#is not the only kind of hunting in our evolutionary history
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god that post made me mad. "humans just CAN'T be persistence hunters, because persistence hunting doesn't make any sense to me personally! no i'm not going to cite any sources, just trust me, i read about it in school!"
okay, mmhm, sure...except it does work. it does work, and we know it does because it was still in practice by modern humans in the central Kalahari until AT LEAST 1990. some of those people have even explained some of the challenges and nuances of the practice as well as the knowledge they use to make it easier. it's not the only method of hunting humans have used over the years, but it is definitely one of the methods in our repertoire.
"humans can't run for multiple days without food and water (which is how i assume persistence hunting works, for some reason)! and they're not fast enough to chase an antelope without losing it! and tracking is a stupid concept that doesn't work, and i'm going to scoff and ignore it!"
you don't have to run for days. you don't have to be super fast. you just have to be fast enough to not let your quarry rest long enough to recover, and you do have to be able to track-- which is absolutely a real thing that people can and do learn how to do.
(i suspect the OP ignored tracking as a possibility for the same reason they tried to discredit any information about the indigenous peoples of the Kalahari as basically being (1) all noble savage bullshit from the 60s or (2) irrelevant because it's not what their forefathers were doing-- their anthropology course probably taught them about the challenges these bands are facing with colonialism, and probably also taught about the rampant misinformation about them, but it did not teach any actual respect for their cultures or knowledge. or for them as, you know, people. whose grandparents remember the way their grandparents hunted, and can talk about it, even if they are no longer able to continue the practice.)
(knowing the noble savage stereotype is bad doesn't make it less racist when you still talk about people from a stance of "but my modern ways are better than their hungry primitive ways and i'm going to talk as if they're already extinct and have no expertise worth discussing.")
"there's no POINT to it! we have tools! and weapons!" the point is not getting gored and kicked to death by a wounded animal four times your size that didn't die when you hit it the first time. the point is that an exhausted kill is an easy kill where you don't die. it's a decent point. it's fucking reasonable. also, afaik there's decent odds we learned hunting before we learned tools.
and yeah, i get that the OP was just upset and yelling in the initial post. i do understand that. and I understand their frustration at hearing a theory misrepresented as fact. but their subsequent reblogs and responses are equally thoughtless pseudointellectual posturing, and i'm sorry, it's garbage. someone pointed out modern pursuit hunters exist, and they basically went "mmmmyeah, all of that is just outdated, cherry-picked misinformation and you're very stupid and i'm very smart, look at me i know lots of tribe names and i'm going to link some articles about why these people no longer matter, isn't that sad and TOTALLY relevant to this conversation." someone else mentioned tracking, and they ONCE AGAIN basically said if you lose your line of sight, that's it, you're done, you've lost your quarry. tracking isn't real, don't even bring it up. hoofprints in wet ground in the rainy season? those are fake. doesn't happen. broken brush where a panicking animal has run? lol, that's not real. you can invent tools, but learning to follow an animal? bullshit. total malarkey. it's all just guesswork. you can GUESS where the antelope went but that's the best you can do.
🙄
anyway, i don't know enough about human evolution to guess why we're shaped the way we are, and i'm not going to speculate on it today. but what i DO know is that i am willing to believe the G/wi and the !Xo when they say, hey, if you drink a lot of water and then chase a large ungulate through the hottest part of the day in the fucking Kalahari at a steady jog, it will probably overheat and collapse before you will. because one, i kinda figure they know what they're talking about, and two, it does actually make sense when you stop and think for thirty fucking seconds. sure, you need to be physically conditioned to run distances in extreme heat, and you need to be able to find your quarry again if you lose sight of it. but conditioning and tracking are both things you can learn, no matter how badly certain clowns wish it wasn't because it doesn't support their bias. 🙃
#persistence hunting#is not the only kind of hunting in our evolutionary history#but it does work#and has BEEN working for humans for a LONG FUCKING TIME#like i am super fucking sorry but you are not presenting me with anything even RESEMBLING a coherent argument!#is persistence hunting the reason we're shaped this way? i don't fucking know!#but i do know it works as a technique! jackass!#god. i'll probably turn off reblogs in the morning but I'm still too angry at the absolute goddamned stupidity#and the way people in the notes were like Oh this makes so much sense! This is my favorite informed rant on tumblr!#BITCH W H E R E#i have not read nearly as much on this as i'd like to but jesus#just from the holes in what they're saying#JUST from the holes#what they're saying is a steaming crock of shit#and! are they right about the gaping holes in the persistence hunting theory? i dunno! maybe!#but i can't trust anything they say! obviously!#ooooo you're not gonna run carrying an ostrich egg full of water ooo#no of course you aren't! you're going to drink the water first! and then run! because that's what you've been conditioned to do#BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THIS WORKS ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh#feel free to reblog for now at least#god#dal is a scream#i got to their shit about tracking being a totally ludicrous proposal and lost my damn mind
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Although there have been exceptions, the evolutionary model of man the hunter-warrior has colored most interpretations of Paleolithic art. Only in later twentieth-century excavations in eastern and western Europe and Siberia has the interpretation of both new and old finds gradually begun to change. Some of the new researchers were women, who noted the female genital imagery and also leaned toward more complex religious rather than the "hunting magic" explanations of Paleolithic art. And as more scholars were secular scientists rather than monks like Abbé Breuil (whose "moral" interpretations of religious practices colored so much of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Paleolithic research), some of the men who reexamined the cave paintings, figurines, and other Paleolithic finds now also began to question tenets once accepted by the scholarly establishment.
An interesting example of this questioning relates to the stick and line forms painted on the walls of Paleolithic caves and engraved in bone or stone objects. To many scholars, it seemed obvious that they depict weapons: arrows, barbs, spears, harpoons. But as Alexander Marshack writes in The Roots of Civilization, one of the first works to frontally challenge this standard interpretation, these line paintings and engravings could just as easily be plants, trees, branches, reeds, and leaves. Moreover, this new interpretation would account for what would otherwise be a remarkable absence of pictures of such vegetation among a people who, like contemporary gatherer-hunter peoples, must have relied heavily on vegetation for food.
In Paleolithic Cave Art, Peter Ucko and Andrée Rosenfeld had also wondered about the peculiar absence of vegetation in Paleolithic art. They further noted another curious incongruity. All other evidence showed that a particular kind of harpoon called biserial didnt appear until the late Paleolithic or Magdalenian age—even though scholars kept "finding" them in "sticks" thousands of years earlier in the wall paintings of prehistoric caves. Moreover, why would Paleolithic artists want to depict so many hunting failures? For if the sticks and lines were in fact weapons, the pictures had them chronically missing their targets.
To probe such mysteries, Marshack, who was not an archaeologist, hence not bound by earlier archeological conventions, thoroughly examined the engravings on a bone object that had been described as pictures of harpoons. Under a microscope he discovered that not only were the barbs of this supposed harpoon turned the wrong way but the points of the long shaft were also at the wrong end. But what did these engravings represent if they were not "wrong way" weapons?
As it turned out, the lines easily conformed to the proper angle of branches growing at the top of a long stem. In other words, these and other engravings conventionally described as "barbed signs" or "masculine objects" were probably nothing more than stylized representations of trees, branches, and plants.
-Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future
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Do you think it's fair to ask others, even strangers, to treat you with kindness and respect, or is that a bit presumptuous because other people don't owe you anything?
Oh, is this one of the qs off that list? Nice, those are some bangers! Thanks for the ask <3
I'm going to answer at length beneath the cut, but here's the short version:
Of course humans owe each other kindness and respect. Of course we owe each other humanity. In fact, humanity can't support itself without cooperation.
However, the difficulty is knowing:
-What is humanity (basic kindness and respect) vs taking on too much?
-What are healthy boundaries?
This trend of, "I don't owe anyone anything!" is really worrisome, man. I guarantee you that literally no one is an island- and I also guarantee that a large percentage of people who espouse this belief feel that others owe them basic kindness and respect, and likely more. But let me try to break all of this down; it's kind of a lot?
Note: I am a scientist, specifically a molecular biologist. I am not an expert in evolution/history/culture. I Googled a lot of stuff, but don't consider me an authority, lol! Also, I can only comment on American culture.
-Why humans owe one another humanity
I'm going way back on this one, fam. Humans have been evolving for... Apparently, at least 160,000 years (that's just modern homo sapiens, this number is far larger if you go back to hominids). Back then, we couldn't buy pre-made goods and services at the store; groups of humans survived by splitting tasks. Some hunted, some foraged, some made clothing, some cooked, some cared for the young and elderly and sick, etc. If humans didn't closely cooperate for the shared goal of group survival, they... well, they died. And the more individuals died, the less likely the group was to survive. This group survival arrangement went on for at least 160,000 years, remember.
