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Lunarchy: the original human economics of time
Abstract
Lionel Sims’ work has illuminated how Neolithic ritual communities ‘solarised’ the moon, deceptively transforming a lunar syntax into a solar one. But where did the ‘time-resistant’ lunar syntax come from? It is unlikely that patriarchal Neolithic societies invented this form of time-keeping. Yet it persists even in modern patriarchal ‘world’ religions derived from Neolithic forebears.
Marx said ‘All forms of economics can be reduced to an economics of time'. How a society organises time reveals what it truly values. The question of the earliest human economy cannot be solved without a focus on women, the moon and menstruation. African hunter-gatherer cosmology takes the lunar cycle as the crucial timeframe for ritual, sex and economic activities. The shared sources of this cosmology carry us back to earliest human symbolic culture, the very origins of art and ritual itself, over 100,000 years ago.
Contrary to presumed Neolithic gender relations, these hunter-gatherer societies are among the most gender egalitarian on earth. But how does such egalitarianism work? Women especially assert power through their bodies collectively to resist any threat of male exploitation. As the moon waxes and wanes, the dynamic of power switches in more or less playful battles between the sexes. Rather than patriarchy or matriarchy, we observe lunarchy – rule by the moon, expressed in a pulse of waxing and waning, ritual power ON, ritual power OFF.
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Many species synchronize reproductive behavior with a particular phase of the lunar cycle to increase reproductive success. In humans, a lunar influence on reproductive behavior remains controversial, although the human menstrual cycle has a period close to that of the lunar cycle. Here, we analyzed long-term menstrual recordings of individual women with distinct methods for biological rhythm analysis. We show that women’s menstrual cycles with a period longer than 27 days were intermittently synchronous with the Moon’s luminance and/or gravimetric cycles. With age and upon exposure to artificial nocturnal light, menstrual cycles shortened and lost this synchrony. We hypothesize that in ancient times, human reproductive behavior was synchronous with the Moon but that our modern lifestyles have changed reproductive physiology and behavior.
Current hunter-gatherers from the Kalahari in southern Africa are well-known for their use of poisoned arrowheads, and it is assumed that this tradition spanned most of the Holocene in the region. Recent archaeological work, however, indicates that the techno-behaviour may have originated sometime during the Pleistocene. Tracing the use of poisoned arrowheads through time is not an easy task. Here I explore the use of the tip cross-sectional area (TSCA) metric to analyse relatively large samples of bone points that are ethno-historically associated with Kalahari San poisoned arrow hunting. I add the southern African poisoned bone arrowhead TSCA range to the previous ranges established for North American atlatl dart tips, North American arrowheads and large thrusting spears. Based on the results obtained from 445 artefacts spanning historical, Later and Middle Stone Age phases, I show that poisoned bone arrowheads may have been in use in southern Africa throughout the last 72,000 years, and that a methodical effort to trace stone-tipped poison arrowheads may be warranted.
Objectives:
The incentives underlying men's hunting acquisition patterns among foragers are much debated. Some argue that hunters preferentially channel foods to their households, others maintain that foods are widely redistributed. Debates have focused on the redistribution of foods brought to camp, though the proper interpretation of results is contested. Here we instead address this question using two nutritional variables, employed as proxies for longer-term food access. We also report on broader patterns in nutritional status.
Materials and methods:
We measured male hunting success, hemoglobin concentration and body fatness among bush-living Hadza. Hunting success was measured using an aggregated reputation score. Hemoglobin concentration, a proxy for dietary red meat, was measured from fingerprick capillary blood. Body fatness, a proxy for energy balance, was measured using BMI and bioelectrical impedance.
Results:
We find no statistically significant relationship between a hunter's success and any measure of his nutritional status or that of his spouse. We further find that: women are, as elsewhere, at greater risk of iron-deficiency anemia than men; men had slightly lower BMIs than women; men but not women had significantly lower hemoglobin levels than in the 1960s.
Discussion:
The absence of an association between hunting reputation and nutritional status is consistent with generalized food sharing. Null results are difficult to interpret and findings could potentially be a consequence of insufficient signal in the study measures or some confounding effect. In any event, our results add to a substantial corpus of existing research that identifies few nutritional advantages to being or marrying a well-reputed Hadza hunter.
