Login

Recent searches

No recent searches

Search options

Not available on mastodon.xyz.
mastodon.xyz is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A Mastodon instance, open to everyone, but mainly English and French speaking.

Administered by:

Server stats:

790
active users

mastodon.xyz: AboutProfiles directoryPrivacy policy

Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.3.4

#huntergatherers

1 post1 participant0 posts today
Public *
Radical Anthropology

Fantastic preprint from Cecilia #PadillaIglesias and colleagues, analysing difference of mobility between the sexes among 700 #BaYaka #huntergatherers

This is some of the best data on prevalence of #matrilocality in #African hunter-gatherers, that is women living with Mum.

biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20

bioRxiv · Sexual division of labour shapes hunter-gatherer spatial rangesMobility lies at the adaptive core of the hunter-gatherer foraging niche, and has shaped the cultural and genetic evolution of our species. Yet, the specific drivers and consequences of mobility are still debated. Here we analyse the lifetime mobility patterns of 776 Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers from five regions in the northern Republic of Congo, revealing pronounced gender differences in spatial behaviour. While men expand their spatial ranges from adolescence to adulthood, women's anges remain stable. We find evidence for a sexual division of labour underpinning these patterns, with men's greater mobility driven by subsistence activities such as hunting or exploratory trips away from camps, and women's mobility mostly driven by gathering closer to their residential location. Our findings challenge traditional assumptions of patrilocality, suggesting that men travel further due to their spatial separation from kin. Larger spatial ranges are associated with increased reproductive success for both genders, suggesting adaptive benefits of mobility in accessing resources, social networks, and potential mates. By linking individual behaviors to broader movement dynamics, our study deepens our understanding of gendered mobility in humans and highlights its significance to social structuring in our species and its evolutionary consequences. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.
Public *
Radical Anthropology

Also seriously exciting is this new paper from @zhgarfield with Sheina Lew-Levy on leadership and transmission of 'opaque culture' (read #ritual #secret knowledge) in 23 'egalitarian' hunter-gatherer groups

This is the major type of teaching that matters with #huntergatherers. I will take a good look at whether these are truly GENDER egalitarian groups. That is basically determined by women's ritual secret knowledge and performance of ritual action.

#initiation

nature.com/articles/s41467-025

NatureTeaching is associated with the transmission of opaque culture and leadership across 23 egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies - Nature CommunicationsTeaching and leadership are under-studied in connection with the opaque norms that underpin cooperation. The authors show that among egalitarian foragers, influential individuals often pass on these norms, hinting at a possible relationship between leadership and cooperative teaching.
Public
Radical Anthropology

Exciting new paper here assessing ages for #puberty onset and #menarche among #UpperPalaeolithic #huntergatherers (from Russia, Czechia, Italy).

'Our results revealed that while puberty had begun by 13.5 years of age for the majority of individuals, there was a lot of variability, with the adolescents from Arene Candide (AC1 and AC16), both aged around 16 years when they died, taking several years longer to progress through puberty than their peers. Assessing the age of menarche was challenging due to the paucity of female adolescents, but based on the available evidence, it appears to have occurred between 16 and 17 years of age. For some, full adulthood had been achieved by 17–22 years, similar to the patterns seen in modern wealthy countries and in advance of historic populations living in urbanized environments.'

#adolescence #lifehistory #humanevolution #anthropology #archaeology #burials

sciencedirect.com/science/arti

Continued thread
Public *
Radical Anthropology

Day 13: our leading scholar #IanWatts takes us to the heart of #Hadza cosmology by following the zigzag trail of the mysterious entity !o!oko, cannibal grandmother and mantis trickster and transformer.

Stories and beliefs associated to the Mantis among the Hadzabe of Tanzania compare with the well-known figure of the Mantis among the /Xam Southern #San #huntergatherers. This suggests great antiquity of the concepts related to #lunar time.

The word itself -- !o!oko -- is probably very ancient with double alveolar-palatal click (pop sound from taking your tongue quickly away from the alveolar ridge). The -ko ending implies femaleness, but this entity has gender fluidity.