The idea of suburbanization seems to have started in the 1940s-50s, at least in the states, along with the rise in the cultural importance of the nuclear family. The problems with spreading out and dividing large human groups (towns) into small ones (households) include:
-Isolation and loss of community
-Ingroup vs outgroup thinking (ie, fear of people beyond the town, or even the household)
-Physically removing people from resources and help, which is especially devastating for vulnerable populations (children, elders, disabled people, anyone who is othered in any way)
And probably a bunch of other things!
Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification, but suffice to say that the shift from community focus to household focus, at least in America, is a very recent and brief part of human evolutionary history. Thinking of our units as the household, rather than the town, seems to have led, in part, to antisocial behaviors that, unsurprisingly, make life more difficult for everyone.
If we don't treat others with kindness, then we can't be surprised when we are not given kindness. If we don't help others, then we can't be surprised when we find ourselves alone in our time of need. Have you ever seen those social media posts that say, "Modern adults have to do all the tasks alone that were once split among families and even towns?" Well, I'm not a sociologist, but yeah, it sure seems that way. We all somehow have to get to work, get our kids to daycare, take care of everyone's medical needs (with what money???), feed everyone, clean, do errands, and more, alone. It didn't used to be that way! There are reasons why we're all so damned tired and burnt out. Chief among them is that help is not at hand without a hefty price tag, because our trusted unit starts and ends at our own front door. And this isn't anyone's fault; American culture is set up this way.
Now, I also believe that we should help each other out of compassion, but even on a basic survival level... Yeah, we owe each other humanity. We suffer at the group and individual level when we don't offer others basic kindness and respect.
However, despite my strong stance on this, um... In practice, it's difficult.
-What is humanity (basic kindness and respect) vs taking on too much?
Oof, now we're at the hard part. I personally have struggled my whole life with being kind vs hurting myself to please others. At the risk of getting too real/personal, I am a cis woman, and I was explicitly raised to have no opinions/desires, to bow to the group, and to take care of everyone. In my mid twenties, I realized that I tensed whenever someone approached me, because I knew they likely wanted something from me. And why wouldn't they? I had unconsciously trained them that I would "happily" help with whatever they wanted. They didn't know about my resentment and perpetual exhaustion.
And the worst thing was probably being a source of emotional labor. Kindly listening can quickly escalate to being everyone's unpaid therapist, and that takes a serious toll.
I'm in my mid thirties now, and I was in therapy for years. I still don't know exactly when to prioritize others vs myself, and what is basic kindness vs extraordinary effort. Everyone probably has their own thresholds for this one, but "treat others how you want to be treated" sounds like a decent starting point?
But no one can help others with an empty cup, so learning to take care of ourselves is a must.
-What are healthy boundaries?
I am not a therapist, and I'm still learning this myself, so this is 100% opinion, but...
I think we owe everyone basic kindness, but those big favors... Well, you can't keep giving forever to someone who doesn't give back. That's not a village, right? That's a pit. If someone approaches you for help and you feel scared or tense instantly, that's a sign that something is wrong.
When I started learning and employing boundaries, I quickly became less popular, lmao! Some people get angry and upset when you start saying no, and may "drop you" as a friend or acquaintance. This is actually far better for your mental health in the long run. As a general rule, if you find yourself anxious about interacting with someone in particular, and especially about telling them no or something they won't want to hear... You likely need boundaries with that person.
A boundary is basically like... Teaching people how you want to be treated. I often see people mistake boundaries as telling other people what to do, but in reality, you can never control other people.
Let's say you have a friend who is chronically late.
Not a boundary: "You can't keep being late!"
Boundary: "If you are more than 15 minutes late, I will leave/start the activity without you."
Boundaries center on your behavior, which you control. Generally, a boundary is established after a problem is proven to be persistent, and you've already tried gently asking for respect.
I admit that, in my own journey, I've pivoted too hard away from being helpful and open. I'm searching for that happy medium of supporting others while prioritizing taking care of myself. But everyone deserves basic kindness and respect, and humans don't thrive while isolated and distrustful. All of this is complex, but please, don't forget to be kind to yourself and others.
We're hurtling through endless space on a blue marble together. Let's keep it real, babes.
Thanks for trusting me with such an important q <3
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Hello I saw you reblog a post from me and add into the tags some very interesting info about species in Australia being adapted specifically for wildfires. Do you have any more fun facts for me to read about this subject? Ive never heard of it before and thoroughly enjoyed reading your tags. Tysm and have a great night/day!
Hi! Yes I do!
So a fire regime is the pattern, frequency, seasonality, and intensity of fire disturbance in a particular ecosystem over long periods of time. A whole lot of places in Australia are ecosystems that've adapted to exist in a fire regime, and the timing between fires tends to be fairly short (compared to a lot of other countries/bioregions). So a lot of species- mostly plants- have become really specialised because of this.
There's a lot of ways that plant species have adapted to frequent fires (many need fire in order to reproduce!). This includes extreme heat releasing seeds (e.g., heating up sap until the seedpod explodes and sends seeds everywhere), plants that resprout quickly after leaves have been scorched off, smoke and heat breaking through seed dormancy by sending the right temperature/chemical signals, etc.
There's also a bunch of things that aren't adaptations but are ways fire can help certain species! The ashbed is really rich in nutrients, and with much of the undergrowth burned away there's a lot more sunlight, improved windflow, decreased herbivore activity- all things that promote establishment of pioneer species, which are first-in hardy species that settle in after a big disturbance, AND help those seeds released by/after the fire to get going. This changes the environment, and eventually, these pioneer species get out-competed by other species that take a big longer to get established and tend to have different traits. (kind of goes pioneer -> building -> mature -> degenerate or disturbance -> back to pioneer! it's a whole cycle).
As the plant species change, the environment changes, and the animal species change as well! If you look at small mammal succession after fire, you'll see that different mammals are present at different times after a fire as vegetation (and other factors) change.
Basically, a bit of burning in Australia leads to maximum diversity with a variety of successional stages. And this means higher recovery potential and resilience in the face of other potential disasters!
And of course there are animals that have adapted to fire in interesting ways, like fire hawks. These are birds like the Black Kite, Whistling Kite, and Brown Falcon and they work both solo AND together to spread fires! They do it by picking up burning sticks and dropping them in other places. The reason is because it's how they hunt- but it plays an important role in the ecosystem. Aboriginal Australians have plenty of stories and knowledge about this and take it into account in their care of the land- but until recently most non-Aboriginal people involved in land management were super skeptical about it so it wasn't factored into any planning or policy.
Of course climate change is absolutely fucking all of this and turning all our fires into devastating megafires which are definitely NOT good for the ecosystem so....
Um anyway sorry I wrote so much, hope the fun facts interested you!
Some links with further info/explained better:
Trying to manage fires and recreate healthy fire regimes
Fire and seed germination
If you happen to want to read an old but very important academic book on the subject, which I have only skimmed
Open-access article on fire as an ecological process
Evolutionary history of fire-stimulated traits in plants
I highly recommend doing some research on the topic (for fun) because it's super interesting, especially how fire has driven evolution of Australian species!
P.S. hope you don't mind me posting this publicly, but thought I'd share in case anyone else was also interested :)
#fire ecology is fascinating#I thought I had another resource abt fire-driven evolution of australian species but i couldn't find it#oh well#not gonna talk abt how climate change is affecting all this cuz it just makes me sad
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Prologue- Before Set
The chilled air reminded me of them. How it was filled with pure nostalgia of camping, walks, and drive-ins. Growing up in a small town like Mystique didn’t offer much. But I met both of my best friends there. And since then… we became the trinity of inseparable destiny.
That was 9 years ago.
I received a letter from one of them. He invited me to a Paramore concert from their reunion tour. I was so busy job hunting, I didn’t even know they got back together. They were our favorite band growing up.
It’s been a long time since we all were together. I was at the Four Seasons hotel near Madison Square Garden. Back when we all grew up together, I was happy. I felt proud to have known them at a young age. They were fearless. It only made me want to be ….just as shameless.
After graduation from the great Mystique High School, Home of the Boars. We went our separate ways. I relocated to New York and studied at Columbia. I wanted to go into Art History. And they had dreams they wanted to chase. We ended up separating from each other a little under a decade.
Back in grade school, we learned a lot from each other. I wondered… What's changed ? Who stayed the same ?
