The Deep Anthropocene(aeon.co)
aeon.co
The Deep Anthropocene
https://aeon.co/essays/revolutionary-archaeology-reveals-the-deepest-possible-anthropocene
41 comments
Well, edible bananas don't have seeds, you have to excavate and extract, prepare, and then bury (plant) culms to spread them. So yes, it was definitely deliberate, people carried banana culms around with them in order to plant them as they traveled from island to island.
Musa acuminata bananas, native to SE-Asia, and probably the sort talked about in this article, do have seeds, though the domesticated variants have significantly less. It seems highly unlikely that these particular bananas had no seeds.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_acuminata
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_acuminata
Um, that is only modern bananas. "old" bananas are mostly seed.
Yes, that's why I said "edible" bananas... those "mostly seed" ones aren't really edible, there's nothing to eat. The mutation / hybridization that resulted in seedless edible bananas must have preceded their being spread around by humans or we wouldn't have bothered.
Oh, anyone bothers if they get really hungry. Stone Age people were fairly resourceful when it came to food.
A friend of mine who used to hike in the Pyrenees had incredible stories regarding hunger and eating.
A friend of mine who used to hike in the Pyrenees had incredible stories regarding hunger and eating.
Care to share any of the stories? I think you'll find a receptive audience :)
The best one is probably this from the early 2000s.
They relied on a paper map only, no smartphones with GPS back then and they did not have any Magellan GPS. Taking a wrong turn somewhere, they added like 40 km to their intended trek, which in that terrain meant two days.
They ran out of food and she was so starved that she ate entire tube of her skin cream. Together with a few bugs that made their way into their tent.
Her description: it looked like yogurt with raisins, but I am not going to describe the taste.
No health consequences.
They relied on a paper map only, no smartphones with GPS back then and they did not have any Magellan GPS. Taking a wrong turn somewhere, they added like 40 km to their intended trek, which in that terrain meant two days.
They ran out of food and she was so starved that she ate entire tube of her skin cream. Together with a few bugs that made their way into their tent.
Her description: it looked like yogurt with raisins, but I am not going to describe the taste.
No health consequences.
Eating skin cream after two days without food? There are people who recreationally fast for that length. There's something missing from this story.
She is tough, but very lean. Not that much body fat, so low reserves.
As for fasting. I fast sometimes, but I would not try fasting on a long hike in mountains like Pyrenees. Probably not even Tatras.
As for fasting. I fast sometimes, but I would not try fasting on a long hike in mountains like Pyrenees. Probably not even Tatras.
Depending on what's in the skin cream, it might not be an unreasonable thing to do. They often contain not much more than plant fats and stablilizers. Probably the perfume will make it taste foul, but it won't kill you.
Southern France/Northern Spain is not a total wilderness. That level hunger after a two day detour implies a serious level of poor planning.
Well, it was their second tour of the Pyrenees. They have come back almost every year since 2001 and learned from their mistakes.
> banana cultivation from the Island of New Guinea
Super interesting. Reminded me that in Cuba there's a type of banana they call "guineo". I wonder if it's at all related to its origin.
Super interesting. Reminded me that in Cuba there's a type of banana they call "guineo". I wonder if it's at all related to its origin.
Hmm, seems so, though a different Guinea! Very interesting:
> Guineos (pronounced [ɡiˈneos]) usually refers to an unripe banana. The term guineo is sometimes used in reference to its ripened counterpart: the yellow (ripened) banana. Etymology of the word Guineo comes from Guinea, a country in the west of Africa, as it is one of the places from which bananas originate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guineo
> Guineos (pronounced [ɡiˈneos]) usually refers to an unripe banana. The term guineo is sometimes used in reference to its ripened counterpart: the yellow (ripened) banana. Etymology of the word Guineo comes from Guinea, a country in the west of Africa, as it is one of the places from which bananas originate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guineo
Obviously this is oversimplified because some of the trips needed to cross huge oceans, but from Papua New Guinea to Ethiopia is only ~12,000 km. If people with bananas move 10 km every year, they will cross that distance in "only" 1,200 years.
