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If the ever-authoritative Walking With Beasts taught me anything it’s that giant sloths had more than enough defenses already.
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Sep 5, 2022 03:15
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Tunicate posted:if they're giant they don't need to stink to be not worth the effort of killing Well maybe they should have. Maybe if they smelled godawful this wouldn't have happened https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-drove-giant-sloths-extinction
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Sep 5, 2022 03:53
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Jazerus posted:as it turns out interbreeding between species is more complicated than you can realistically capture in a hierarchical tree. two organisms can be very genetically different but as long as certain parts of the genome haven't changed then you'll still have compatibility. but if they have changed, then two organisms can be almost genetically identical and be unable to interbreed. generally, species in different genuses or families have accumulated enough of these incompatibilities that it doesn't work, but not always
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Sep 5, 2022 05:56
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BrainDance posted:I read that sloths basically let themselves get insanely filthy and maybe even grow junk on them as a defense mechanism to make them smell so horrible they're unpalatable to predators. A goon joke feels too easy.
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Sep 5, 2022 09:33
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There's not very much we really can know about the overall behavior of giant sloths, since the remaining existing sloths are only distantly related and they have a wildly different habitat.
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Sep 5, 2022 14:44
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cheetah7071 posted:Guide dogs are purposefully bred, I know Yes, but they're not really for "pure" inbred show dog breeds anymore, at least here. My wife fosters puppies that are to be guide dogs, and they're generally bred for temperament. So they tend to be more-or-less a named breed, with their parentage getting noted, but not the kind you take to a dog show.  Current one, half lab half golden retriever  Previous, "pure" labrador posted because how could one not love their big adorable dog faces, ancient roman patricians or 2022 goons
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Sep 5, 2022 16:59
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:
As a prolific lurker here, I shall break my normal silence to say APPROVED. Please continue
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Sep 5, 2022 18:25
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SlothfulCobra posted:There's not very much we really can know about the overall behavior of giant sloths, since the remaining existing sloths are only distantly related and they have a wildly different habitat. We do have that super neat site which is a bunch of preserved tracks of a sloth and a hunting party and the following show down, which is like amazingly cool.
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Sep 5, 2022 18:28
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Mr. Nice! posted:I think it’s more an indication that people have been people. We don’t necessarily have writing to explain what was happening before a certain point, but I posit that people were very much still people. Given the diseases and hunger and poo poo that the Neolithic brought on, we’d all (well those few of us) be better off still hunting and gathering. Iirc, Paleolithic folks only spent 4 something like hours a day hunting and gathering. The worst insult one can make against homo sapiens is to insist that aliens were needed to make all this stuff. Like really, do you think we have always been that loving stupid? Otteration fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Sep 6, 2022 |
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Sep 6, 2022 04:48
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Otteration posted:Given the diseases and hunger and poo poo that the Neolithic brought on, we’d all (well those few of us) be better off still hunting and gathering. Iirc, Paleolithic folks only spent 4 something like hours a day hunting and gathering. Go out and chase deer for four hours everyday in all weather and then come back with your newfound appreciation for civilization
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Sep 6, 2022 04:51
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Gaius Marius posted:Go out and chase deer for four hours everyday in all weather and then come back with your newfound appreciation for civilization While your women gather up enough calories in roots and berries for you to get up and try it again tomorrow.
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Sep 6, 2022 04:58
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Otteration posted:Given the diseases and hunger and poo poo that the Neolithic brought on, we’d all (well those few of us) be better off still hunting and gathering. Iirc, Paleolithic folks only spent 4 something like hours a day hunting and gathering. I rather like having modern medicine and technology available to me, even that means I need to work more than 4 hours a day.
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Sep 6, 2022 04:59
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it took twelve thousand years, but agriculture was finally worth it when we invented video games
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Sep 6, 2022 05:00
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Gaius Marius posted:Go out and chase deer for four hours everyday in all weather and then come back with your newfound appreciation for civilization Doesn’t evidence point out that hunting was spurt effort that provided for a lot of downtime?
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Sep 6, 2022 05:04
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Otteration posted:Paleolithic folks only spent 4 something like hours a day hunting and gathering. What did they do the rest of the time? Other than sleep and gently caress obviously
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Sep 6, 2022 05:09
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CrypticFox posted:I rather like having modern medicine and technology available to me, even that means I need to work more than 4 hours a day. Yeah, they’re are alternatives everywhere. For example, would we actually need so many medicines if we still lived in small, isolated groups? Don’t get too worried. It’s not a principle I hold, it’s just a thought experiment.