I only wrote letters to one of them. I haven’t heard anything from the other. It’s like he faded into the background with no trace, whatsoever. Maybe he just wanted a clean slate from the overwhelming fame of being a prodigy athlete to Mystique. Just 20 miles outside of Milwaukee, Mystique was a town that was ran by them. Two overly ambitious athletes got all the praise from our quiet little town. But they won games. Brought back trophies. Almost went to the championship. But we didn't go because our rivals had a better season.
Back then, I thought I could never entertain the idea of falling in love with them. I did love them. But it was strictly platonic. Though a lot of our fellow classmates thought otherwise. They were seen as my brothers. I was an only child so it was fitting. They’ve only seen me as their youngest sister. They protected me. I was never bullied.
They ran most of the popular hangouts. Rosie’s. The Mystique Drive-In. And so on. No kid could ever cross them. They weren’t brothers, though everyone thought they were. They just shared the same age and same birthday. I guess that’s why no one could ever tell them apart. They were smart, but most of all kind. Different from the guys I ever dated. I knew no one would ever want to meet them, personally. Their intimidation was powerful. I talked about them, and it was a threat. Like every guy handled envy a little differently. I tried to tell them, there was nothing ever to be envious about. It never rang out. I guess my lips spoke their names too much. They tried to do everything to tune them out. It was then that I accepted, maybe I would fall for one of them. It was just all a matter of when. No more doubts.
Now, I’m looking off into the distance in front of a clear, blackened view of an open road. It leads to the last concert I would see both of them at. And I was riddled with countless questions of my heart having to split into. I didn’t feel as close to them as I did back then, I was scared shitless of what opinions waved in. How would they view me now? Would they see me as just as mature? Would they have an evolutionary perspective of the woman I am ? Am I appealing? Oh, and most of all, would they honor my feelings too? It was still too early to tell which one gripped my heart more, however, I knew I would have an answer, seeing them together.
I put my tea down on the crystallized glass table. I gathered up my wool jacket and headed out. The black concrete road was were I was going to face them. I fished out my gloves in my pocket and the hand warmers seeped through the seams. It was the transition of autumn becoming winter. The awful chill in the New York air nipped every breath and turned it into a spoken image. I didn’t care how cold my lips were about to feel, I wasn’t turning down this invitation. I desperately needed to see them. For a while, they were home. I guess I just missed how comfortable I felt around them.
I look up from the concrete and see him at once. He was walking ahead of me, a bit lonely. His shoulders hung low and his black wool coat wrapped around his lengthy torso. He stood about 6’5” tall. Even slightly hunched over, I noticed he had a better chance of reaching heaven than I did. I only stood at 5’6”.
He wore tightly darker jeans and the low Nike 1s in orange and blue traces. It was the only thing that brightened against the darkened concrete. I could always tell him from the other.
The nickname I gave him was so long ago. It was a ringing joke from him always losing races the three of us competed in. And so, we settled with Speedy. It was a double entendre. There was nothing speedy about him, but he still accepted it.
The way he drove his 1990 Dodge Challenger, was a different story. When he finally got behind the wheel, his car made up for the lack of full speed he couldn’t carry.
“Speedy,” I called for him. He came to a shrieking halt before he whipped around. Best greeting yet. He looked like he just saw a ghost.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Speedy said as we stopped under the flickering streetlight. The scar was still there, right under his eye. His freckles were spread out from across his nose and landed on each side of his cheeks. His eyes shined the brightest of amber. I only had a minute to take him all in, but my heart knew. I knew Speedy more than myself. I knew all his shortcomings and with each breath, memories flooded between the both of us like a flowing creek. Walks by the rivers. Building tree fortresses in the middle of the woods. Late night camp session readings that were often crashed by his counterpart. The other him. Pepper. A name we didn’t give, but his family did. But he was never bothered with us taking it on. And to them- I was Moggie. Some days-Mog. Short for Mahogany.
“You always had perfect timing huh, Mog?” Speedy looks toward me, hopeful. I felt a warm feeling in my chest.
I smiled up at him. “I always knew where to be.”
“That’s for damn sure.” Speedy rushes me and lifts me in the air. “God, you barely grew Mog. But I guess your height was never your best factor.”
I scoffed, hitting his shoulder to put me down. “Like speed was ever yours?”
“Ouch,” Speedy replied after we continued our walk. “Still witty as a bat, man… I’ve missed that.” Then, he paused in the cold air. “I’ve… missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.” I responded.
We made it towards the checkpoint and we met Pepper right near the front. Pepper was shorter than Speedy by a few inches. But it didn’t stop him from having the biggest ego between them. Tonight, he looked as I remembered him. Dreamless eyes that were multicolored. The left side was brown. The right side was blue. Freckles were brown and gathered across his nose. His hair was shorter now and faded out to fine coiled lines. He wore a dark brown jacket and a white shirt underneath. His pants were black and skinny. Combat boots he wore were very spiky. Typical rockstar look for someone who is the most witty.
“Moggie… wow. Still a sight for sore eyes.”
Pepper stretched his arms toward me and I piled right in. His embrace was warm enough. His arms wrapped around me tightly like a protective shield. I didn’t think he would ring so much affection in our returned encounter. I was taken aback, but then again Pep always did things to surprise me. That fact wasn’t too surprising.
“Hey, Pepper. How you been?” I asked after we broke apart.
“Alright. Did Speed mention we work together now?” He replied, then put the yellow VIP lanyard around my neck. I touched it to make sure it was a solid hold.
“No, but I assumed from the invitation. So how is it? Working with artists?”
“Oh man,” Speedy joined Pepper in a conjoined laugh. They both still laugh obnoxiously. Feeling it with their entire body. Slapping each other’s shoulders and arms. “It’s been a hellish ride. But the work is worth the scores.” He held up their seasonal VIP passes laminated from the company.
“Imma go ahead and make sure the band is ready,” Pepper said. Then his eyes lowered toward me before he tilted his head. “You should come backstage… once it’s all over.”
“Great,” I smiled.
Pepper exits and isn’t planning on looking back. He was a head-charged man. And feelings never wore on his sleeve. He couldn’t even bring up the fact when he last saw me. It wasn’t the best day. We had gotten into a petty fight over where I was going to college. He wanted me to go to UCLA for him and Speedy. I just couldn’t. New York already accepted me in their arts program and there was no way I would change to accommodate. I couldn’t follow them. It hurt like hell. But I think the distance did us some good. I know who I am as an artist. And time apart showed me how successful they became without me. They didn’t need me… hovering.
“Should we head over to the bar?” Speedy suggested, snapping me out of my thoughts.
I looked up at his whimsical expression. I matched it. “Sure.”
As we stood waiting for our orders, Speedy broke the silence first. “You know, I don’t think Pep ever got over it,” he started, before leaning against the counter, his back toward the bar. “You not coming with us ... broke up the band.”
I swigged down the beer that just came in front of me before answering, “I know.”
Speedy’s eyebrows collided. “Do you hate him now?”
He had to be referring to the 9-year silence Pepper put me through. Then just now, hugged me like no time had passed. Hate… wasn’t a term for what I was feeling. I felt defeated. I don’t think our relationship could ever go back to normal, ever again.
“No… I just wished he understood,” I sipped my beer again. “That’s all.”
“I was the one who had to convince him to let you come here… before he moved abroad,” Speedy explained. “He was going to leave without a trace. It ain’t right.”
“He has a right to choose what he wants,” I told him. “I’m not the little girl that is going to lick his wounds every time he can’t understand something.” I gulped the last cold one and slapped it on the counter.
“Still Mog- you need an honest convo with him. Air shit out before you know-,” Speedy tried to convince me. I appreciate how big his heart was and how much he cared about the both of us. He never liked when arguments broke out between me and Pepper. And this … was a long one. So much resentment had built a wall between us. Where could I even begin tearing a brick out? Pepper’s mask would fall, eventually. And it’ll be me and Speedy that would have to pick up the pieces, again. I was tired of it.
I said this out of spite, “I’m not his mom.”
Speedy raised his voice towards me. He matched how angry I was. “I never said you were Mahogany, but damn! When is this shit ever going to end?” He threw a few bills at the bar and stormed off.
I was wrong. I knew Pepper’s mom passed away from cancer not too long ago. In that moment, I became a shitty friend. But, it couldn’t be helped. He always brought it out of me. He always picked at my shadowy side. He knew what buttons to light my fuse. Speedy’s words rang me as I moved lifelessly through the raging crowd forming before the band played. I thought about just getting it over with and heading backstage. But I needed to cool off. My rising anger didn’t match his carefree attitude. It never has. Speedy ended up finding me again and stood by me, arms folded. Not making any room for eye contact.
I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry Speed. That was really shitty.”
