[HN Gopher] Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50k-year-old social ne...
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Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50k-year-old social network across
Africa
Author : gmays
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-12-22 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.shh.mpg.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.shh.mpg.de)
| 1cvmask wrote:
| It is not proven but highly suggested from the data:
|
| By comparing OES bead characteristics, such as total diameter,
| aperture diameter and shell thickness, Miller and Wang found that
| between 50,000 and 33,000 years ago, people in eastern and
| southern Africa were using nearly identical OES beads. The
| finding suggests a long-distance social network spanning more
| than 3,000 km once connected people in the two regions.
| beloch wrote:
| There is some odd use of language in this article that might be a
| little misleading.
|
| "Social network", "population connectivity", and similar terms
| seem to be chosen to paint a very modern picture of one of the
| oldest trade-networks yet discovered. Such language suggests that
| people across Africa were in regular communication with each
| other through this network, much like people across the internet
| today. The truth is that there was probably zero social
| "connectivity" between people in this network beyond with their
| immediate neighbours, and it was almost certainly more about
| trade than socialization even then.
|
| Trade networks occur wherever humans go. People have too much of
| the local stuff and not enough of the exotic stuff, so they trade
| one for the other with their neighbors. Trade networks rise,
| ramify, change, and occasionally break down. Pre-contact North
| America had trade networks that spanned the continent, but it's
| likely that people at the far end of the network from any
| particular trade-good had no idea where it really came from. Such
| networks do not require continent roaming traders to operate. It
| was likely patently unsafe for anyone to travel too far from
| their home territory and totally unnecessary for continent
| spanning trade networks to operate. All it took was neighbours
| trading with neighbours who then trade with their neighbours, and
| so on.
|
| In particular, OES beads were likely to penetrate further into
| trade networks than most other commodities. Portable, valuable
| and not likely to break from wear and tear, they could have
| criss-crossed Africa several times over before winding up in a
| midden heap or burial. They were a bit like coins in this
| respect. During classical times, Roman coins penetrated far into
| areas where nobody had even heard of the Romans.
| meristohm wrote:
| Sometimes we just like a challenge, especially when we're young
| and full of wanderlust. Wade Davis, in The Wayfinders, tells
| about a Pacific trade network of white beads going one way
| (clockwise, iirc; listened to the book) and red beads going the
| other, with acted-out hostility on the island, and approach-
| protocols by the voyagers, followed by trading strings of beads
| and some social-bonding time together before the voyagers
| departed. With each island having what it needed for survival
| (the ocean provided quite a lot before mechanized exploitation;
| see, for one, Eat Like a Fish, by Bren Smith), the trade across
| such distances may well have been to keep up the social network
| with people showing similar origins.
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(page generated 2021-12-22 23:02 UTC)