The use of apps that record detailed menstrual cycle data presents a new opportunity to study the menstrual cycle. The aim of this study is to describe menstrual cycle characteristics observed from a large database of cycles collected through an app and investigate associations of menstrual cycle characteristics with cycle length, age and body mass index (BMI). Menstrual cycle parameters, including menstruation, basal body temperature (BBT) and luteinising hormone (LH) tests as well as age and BMI were collected anonymously from real-world users of the Natural Cycles app. We analysed 612,613 ovulatory cycles with a mean length of 29.3 days from 124,648 users. The mean follicular phase length was 16.9 days (95% CI: 10–30) and mean luteal phase length was 12.4 days (95% CI: 7–17). Mean cycle length decreased by 0.18 days (95% CI: 0.17–0.18, R2 = 0.99) and mean follicular phase length decreased by 0.19 days (95% CI: 0.19–0.20, R2 = 0.99) per year of age from 25 to 45 years. Mean variation of cycle length per woman was 0.4 days or 14% higher in women with a BMI of over 35 relative to women with a BMI of 18.5–25. This analysis details variations in menstrual cycle characteristics that are not widely known yet have significant implications for health and well-being. Clinically, women who wish to plan a pregnancy need to have intercourse on their fertile days. In order to identify the fertile period it is important to track physiological parameters such as basal body temperature and not just cycle length.
Are there constraints on the social conditions that could have given rise to language
and symbolic cognition? Language has emerged in no other species than humans,
suggesting a profound obstacle to its evolution. If language is seen as an aspect of
cognition, limitations can be expected in terms of computational capacity. But if it
is seen it as fundamentally for communication, then the problems will be found in
terms of social relationships. Below a certain threshold of cooperation and trust, no
language or symbolic communication could evolve (Knight & Lewis, 2017a); this
has been termed a “platform of trust” (Wacewicz, 2017)....
In this chapter, I argue that quite specific social conditions were prerequisite for the evolution of language- and symbol-ready hominins. One of the requirements differentiating our ancestors from other African apes was a switch to mainly female philopatry – females living with their relatives, rather than dispersing at sexual maturity – coevolving with an increasing tendency to egalitarianism....How did increasing egalitarianism affect males and potentially “feminize” male behavior for cooperative offspring care? How were male and female relations affected in the evolution of genus Homo and Homo sapiens?
In human populations, changes in genetic variation are driven not only by genetic processes, but can also arise from cultural or social changes. An abrupt population bottleneck specific to human males has been inferred across several Old World (Africa, Europe, Asia) populations 5000–7000 BP. Here, bringing together anthropological theory, recent population genomic studies and mathematical models, we propose a sociocultural hypothesis, involving the formation of patrilineal kin groups and intergroup competition among these groups. Our analysis shows that this sociocultural hypothesis can explain the inference of a population bottleneck. We also show that our hypothesis is consistent with current findings from the archaeogenetics of Old World Eurasia, and is important for conceptions of cultural and social evolution in prehistory.
Why is it that, out of 220 primate species, we are the only one that talks? The relative inflexibility of primate vocal signaling reflects audience pressure for reliability. Where interests conflict, listeners’ resistance to being deceived drives signalers to limit their vocal repertoire to signals that cannot be faked. This constraint was lifted in the human case, we argue, because the original victims of our species’ first deceptive vocalizations were nonhuman animals. When our ancestors were vulnerable hominins equipped with limited weaponry, they kept predators away by increasing the range and diversity of their vocal calls. This led to choral singing, primarily by females, and deceptive mimicry of animal calls, primarily by scavenging and hunting males. A critical feature of our model is the core principle of reversal, whereby deceptive signals aimed originally by a coalition against an external target are subsequently redeployed for honest communicative purposes within the group. We argue that this dynamic culminated ultimately in gestural, vocal, and ritual metaphor, opening the way to word formation and the rapid emergence of grammar. © 2017 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.
Fossil evidence points to an African origin of Homo sapiens from a group called either H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis. However, the exact place and time of emergence of H. sapiens remain obscure because the fossil record is scarce and the chronological age of many key specimens remains uncertain. In particular, it is unclear whether the present day 'modern' morphology rapidly emerged approximately 200 thousand years ago (ka) among earlier representatives of H. sapiens1 or evolved gradually over the last 400 thousand years2. Here we report newly discovered human fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and interpret the affinities of the hominins from this site with other archaic and recent human groups. We identified a mosaic of features including facial, mandibular and dental morphology that aligns the Jebel Irhoud material with early or recent anatomically modern humans and more primitive neurocranial and endocranial morphology. In combination with an age of 315 ± 34 thousand years (as determined by thermoluminescence dating)3, this evidence makes Jebel Irhoud the oldest and richest African Middle Stone Age hominin site that documents early stages of the H. sapiens clade in which key features of modern morphology were established. Furthermore, it shows that the evolutionary processes behind the emergence of H. sapiens involved the whole African continent.