And some people cover more than 10 km in a single day.
And some people cover more than 10 km in a single day.
Fascinating indeed. Climate change goes far beyond CO2 levels.
Another thing that we miss is our history before the last ice age, which still lies in complete mistery.
Complete is greatly overstating it. I've personally found stuff from approximately that time period and in general we have a decent idea how people lived and many of their technologies. There are issues pinning down details on specific groups, cultures and political organization, but nothing so unknown as to hide a large industrial society.
How people maintained consistent culture--judging from cave paintings--across tens of millennia and thousands of miles, in and out of ice ages, is an enduring mystery.
There really is no shortage of mysteries, although archaeologists don't like to talk about them.
That Denisovan bracelet from tens of millennia ago, with a hole drilled by a method not reinvented until historical times, is a new mystery.
Miles and miles of undersea construction off India, on seabed last exposed more than 7000 years ago.
The very oldest known stone construction, in both Egypt and Peru, used the very biggest chunks of rock, often 50 tons and more, (apparently) before even pulleys. Blocks get progressively smaller and clunkier in later work.
Egyptian sculpture made of basalt and granite, smoothed to a satin finish. Basalt boxes, 50 tons and more, with perfectly right-angled and smooth interior cuts, without tool marks.
I'm not saying it's aliens, because... why the hell would aliens care about rocks? But people were doing things that we don't understand, and cannot reproduce with the tools they should have had.
There is a great deal more to learn about the prehistoric past than we have even begun to get a handle on.
There really is no shortage of mysteries, although archaeologists don't like to talk about them.
That Denisovan bracelet from tens of millennia ago, with a hole drilled by a method not reinvented until historical times, is a new mystery.
Miles and miles of undersea construction off India, on seabed last exposed more than 7000 years ago.
The very oldest known stone construction, in both Egypt and Peru, used the very biggest chunks of rock, often 50 tons and more, (apparently) before even pulleys. Blocks get progressively smaller and clunkier in later work.
Egyptian sculpture made of basalt and granite, smoothed to a satin finish. Basalt boxes, 50 tons and more, with perfectly right-angled and smooth interior cuts, without tool marks.
I'm not saying it's aliens, because... why the hell would aliens care about rocks? But people were doing things that we don't understand, and cannot reproduce with the tools they should have had.
There is a great deal more to learn about the prehistoric past than we have even begun to get a handle on.
My personal field experience is that cultures were not consistent across millennia and miles, but it can often be difficult to distinguish cultures purely from their material record, especially to modern eyes. In general, people tend to both underestimate what's possible and mistake natural landforms for human constructions. The Bosnian Pyramids and the Yonaguni Monument are prime examples.
Even experts sometimes screw this up. I've seen my share of cropmarks and straight "walls" on imagery that turn out to have perfectly natural explanations. My first field season was particularly memorable. I spent days sitting in a muddy trench, convinced I had found a posthole. A few feet below was the remains of a collapsed rabbit warren. Archaeology can be hard.
Even experts sometimes screw this up. I've seen my share of cropmarks and straight "walls" on imagery that turn out to have perfectly natural explanations. My first field season was particularly memorable. I spent days sitting in a muddy trench, convinced I had found a posthole. A few feet below was the remains of a collapsed rabbit warren. Archaeology can be hard.
Can you link me some sources to your claims? Super fascinated and I wanna read more!
https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeae.2008.07.00...
"It is a common assumption that stone drilling originated during the Upper Paleolithic, but gained the features of a well-developed technology only during the Neolithic. The comparatively archaic method of two-handed drilling was replaced by the more efficient bow drill (Ibid.: 62). The process of stationary drilling, i.e., with the help of the bow drill, did not leave signs of drill vibration. These progressive features have been noted on the Denisova bracelet. It constitutes unique evidence on an unexpectedly early employment of two-sided fast stationary drilling during the Early Upper Paleolithic. All of the other known Paleolithic implements with signs of drilling bear features suggesting relatively slow drilling with a considerable drill vibration."