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Sep 6, 2022 05:19
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Wafflecopper posted:What did they do the rest of the time? Other than sleep and gently caress obviously Things were probably pretty pleasant when there was enough food. Of course, well,
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Sep 6, 2022 05:24
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Otteration posted:Yeah, they’re are alternatives everywhere. For example, would we actually need so many medicines if we still lived in small, isolated groups? Yes, we would still need most of them. If you live in an isolated hunter-gatherer band without access to antibiotics, any cut has the potential to become infected and kill you. An ingrown toenail could easily become deadly. A tooth abscess can kill you. If your appendix bursts, no surgeon can go in and stop that from killing you. You are in a sense right that a lot of medications would be less relevant, because a lot of them are primarily used by older people, and people living to be 70+ years old was quite rare in the ancient world. However that is because of a lack of ability to treat things like infections and other health hazards that would kill you before you got to the point in life where a lot of modern medications are most frequently used.
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Sep 6, 2022 05:30
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Wafflecopper posted:What did they do the rest of the time? Other than sleep and gently caress obviously https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man This last one is perhaps the most beautiful thing ever crested by humans, to me. And told exaggerated fish stories over the fire about their mammoth or horse hunts too. People have always been people.
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Sep 6, 2022 05:30
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You know we still have plenty of hunter-gatherers around today that are widely studied. They aren't identical to humans thousands of years ago but I don't see why they'd be drastically different in this area.
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Sep 6, 2022 05:42
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CrypticFox posted:Yes, we would still need most of them. If you live in an isolated hunter-gatherer band without access to antibiotics, any cut has the potential to become infected and kill you. An ingrown toenail could easily become deadly. A tooth abscess can kill you. If your appendix bursts, no surgeon can go in and stop that from killing you. You are in a sense right that a lot of medications would be less relevant, because a lot of them are primarily used by older people, and people living to be 70+ years old was quite rare in the ancient world. However that is because of a lack of ability to treat things like infections and other health hazards that would kill you before you got to the point in life where a lot of modern medications are most frequently used. Yeah, it all depends on what has “value”. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6113-elderly-crucial-to-evolutionary-success-of-humans/ Edit: Goodness! Sudden active thread! Otteration fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Sep 6, 2022 |
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Sep 6, 2022 05:44
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NikkolasKing posted:You know we still have plenty of hunter-gatherers around today that are widely studied. They aren't identical to humans thousands of years ago but I don't see why they'd be drastically different in this area. Unfortunately almost all of them have baseball hats and t shirts and other stuff due to trade. Universal trade has always happened, so it’s hard to tell, but we’re not gonna figure out the complete Paleolithic from them. It’s a start, though.
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Sep 6, 2022 06:05
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NikkolasKing posted:You know we still have plenty of hunter-gatherers around today that are widely studied. They aren't identical to humans thousands of years ago but I don't see why they'd be drastically different in this area. the dataset is a bit iffy because by the time people were writing down how they lived, there were almost no hunter-gatherers left on anything but marginal land
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Sep 6, 2022 06:10
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cheetah7071 posted:it took twelve thousand years, but agriculture was finally worth it when we invented video games I stuck a vibrating dildo far up my rear end on that day, thank you very much. (Well, the same as every other day, but anyway….)
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Sep 6, 2022 06:13
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Eh nvm.
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Sep 6, 2022 06:22
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Gaius Marius posted:Go out and chase deer for four hours everyday in all weather and then come back with your newfound appreciation for civilization Live on the coast friend, and go out and bop a seal on the head and then come back
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Sep 6, 2022 06:25
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cheetah7071 posted:the dataset is a bit iffy because by the time people were writing down how they lived, there were almost nohunter-gatherers left on anything but marginal land There must have been and gobs and gobs and gobs of sub-Saharan hunter-gatherers living below Egypt before and during Narmer. Same in meso and South America before and after the Inca/Maya/Aztec poop.Some folks just don’t want to put up with that poo poo.
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Sep 6, 2022 06:33
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Otteration posted:Given the diseases and hunger and poo poo that the Neolithic brought on, we’d all (well those few of us) be better off still hunting and gathering. Iirc, Paleolithic folks only spent 4 something like hours a day hunting and gathering. This is pretty outdated. Not that stone age economics is wrong, but that it was a simple thing where farming -> more labor. We have present day farming societies where the average work week for prosperous amounts of calories is <15 hours, and to the best of our knowledge several thousand years of the neolithic was much like that. It's political and cultural changes that lead to increasingly poor ratios of hours per calorie. cheetah7071 posted:the dataset is a bit iffy because by the time people were writing down how they lived, there were almost no hunter-gatherers left on anything but marginal land Yeah this is important. While its the best data we've got its corrupted by 1) all modern studied foraging societies are living on marginal land, which makes them quite unlike e.g. fertile crescent foragers and 2) they're all in contact with non-foraging societies and have been for a very long time, which is a very different situation from living on a planet where non-foraging societies have literally never existed.