Earth pigments figure prominently in debates about signal evolution among later Homo. Most archaeologists consider such behavior to postdate ~300 Ka. To evaluate claims for Fauresmith and Acheulean pigments in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province, extending back 1.1 Ma (Beaumont and Bednarik 2013), we reexamined collections from Kathu Pan 1, Wonderwerk Cave, and Canteen Kopje. We report and describe materials where we are confident as to a pigment status. We found (i) compelling evidence of absence in all but the youngest Acheulean contexts, (ii) definite but irregular use in Fauresmith contexts from at least 500 Ka, (iii) widespread and regular use within this limited area by ~300 Ka, coeval with circumstantial evidence for pigment transport over considerable distances and use in fire-lit environments. These findings are used to evaluate predictions derived from two competing hypotheses addressing the evolution of group ritual, the “female cosmetic coalitions” hypothesis (Power 2009) and the “cheap-but-honest signals” hypothesis (Kuhn 2014), finding that the former accounts for a greater range of the observations. The findings underscore the wider behavioral significance of the Fauresmith as an industry transitional between the Acheulean and the Middle Stone Age. © 2016 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.
Relative to the large amount of behavioural ecology literature, little has
been documented on Hadza ritual activity. Nor has it been placed in context of myth
and narrative. This is a serious lack given the agreement of both social anthropology
(Durkheim, Turner, Rappaport) and more recent evolutionary approaches, eg Sosis and
Bulbulia, on the central importance of ritual as the medium for establishing symbols
and showing commitment to the group. This paper examines the relationship of the
two gender rituals, the more regular monthly epeme, and the less frequently performed
female initiation, maitoko. Both sexes are participants in each ritual, but epeme is
governed by male-held ‘secrets’, while maitoko is governed by female ones. Drawing
on a case study where the two rituals ran concurrently, one by night, one by day, I will
link them as counterparts in a gender contest. The key myth on origins of epeme – a
male ‘secret’ – is also the source for dramatic ritual enactment by women and girls in
maitoko. While epeme rules of respect underpin Hadza ritual and economic life, the
importance of maitoko for women’s solidarity is indicated by its greater costliness. The
relationship of these contesting but counterpart rituals fits a model of a ‘pendulum of
power’ swinging between men and women (cf. Lewis, Finnegan), implying that hunter-gatherer
gender relations should be considered as dynamic.
Examining cultures as diverse as long-house dwellers in North Borneo, African farmers, Welsh housewives, and postindustrial American workers, this volume dramatically redefines the anthropological study of menstrual customs. It challenges the widespread image of a universal 'menstrual taboo' as well as the common assumption of universal female subordination which underlies it. Contributing important new material and perspectives to our understanding of comparative gender politics and symbolism, it is of particular importance to those interested in anthropology, women's studies, religion, and comparative health systems.
The oldest extant human maternal lineages include mitochondrial haplogroups L0d and L0k found in the southern African click-speaking forager peoples broadly classified as Khoesan. Profiling these early mitochondrial lineages allows for better understanding of modern human evolution. In this study, we profile 77 new early-diverged complete mitochondrial genomes and sub-classify another 105 L0d/L0k individuals from southern Africa. We use this data to refine basal phylogenetic divergence, coalescence times and Khoesan prehistory. Our results confirm L0d as the earliest diverged lineage (∼172 kya, 95%CI: 149-199 kya), followed by L0k (∼159 kya, 95%CI: 136-183 kya) and a new lineage we name L0g (∼94 kya, 95%CI: 72-116 kya). We identify two new L0d1 subclades we name L0d1d and L0d1c4/L0d1e, and estimate L0d2 and L0d1 divergence at ∼93 kya (95%CI:76-112 kya). We concur the earliest emerging L0d1'2 sublineage L0d1b (∼49 kya, 95%CI:37-58 kya) is widely distributed across southern Africa. Concomitantly, we find the most recent sublineage L0d2a (∼17 kya, 95%CI:10-27 kya) to be equally common. While we agree that lineages L0d1c and L0k1a are restricted to contemporary inland Khoesan populations, our observed predominance of L0d2a and L0d1a in non-Khoesan populations suggests a once independent coastal Khoesan prehistory. The distribution of early-diverged human maternal lineages within contemporary southern Africans suggests a rich history of human existence prior to any archaeological evidence of migration into the region. For the first time, we provide a genetic-based evidence for significant modern human evolution in southern Africa at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum at between ∼21-17 kya, coinciding with the emergence of major lineages L0d1a, L0d2b, L0d2d and L0d2a.
