The Surprising Ways Inventions And Ideas Spread In Ancient Prehistory

• by: Brenna R. Hassett

Brenna Hassett – Photo: en.wikipedia.org

09-10-2024 ~ You can learn a lot about humanity from the first technological revolutions of more than 10,000 years ago.

The human capacity for invention is unparalleled. We have developed technologies that have allowed us to survive and thrive far beyond the ecological niches that constrained our ancestors. While our innovation has allowed us to break loose from the constraints of our home continent, Africa, and even our home planet, the actual way in which our species adopts new technologies remains a subject of huge debate among those scientists who study the past. Does one hominid ancestor start to shuffle upright, and the rest follow? Does the first human to loop a piece of string through a shell bead inspire the rest of the species to create the world’s first jewelry? Or do different animals take up the same new adaptation at different times, because it solves a problem that appears in many places?

We know that in some of our closest living relatives, the primates, new technical skills are passed on through direct learning. Macaques, in particular, are responsible for innovative behaviors that have been transmitted through their societies by individuals who have seen and observed them and then adopted them as their own. This is true of behaviors as varied as “hot tubbing” by the macaques of Japan’s northern Hokkaido island and the habit of dipping sweet potatoes in the sea to “salt” them developed by macaques on Koshima island further south.

Many of the technological innovations that have had the greatest impact on our species were first seen about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in a region that archaeologists refer to as the “Fertile Crescent.” The region encompasses a swathe of land crossing the countries between the easternmost Mediterranean Sea and the Sinai, Arab, and Syrian deserts and up into the Zagros Mountains of what is now Iran. It is a region of famous firsts in terms of radical changes to our species lifestyle: settling down, cultivating plants, and taming the animals we eat are all first attested in this strip of relatively abundant land. Read more

A Note On The ‘Lesser Of Two Evils’ Voting Argument In 2024

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

C.J. Polychroniou

09-10-2024 ~ Why people, and radicals in particular, fail to grasp the reasoning behind this argument is truly mind-boggling.

One of the most bewildering reactions on the part of certain segments of the U.S. left (whatever that means these days) is that every time there is a crucial election, and the voice of reason dictates casting a ballot in a direction which will help the most to keep out of public office the most extreme, and often enough the positively nuts, candidate in the race, is to scream that this is a case of “the lesser of two evils” thinking and to imply in turn that the one making such an argument is, somehow, a sellout.

Noam Chomsky, of all people, has been the recipient of such brainless reactions for much of his life as he has repeatedly made the argument that voting for a third-party or independent candidate in a swing state would accomplish nothing but increase the possibility of the most extreme and positively nuts candidate winning the election.

Why people, and radicals in particular, fail to grasp the reasoning behind such an argument is truly mind-boggling. Either they don’t understand the nature of U.S. politics, with its winner-take-all election system, or they are simply wrapped up in the “feel-good” factor in politics to even notice such subtleties. But since even a fairly bright elementary student would most likely be able to understand the difference between a winner-take-all election system and proportional representation, it would be logical to conclude that what we have here is nothing less than a display of the politics of feeling good, which basically translates to acting in whatever manner makes one feel good, politically speaking, regardless of the consequences of those actions.

Now, one might say that when the Comintern adopted Stalin’s thinking in the 1920s that “social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism” and proceeded later to lump together Hitler’s Nazi party and the German Social Democratic Party that it was doing so out of conviction that the capitalist world was teetering on the brink of collapse and that the communists would inevitably emerge as the victorious party. Read more

The Decline Of The U.S. Empire: Where Is It Taking Us All?

• by: Richard D. Wolff

Richard D. Wolff

09-09-2024 ~ The evidence suggests that empires often react to periods of their own decline by over-extending their coping mechanisms. Military actions, infrastructure problems, and social welfare demands may then combine or clash, accumulating costs and backlash effects that the declining empire cannot manage. Policies aimed to strengthen empire—and that once did—now undermine it. Contemporary social changes inside and outside the empire can reinforce, slow, or reverse the decline. However, when decline leads leaders to deny its existence, it can become self-accelerating. In empires’ early years, leaders and the led may repress those among them who stress or merely even mention decline. Social problems may likewise be denied, minimized, or, if admitted, blamed on convenient scapegoats—immigrants, foreign powers, or ethnic minorities—rather than linked to imperial decline.

The U.S. empire, audaciously proclaimed by the Monroe Doctrine soon after two independence wars won against Britain, grew across the 19th and 20th centuries, and peaked during the decades between 1945 and 2010. The rise of the U.S. empire overlapped with the decline of the British empire. The Soviet Union represented limited political and military challenges, but never any serious economic competition or threat. The Cold War was a lopsided contest whose outcome was programmed in from its beginning. All of the U.S. empire’s potential economic competitors or threats were devastated by World War II. The following years found Europe losing its colonies. The unique global position of the United States then, with its disproportional position in world trade and investment, was anomalous and likely unsustainable. An attitude of denial at the time that decline was all but certain morphed only too readily into the attitude of denial now that the decline is well underway.

The United States could not prevail militarily over all of Korea in its 1950–53 war there. The United States lost its subsequent wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The NATO alliance was insufficient to alter any of those outcomes. U.S. military and financial support for Ukraine and the massive United States and NATO sanctions war against Russia are failures to date and are likely to remain so. U.S. sanctions programs against Cuba, Iran, and China have failed too. Meanwhile, the BRICS alliance counteracts U.S. policies to protect its empire, including its sanctions warfare, with increasing effectiveness. Read more

Keys To Building Human Bridges To The Past

• by: Deborah Barsky

Deborah Barsky

09–7-2024 ~ Human technologies have continued to evolve exponentially since the end of the Paleolithic: today we are using them to learn more about the past.

