Thread

1. culi · 1790642109 · focus · HN ↗

   More evidence for David Graeber and David Wengrow's reading of the site.

   Between Göbekli Tepe, Poverty Point, Cahokia, and other sites we have pretty good evidence of complex urban societies that did not rely on agriculture. And even in these few sites we have abundant evidence of diversity of social structures from radically egalitarian to hierarchical

   The linear narrative of the evolution of human societies is dead

   1. lumost · 1790643968 · focus · HN ↗

      Out of curiosity couldn’t this also mean that we are missing the agriculture? Or that the practices they used were very different from today.

      1. onlyrealcuzzo · 1790645126 · focus · HN ↗

         At a large enough scale and a short enough time horizon, you're not going to miss it.

         I don't think anyone is saying they FOR SURE didn't cultivate a couple flowers and magic mushrooms.

         If they were an agricultural society resembling anything like the ones we see later, there are several things you'd expect to find.

         1. OliveronData · 1790680540 · focus · HN ↗

            Earliest fossil for homo sapiens is 315000 years old, earliest neanderthal fossils are 430000 years. Keep in mind these are fossils and they need certain conditions to fossilize to begin with.

            That's a huge range of time. And the evidence that we can find is very limited. This has nothing to do with what we expect to find when we have so thoroughly documented that humans were exceptionally capable of reusing pretty much anything.

            So I don't buy the certainty that there was no agricultural society. We simply cannot know that anywhere past 100k years. We can say there were no globally spread agriculture, because that would have had a much higher chance to leave some evidence, but that isn't the same thing. An agricultural society doesn't have to be global or be dominant to exist.

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