It is commonly thought that human genetic diversity in non-African populations was shaped primarily by an out-of-Africa dispersal 50-100 thousand yr ago (kya). Here, we present a study of 456 geographically diverse high-coverage Y chromosome sequences, including 299 newly reported samples. Applying ancient DNA calibration, we date the Y-chromosomal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) in Africa at 254 (95% CI 192-307) kya and detect a cluster of major non-African founder haplogroups in a narrow time interval at 47-52 kya, consistent with a rapid initial colonization model of Eurasia and Oceania after the out-of-Africa bottleneck. In contrast to demographic reconstructions based on mtDNA, we infer a second strong bottleneck in Y-chromosome lineages dating to the last 10 ky. We hypothesize that this bottleneck is caused by cultural changes affecting variance of reproductive success among males.
© 2015 Karmin et al.; Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
24 hunter-gatherer ethnographies across four continents establish meat sharing as universal among hunter-gatherers. Sharing was accompanied by vigilance against unfairness and cheating. Those who tried to establish dominance brought consistent 'counter-dominant' reactions, escalating step-by-step from ridicule to execution. A model of human evolution is proposed in which humans became too clever to dominate effectively, leaving sharing as the only viable strategy.
Recent findings concerning the synchronisation of human female menstrual cycles under conditions of proximity inform a re-analysis of the myth of the Wawilak Sisters from north-east Arnhem Land. It is suggested that the logic generating the Rainbow Serpent myth-universal in one form or another throughout Australia-is the cultural logic of menstrual synchrony itself, which undergoes structural inversion through the agency of male rituals of pseudo-procreation re-enacting the myth. The essay is intended to provide a point of contact between 'sociobiology' and cultural anthropology.
In certain African hunter-gatherer cultures (the Khoisan and Hadza), gender appears mutable and paradoxicalwith respect to sex. Duringinitiation ritual, girls acquire 'masculine' characteristics, such as penises and hunting weapons; boys are treated as menstruants. Anthropological models of a hierar- chized 'masculine' v. 'feminine', correlated with biological sex, would not predict such reversals. Alternative models of 'multiple' genders fail to account for the structural similarities between female and male initiations, which tend to unify gender irrespective ofsex. Using data on Khoisan and Hadza ritual and myth, with illustrations from southern African rock art, a 'native model' of gendered sym- bolic oppositions is presented. This indigenous model represents gender as mutable through time, and as correlated with ritual potency, not with biological sex; the model thereby supports predictions made by the 'sex-strike' theory of the origins of symbolic culture.
In this chapter I will first discuss women's role in the emergence of art. I will then show how this evolutionary approach can illuminate imagery of women in art from the European Upper Paleolithic and African Later Stone Age. Current Darwinian models argue that female strategies drove the ear-liest symbolic behavior. As brain sizes increased in Homo heidelbergensis and the immediate ancestors of Homo sapiens (specifically the period from 500 to 130,000 b.p.), so did reproductive stress on females. Evolutionary ecology predicts conflict between the sexes over investment in offspring. Once ovu-lation had been concealed in the human lineage, menstrual bleeding became the only good indicator of impending fertility. But while concealed ovulation withholds information from males about which females are fertile at any time, the salience of the menstrual signal undermines this effect, marking out imminently fertile females from pregnant or lactating ones. To resist male discrimination between cycling and noncycling females, coalitions of late archaic/early modern Homo sapiens women began cosmetically manip-ulating menstrual signals—sham menstruation. Collective, deceptive, and amplified use of red pigments as body paint confused information available to men about women's reproductive status, and effectively formed a pre-adaptation to ritual. This model predicts that the earliest art will be evi-denced by a cosmetics industry, dominated by red pigments. The model offers further predictions in relation to the rock art record. Particularly I will address: (a) the focus on women's reproductive signals; (b) the importance of coalitions; (c) the link between women and game animals; and (d) the original signature of ritual power.
Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males in mating
systems. Langur monkey populations provide a natural experiment for observing alternative female strategies of
confusing or concentrating paternity. Where females escape seasonal reproductive constraints, they desynchronize
fertility and show visible cues (menstruation), enabling single males to monopolize matings. This increases
female fitness by reducing food competition. Where langurs are seasonally constrained, females conceal fertility,
confusing paternity and reducing infanticide. These case studies illuminate how hominin females could increase
male numbers and investment. Fitness payoffs to male investors will be affected by degree of reproductive seasonal
constraint, and by females either concealing or confusing menstrual cues of imminent fertility. Among
ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals these strategies diverged. Under pressure of encephalization,
modern human female ancestors, less seasonally constrained, pursued a strategy of cosmeticization of menstrual
signals. This Female Cosmetic Coalitions model accounts for the African Middle Stone Age record of pigment use.
Among Neanderthals, strategies alternated. Severe seasonality during glacial cycles tied Neanderthal males into
pair-bonds, suppressing cosmetic signaling. Only during interglacials when seasonality relaxed would Neanderthal
females require blood-red cosmetics. Our Seasonality Thermostat model explains why European ochre use
correlates with climate through the Middle to Late Pleistocene.
It is a classical anthropological paradox that symbols of rebirth and fertility are frequently found in funerary rituals throughout the world. The original essays collected here re-examine this phenomenon through insights from China, India, New Guinea, Latin America, and Africa. The contributors, each a specialist in one of these areas, have worked in close collaboration to produce a genuinely innovative theoretical approach to the study of the symbolism surrounding death, an outline of which is provided in an important introduction by the editors. The major concern of the volume is the way in which funerary rituals dramatically transform the image of life as a dialectic flux involving exchange and transaction, marriage and procreation, into an image of a still, transcendental order in which oppositions such as those between self and other, wife-giver and wife-taker, Brahmin and untouchable, birth and therefore death have been abolished. This transformation often involves a general devaluation of biology, and, particularly, of sexuality, which is contrasted with a more spiritual and controlled source of life. The role of women, who are frequently associated with biological processes, mourning and death pollution, is often predominant in funerary rituals, and in examining this book makes a further contribution to the understanding of the symbolism of gender. The death rituals and the symbolism of rebirth are also analysed in the context of the political processes of the different societies considered, and it is argued that social order and political organisation may be legitimated through an exploitation of the emotions and biology.
Qu'est-ce qui rend la cognition humaine unique ? Intentionnalité individuelle, partagée et collective.
Il est largement admis que ce qui distingue la cognition sociale humaine de celle des autres animaux est la maîtrise, dès l''âge de 4 ans, d'une psychologie qui fait intervenir des croyances et des désirs (théorie de l'esprit). Pour les auteurs, la théorie de l'esprit n'est toutefois que la seconde étape ontogénétique dans le développement d'une cognition sociale spécifiquement humaine. La première étape a lieu à l'âge d'1 an, lorsque les enfants comprennent que les personnes sont des agents intentionnels ; cette acquisition leur ouvre de nouvelles capacités d'apprentissage culturel et leur permet d'accéder à l'intentionnalité partagée. Cette étape initiale est la plus fondamentale car elle permet à de jeunes enfants de participer à des activités culturelles, par exemple la communication linguistique et le faire-semblant, en utilisant des symboles partagés dont la dimension conventionnelle / normative / réflexive marque le début de la compréhension des choses mentales. La maîtrise du concept de croyance et la participation à l'intentionnalité collective que manifestent les enfants de 4 ans – qui leur permet de faire sens de phénomènes tels que la monnaie ou le mariage – sont le résultat de plusieurs années passées à échanger leurs point de vue avec autrui et à participer à des discours réflexifs jalonnés d'attitudes propositionnelles.