“Yeah, it was,” he responded, still looking forward. “You knew the death of his mom just happened.”
“I know,” I turned to him, pleading for him to look at me. “I know, I just- and it’s not an excuse- but I’m just tired of him using me as an emotionless punching bag.”
His amber eyes widened as his head turned to me, “That’s not what he is thinking at all, Mog. He was-,” Then he caught himself, like he was about to reveal something he shouldn’t.
“What is it?” I edged him on.
He shook his head violently and gripped my shoulder. “You really need to talk to him.”
I huffed, and now my arms were folded. I knew by the end of the concert that this would be one of the hardest conversations I ever had to face with him. I didn’t want to think about any of it now. Not when our favorite band was about to take the stage.
“Later,” I finally said. “Looks like Paramore is about to go on.”
#the last concert#love story#paramore#childhood friends#growing up#pepper#moggie#speedy#polyamory#lgbtq#Spotify
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The Middle Glaciocene: 115 million years post-establishment
Might Makes Right: Harmster Society and Culture
Having attained an advanced degree of self-awareness and cognitive complexity, the carnivorous podothere known as the harmster has, over time, developed a set of social behaviors, a form of social hierarchy, and each group displaying markedly-different behaviors learned and acquired over time-- the beginnings of society and culture.
These arose from the coordinated hunting strategies from their ancestors, the riplets, which relied on various cooperative methods to corral their prey, such as surrounding them with superior numbers to confuse and disorient them, driving them towards constructed traps such as pitfalls, and at times even igniting wildfires on purpose and pouncing on their victims as they try to flee the flames. However, this cooperative behavior is merely a pragmatic one born out of need: harmsters display little if any affection or loyalty toward their own kind, and willingly and callously sacrifice their fellows for their benefit and for the larger group. This likely stems a side-effect of their highly-fecund reproduction, producing up to four litters a year of up to ten offspring: losses are easily replaced each breeding season, and thus harmsters show very little importance on the individual, and view them in a utilitarian manner, only being valued for how useful they are to the group-- to the point that their sick, injured and weak are frequently cannibalized if they become a liability and are decided to be more useful as a source of food.
Harmster society is one fraught with brutality and violence, with their form of social hierarchy being in essence a dictatorship: individual packs are led by the strongest and most aggressive breeding pair, who maintains their hold of power over their fellows through fear and intimidation. Lower-ranking members of the pack frequently learn from painful experience that the alpha pair's will is absolute, and comply out of fear of punishment, but lack any sort of genuine loyalty to their leaders-- caught in compromising situations subordinates will willingly abandon their alphas to save their own skins, and even at times some brave individuals are known to stage a coup and attempt to usurp their leaders: a risky prospect, given that while insubordination is punished with aggression, outright challenges outright warrant a gladiatorial duel to the death between prospective leaders to determine who will become their leader.
Primarily nomadic in search for new prey, harmsters have not, at least yet, made permanent settlements and thus have not learned advancements such as architecture and agriculture. Their technology is currently still limited to weaponry comprised of wooden branches or sometimes animal bones that have been gnawed into shape to serve as a spear or polearm, weapons with a longer reach to compensate for their shorter arms. However, the tundra species is the most advanced of these, able to construct more complex tools, such as using hardened plant sap as glue and grass stems as twine to attach sharpened stones, or even the claws and teeth of slain rival predators, to create superior tools, one that has enabled the tundra species to slowly migrate outward, actively and aggressively expanding to conquer new land, acquire new resources, and simply engage in the thrill of combat and war, having a nigh-inherent desire for cruelty and violence.
This degree of callousness towards their fellows extends even to their own young, which are born fully-furred and open eyed and are tended to by their mother for at least two weeks. However, once they become relatively independent at about a month old she drops all her care and protectiveness and begins to treat them like any subordinate member in the pack, keeping them in line through fear and intimidation. At times she may even punish especially troublesome youngaters by viciously mauling them in full view of their siblings and peers to make examples of them, examples that the fast-learning juveniles, picking up behaviors by imitation and learning through painful experience what is and is not acceptable behavior, quickly heed and thus learn not to challenge their superiors or suffer dire consequences.
From a human perspective the harmsters may seem outright evil-- however, shaped by their ecological niche, evolutionary history and their experiences with the environment, their psychology is radically different from ours: intelligent as they are, their concepts of "right" and "wrong" are geared toward whatever is beneficial to their survival, or what hinders them in surviving: concepts such as altruism and amicable sharing are downright alien, even insane and harmful, ideas to them, and caring for one another and of the ailing and elderly, or showing mercy to their prey is seen as a wasteful expenditure of resources and energy, as they breed quickly enough to recuperate those that die, and killing prey animals humanely is not even considered as they prey would soon be dead anyway. In fact, they are subconsciously predisposed to outright sadism and cruelty, as the distressed cries of dying prey meant food, and thus survival, and this has manifested in their behavior as a joyful, ecstatic response to the act of killing, not only as a means of acquiring food or disposing of rivals, but for the genuine thrill of violence itself.
Shaped by their environment and favored by natural selection toward higher fecundity, increased intelligence, and utter ferocity, the end result is a creature unimaginably geared toward survival at the expense of others, a genuine capacity to understand other beings suffer and yet be psychologically predisposed to take joy in inflicting it, and a lust for war that provides them with a sense of emotional fulfillment. These traits, added with their ability to augment their own defenses with weapons of their own creation and their willingness to turn on their own kind if it benefits them, bring about a truly fearsome force of destruction all the more unnerving in its degree of self-awareness.
Indeed, easily the most frightening aspect of the harmsters is their capacity to observe the natural world's phenomena and create their own conclusions on the reality they experience. Seeing the inherent amorality of nature's ways, and observing through deduction by the behaviors and structures of different species, the harmsters observed that all living organisms were designed for the consumption of other living things: carnivores most obviously are designed by nature to be killers, but even herbivores were built to consume plants, which the harmsters have come to know are also living, and even plants themselves which shade and starve each other from sun, drain each other, strangle or poison one another. From this experience the harmsters would come to a grim conclusion: that all life exists for the sole purpose of destroying other life, that every living thing is defined by what it kills, that to destroy one another was the essence of the natural order of things-- a conclusion that would shape their very cultures and beliefs as their society advances further.
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Common Myths
An excerpt from Memoirs of a Flesh Eater, never published.
Next Excerpt
Everyone knows about ghouls, right? Everyone grows up hearing scary stories about us, from parents telling you to brush your teeth or the ghouls will get you, to your friends on the playground lying about how they saw one with their own two eyes and it was so scary no really even scarier than that, to - eventually, as you get older - news stories about mass murders and human slaughterhouses and graverobbers digging up your grandma and biting open her bones to get what’s left of her marrow.
The stories are terrifying and vivid and mostly sensationalist garbage. It’s kind of a shame, honestly - a lot of them are really well-written. With the best ones, it’s hard to tell sometimes if they were written by a human with an overactive imagination, or by one of us.
Weird, right? You wouldn’t think we’d want to spread stories that make us look even worse to the rest of humanity than they already think we are, but as far as I can tell, we’ve been making up horror stories about ourselves forever. Our records are spotty at best - oral histories don’t always get passed on before the person carrying them dies, and there are none of us who can trace our family line more than a few generations before it gets too muddled by death to trace any farther. And as for physical records, those are even more vulnerable. Those can’t just be lost - they can be stolen. Used against us. As far as I know, there has never been a written record of ghoul lore circulated. Not until this one.
{Editing Note: Too dramatic? Maybe. But I like it. I’ll think about it}
That being said, though, I think we used to tell these stories to enhance our reputation. To keep humans too scared of us to mount a serious resistance when we came hunting. If they believed we couldn’t be beaten, they wouldn’t try as hard. I think we lived more openly back then, back before automatic firearms and high explosives and kevlar body armor and chemical weapons leveled the playing field. Back when those of us who chose to could hunt humans with near impunity.
{Editing Note: I don’t like ending the paragraph there. We weren’t all killers then any more than we are now. But we did kill. We did hunt them, and I think we hunted them more. I need to make them understand us, but how can they understand us if telling them the truth just makes them hate us more? It needs another pass}
Even then, there were a lot more humans than there were of us. That’s basic ecology - there have to be more prey than predators {Editing Note: I need to find a better way to say that. There are gentle ways to be truthful, and there are hard ways. Do better}. Working together, humans could threaten our existence even then. The stories helped, I think. If they were too scared to work together against us, then we had a better chance of surviving another day, another month, another year.