#13daysofXmas #RAGtoptalks
#egalitarianism #gender #trickster #IndigenousCosmology

vimeo.com/761741261

VimeoThe Mantis and the Moon – a Hadza mystery by Ian Watts October 11, 2022Ian Watts traces the stories and beliefs associated to the Mantis among the Hadzabe of Tanzania, and compares these to the well-known figure of the Mantis among…
Continued thread
Public
Radical Anthropology

Women's ability to move, as nomadic #huntergatherers, not be trapped by #settlement, able to choose where to live (Draper, Townsend, Dyble et al, demographic effects Page et al) plus women's decision-making on movement based on resources available, general #consensus decision-making (Venkataraman)

aeon.co/essays/what-the-ju-hoa

AeonWhat the Ju/’hoansi can tell us about group decision-making | Aeon EssaysHunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity
Continued thread
Public
Radical Anthropology

An earlier review of 2022 studies on #Neanderthal #family life. Social structure according to #genetics looks like #patrilocal with #females moving out of groups.

We are close to 💯 per cent certain that #Homosapiens did the exact opposite -- daughters stayed with their mums, and sons-in-law came into the group to do #brideservice. We are so sure here because it's what #African #huntergatherers do. As a result, our lineage flourishes (thanks to grandmothers), Neanderthals dwindled (lack of grandmothers?) and numerous Neanderthal women could have moved into the incoming African origin groups.

#humanorigins #anthropology #Pleistocene #kinship

cell.com/current-biology/fullt

Public *
Radical Anthropology

Great piece from #BrennaHassett

Rather than being too 'simple' and 'poor' to invent rank, #egalitarian #huntergatherers are 'too complex to allow one person or group of people to take charge'.

(Stupid AI generated image shows almost all men hanging around camp, which is in fact totally unrealistic. As usual where are women, children, grandmothers who would be the heart of the camp?!)

slguardian.org/the-hunter-gath

slguardian.orgThe Hunter-Gatherer Guide to Keeping Society Equal – Sri Lanka Guardian
Public *
Radical Anthropology

On the occasion of the death of world famous #Neolithic #archaeologist and Tory peer #ColinRenfrew we have a few things to say.

Looking down at us from the #Cambridge high table, he made some severe misjudgements. His #sapientparadox was an attempt to argue that while #Homosapiens bodies evolved in #Africa, somehow we didn't get smart till we hit #Europe.

Also highly questionable was his attitude to the #cognition of #huntergatherers who, so he said, 'lacked fully developed mind'. According to him, they needed to borrow language from farmers.

We had some big political and social institutional differences with Renfrew. Our own Chris Knight goes through the whole context in a review below

#archaeology #Renfrew #racism #Indigenous #Palaeolithic #humanorigins

JRAI 2002, 8: 807-8
A devastating review by Chris Knight of the Runciman collection 'The Origin of Human Social Institutions'

Screenshot of JRAI 2002 vol 8 p.807 1st page of scathing review by Chris Knight of the Runcimnn collection 'The Origin of Human Social Institutions'
Screenshot of JRAI 2002 vol 8 p.807 2nd page of scathing review by Chris Knight of the Runciman collection 'The Origin of Human Social Institutions'
Public *
Radical Anthropology

Interesting piece on the ideas of #sexstrike so troubling the US.

What this misses out is that #sexstrike was how we created human culture! And it was periodic -- not forever! Aligned to the #moon and #menstrualcycles
See 'Blood Relations' on this link
libcom.org/article/blood-relat

Sex Strike takes specific forms among #African #huntergatherers, that is #menstrual #taboos and rules about #brideservice which is the work a son-in-law does for his mother-in-law (she is boss) otherwise no nooky!

unherd.com/2024/11/sex-strikes

libcom.orgBlood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture - Chris Knight (complete book)This highly original book presents a new theory of the origins of human culture. Integrating perspectives of evolutionary biology and social anthropology within a Marxist framework, Chris Knight rejects the common assumption that human culture was a modified extension of primate behaviour and argues instead that it was the product of an immense social, sexual and political revolution initiated by women.
Public *
Radical Anthropology

FREE community #fediscience, please BOOST!

TONIGHT
Everybody welcome, just turn up!

🌒Tues Nov 5, 18:30 🌓 (London UK)
with #HarryJenkinson
LIVE @UCLanthropology
And on ZOOM

'Wild Service--the Human Right to Roam'

LIVE in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor of the UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW

ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak

Harry Jenkinson will present the concept of Wild Service: a philosophy of reciprocity with our fellow species, made possible through increased human access to nature.