This thesis is based on ethnographic research conducted with Mbendjele BaYaka Pygmy hunter-gatherers of Likouala Region, Congo-Brazzaville for eighteen months from 2013 to 2015. The primary goals of this thesis are: (1) to present three key contexts for educating children about Mbendjele practices and values; (2) to analyse ethnographic observations of how these contexts are employed to distinguish the modes of education they exploit; (3) to contrast Mbendjele and outsider-imposed education methods, and how Mbendjele define proper and improper teaching and learning. Mbendjele BaYaka value three main pro-egalitarian, cultural institutions as the primary means of educating children. They are based on public speaking, ridicule and play. I will examine how these institutions are employed in practice with a discussion of content and context. The results indicate that Mbendjele value mostly transmission of pro-egalitarian values, shaping understanding of gender and sexual roles in children, and teaching ways to deal with Non-Mbendjele outsiders. Corporal punishment is rare amongst egalitarian hunter-gatherers. Despite Mbendjele perceiving of it as an improper way of disciplining children, it is often employed in sedentarized context, in conjunction with increasing domestic violence and alcoholism. Indigenous institutions for cultural reproduction are central to understanding how hunter-gatherer picture their own future. Despite good intentions foreign enforcement of institutional schooling can have negative affects on the cultural resilience of Mbendjele sociality and egalitarian values. Understanding how Mbendjele value outsider imposed and their indigenous education institutions contributes to a better understanding of cultural resilience among marginalised ethnic groups, such as Mbendjele.
The Hadza, residing near Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania, represent one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer populations. Inhabiting the same area as our hominin ancestors and exploiting very similar resources, the Hadza maintain a foraging lifestyle characterised by a sexual division of labour. Studies of their foraging and food sharing habits serve as the foundation to numerous hypotheses of human behaviour and evolution. Data from the Hadza have featured heavily in debates on the sexual division of labour. These debates focus predominantly on men’s foraging, including how and why men provision. Women’s provisioning, on the other hand, is seldom explicitly examined and is often presumed to be constrained by reproduction. This thesis contributes to debates on the sexual division of labour by investigating how a woman’s reproductive status affects her foraging behaviours. Observational data on women’s foraging are investigated from 263 person/day follows (1,307 hours total) across 10 camps between 2004 and 2006. These data present the first quantitative documentation of forager women’s eating and sharing outside of camp. Interview data on women’s reproductive timeline are also analysed from in-depth interviews with 58 women from 9 camps in 2015. Spanning from menarche to menopause, these data offer the first quantitative and qualitative documentation of forager women’s menstruation. The results demonstrate that Hadza women eat and share over 800 kilocalories outside of camp per person/day. They regularly give and receive food, including gifts of honey from men. Breastfeeding women are more likely to give gifts and give more gifts than non-breastfeeding women. When they bring nurslings with them outside of camp, they forage less kilocalories per hour. Post-menopausal women eat less relative to what they forage, are less likely to receive gifts, rest less and forage more than pre-menopausal women. Although Hadza women describe their foraging workload as most difficult during late pregnancy, no significant differences in eating, sharing, resting or foraging are observed for pregnant women. Menstrual data from the Hadza reveal that menstruation is not only culturally relevant to the sexual division of labour, but it is also biologically relevant to current understandings of fertility. The majority (60%) of Hadza women report not doing their normal work during menstruation. They also report menstruation-related taboos for berry picking. The thesis presents an in-depth review of women’s menstruation, from the duration of menses to the menstrual cleaning process.
The Middle Stone Age in Africa
The Olorgesailie basin in the southern Kenya rift valley contains sediments dating back to 1.2 million years ago, preserving a long archaeological record of human activity and environmental conditions. Three papers present the oldest East African evidence of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) and elucidate the system of technology and behavior associated with the origin of Homo sapiens . Potts et al. present evidence for the demise of Acheulean technology that preceded the MSA and describe variations in late Acheulean hominin behavior that anticipate MSA characteristics. The transition to the MSA was accompanied by turnover of large mammals and large-scale landscape change. Brooks et al. establish that ∼320,000 to 305,000 years ago, the populations in eastern Africa underwent a technological shift upon procurement of distantly sourced obsidian for toolmaking, indicating the early development of social exchange. Deino et al. provide the chronological underpinning for these discoveries.