Times are different now. Fear is no longer a tool that helps us. Human fear threatens our existence. But we still make up these stories and spread them. I spread my share on the elementary school playground. Whenever any of the other kids told a scary ghoul story, I could always come up with a better one. Scarlet’s were even better. He’s always been able to make words dance.
He was my best friend growing up. We were the only ghouls in our grade, maybe even in the whole school. I couldn’t tell for sure - we didn’t see the other grades as much. But he was enough. He was someone I could be myself with. I didn’t have to pick all of my words carefully, or make sure that the thing I was telling him was a normal human experience. It was such a relief to truly be me, even if it was only outside of school hours and well out of earshot of anyone nearby. It didn’t hurt that we actually had some common interests, you know, like friends do. We used to play imagination games together. He’d conjure dragons into existence with his words, and he’d help me use mine to slay them.
{Editing Note: My academic advisor would rip this into shreds, but this isn’t a research paper. This can’t be dry. This needs to be full of heart, not just information. They need to understand. But I might have gone overboard a little}
Scarlet’s an aspiring author now. I’ve read a few of his short stories. Horror and romance, always hand in hand {Editing Note: That’s too identifying. Make that less specific}. I asked him why he thought we still told these stories about ourselves, why we still want them to think of us as more terrifying than we are, why we make ourselves seem larger than life.
He told me that it’s because they hate us. Because there is nothing we can do to make them stop hating us, so why not give them something more worthy of their hatred? Why not give them a comically exaggerated monster - one that bears only a passing resemblance to us - to hate instead? This way, we can laugh at them for their foolishness amongst ourselves, laugh at how little they understand us. If what they hated was closer to our truth, we wouldn’t find it as easy to laugh at. It isn’t always easy as it is, to look at the world around you and know that 98% of the people you see burn with hatred at the mere thought of you, and to meet that with laughter. How much harder would it be if what they hated was who we really were, complex and vulnerable and as human as them? How would we ever endure it if they beheld us for all that we were and still called for our annihilation?
Scarlet’s always been good at giving words to truth. I hope that I’m as good at using words to make a new truth. I want to make him wrong. So here is some truth for you. Here is the truth beneath the myths about who and what we are.
Ghouls eat people
This is true, at least in part; we eat human flesh. That isn’t always the same thing. I’ll go deeper on our dietary needs later, but for now, know that we don’t have to kill to eat, most of the time. I’ve never killed a human, and I hope I neve have to.
Ghouls like hurting people
Not as a rule. There are ghouls that like hurting people. There are humans who like hurting people too.
Ghouls don’t feel pain and can heal from anything
Ghouls have two foot long prehensile tongues
I can tell you from experience that this one isn’t true. We feel pain as acutely as any human, I think, though it does take a little more to hurt us. Our skin and bones are tougher, harder to break. Our muscles are a little stronger too. Not enough that the weakest ghoul is stronger than the strongest human, but it’s not an insignificant advantage. I was always one of the best performers in PE, and I’ve never worked out in my life. So we’re harder to injure, and our strength lets us push through some injuries that would incapacitate a human. But we don’t heal any faster than humans do, or any cleaner.
Contrary to what the politicians said when they passed the Chemical Exterminants Act.
… I think this one started with a human fetish artist, actually. No. We do not.
Ghouls have two sets of teeth
This one is true, although most of the time you’d never know unless you did an autopsy on one of us. Fetish artists, go nuts with this one.
{Editing Note: Do I really want to directly address ghoul fetishists in the book that will redefine the relationship between ghouls and humans that has existed for as long as anyone can remember? Maybe. At least they have a vested interest in keeping us from being wiped out?}
Ghouls can’t eat human food
False, at least in the most literal sense. If we physically couldn’t eat human food, we’d have all been found and killed a long time ago. We can consume things other than human flesh, but they don’t do anything for us nutritionally, and they don’t taste good to us either. That doesn’t always mean they taste bad, though. If we eat too much it will make us sick, however, and some things will make us sicker faster, or make us more sick than other things. Some of us even have allergies. For example, grapes give me hives. A single chicken nugget will trap me in the bathroom for the rest of the day. French fries, on the other hand... I almost manage to enjoy french fries sometimes.
Ghouls have better senses than humans do
This one’s a mixed bag. Our sense of smell is definitely better. That’s how Scarlet and I found each other; we could smell the flesh on each other’s breath. But as for the rest… Some people say our hearing is worse, but I’ve never come across anything conclusive one way or the other. I might just have bad ears. Our sense of taste is definitely different, but I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse. We’re just adapted to taste different things. I’m pretty positive our sense of touch is the same. As for sight, our night vision is better, but only sometimes. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Ghouls true forms are terrifying and inhuman
Definitely false, but there’s a tiny kernel of truth a little to the left of this one. Most of the time, we look indistinguishable from humans, which is definitely an evolutionary advantage. But we have three traits that help us when we hunt. They mark us as distinctly inhuman, so it’s a good thing that they only come out when we want them to. First, our nails are a lot harder than human nails, and we can cause them to extend, like claws. They can rip through flesh and most cloth without breaking. Second, that second set of teeth I mentioned earlier. They’re sharper, better for tearing flesh. Our mouths have to distend a bit to make room for them, so that’s a dead giveaway when they’re out. Third, our eyes. We can dilate them a lot wider than humans, and we can control their dilation consciously. That’s what I meant about better night vision.
Last one.
Ghouls are monsters. They must be exterminated
Keep reading. Maybe by the end of this book, you can answer that for me.
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Humans: Post-Apocalyptic Monsters, Alien Invaders, Invasive Species
Dinosaurs reigned as the dominant creatures on Earth for around 170 million years. In the time that they lived there was a balance between different species, between predator and prey. There was a natural progression of adaptation and evolution. Every species had its niche and its own special qualities, characteristics, and adaptations that made it capable of surviving. No one species was astronomically advanced or had a huge advantage over every single other species it lived with. During the time that dinosaurs lived, they didn't destroy the planet. They lived on Earth, predators killed when they needed to eat, and natural resources were not heavily depleted. The only destruction was from natural causes - droughts, volcanic activity, changes in climate, shifting of continents, and natural extinction events. After each extinction event within the Mesozoic era, dinosaurs remained the dominant creatures and kept coming back, more advanced and better evolved than before. Individual species were averaging a few million years on Earth before going extinct or evolving into a different species.
Humans have only lived on Earth for about 200,00 years. Our earliest ancestors only lived a few million years ago. Civilization and industrialization have existed for about 6,000 years and 200 years respectively. In the 200,000 years that humans have existed, we have nearly destroyed everything else on planet Earth. We have caused the complete extinction of nearly 700 species, destroyed entire ecosystems, and have brought Earth dangerously close to irreversible environmental damage. No other singular species in existence has created this kind of destruction and devastation. No other species has been able to. No other species has ever had this much of an advantage over every other living thing on the planet. Humans are so much more intelligent, and so much more advanced than every other living thing on planet Earth, that everything else on this planet is at the mercy of our species. Humans can cause the total extinction of probably any species we want to and completely destroy any habitat or environment if we wanted to. This is not how nature is supposed to work, and it's never worked like this before on Earth. Not only is the amount of damage done by humans astonishing, but the speed at which we have caused this damage is as well. Civilization has only existed for 6,000 years and industrialization has only existed for around 200 years. The fact that the majority of environmental damage done by humans has occurred in the past 200 years is alarming, and the fact that the most destruction of planet Earth has occurred during the past 200 years out of the 3.7 billion years that life has existed on Earth is almost unfathomable. No other single species in natural history has ever caused this level of destruction. No other single species has ever even come close to the level of destruction humans bring to this planet.
The way humans are impacting the planet resembles the way an invasive species can impact an environment. Invasive species with more advanced adaptational advantages wreak havoc on habitats that are not equipped to deal with such species. These invasive species have real advantages and cause real damage. If humans are acting like an invasive species, then we had to have come from somewhere else.
Without humans, this kind of total environmental and climate destruction wouldn't be happening. No other species is destroying and uprooting entire forests to create farms and homes, no other species is hunting other animals for sport, nearly to extinction in some cases, no other species is depleting natural resources, scarring the land, or polluting the air, land, and water with toxic fumes and chemicals. Without humans, all the other species on Earth would be living with a natural balance, adapting and evolving at a natural pace, going extinct only when natural disasters and natural extinction events occur.
We always think about alien invaders coming to Earth and destroying our planet, causing our species to fight for survival or go extinct. We always imagine a mass extinction event or apocalypse that will either end our species or bring us to the brink of extinction. We imagine what kind of post-apocalyptic monsters or futuristic beings will inhabit or overtake our planet. We always think it will be in the future, because we never consider that it's already happened. We always imagine something different, something else out there, because we never considered that it's us.
