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Posts tagged with:  Civilization

People slept on comfy grass beds 200,000 years ago

By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 20 Aug 20

The oldest beds known to science now date back nearly a quarter of a million years: traces of silicate from woven grasses found in the back of Border Cave (in South Africa, which has a nearly continuous record of occupation dating back to 200,000 BCE). Ars Technica reports: Most of the artifacts that survive from more than a few thousand years ago are made of stone and bone; even wooden tools are rare. That means we tend to think of the Paleolithic in terms of hard, sharp stone tools and the bones of butchered animals. Through that lens, life looks

The oldest beds known to science now date back nearly a quarter of a million years: traces of silicate from woven grasses found in the back of Border Cave (in South Africa, which has a nearly continuous record of occupation dating back to 200,000 BCE). Ars Technica reports: Most of the artifacts that survive from more than a few thousand

Discovery in Mexican Cave May Drastically Change the Known Timeline of Humans’ Arrival to the

By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 27 Jul 20

Human history in the Americas may be twice long as long as previously believed — at least 26,500 years — according to authors of a new study at Mexico’s Chiquihuite cave and other sites throughout Central Mexico. According to the study’s lead author Ciprian Ardelean: “This site alone can’t be considered a definitive conclusion. But with other sites in North America like Gault (Texas), Bluefish Caves (Yukon), maybe Cactus Hill (Virginia)—it’s strong enough to favor a valid hypothesis that there were humans here probably before and almost surely during the Last Glacial Maximum.” Read more at Smithsonian Magazine.Read the original

Human history in the Americas may be twice long as long as previously believed — at least 26,500 years — according to authors of a new study at Mexico’s Chiquihuite cave and other sites throughout Central Mexico. According to the study’s lead author Ciprian Ardelean: “This site alone can’t be considered a definitive conclusion. But with other sites in North

Kim Stanley Robinson: “The Coronavirus is Rewriting Our Imaginations.”

By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 4 May 20

Science Fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson has written a powerful meditation on what the pandemic heralds for the future of civilization in The New Yorker. Possibly, in a few months, we’ll return to some version of the old normal. But this spring won’t be forgotten. When later shocks strike global civilization, we’ll remember how we behaved this time, and how it worked. It’s not that the coronavirus is a dress rehearsal—it’s too deadly for that. But it is the first of many calamities that will likely unfold throughout this century. Now, when they come, we’ll be familiar with how they

Science Fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson has written a powerful meditation on what the pandemic heralds for the future of civilization in The New Yorker. Possibly, in a few months, we’ll return to some version of the old normal. But this spring won’t be forgotten. When later shocks strike global civilization, we’ll remember how we behaved this time, and how

What Can We Learn from the Evolution of Empires?

By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 30 Nov 19

Image Credit: Nigel Hawtin and the BBCWhen studying the cultural evolution of societies, there is an interesting pattern that arises — that doesn’t get nearly the attention that it deserves. Notice how all historical civilizations have collapsed. There is no evidence that any have proven to be sustainable.What does this tell us about our planetary predicament? For starters we might ask if this is an exhaustive list of human cultures. We will soon come to learn that there are many ways of organizing human societies that are (a) not empires or civilizations; and (b) some of them have proven to be resilient enough

Image Credit: Nigel Hawtin and the BBCWhen studying the cultural evolution of societies, there is an interesting pattern that arises — that doesn’t get nearly the attention that it deserves. Notice how all historical civilizations have collapsed. There is no evidence that any have proven to be sustainable.What does this tell us about our planetary predicament? For starters we might ask if this

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