Science , this issue p. 86 , p. 90 , p. 95
Despite the empirical uncertainty about the existence of menstrual synchrony (i.e., the phenomenon where some women's menstrual cycles synchronize when they live in close proximity with one another), the persistence of beliefs in its existence permeate popular and medical discourses. Although there is a substantial body of scientific work on whether or not menstrual synchrony exists, far less work has examined why women believe in menstrual synchrony and the reasons they attribute to its existence (or not). Qualitative data from semistructured interviews with a diverse community sample of 20 women (mean age = 35.35, SD = 12.01) living in a large Southwestern U.S. city from a range of age, race, class, and sexual orientation backgrounds (40% women of color, 20% lesbian, 20% bisexual) were collected to examine beliefs about menstrual synchrony. Results revealed that women overwhelmingly endorsed the occurrence of menstrual synchrony both for themselves (90%) and for other women (95%). Four themes were associated with women's beliefs in menstrual synchrony: (1) connection to and hierarchy among other women; (2) menstrual synchrony as “magical” or “mysterious”; (3) menstrual synchrony as biological and animal-like; (4) managing and overcoming negative experiences with menstruation. Tensions between connection and dominance—and the contradictions and complications in women's modes of bonding with other women—are discussed, particularly as women fluctuated between shame and solidarity about their menstrual cycles. Menstrual synchrony offers one possible avenue to feel collective anger, and it highlights women's feelings about mysticism, science, and close female relationships.
In The Hadza, Frank Marlowe provides a quantitative ethnography of one of the last remaining societies of hunter-gatherers in the world. The Hadza, who inhabit an area of East Africa near the Serengeti and Olduvai Gorge, have long drawn the attention of anthropologists and archaeologists for maintaining a foraging lifestyle in a region that is key to understanding human origins. Marlowe ably applies his years of research with the Hadza to cover the traditional topics in ethnography-subsistence, material culture, religion, and social structure. But the book's unique contribution is to introduce readers to the more contemporary field of behavioral ecology, which attempts to understand human behavior from an evolutionary perspective. To that end, The Hadza also articulates the necessary background for readers whose exposure to human evolutionary theory is minimal.
Using the theme of women's ritual dance among Central African hunter-gatherers, this paper will examine an alternative kind of politics to that common in societies in which property, social hierarchy and corporatism have become the dominant structural principles. In a previous paper I described spirit performances known respectively as mokondi massana or molimo during which Mbendjele and Mbuti dancers organise into formal gender groups. These impromptu coalitions distribute social power by literally dancing it out. Here I go further in exploring the epistemological and political implications of this power-model. The part played by collective dance in releasing the socially productive power of desire is examined. And the kind of fluid sociality this movement generates is contrasted with the physical fragmentation encouraged by capitalist societies. A new model for power is developed drawing on the insights of deluze and guattari, Turner, Marcuse and recent dance and movement theory. The paper aims to demon...
Conventional wisdom over the past 160 years in the cognitive and neurosciences has assumed that brains evolved to process factual information about the world. Most attention has therefore been focused on such features as pattern recognition, color vision, and speech perception. By extension, it was assumed that brains evolved to deal with essentially ecological problem-solving tasks. 1.
The Ju/'hoan Bushman origin myth is depicted as providing a contextual frame that orchestrates and gives meaning to their puberty rites, storytelling, and healing dance. These performances are shown to be an enactment of a reentry from Second into First Creation, the latter an imagined time when the original people could change into animals, communicate with all living forms, and have eternal life without sickness. Here n/om, or the presumed vitality of life, change, and creation, is infused into the community. Empowerment of adolescent passage into adulthood, renewal of mythological potency, enhancement of community relations, and healing of sickness take place inside the performances that dramatize reentry into First Creation. Bushman religion and ceremonial life are shown to highlight the importance of experiences that enact the way changing forms are given primacy over any subsequent naming or indication that stills movement. The latter is regarded as Second Creation. This recurrent passage between First and Second Creation sets the stage for Bushman transformative experience.
Greater equality of wealth, of power and of prestige has been achieved in certain hunting and gathering societies than in any other human societies. These societies, which have economies based on immediate rather than delayed return, are assertively egalitarian. Equality is achieved through direct, individual access to resources through direct, individual access to means of coercion and means of mobility which limit the imposition of control through procedures which prevent saving and accumulation and impose sharing through mechanisms which allow goods to circulate without making people dependent upon one another. People are systematically disengaged from property and therefore from the potentiality in property for creating dependency. A comparison is made between these societies and certain other egalitarian societies in which there is profound intergenerational inequality and in which the equality between people of senior generation is only a starting point for strenuous competition resulting in inequality. The value systems of non-competitive, egalitarian hunter-gatherers limit the development of agriculture because rules of sharing restrict the investment and savings necessary for agriculture they may limit the care provided for the incapacitated because of the controls on dependency they may in principle, extend equality to all mankind.-Author
It has become standard practice within feminist anthropology to repudiate any essential relationship between the biological body and cultural identity. In recent years, the ongoing deconstruction of the body has come to seem the only ‘natural’ fact. By contrast, this article seeks to reconnect sex, power, and culture in a positive sense, by identifying a political system in which power is kept in motion through the body. Literally dancing it out, organized Mbuti or Yaka gender groups perform a recurrent ritual repartee where power is continually churned up and funnelled back and forth between coalitions. The graphic somatic language that emerges through these dances suggests an alternative power-principle: kinetic, erotic, and fundamentally non-coercive. Here, the drawing back of the collective eye to the anatomical nature of power, with the simultaneous ritual de-privatization of ‘biology’, explodes the body out into a collective political force. The cultural visibility of the female procreative body in such contexts is striking. Using the core theme of dialogism, I rethink the creative potential of sexual duality, and work towards a new understanding of gender, power, and the body.
