The Origins of Tidiness
Jack Linthicum
major aspects of the Clovis culture seems to be a dedicated attention
to a neat site. Meltzer comments on it several times, that a site
seems incomplete lacking artifacts which are supposedly explained by
the Clovis tidiness.
The Origins of Tidiness
By Michael Balter
ScienceNOW Daily News
18 December 2009
"A tidy house, a tidy mind." Some of the more slovenly among us might
bristle at this scolding old proverb, but to human evolution
researchers it makes perfect sense. One of the hallmarks of modern
behavior is the sophisticated way Homo sapiens organizes the spaces it
lives in, with everything in its place. But new work at a nearly
800,000-year-old hominin site in Israel suggests that the roots of
tidiness may lie deep in our evolutionary past.
Prehistoric humans did not start building permanent dwellings until
about 15,000 years ago, but earlier hominins--the term now commonly
used by scientists for humans and their ancestors but not other apes--
frequented caves and open-air sites as they hunted and gathered food.
Whereas sites occupied by modern humans often show signs of separate
"activity areas" such as hearths, stone-tool knapping areas, food
preparation areas, sleeping areas, and so forth, not so long ago there
was little evidence that other hominins engaged in such organized
behavior.
More recently, however, work at Neandertal sites has demonstrated that
our evolutionary cousins also divided up their living spaces into
activity areas. New research at rock shelters like Abric Romaní in
Spain and Tor Faraj in Jordan, where Neandertals lived between 50,000
and 70,000 years ago--before modern humans migrated into Europe and
Asia--has demonstrated spatial organization at times indistinguishable
from that typical of H. sapiens. Now, a team working at Gesher Benot
Ya'aqov (GBY), a 790,000-year-old site in northern Israel's Hula
Valley, claims that a much older species also showed tendencies toward
tidiness. GBY is thought to have been occupied by H. heidelbergensis,
a species that may have given rise to H. sapiens in Africa and the
Neandertals in Europe. It is also the site of the earliest widely
accepted mastery of fire by prehistoric humans.
The researchers, led by archaeologists Nira Alperson-Afil and Naama
Goren-Inbar of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, mapped the precise
locations and densities of thousands of plant and animal remains as
well as stone tools found in one of GBY's 14 archaeological levels.
The excavated area, a long strip covering about 26 square meters, had
been covered rapidly by lake sediments in ancient times, thus
preserving the remains in place.
The team found that hominin activities were concentrated in two main
areas at opposite ends of the strip. Knapping of stone tools made from
flint was concentrated in the northwest area, while production of
tools made from basalt and limestone was concentrated around a hearth
in the southeast. There was also a clear pattern of animal and plant
remains. For example, remains of crabs consumed by the hominins were
clustered around the hearth, as were the remains of nuts and stone
tools, such as anvils and choppers, suitable for cracking them open.
On the other hand, fish bones were found in two clusters, one at each
end of the excavated area.
The team concludes, in its report on the findings in the 18 December
issue of Science, that the GBY hominins' division of their living
space into designated activity areas is a sign of "sophisticated
cognition" once thought to be the special preserve of modern humans.
Clive Gamble, an archaeologist at Royal Holloway, University of
London, says the new work confirms other research showing that H.
heidelbergensis "was a very tidy species." At the 500,000-year-old
site of Boxgrove in southern England, Gamble points out, "across a
landscape with no hearths they followed rules about where to get,
make, and throw away their stone tools. There was nothing random in
these activities, and GBY now extends this pattern back in time."
But Lyn Wadley, an archaeologist at the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, sounds a cautionary note.
"The GBY site is remarkable and the use of space there is more complex
than one might expect for the age of the occupation," Wadley says. But
she thinks it would be a sure sign of sophisticated cognition only if
the GBY hominins had attributed symbolic meanings to the way they
divided their living quarters—something the research team has yet to
demonstrate.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1218/3
Tom McDonald
> On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:45:21 -0800 (PST), Jack Linthicum
> <jackli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> This may seem like a superficial and even stupid study,
>
Well, yes indeed, it does have to do with this ng.