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Sep 6, 2022 06:34
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What about the Sentinelese? As far as I know, their only contact with us is them killing us. In an age of drones, it would be weird if no-one is studying them.
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Sep 6, 2022 07:00
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Tulip posted:This is pretty outdated. Not that stone age economics is wrong, but that it was a simple thing where farming -> more labor. We have present day farming societies where the average work week for prosperous amounts of calories is <15 hours, and to the best of our knowledge several thousand years of the neolithic was much like that. It's political and cultural changes that lead to increasingly poor ratios of hours per calorie. Cool, throw us some links.
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Sep 6, 2022 07:07
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Libluini posted:What about the Sentinelese? As far as I know, their only contact with us is them killing us. In an age of drones, it would be weird if no-one is studying them. they had contact earlier, with the British, who left such a bad impression their loathing of outsiders is understandable
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Sep 6, 2022 07:33
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Otteration posted:Cool, throw us some links. Holdaway, Simon J. and Willeke Wendrich (eds). 2017. The Desert Fayum Reinvestigated: The Early to Mid-Holocene Landscape Archaeology of the Fayum North Shore, Egypt. Los Angeles: UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Roosevelt, Anna. 2013. ‘The Amazon and the Anthropocene: 13,000 years of human influence in a tropical rainforest.’ Anthropocene 4: 69–87. Shennan, Steven. 2018. The First Farmers of Europe: An Evolutionary Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sherrat, Andre. 2007. ‘Diverse origins: regional contributions to the genesis of farming.’ In Colledge and Conolly (eds), pp. 1–20. Or you could just read Dawn of Everything by Wengrow & Graeber.
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Sep 6, 2022 07:36
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The Sentinelese have had some non-violent contact. It's a bit of a complicated history but at various points they would allow parties to bring gifts and leave un-attacked.
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Sep 6, 2022 07:38
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Outside contact caused the sentinel people to lose fire. Western assholes took a family from there, got them sick with something that killed the parents but not the kids, and then dropped the kids off. Writings about the islands before this describe a lot of people and recognizable torches and well lit setups. Afterwards, the parents all died and no one left knew how to make fire. To this day they have to maintain lightning started fires in big communal pits because they do not have the knowledge to create fire independently anymore. There’s a good reason they kill any outsiders that show up. The last ones they allowed around caused all the parents to die and they lost fire.
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Sep 6, 2022 13:05
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Besides the Sentinelese, there are other primarily hunter gatherer people out there, and a good chunk of their time daily is spent doing nothing at all.
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Sep 6, 2022 13:10
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we say nothing at all, social stuff, training, improving the group dynamic. maintaining any animals you might use, like sled dogs for example. processing things you've gathered, treating food so you can store it. travel. childcare, teaching apprentices, stuff like that. often several things at once, the Inuit people for example really really liked making simple little games of dexterity skill of the hoop and ball on a string variety and still are uncannily good at it from my observation. that's play that's practice that's childcare that's training etc etc.
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Sep 6, 2022 13:19
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When I've got free time I like to arrange rocks into interesting forms.
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Sep 6, 2022 13:22
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CoolCab posted:we say nothing at all, social stuff, training, improving the group dynamic. maintaining any animals you might use, like sled dogs for example. processing things you've gathered, treating food so you can store it. travel. childcare, teaching apprentices, stuff like that. often several things at once, the Inuit people for example really really liked making simple little games of dexterity skill of the hoop and ball on a string variety and still are uncannily good at it from my observation. that's play that's practice that's childcare that's training etc etc. what did inuit use to get hosed up?
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Sep 6, 2022 13:23
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Brawnfire posted:When I've got free time I like to arrange rocks into interesting forms. funny enough you can even develop a fairly complex system of signage before inventing any kind of written language given enough time and an appreciation for exactly that.
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Sep 6, 2022 13:24
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ChubbyChecker posted:what did inuit use to get hosed up? i am not aware of any historical intoxicants, actually. hypothermia.
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Sep 6, 2022 13:49
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