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Notes on video lecture:
Politics and Warfare of Pre-Agricultural Societies
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
monogamous, extravagant, Sahaba, genetic, reincarnated, Danube, Moscow, Wrangel, foxes, leaders, agricultural, Sungir, Offnet, nuclear, private
there is not sufficient evidence to determine if in the Stone Age people had                property,                families and                      relationships
we do, however, have some evidence of what political and social life was like
             burial site
28,000 to 30,000 years old
discovered in 1955
200 kilometers east of             
a society of mammoth hunters
wolly mammoth
10,000 disappeared from mainland
4,000 years ago on                island
main grave
50 year old man
strings of ivory beads made from mammoth
3000 ivory beads
other graves
had less beads
deduced that the one man was of higher rank than the others
the children of Sungir
two skeletons buried head to head
one to a boy, 12 years old
another to a girl, 9 years old, deformity on hip
boy had hat with teeth of           , a belt which had 250 teeth of foxes
at least 60 foxes had to have their teeth pulled out to make this
girl had 2550 ivory beads
surrounded by ivory statues
10,000 ivory beads which covered these children required about 7,500 hours of delicate work by very experienced craftsmen, i.e. three years of combined labor
it is unlikely that these young children were physical chiefs or                of this group of humans, only cultural beliefs can explain why these young children received such an                        burial.
theory #1: perhaps these children were children of chiefs in a culture which believed in familial inheritance and strict rules of succession
theory #2: at birth these children were identified as a                          spirit
theory #3: children were ordinary people ritually sacrificed and buried with objects which required much labor as a payment to the gods
the children of Sungir are the best evidence we have that 30,000 years ago Homo sapiens could invent social political codes that went far beyond the dictates of our DNA. There is nothing like the burial of these children of Sungir among the Neanderthals.
this burial is also a clear indication that in human bands there were hierarchy and social inequality
warfare
did ancient bands like the Sungir people fight their neighbors or not?
theory #1: wars on a large scale started only after the agricultural revolution when people started to acquire property
wars among ancient foragers was exceptionally cruel and violent
both schools of thought have very little evidence
the most evidence are present day forager societies
live mainly in isolated areas like the arctic and Kalahari desert
for these people, the opportunity to find other peoples to war with are very low
these foragers are increasingly subject to the authority of modern states who do not their subjects fighting with one another
anthropologists had only two main opportunities to observer large and dense population of foragers who were independetly of the control of modern states
northwestern part of Alaska and Canada in 19th century
in Australia in 19th and early 20th century
in relatively fertile area with many hunter/gatherer bands
in both cases, anthropologists found a high frequency of armed conflict
archeological evidence is meager and
we have no evidence of large-scale violence between people from more than about 20,000 years ago, yet we have very little evidence of anything from that time, so we don't know if inter-band violence was common or nto
from 20,000 and 10,000 there are evidence which support both violent and peaceful theories
only 2 of 400 skeletons in Portugal found evidence of humans dying from violence
violence to skulls found in 18 out of 400 skeletons in              valley
today the global average is 1.5%
in 20th century, only 5% of people died from human-caused death, so this would mean that pre-                         humans in Danube valley was just as violent as 20th century
Jebel             
12,000 years ago
contains 59 skeletons
40% of the skeletons had arrowheads and spear points stuck in them
             cave in Bavaria
remains of 38 foragers
clear signs of human weapons such as knives and clubs
injuries on older male skeletons worse
just as today, they probably had a certain areas with various violence rates
it's important to realize that people who lived 10,000-12,000 years ago may have had very rich, exciting and troublesome lives just as we have today, various events, religious movements, and artistic pieces even if we haven't found the remains
in the last 10-15 years                evidence has provided more answers about ancient forager humans
we know close to nothing about 60,000 years of our 70,000 year history, and these 60,000 years were very important since humans in that time shaped the world around us, and brought about changes in the ecology in these areas
corrected
monogomous
monogamous
hiearchary
hierarchy
The Context of History and Our Extended Human Family
How Walking Upright Led to Better Social and Cooperative Skills
The Importance of Fire and Cooking
Why Did Other Human Species Become Extinct?
The Cognitive Revolution and the Beginning of Human History
The Language of Homo Sapiens
How Fictive Language Enabled Larger Social Groups
The Power of Imagined Realities
How the Ability to Tell Stories Enabled Humans to Cooperate in Massive Groups
The Cognitive Revolution and the Variety of Human Communities
Spiritual Beliefs of Early Humans
Politics and Warfare of Pre-Agricultural Societies
45,000 Years Ago: Human's Decimation of Australia's Large Mammals
14,000 BC: Human Migration to the Americas
Agriculture: The Good and the Bad
10,000 BC: Agricultural Revolution
The Origins of Agriculture
The Code of Hammurabi and Other Imagined Realities
Inter-Subjective Reality and Romantic Consumerism
The Human Brain's Outsourcing of Mathematics
Unjust and Imagined Hierarchies
Imagined Hierarchies in History
Culturally Defined Gender
Three Theories of Gender Domination
The Direction of Humankind: Global Unity
The Essence of Money
The History of Money
The Historical Definition of Empire
The Relationship between Science, European Imperialism and Capitalism
Science, Capitalism and European Imperialism
Columbus: Last Man of the Middle Ages, Vespucci: First Man of the Modern Age
European Empires, Science, and Capitalism
How Capitalism is Based on Trust in the Future
On the Interdependence of Science and Capitalism
How Capitalism Enabled Small European Countries to Explore and Conquer the World
The Relationship Between Capitalism, the Slave Trade, and Free Market Forces
Industrialization, Energy and Raw Materials
The Second Agricultural Revolution and its Effect on Animal Treatment
The Ethics of Capitalism and Consumerism
On Limitless Energy Resources and the Hegemony of Modern Time Schedules
State/Market vs. Family/Community
Humankind's Rigid and Violent Past, and Flexible and Peaceful Present
Reasons for Our Current Unprecedented Era of International Peace
Three Theories on the History of Happiness
Psychological and Biological Happiness
Measuring Human Happiness
The Future of Cyborgs and Robots
What Do We Want to Want?