You may be confused, since it is about archaeology. You may have
been expecting personal attacks, or personal pique, or geology,
or theology, or meteorology, or politics, or . . . .
--
Tom "Go Pack" McDonald
doublePlusPaleo
<jackli...@earthlink.net> said:
> This may seem like a superficial and even stupid study, but one of the
> major aspects of the Clovis culture seems to be a dedicated attention
> to a neat site. Meltzer comments on it several times, that a site
> seems incomplete lacking artifacts which are supposedly explained by
A totally unremarkable bit of journalistic fluff. The journalist could
have written the same article but instead of referring to Clovis
people, he could have referred to bower birds, spider webs or almost
anything constructed by animals.
Day Brown
You need a special area to do that.
Jack Linthicum
The concept and practice of tidiness is the bane of any and all
archaeologists. They want slobs and snobs who drop the contents of
their last meal in a pit in the same cave where they discard a broken
piece of jewelry or a broken point.
Jack Linthicum
wrote:
A quote from Meltzer's book First Peoples in a New World on the
tidiness of the isolate (cache)sites, "the majority of these are
isolates, unaccompanied by other Clovis tools, bones, or trappings of
a site. A David Brose remarked (tongue in cheek) from the looks of it,
these groups ate nothing and lived alone."
Horace LaBadie
<a0aff34b-8240-4f35...@z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com>,
Jack Linthicum <jackli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
So, not university students?
doublePlusPaleo
Like the way most animals don't defecate in their living quarters.
What is your point?
Day Brown
are they concerned with future occupants.
doublePlusPaleo
Just off the top of my head I can think of New Caledonian crows as
being excellent tool makers, also Australian magpies come to mind.
The notion of concern (or lack of it) for future occupants is entirely
unprovable and seems to me to be an anthropocentric concept.
Day Brown
doublePlusPaleo
>>>
>>
>> Just off the top of my head I can think of New Caledonian crows as
>> being excellent tool makers, also Australian magpies come to mind.
>>
>> The notion of concern (or lack of it) for future occupants is entirely
>> unprovable and seems to me to be an anthropocentric concept.
>>
>>
> I guess. but hominids were barefoot, and they had, and hoped for more, kids.
How do you know what the hominids were thinking, any more than you know
what a duck or a dog is thinking?
Matt Giwer
> On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:45:21 -0800 (PST), Jack Linthicum
>> This may seem like a superficial and even stupid study,
> And has NOTHING to do with this newsgroup.
In one sense true. It is paleontology. "However" and "But" that is not the
whole story.
Note the age of Heidelberg man. Note even the much lesser age of us. After
living off the land for hundred of thousands and tens of thousands of years
respectively, in the blink of an eye cities appear. And by golly they are
organized. What constitutes a city is division of labor. We find the division
of labor represented in the physical layout of a city. This is opposed to
farmers who do a little bit of everything.
Consider the physical organization of the 700,000 yo cite. Is it a city
without buildings? Is the division of labor a correct definition of a city if
labor was divided 700,000 years ago?
Division of labor means specialized individuals doing what they do best. If
this pattern was in the ancient settlements then there were cities without
buildings in the high six digits years ago. Or can a city exist without a
division of labor? Or are we really hung up on our definition and need
something better to define what is and is not a city? I'll bet on the last.
In the mean time what is missing from the Hula valley site is evidence of
particular individuals specializing in cooking crabs and nuts and others
specializing in fish while a third group making the tools. It is not clear if
such can be determined.
--
The amount of sleep the average person needs is one snooze more.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4200
http://www.giwersworld.org/palestine/answers.phtml a9
Sat Dec 26 19:52:01 EST 2009
Garry Williams
Because we're all hominids?
Garry
Day Brown
>>> I guess. but hominids were barefoot, and they had, and hoped for more,
>>> kids.
>> How do you know what the hominids were thinking, any more than you know
>> what a duck or a dog is thinking?
>
> Because we're all hominids?
not require thinking. As we see in so many thotless responses.
The flint knapper was the first beta male geek. Didnt matter if he was a
lazy, cowardly hunter. The tribe that kept him fed got the best points,
had the most meat, and stayed in the gene pool.
Even some two year old boys will bang rocks together. Why else?