Presentation des techniques de chasse et de recuperation du gibier, comparaison des strategies adoptees par les Hadza (Tanzanie) quant au transport, a la transformation et la consommation des carcasses| discussion des interpretations archeologiques des strategies de subsistance des chasseurs-cueilleurs a partir des seuls gisements d'os decouverts
How variable is the length of human pregnancy, and are early hormonal events related to gestational length?
Among natural conceptions where the date of conception (ovulation) is known, the variation in pregnancy length spanned 37 days, even after excluding women with complications or preterm births.
Previous studies of length of gestation have either estimated gestational age by last menstrual period (LMP) or ultrasound (both imperfect measures) or included pregnancies conceived through assisted reproductive technology.
The Early Pregnancy Study was a prospective cohort study (1982-85) that followed 130 singleton pregnancies from unassisted conception to birth, with detailed hormonal measurements through the conception cycle; 125 of these pregnancies were included in this analysis.
We calculated the length of gestation beginning at conception (ovulation) in 125 naturally conceived, singleton live births. Ovulation, implantation and corpus luteum (CL) rescue pattern were identified with urinary hormone measurements. We accounted for events that artificially shorten the natural length of gestation (Cesarean delivery or labor induction, i.e. 'censoring') using Kaplan-Meier curves and proportional hazards models. We examined hormonal and other factors in relation to length of gestation. We did not have ultrasound information to compare with our gold standard measure.
The median time from ovulation to birth was 268 days (38 weeks, 2 days). Even after excluding six preterm births, the gestational length range was 37 days. The coefficient of variation was higher when measured by LMP (4.9%) than by ovulation (3.7%), reflecting the variability of time of ovulation. Conceptions that took longer to implant also took longer from implantation to delivery (P = 0.02). CL rescue pattern (reflecting ovarian response to implantation) was predictive (P = 0.006): pregnancies with a rapid progesterone rise were longer than those with delayed rise (a 12-day difference in the median gestational length). Mothers with longer gestations were older (P = 0.02), had longer pregnancies in other births (P < 0.0001) and were heavier at birth (P = 0.01). We did not see an association between the length of gestation and several factors that have been associated with gestational length in previous studies: body mass index, alcohol intake, parity or offspring sex.
The sample size was small and some exposures were rare, reducing power to detect weak associations.
Human gestational length varies considerably even when measured exactly (from ovulation). An individual woman's deliveries tend to occur at similar gestational ages. Events in the first 2 weeks after conception are predictive of subsequent pregnancy length, and may suggest pathways underlying the timing of delivery.
This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. None of the authors has any conflict of interest to declare.
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The Nharo (also known as Naron or //Aikwe) are a Khoe- (or ‘Hottentot-’) speaking people who live in the western Ghanzi district of Botswana, in the central-western Kalahari. They number about 5000 and live in small bands of eight to 40 people each. Traditionally they were hunter-gatherers, and among their closest linguistic relatives are the G/wikhwe and G//anakhwe Bushmen (or San) of Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve, who speak dialects mutually intelligible with Nharo. The Nharo are not linguistically related to the !Kung, who live to the immediate north, but a great many aspects of their medico-religious belief system resemble those of the !Kung, and the ‘superiority’ of !Kung medicine is recognised by the Nharo and indeed by other Bushman peoples as well. The Nharo come second, with a greater spiritual and medical knowledge that the G/wikhwe and G//anakhwe, or the !Kõ, who live to the south (cf. Heinz 1975: 28-9).