Humans are the post-apocalyptic creatures on Earth. Humans are the alien invaders on this planet. Humans are the destructive invasive species on Earth.
No other species on Earth thinks about apocalypses or alien invasions. No other species thinks about mass extinction events and post-apocalyptic monsters, or alien invaders. Perhaps this way of thinking is some form of evolutionary memory, some reminder. Maybe we think, well, it's been done before, it could happen again. Maybe we think, we did this to this planet, somebody else could do the same thing to us. Maybe our fascination with aliens and worries of apocalypses comes as an instinctual alertness, an evolutionary memory, a warning for us to stay vigil, stay aware because we already know that it's possible.
#Humans: Post-Apocalyptic Monsters Alien Invaders Invasive Species#humans: unnatural to earth#humans are unnatural to earth#mine#my post#themoonaliensandreligion
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The Top Ten Dinosaur Discoveries of 2020
https://sciencespies.com/nature/the-top-ten-dinosaur-discoveries-of-2020/
The Top Ten Dinosaur Discoveries of 2020
There’s never been a better time to be a dinosaur fan. Even in a year where fossil explorations have been curtailed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, paleontologists have dug deep to describe dozens of new species and unlock new secrets about our favorite prehistoric creatures. The discoveries continue even now, with the fluffy “maned” dinosaur Ubirajara named just last weekend. As we anticipate what the fossil record might reveal in 2021, here’s a look back at ten dinosaur discoveries that surprised and enthralled dinosaur enthusiasts this year.
Tiny Fuzzball Shows How Dinosaurs Started Small
Life restoration of Kongonaphon kely, a newly described reptile near the ancestry of dinosaurs and pterosaurs
(Illustration by Alex Boersma)
Some of the key traits that allowed dinosaurs to be such an evolutionary success story—from fuzzy feathers to warm-running metabolisms—may have first evolved in their tiny ancestors. This year experts reported the discovery of a tiny reptile from the Triassic of Madagascar they named Kongonaphon. While not a dinosaur itself, this animal was close to the ancestors of both dinosaurs and related flying reptiles called pterosaurs. This small, insect-eating reptile likely moved nimbly to catch lunch and may have sported a coat of fuzz to help regulate its body temperature. This hints that some key dinosaur traits, such as warm-bloodedness and insulating body coverings, evolved early in their history and were elaborated upon as dinosaurs eventually diversified into all sorts of shapes and sizes.
Winner By a Tail
Spinosaurus used its tail to swim
(Gustavo Monroy-Becerril CC BY-SA 4.0 )
Paleontologists have long suspected that the giant carnivore Spinosaurus spent much of its time around the water. Fossils reported in 2015 went a step further—flat feet and dense bones indicated that Spinosaurus spent a great deal of time in the water and is the first known semi-aquatic dinosaur. This year, a tail added another clue. The appendage, found at the same quarry as the 2015 skeleton, is long and deep. The tail is more like a paddle than what’s seen in other carnivorous dinosaurs and would have been suited to swishy, side-to-side motions that propelled Spinosaurus through the water. The fact that the tail goes with the other fossils found at the site also confirm that they all go to one individual, underscoring the fact that Spinosaurus had strange body proportions unlike any other dinosaur yet discovered.
Dinosaurs Suffered From Cancer, Too
A Centrosaurus skeleton in the mass dearth assemblage at the Royal Tyrrell Museum
(Riley Black)
Dinosaurs are often celebrated for being big, fierce and tough. The truth, however, is that they suffered from many of the same injuries and maladies that humans do. A study published this year in The Lancet reported on the first well-documented case of malignant bone cancer in a non-avian dinosaur. The animal, a horned dinosaur known to experts as Centrosaurus, probably coped with declining health before its eventual death in a coastal flood that caught its herd off-guard.
Dinosaurs Weren’t in Decline When the Asteroid Hit
A Tyrannosaurus rex holotype at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History
(ScottRobertAnselmo CC BY-SA 3.0)
If dinosaurs “ruled the Earth” for millions of years, why were they hit so hard by the mass extinction of 66 million years ago? Paleontologists have been puzzling over this question for decades, and, some have suggested, dinosaurs might have already been dying back by time the asteroid struck. But an increasing amount of evidence contracts that view, including a study published this year in Royal Society Open Science. The researchers looked at different evolutionary trees for what dinosaurs were around during the end of the Cretaceous to track whether dinosaurs were dying out, thriving or staying the same. After sifting through the data, the paleontologists didn’t find any sign that dinosaurs were declining before the asteroid strike. In fact, dinosaurs seemed perfectly capable of evolving new species. If the asteroid had missed, the Age of Dinosaurs would have continued for a very long time.
Taking a Long Swim
Researchers found the remains of a duckbilled dinosaur in Morocco.
(Raul Martin)
Sometimes dinosaurs show up where we don’t expect them. While paleontologists have found numerous fossils of duckbilled dinosaurs at spots around the world—from North America to Antarctica—no one had ever found one in Africa. That changed this year. In a Cretaceous Research study, paleontologists described a new species of hadrosaur found in Morocco. Named Ajnabia, the dinosaur lived at the end of the Cretaceous during a time when Africa was separated from other continents by deep water channels. Swimming would have been the only way for the dinosaur to reach prehistoric Africa from Europe or Asia, reinforcing the idea that exceptional events can help species move between distant continents.
Baby Titans Had Tiny Horns
A titanosaur embryo was discovered perfectly preserved inside its egg.
(University of Manchester)
Baby dinosaurs are exceptionally rare. We know far more about the adults of most species than how they started life. And when we do find those babies, they often hold surprises. An embryo of a long-necked dinosaur called a titanosaur reported in Current Biology drew attention this year for a strange, rhino-like horn jutting from its face. No such structure has been found in adult titanosaurs, and so it seems the horn is a kind of a temporary “egg tooth” that the dinosaur would have used to crack out of its shell.
Were Dinosaur Eggs Soft?
Protoceratops laid leathery eggs.
(AntoninJury CC BY-SA 4.0)
Think of a dinosaur egg and you’re likely to envision something out of Jurassic Park—a hard-shelled capsule the baby dinosaur has to kick or push its way out of. But research published this year in Nature proposes that many dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs. Under close examination, the eggs of the dinosaurs Protoceratops and Mussaurus turned out to be more like the leathery eggs of turtles than the thick, hard-shelled eggs known from other dinosaurs. This may indicate that dinosaur eggs started off soft and only later evolved to be hard-shelled in some groups. The findings may often indicate why eggs have been so hard to find for many dinosaur species, as softer eggs would decay more readily than hard-shelled ones.
Enter the Wonderchicken
Artist’s reconstruction of the world’s oldest modern bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis, in its original environment
(Phillip Krzeminski)
Not all this year’s big dinosaur discoveries had to do with non-avian dinosaurs. A fossil dubbed the “wonderchicken” in Nature has helped paleontologists understand how modern birds took off during the Age of Dinosaurs. While birds go back to about 150 million years ago, the wonderchicken—or Asteriornis—lived about 67 million years ago and is the oldest known representative of what biologists think of as modern birds. The fossil, which includes a skull, has some anatomical similarities to chickens and ducks. These findings indicate that modern birds started to evolve and proliferate prior to the mass extinction that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. If such beaked, seed-eating birds had not evolved, dinosaurs might have been entirely wiped out instead of leaving birds behind.
The Hunt for Dino DNA
Hypacrosaurus was a 70 million-year-old hadrosaur.
(Riley Black)
Will DNA from the likes of Tyrannosaurus ever be found? The consensus has been “No,” as DNA decays too fast after death to survive millions and millions of years. But in a study published in National Science Review this year, researchers have proposed that they’ve found chemical signatures consistent with DNA in the bones of a 70 million-year-old hadrosaur called Hypacrosaurus. The results have yet to be expanded upon or verified, but the idea that even degraded DNA from non-avian dinosaurs might survive is tantalizing for all such a discovery might teach us about prehistoric life.
Polar Dinosaurs Remained Year Round
A fossil jawbone found in Alaska offers evidence that some dinosaurs stayed in polar habitats year-round.
(Andrey Atuchin)
Ever since paleontologists discovered dinosaur bones within the ancient Arctic Circle, experts have debated whether the polar dinosaurs stayed in their cool habitats year-round or migrated with the seasons. A tiny jaw from a young dinosaur now answers that question. Described in PLOS ONE, the fossil belonged to a young raptor-like dinosaur that lived in an ancient Alaskan habitat marked by harsh seasonal shifts and long, dark winters. That dinosaurs were nesting and hatching babies in these habitats indicates that they were capable of surviving the harsh winters, even when it snowed.
