built Stonehenge!

cb294 04 Feb 2022
In reply to MikeR:

The battle I am talking about happened in what is now the Tollense plain North of Berlin, almost on the Baltic coast. Over the last few years archaeologists there found bones belonging to at least 1k individuals, so that is the absolute minimum number of casualties.

Even if there was a casualty rate of 50% * the point would still stand.

Which parties recruited, paid, equipped, and fed 1000 soldier each, and what was worth such an investment? In fact they even found remains of horses, in addition to arrowheads and wooden clubs and spears.

No swords, though, even though many of the bones had cut marks consistent with sword wounds. Probably just shows that bronze was so valuable (unlike the soldiers....) that every weapon fragment was recovered afterwards.

CB

* essentially unheard of even in antiquity with very rare exceptions that have become famous for precisely that reason, and usually involving a small group being massacred by a bigger one, e.g. the blockade of the Thermopylae during 1st Persian war

cb294 04 Feb 2022
In reply to jimtitt:

Possibly the same culture (Aunjetitz culture) that left wooden "henges" and burial mounds from the Magdeburg area all the way through Czechia and South Poland to Budapest. Not much else known about them, except that they probably also made the Nebra disk, some kind of bronze platter with representations of stars, hinting at some astrological religion.

CB

 Timy2 04 Feb 2022
In reply to bouldery bits:

I live on Dandelion burgers these days...

 MikeR 04 Feb 2022
In reply to mondite and cb294:

> Tollense?

Possibly, can't quite remember but that name does sound familiar.

> Historically it was very rare to get heavy casualty rates in battle.

Sure, I was just wondering if the same could be applied way back in prehistory for some unknown culture. However..

> Main casualties were in the rout afterwards and would mostly be done by cavalry (since otherwise the attackers get knackered and slowed each time they kill someone and the routees have more motivation). Whilst there was some evidence of mounted troops it doesnt seem to be at the level which could carry out a massacre.

That makes sense from a practical point of view.

Thanks for the replies, I find it an interesting subject. 

 mondite 04 Feb 2022
In reply to MikeR:

> That makes sense from a practical point of view.

For Tollense it could possibly meet the second criteria of getting trapped against a natural feature with the river and swampy areas. Not exactly terrain you want to be running for your life in.

 mondite 04 Feb 2022
In reply to cb294:

> Which parties recruited, paid, equipped, and fed 1000 soldier each, and what was worth such an investment? In fact they even found remains of horses, in addition to arrowheads and wooden clubs and spears.

A separate suggestion to the random merchants/whatever was a pair of local tribes coming into conflict and each calling in support from the their larger tribal groupings. Means they didnt need those resources for as long.

> Probably just shows that bronze was so valuable (unlike the soldiers....) that every weapon fragment was recovered afterwards.

One thing I didnt realise until fairly recently is that early iron swords werent superior to bronze as opposed to the copper/tin being a lot rarer and more geographically dispersed.

 timjones 04 Feb 2022
In reply to jimtitt:

 In light of the current vogue to obsess over our own mortality  it may be wise to use a smiley to indicate such humorous asides


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