The study of religious or heroic legends and tales. One constant rule of mythology is that whatever happens amongst the gods or other mythical beings was in one sense or another a reflection of events on earth. Recorded myths and legends, perhaps preserved in literature or folklore, have an immediate interest to archaeology in trying to unravel the nature and meaning of ancient events and traditions.
The gracilisation humans experienced in the Final Pleistocene and Holocene is attributed not to evolutionary processes, but to cultural intervention through breeding preferences leading to the neotenous features characterising present-day humans”.
Note it states 'breeding preferences'. Like I said, that has to be guess work.
This cutting in the chalk is only a few hundred years old and we can't account for why people did it and maintained it for a long period of time. Nobody as yet has given a definitive reason for the cave art of France and Spain. Their mindset could be totally alien to us, look at the attitude of Japanese soldiers during WWII, totally alien to the west, and this is only a few years ago.
Forum Monk wrote:Richard,
does the author imply that slighter builds are somehow inferior? Considering the enormous energy required to fuel a large brain, how much more so a large frame.
Manystones wrote:Bednarik notes that one of the most important issues for archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists has been ineffectively tackled if at all:
Why did humans of the Late Pleistocene develop into inferior forms not only in Europe, but in all four continents occupied at the time?
Why was an historic trend toward robusticity reversed leading to rapid gracilisation?
Richard, do you have a link to Bednariks discussioon on this? I can probably Google it but you may have it handy.
And again, to quote from the original RAR article:
"The search for physical modernity is itself misguided (Tobias 1995), modernity is indicated by cognition and culture, and more specifically by the external storage of cultural information (Donald 1993), and not by cranial architecture or other minor physical differences."
“Breeding Preferences???”
Wasn’t it Robin Williams that said something to the effect of
“What kind of God gave me two heads, and only enough blood for one at a time?”
That is a leather easy chair with a brandy at the club opinion if I ever heard one.
That guy needs to spend more time on the street on Friday nights.
He will learn all about breeding preferences.
I have to go now. My “breeding preference” just signaled it is time for dinner.
That is important now, but I do not recall it was at the time of selection.
Indeed we are smaller and our bones are less dense than our ancestors. We also lack their overall strength.
But there must be a highly adaptive reason for gracilization. It began in Africa but soon enough the gene (if it is a gene) flew through other populations. Again, the picture often given of Africans sweeping up and around the globe is one that I've always found ridiculous. But this gene did. And it is a mystery.