#Nature
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favorite bird?
This is illegal you cant make me choose between my children
I love all birds for a variety of different reasons and they are of course the best of the lifeforms out there, but here are some birds I love and why I love them (this list is NOT exhaustive, this is just off the top of my head. If there are birds that you feel need to be on this list, PLEASE add them!)
Birds I love for their aesthetic
Barn Owls
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Just look at them! They’ve got satellite dishes for faces and their ears are asymmetrical! Check out those beautiful feather markings on those wings! Not to mention those eyes!
Strawberry Finches
These ladies… the delicacy of their markings and how they look like they should be at fancy balls with their amazing red gowns and strings of pearls. Look at the way the red fades to black on the wings! Look at the white eyeliner on the bottom lid!
Birds I love that are kept by humans
Pacific Parrotlets
This little lady is Mia of the @flock-talk family. Parrotlets are amazingly smart little birds with TONS of personality. They aren’t the same as budgies; they’ve got shorter tails, longer lifespans, and they are mostly solitary where budgies are flock birds. You can check out Mia’s cool training videos as well as general bird-keeping knowledge on the Flock-Talk youtube channel!
Goshawks
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Goshawks have a veeery different relationship to humans than parrots. Goshawks have been kept as hunting birds for centuries and are considered to be one of the hardest raptors to train. They are not domesticated, and are very much wild predators that only those with lots of experience with hawks should keep. If you want to know more about goshawks, falconry, or just want to read an amazing book, check out H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, an amazing story about the author’s experience training a young goshawk and how their relationship helped her explore the nature of being human after the loss of her father
Birds I love for their behavior
Oilbirds
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These birds are an oddity! They are nocturnal, fruit-eating, and use echolocation as well as amazing night vision and a keen sense of smell to navigate at night and find fruit. They live in caves for the most part, and live in colonies with up to thousands of individuals. The name Oilbird comes from how the baby birds are SO fat that people used to use them as a source of oil. Fortunately, they aren’t hunted widely anymore. (The babies are so goddamn fat that they weigh almost twice as much as their parents before they fledge)
House Sparrows
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Now these are some smart birds! I wanted to include them instead of the more popular crows, ravens, and bluejays because their smarts are so often overlooked. They are considered pests in most urban and suburban areas because they are very common and smart enough to know how to be a bother and stay alive. House sparrows started to become human-dependent around the start of agriculture, where the adult sparrows would feed on the grain harvested by humans. This led to mass killings of sparrows which initially caused an increase in crop production. Afterward, though, other grain pests’ populations exploded and crops failed. This is because although adult sparrows feed on grain, they feed their babies insects including grasshoppers and locusts, so in the end, they were, like all other animals, an important piece in the ecological puzzle. If you want to read more about house sparrows, including how they learned to fly in front of motion-sensors to open the sliding doors to cafeterias and get at the food inside, check out The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman, an amazing book about all kinds of smart birds and how amazing our feathered friends can be!
In conclusion
Birds are the best class of animals; they are dinosaurs with beaks, they are intelligent, they can talk human words as well as sing amazingly intricate songs of their own, and they’re covered in beautiful 3D-printed evolutionary miracles that allow them to fly. For an in-depth look at the incredible design and evolution of feathers as well as their significance in human history, check out
Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson! Just… read all the bird books. That’s it. Just read them all because these little guys are the best ever.
If there are more birds you feel should be on the bird appreciation list, please add to this! More people need to be obsessed with birds!
#birds#birdblr#barn owl#strawberry finch#pacific parrotlet#goshawk#oilbird#house sparrow#um. this got a little out of hand. i do not apologize#long post#what can i say i think about birds i go crazy#this post started out as 'look at this bird!' and turned into heres why these birds should be respected and loved'#originalcontent#thank you for this ask i know you didnt sign up for this#op#asks#if any of this is like... incorrect then please correct me i am NOT an expert i just lov birds#all the images have alt text also!#ive edited this post on desktop and mobile so if anything is wonky then rip me i guess. wish this was a good functional site
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Long article by Eric Garland- this dude knows his shit . . .
That Donald Trump has been a front for organized crime [like his father before him] is not much of a secret. And yet he became president. Just as in many countries, democracies have been seized by organized criminal elements. How did this happen and who knew? The most stunning historical development of the past 30 years - a multi-decade crisis - has been the merger of Russian organized crime, the Russian intelligence services, and the Russian state. We were warned by Sasha Litvinenko that the world had changed. Litvinenko was an officer in the Russian FSB (the domestic successor to the KGB) who warned Western intel services AND law enforcement that they didn't understand - Russia had become something entirely new in history: A Mafia State. Because of his warning he was poisoned with polonium tea.
To understand how tectonic Russia's transformation was, you have to understand how nation-states dealt with security of militaries, spies, and organized crime: Separately. Usually with discrete agencies. FBI for criminals, CIA for foreign intelligence - that kind of thing. When Russian organized crime propelled Vladimir Putin to power, the rules of modern national security changed for the first time in 100 years. The Mob was the State was the Intelligence services. Not identical, to be sure - but centrally controlled, and DANGEROUS. Understand that, while every true government servant in the U.S. and its allies are thoroughly dedicated to the same mission - cultures, attitudes, and techniques are vastly different. FBI's history goes back to Al Capone. CIA is a product of the post-WWII era. NSA is [REDACTED] and FBI hunts spies on domestic soil, of course. But they're in a different section from organized crime. CIA is looking outward at governments, spies, terrorists. DOD has a different view. Litvinenko told us THE WORLD DIDN'T WORK LIKE THAT ANYMORE. IT WAS ALL ONE THREAT NOW. Russia had fused its best-in-class intelligence capabilities and the ruthlessness of its Mafiya and taken over a nation-state. The totality of this change no longer fit any one single agency, in any country, and the threat was evolving at a breakneck pace. Understand, especially, that government intelligence work does NOT look like anything in the movies. These are tightly controlled, regimented bureaucracies that maintain strict roles and are fanatical about secrecy. They don't do light speed evolutionary threats very well. So imagine, if you can, working your tightly controlled role in an intel or law enforcement agency, and instead of a spy, or a Mob thug, or a white collar financial criminal, you have to track a new hybrid. Like, for example, Rudy Giuliani patron Dmitry Firtash. Instead of Mob boss like Whitey Bulger (FBI territory) or a government agent you recruit like Sergei Skripal (CIA) or Wall Street-type criminal (IRS treasury) or an arms dealer, you get dudes that do ALL OF THAT SIMULTANEOUSLY. WHO HANDLES IT? HOW? Spies infiltrate, they don't buy half of downtown Cleveland. Captains of industry consolidate economic activity, they don't run spy operations. Diplomats don't run drugs. Except when they do and they're all interchangeable. That's what Russia innovated. SO WHO TRACKS IT? This is the world that Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama inherited, along with their intelligence and law enforcement agencies understandably not designed for this new threat. Forget terrorism. THIS was the real change in national security since 2000. And it's been a bumpy ride since. This still may be abstract, but let me break it down as an intelligence analyst with over 20 years’ experience: If the world doesn't match the design of your intelligence services, nothing will work right. You can't collect, analyze, or disseminate properly. If you're looking at a transnational criminal intelligence government syndicate where criminals, spies, and regimes used to be, nobody will know whose job it is. None of the questions will match. The answers will be weird. The policies will be hard to implement. When the transnational organized crime threat doesn't match the shape of your intelligence and law enforcement, then even when professionals are ultimately dedicated, they still may not be able to get leaders to make the necessary decisions.
Which gets us back to Trump.