Scientific breakthroughs about human origins have captured the curiosity of audiences eager to learn more about the past. We are entering a new phase, thanks to the accumulation of evidence and new research technologies, in which experts and audiences are increasingly asking bigger questions about who we are and where we came from—and are teasing out some valuable answers.

This development has come at a time when there is a growing sense that linking the past with the present can support the attempt to build a more sustainable future.

Groundbreaking technologies are being applied to archeology. Modern archeologists are taking advantage of digital tools to share knowledge about human origins on a widening spectrum of platforms, including museum exhibits, virtual settings, and on-site experiences.

There is, however, a choke point in this process. The academic findings are described in a highly technical language that requires familiarity with the jargon of many research disciplines and testing methods, making the wider public adoption of research from human evolutionary science and archeology difficult. And most experts from these fields are not sufficiently trained to translate their findings to the array of audiences that can use them. But a growing number of initiatives are providing new ways to bridge the gap separating academia from global public awareness, emerging often from leading research institutions in Australia, East Africa, Western Europe, and the U.S. These centers and the educational efforts emerging from them nurture the evolutionary consciousness people need to appreciate what it means to be human.

Fostering knowledge about chains of events that affected the human evolutionary pathway thousands and even millions of years ago allows us to fit them into a coherent, multilevel chronological, and cultural framework. We can train our minds to reflect over long periods and find useful ways to compare chapters of human history. This fundamental viewpoint will permit the kind of planning necessary for solving long-term human challenges, from social to environmental. Read more

Robert Sapolsky: Are We Better Off Accepting That There’s No Free Will?

• by: Jan Ritch-Frel & Marjorie Hecht

09-06-2024 ~ Interviewing the neuroscientist and primate behavior expert on a question that could radically change our understanding of reality.

The release of Determined, a new book by renowned Stanford professor of primate behavior and neuroscience Robert M. Sapolsky, has catapulted him into the middle of an ancient debate: whether humans have free will and agency over their actions. Determined isn’t just a bio-philosophical treatise: It covers the potential benefits that a society that accepts Sapolsky’s thesis of there being zero free will and agency over our actions will likely become more humane and will be better at understanding and addressing humanity’s challenges.

Sapolsky found fame while teaching the science of stress and anxiety from a neurological perspective and its presence in the wider primate world. His popular teachings have enlightened millions and opened new pathways to help people consider the biological causes of their behavior.

Over this year, Sapolsky has rolled a publicity tour in defense of Determined’sthesis, including speaking on dozens of nationally known podcasts, and more recently, he has co-launched an informative and witty YouTube Q&A show with his talented daughter Rachel Share-Sapolsky.

We reached out to Sapolsky for an interview about his thinking on how public adoption of science can change perspectives, and his experience as an activist to try and get the world to think differently about the causes of human behavior.

Jan Ritch-Frel and Marjorie Hecht: You point to the early 1800s in France as a turning point in how society perceived epilepsy, from culpability for behavior during seizures to understanding it as a medical condition. Where are you seeing similar green shoots today?

Robert Sapolsky: A great example is the recognition that obesity is a biological disorder, rather than some sort of failure of Calvinist self-discipline. It is a biological disorder that is profoundly sensitive to psychological state and social context, but it is nonetheless biological.

To give the most dramatic example, if someone has a mutation in the leptin receptor gene, their brain will simply not process food satiation signals, regardless of how much willpower they have. Currently, stigma about weight is one of the most persistent prejudices in society, and findings like this are just beginning to change attitudes toward obesity. Read more

Political Collapse: Lessons From Fallen Empires

• by: Richard E. Blanton, Gary M. Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski, and Lane F. Fargher-Navarro

09-04-2024 ~ Our investigation of the disastrous society-wide collapses of four premodern polities, China’s Ming Dynasty, the South Asian Mughal Empire, the High Roman Empire, and Renaissance Venice led to the discovery of an unexpected historical pattern. This revelation was not evident before these sudden collapses as all four polities had demonstrated forms of governance that persisted for centuries, had been among the wealthiest and best-governed polities of their eras, and had embraced policies fostering inclusiveness and egalitarianism that engendered strong support from the majority of their citizens.

We could not identify any exogenous causal factors for the collapses—such as drought, epidemic, or conquest by a more powerful foe (three of the four eventually were conquered, but only after their governments were considerably weakened)—adding to our confusion about what led to these major political transformations.

To understand the reasons for the political breakdowns, we decided to revisit an earlier article in which we had posited an answer to this question when it became increasingly clear to us that the conflictive political culture of the contemporary U.S. presents striking parallels with what we had discovered. We aim to reexamine our article to bring a comparative perspective on historically well-known episodes of collapse, their causes, and negative outcomes, and to alert U.S. citizens of the potential dangers we face, so we can highlight the need to take urgent corrective actions. We begin by referring to recent works by political scientists and anthropologists that provided theoretical context for our arguments.

Collective Action Theory Expands Our Understanding of Governance
In all four instances, collapse followed quickly after the leaders of these polities inexplicably and suddenly abandoned principles and practices that had successfully underpinned state-building and social stability. Their actions initiated a cascading series of events that brought a rapid decline in many aspects of society, which extended beyond the government. But why would the actions of just a few people have such severe consequences for otherwise endurable and well-organized polities? Read more