Humans are a nomadic species. For over 95% of our history, we have lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers, with nomadism central to understandings of ecological balance. But when we are politically and culturally restricted from nature, we become unable to take care of it. The Right to Roam movement, to which Harry belongs, calls for public access to the English countryside, 92% of which is inaccessible.

Looking at mobility and ecological reciprocity among Indigenous peoples today, Harry will discuss inspirations for Wild Service and draw upon his ethnographic work among Indigenous peoples in the Arctic.

Wild Service offers a renewal of relationships, where we recognise humanity as part of, rather than separate from nature.

Harry will be LIVE in the Daryll Forde, 2nd Floor, UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, WC1H 0BW.
Please arrive by 6:30pm before doors close. Or join on ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak
@right_2roam

Black and white graphic by Right to Roam illustrator Nick Hayes shows a human profile against leaves, fronds and tendrils in the background. A bird/blackbird? has landed singing on the human' s forefinger. One branch seems to grow out of the human mouth
#WildService#nomadism#huntergatherers
Replied in thread
Public *
Radical Anthropology

@DoomsdaysCW
from my perspective the only 'original' religion is #Hadza #Epeme which thrives in darkness under a sparkling ethereal Milky Way. The entities of Epeme, a dark moon healing ritual, will of course be described by patriarchal so-called 'world religions' as demons and devils.

But Epeme is two orders of magnitude older than any of these recent inventions by farmers built on gender (and caste) hierarchy.

Only a few dozen or hundreds of people know about Epeme, and I am one of them, at least partly. A tenacious resilient group of #huntergatherers keep it going. In a court of law, I would identify as a celebrant of Epeme. And next year, if my health is good, I have the scintillating prospect of getting back to one of those healing rituals!

#anthropology#religion
Continued thread
Public
Radical Anthropology

In a poignant coda 'What if...', #DoerteWeig offers a creative intervention, inspired in part by Graeber and Wengrow’s invitation to freedom of form and experiment, in part also by the primarily #sociosomatic experience of #egalitarian living. As a fieldworker who has lived among Central African Forest groups, she asks eloquently what it could mean to gift that knowledge to so many people, to educate whole generations of schoolchildren in what it means to be human.

#egalitarian #huntergatherers #CentralAfrica #education #stories #bodies

liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

Continued thread
Public
Radical Anthropology

In 'Cancelling hunter-gatherers for the cause of 21st C urbanism', anarchist anthropologist #JamesvanLanen critiques what he sees as a gendered structure arising in #TheDawnofEverything.This counterposes brutish, masculinist, prestige-hungry hunters to more communal, matriarchal early women farmers, busy creating an ‘ecology of freedom’. A whole array of lifeways of non-intensifying, egalitarian peoples have been ‘cancelled’ from this ‘new history of humanity’. Yet precisely these indigenous peoples bear the most sustainable cultural knowledge, and are most vulnerable to ethnocide from farmer expansion. Paradoxically Graeber + Wengrow end up advocating statist, urban bureaucracies in creating a fallacious prehistoric ‘left/right’ divide.

#huntergatherers #nonintensifying #egalitarian #transegalitarian #farmers #states #bureaucracy #history

liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

Continued thread
Public
Radical Anthropology

In 'Architects of change', archaeologist #TanjaSchreiber offers personal experience of Graeber + Wengrow’s book as empowering and emancipatory for her research. Refusal to accept narratives of ‘linear progression from simplicity to complexity’ at once sweeps away the old evolutionist, stageist models that still haunt archaeology (but not really evolutionary anthropology). With a fascinating case study of W Siberian foragers who built fortified settlements over eight millenia, she is able to show long-term oscillation between greater and lesser social inequality. Pushback and contestation over growing inequality may be seen in conscious manipulation of space within the settlements. As ‘“architects” of their own social arrangements’, people of these Siberian communities fostered denser cohabitation, perhaps strengthening communal solidarity to resist inequalities. Analysis of Gini coefficients shows a zigzag in direction of change.

#archaeology #huntergatherers #WesternSiberia #fortifications #socialinequality #Ginicoefficients

liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

Two box plots labelled a and b, comparing Gini coefficients across time periods, Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Medieval. In the case of a, the comparison using house floor area as a proxy includes ethnographic info on normal inhabitant density. Informed by that, the arrow tracks a zigzag in levels of more and less equality. Without use of ethnographic info, the trend goes from more to less.
ExploreLive feeds
About