"It is a common assumption that stone drilling originated during the Upper Paleolithic, but gained the features of a well-developed technology only during the Neolithic. The comparatively archaic method of two-handed drilling was replaced by the more efficient bow drill (Ibid.: 62). The process of stationary drilling, i.e., with the help of the bow drill, did not leave signs of drill vibration. These progressive features have been noted on the Denisova bracelet. It constitutes unique evidence on an unexpectedly early employment of two-sided fast stationary drilling during the Early Upper Paleolithic. All of the other known Paleolithic implements with signs of drilling bear features suggesting relatively slow drilling with a considerable drill vibration."
Incredible. Where should I look for the undersea building off India? Gives me huge Atlantis vibes, haha.
What about a small industrial society?
When we start getting into hypotheticals, it's useful to reframe the discussion in more concrete terms. What would it mean to have a "small industrial society"? I can think of a number of "things" that would fit that term:
1) Ancient Aliens: Essentially similar to what a human martian colony would look like. In this case, resources, population, and knowledge are brought from off-world and there's little to no local exploitation. The only way to detect something like this is direct material evidence, which also means it's practically unverifiable. Not really a useful hypothesis.
2) the dystopia: an anomalously advanced human society surrounded by hunter-gatherers in the wastelands outside. As a twist, the population is small and in-line with contemporaneous HG populations. One problem with this scenario is that it just doesn't look like any human society ever discovered. There's libraries worth of work on how technological development happens and the two big accelerators we see across most of history are high (effective) populations and communication "density". The lower either of these are, the more likely that the information network breaks down over time. At the population levels we're talking, simply having enough people to do all the various jobs that need doing in a high-tech society is a problem, let alone redundancy and exploration of new ones.
3) Non-human societies: Something incredibly old, non-human, and lost in the mists of time. This is where you get into the silurian hypothesis and given enough technology/magic/moved goalposts, it gets difficult to say anything concrete. There would probably still be evidence in some form or fashion, but ultimately you have to define some model of what the society looks like it to actually say anything about it.
1) Ancient Aliens: Essentially similar to what a human martian colony would look like. In this case, resources, population, and knowledge are brought from off-world and there's little to no local exploitation. The only way to detect something like this is direct material evidence, which also means it's practically unverifiable. Not really a useful hypothesis.
2) the dystopia: an anomalously advanced human society surrounded by hunter-gatherers in the wastelands outside. As a twist, the population is small and in-line with contemporaneous HG populations. One problem with this scenario is that it just doesn't look like any human society ever discovered. There's libraries worth of work on how technological development happens and the two big accelerators we see across most of history are high (effective) populations and communication "density". The lower either of these are, the more likely that the information network breaks down over time. At the population levels we're talking, simply having enough people to do all the various jobs that need doing in a high-tech society is a problem, let alone redundancy and exploration of new ones.
3) Non-human societies: Something incredibly old, non-human, and lost in the mists of time. This is where you get into the silurian hypothesis and given enough technology/magic/moved goalposts, it gets difficult to say anything concrete. There would probably still be evidence in some form or fashion, but ultimately you have to define some model of what the society looks like it to actually say anything about it.
... like mass species extinction? Arguably as disturbing as global warming.
Interesting to put this view of the anthropocene next to David Graeber's and how he thinks it shaped the evolution of human society
https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/
He and David Wengrow ask why "the myth of 'agricultural revolution' remains so persistent, and argue that there is a whole lot more we can learn from our ancestors"
https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/
He and David Wengrow ask why "the myth of 'agricultural revolution' remains so persistent, and argue that there is a whole lot more we can learn from our ancestors"
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I recommend the latest season of Patrick Wyman's Tides of History podcast [1] for an overview of the latest discoveries in archeology and related fields.
[1] https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/
[1] https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/
Funny how the authors think the Chinese started out farming rice. The Chinese grew wheat for thousands of years before they caught onto rice.
Chinese got the rice culture from SE Asian people e.g. Tai-Kadai, who at that time inhabited S China.
From Ricepedia: "Recent genetic evidence show that all forms of Asian rice, both indica and japonica, come from a single domestication event that occurred 8,200–13,500 years ago in the Pearl River valley region of China."
From Ricepedia: "Recent genetic evidence show that all forms of Asian rice, both indica and japonica, come from a single domestication event that occurred 8,200–13,500 years ago in the Pearl River valley region of China."
It is amazing how long it took for rice to spread and take over. Guessing it depended on advances in irrigation systems.
Growing it in flooded padis, to control weeds, came surprisingly late, like 4000 ya. Putting fish in the padis to eat mosquito larvae and provide protein started only ~1800 ya.
Growing it in flooded padis, to control weeds, came surprisingly late, like 4000 ya. Putting fish in the padis to eat mosquito larvae and provide protein started only ~1800 ya.
TL;DR: TFA claims climate change don't real. Money quotes:
"Recent popular conceptions of the Anthropocene risk making a similar mistake, drawing a thin bright line at 1950 and describing what comes after as a new, modern form of ecological disaster." (implying that what's happened after 1950 isn't an ecological disaster)
"In the ‘pristine myth’ paradigm ... human societies are recent destroyers, or at the very least disturbers, of a mostly pristine natural world." (implying that human-caused climate change is a "myth")
If you read the article you'll find it's using a lot of double negatives like the ones above, and a lot of innuendo, but it ultimately boils down to denying that humans are causing climate change right now and we need immediate political change to reverse it.
"Recent popular conceptions of the Anthropocene risk making a similar mistake, drawing a thin bright line at 1950 and describing what comes after as a new, modern form of ecological disaster." (implying that what's happened after 1950 isn't an ecological disaster)
"In the ‘pristine myth’ paradigm ... human societies are recent destroyers, or at the very least disturbers, of a mostly pristine natural world." (implying that human-caused climate change is a "myth")
If you read the article you'll find it's using a lot of double negatives like the ones above, and a lot of innuendo, but it ultimately boils down to denying that humans are causing climate change right now and we need immediate political change to reverse it.
Those are key points in the article, but I didn't read them in the way you did. This article is largely about many research groups coming together to build a more nuanced understanding of our impact on the environment over the past thousands of years.
It also suggests the prevailing views of climate change are simplistic. We, even in much more "primitive" times, have been mucking up the earth to our benefit. It's bound to happen, of course. All that energy must come from somewhere.
I don't think the article suggests that the situation we're in now isn't happening. The article reads almost breathless—in on the knowledge that we're in a dire situation. Do we really need more reasons to illustrate our impact on the environment?
It also speaks to our strange compulsion to believe in the duality of human and nature. How do you get the public to recognize that there is no such thing, only one symbiotic whole? I hope we can figure out how to work together.
It also suggests the prevailing views of climate change are simplistic. We, even in much more "primitive" times, have been mucking up the earth to our benefit. It's bound to happen, of course. All that energy must come from somewhere.
I don't think the article suggests that the situation we're in now isn't happening. The article reads almost breathless—in on the knowledge that we're in a dire situation. Do we really need more reasons to illustrate our impact on the environment?
It also speaks to our strange compulsion to believe in the duality of human and nature. How do you get the public to recognize that there is no such thing, only one symbiotic whole? I hope we can figure out how to work together.
Yes I would argue they aren't denying CO2. They are saying that humans have been doing massive changes to global-scale systems for a while now.
That mean they are trying to say that the simple chemical property of increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases heat retention isn't false, or that humans aren't doing it.
I'd say it's more akin to them warning there may be more insidious or less-well-understood dangers to human civilization and the Earth biome than just global warming.
Personally, mass extinction of species comes to mind. A wide variety of species enables equilibriums to be established with changing conditions, given a proper allowed rate of evolution.
Current anthropomorphic changes to the world are far faster than typical climate shifts, which occurred on the scale of 1000s of years, not decades.
Combined with humanity reducing the number of available species to adapt, mass extinctions seem akin to us playing russian roulette:
- did killing off this species collapse the entire system? No? - how about this one? No? - how about this one? Uhoh.
That mean they are trying to say that the simple chemical property of increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases heat retention isn't false, or that humans aren't doing it.
I'd say it's more akin to them warning there may be more insidious or less-well-understood dangers to human civilization and the Earth biome than just global warming.
Personally, mass extinction of species comes to mind. A wide variety of species enables equilibriums to be established with changing conditions, given a proper allowed rate of evolution.
Current anthropomorphic changes to the world are far faster than typical climate shifts, which occurred on the scale of 1000s of years, not decades.
Combined with humanity reducing the number of available species to adapt, mass extinctions seem akin to us playing russian roulette:
- did killing off this species collapse the entire system? No? - how about this one? No? - how about this one? Uhoh.
> I'd say it's more akin to them warning there may be more insidious or less-well-understood dangers to human civilization and the Earth biome than just global warming.
> Personally, mass extinction of species comes to mind. A wide variety of species enables equilibriums to be established with changing conditions, given a proper allowed rate of evolution.
From what I understand, the main existencial issue of CO2 and the subsequent global warming is the extinction of oxygen producing plankton in the oceans, which are apparently much more significant O2 producers than a typical forest.
This isn't a large multi causal multi-species antropogenic extinction, it is a single group extinction failure mode, directly caused by 'just global warming' which will automatically mean game over. We absolutely do need to curb greenhouse gases (not just CO2) and decelerate the trend of global temperature increase.
> Personally, mass extinction of species comes to mind. A wide variety of species enables equilibriums to be established with changing conditions, given a proper allowed rate of evolution.
From what I understand, the main existencial issue of CO2 and the subsequent global warming is the extinction of oxygen producing plankton in the oceans, which are apparently much more significant O2 producers than a typical forest.
This isn't a large multi causal multi-species antropogenic extinction, it is a single group extinction failure mode, directly caused by 'just global warming' which will automatically mean game over. We absolutely do need to curb greenhouse gases (not just CO2) and decelerate the trend of global temperature increase.
Agreed, that is a pretty straightforward danger.
But just because that is a simple and direct danger, does that mean that mass extinction isn't killing off "key cog" species in more complicated critical machinery?
But just because that is a simple and direct danger, does that mean that mass extinction isn't killing off "key cog" species in more complicated critical machinery?
The goal of scientific research is not to score points for your side in a political debate. It is to uncover truth.
Regardless, I think you have misinterpreted this article anyway and it is saying the opposite.
Regardless, I think you have misinterpreted this article anyway and it is saying the opposite.
Your reading was selective and not comprehensive. "Viewing humans and nature as entwined doesn’t mean that we should shrug our shoulders at current climatic trends, unchecked deforestation, accelerating extinction rates or widespread industrial waste. Indeed, archaeology supplies numerous examples of societal and ecosystem collapse: a warning of what happens if we ignore the consequences of human-caused environmental change."
Rather, the opposite: Comparing to a baseline before humans made big changes in the landscape, the changes today are larger than had been assumed.
Do we really know how advanced ancient societies were, and what trade networks they had? Consider this:
> Advances in the study of plant silica micro-fossils (phytoliths) have helped trace banana cultivation from the Island of New Guinea more than 7,000 years ago – from where it spread through Island Southeast Asia, and eventually across the Indian Ocean to Africa
Did that happen without any societal involvement. Did humans just carry seeds like birds might, or was there an organized effort to spread agriculture like this?
> ... it’s clearer than ever before that most places we think of as ‘pristine’ or ‘untouched’ have long relied on human societies to fill crucial ecological roles."
I hope that we'll continue to learn more.