We arrive back at a few terrible problems that need exposure at long last. Our intel and law enforcement agencies KNEW Trump was owned by foreign mafia and yet he became President. It was not their fault. Their hands were largely tied. And yet - the truth must finally emerge. I brought this to the world's attention in a thread about a month after the election, my personal reaction to people expecting the Intel Community to Save America From Trump, Now! These were my colleagues. I knew they were BUSY. And doing far from nothing. And for those who still thirst for a quick fix (I am regularly part of that group, too) I am still as aware as I was over three years ago of how unorthodox and horrible the options for the USIC were. Totally against everything they stand for. You don't want a spookocracy. That makes us like the Soviet Union or East Germany. The USIC knows that because they studied those regimes. So they can't just "save us" from an election even where we were attacked – BUT - this time may need to be different. Donald Trump is a treasonous sack of shit willing to let millions die. Not because he's a "dictator" or a "narcissist" - because he's a piece of property. Transnational organized crime owns him outright. He must be stopped, now more than ever. Donald Trump has been a mortal threat since 2015, part of the hybrid national security assault we were ill-equipped to fight. But now, his role as president is at the phase of mass graves of Americans, the very ones national security is here to protect. Our entire national security and law enforcement apparatus exists to keep a lunatic owned by foreign enemies from being president. Because that might lead to a person allowing a pandemic to slaughter Americans in a barely-concealed attempt to look "incompetent." For those crying "why didn't Mueller do his job?" or "Where is this so-called IC of yours?" you don't understand - these silent professionals, never seeking self-aggrandizement, willing to die for our freedoms - they are sick to their stomachs over this. Understand this from the Intel perspective, this is a picture of a diseased criminal TAKING A SHIT IN FRONT OF A CEMETERY. One of his first acts was to attack those in the IC that Trump *knew* understood what he was. There are people you never met, never heard of. They died without saying goodbye to their families. They were perhaps tortured on the way out. They did it for us. Trump defecated on that duty and honor and brought a crowd to cheer him. And now, in addition to everything for which they've given their lives, we may need to hope that the Intelligence Community may be willing to break tradition and tell us just why this pathetic, simpering blasphemy happened.
Mitch McConnell will rot in hell for ignoring what Robert S. Mueller III told the nation and refusing to remove this traitor from office. Mueller and his colleagues did their level best only to be betrayed. We now sit hoping for an unredacted report. We expect, we say we are a better nation because our intelligence and law enforcement professionals stick to the rules. But we have to ask this time at what cost. And to prepare for what may be a breach of protocol that could save civilization.
Americans still don't understand what trump is. That is the fault of politicians, the media, propagandists - and of course his sincere supporters as well. But some know the truth. That he isn't rich, that he's Mob property. That's he's tasked with destroying anything his bosses say to. Donald Trump was acquired by Russia when its Mob overtook the Five Families of La Cosa Nostra, his family's old owners. But now he's the joint property of murdering despots. The intelligence communities of many allied nations know this. The common people must know, too.
I know, like LincolnsBible, the complexities and contradictions of what I'm suggesting. We already ask so much of such men and women. And this moment may call for yet more. In 2016, I said I understood why the USIC didn't "act." In 2020, I wonder if they must - lest we be lost. I don't think American institutions will survive four more years of damage from foreign enemies being allowed to destroy us from within the White House. I don't know precisely who would reveal what, when, but I pray it is soon. The truth is simple and hideous. Let it out. I think we all do what we can, whether it's to wear masks and stay home, or take care of our neighbors or fight crime or rise up yell the truth from the rooftops. We do our best. Which makes me think about my own last four years. My colleagues and I knew Trump was a unique danger in 2016. Few of us thought he'd be elected. Then he was. I slept an hour a night for a month, talking to everyone. Didn't think I'd still be writing every day like this.
Somehow mainstream news isn't interested in this... but it is time.
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How To Achieve World Peace (2020)
I have figured out a few things that explain common phenomena in society but are routinely overlooked.
I can explain why conservatives and liberals have always existed, and why conservatives are often in power. I can explain ‘black sheep’ of families and why almost everyone has a ‘weird aunty’ or a ‘weird uncle.’ I can explain why artists are so often depressed, so creative and so misunderstood. I can explain conformity and non-conformity. I can explain Michael Jackson’s attraction to shiny things, and everything else about him.
The thing to remember is that we are animals like all the others, and that our evolutionary history shaped us — not culture. People who think culture is stronger hold that individuals choose their preferences in life, which is false. People choose the things they do because they’re programmed that way by evolution, and it is not one size fits all.
There are two main sorts of humans on the earth: family types (making up at least 80% of the population) and leaders (making up the rest).
Family types evolved to survive, raise families and do exactly what their parents did. For this reason they are conservative, incurious (because any new thing is a potential threat to existing conditions), blinkered and have a practical and deductive intelligence rather than a synthetic and inductive one. Leaders are explorers — their education never ends. Their permanent curiosity ensures they are forever exploring, making new connections and forming new hypotheses.
Without this neat ~80/20 balance, human society would not progress. Without the leaders, no new inventions would be created and we’d all still be living in caves. Without family types, nothing could be instantiated and there would be anarchy. Nature or God or whatever is responsible for the order we see in the universe worked this ideal ratio out so that beings could develop and differentiate and proliferate — basically, to make manifest the creativity of the universe.
I remember a few years ago reading Satoshi Kanazawa’s book The Intelligence Paradox, wherein he describes the traits of people with above-average intelligence: they are usually night owls, are less likely to marry and have kids, enjoy experimenting with drugs, are highly curious and creative. I think he was fired from Psychology Today for stating his findings. Ah, political correctness getting in the way of science, again.
Growing up I noticed a pattern in every family I encountered: the parents were normal enough (after all, they were parents), one child was robust and similar to the parents, and the other was a highly sensitive, interesting and curious type. If there were more than two children, there were more robust types than sensitive types.
Growing up I had a hell of a time in my family. I loved staying up late reading, writing and playing music. I loved the night so much that I covered my windows during the day, which is something Jimi Hendrix also did. My parents were dismayed and couldn’t understand why I was so different to them. I also liked going out for days, exploring and experimenting. I was, of course, extremely artistic from the beginning. I understood concepts at school very quickly, and got in trouble for breaking the rules and prioritising my own ideals over that of my superiors.
All these behaviours label children, and the adults they become, ‘troublemakers’ and rebels. “Why can’t they just behave?” parents and teachers lament. Well, because evolution programmed them that way. But back then I would’ve utilised a far shorter answer.
Leader types, being highly sensitive, experience the discord of growing up in families of followers very intensely and in far higher resolution. If a father is strict and domineering, the sensitive child will feel he is ruled by a tyrant. Off-handed criticisms will be stab wounds that are nursed for years and years. Their deep processing will have them mulling and stewing over the slightest things that followers forget in the very next moment.
Thousands of years ago, human tribes had to hunt animals, gather foods, build shelters, live in the shelters and raise families. Distinct human types evolved to carry out these different tasks.
Leaders are the hunting and exploring type. They were the ones who went out, probably at night, to look for food. To be good at this, they had to be highly sensitive so they could hear every noise, smell every smell, feel the vaguest touch on their skin and see the slightest movement. They had to be brave and bold to explore scary places. They had to be graceful and silent as cats to sneak up on prey, but aggressive enough to actually kill. They had to have loud, developed voices in order to communicate with other members of the hunting party. They had to be confident of their own opinion and communicate it effectively to others in order to lead.
They also had to be able to imitate other animals they encountered, to seem less threatening. They also had to be ingratiating in order to win the trust of people they only just met — and they would have met many people on their travels. They had to be highly adaptable to quickly get used to ever-changing environments. They had to be physically robust and agile to withstand the rigours of their itinerant hunting life. They developed the classic ‘rolling stone’ personality — Jimi couldn’t stand being in the same place for three months, let alone years. They also needed great and detailed memories, to remember where they’d been.
With their keen vision they would spot anomalous objects in the environment — shiny things might indicate water, and colourful things (especially red and yellow) would indicate food. Look at the colours and shiny things Michael wears and is attracted to. Watching him shopping is literally watching a leader type hunting in the forest thousands of years ago.
Their sensitivity is responsible for their artistry. As I read somewhere (possibly in Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Person), not all highly sensitive people are geniuses, but all geniuses are highly sensitive. Charles Darwin lined his room with cork to keep the noise out. Jimi, as mentioned, covered his windows with black fabric. All this is to minimise stimulation. Because highly sensitive people take in so much more information from their environment, and process it so much more deeply, they need to restrict it only to what is most important to them.
Being a night owl, as Kanazawa found in his research, was related to higher intelligence. Much hunting probably occurred at night, when the animals were about, or it was easier to travel without being seen. The peace and stillness of the night also minimises stimulation for highly sensitive leader types. Intelligence itself is required to make connections between disparate phenomena, entertain several possible explanations, and synthesise information to decide on a verdict and course of action. The activity of hunting would have honed the intelligence of leader types. Any kind of physical bodily movement and coordination increases brain power — dancing for example. Moving the body in space. I relate this to moving ideas around in one’s head. This is how I did philosophy at university: I literally saw concepts as interacting forms in my mind. Einstein also thought in visual-spatial terms.
Something fascinating about stimulation is that leader types seem to become rapidly overwhelmed by experiences that family types consider quite routine and harmless, but at the same time, they crave intense stimulation. Paradoxical personalities, innit? Clearly, not all stimulation is created equal: a normal day in an office as an employee would be intense and overwhelming for a leader, but then they go out at night, attracted by the bright lights and shiny things of the city, loud music and the stage, and crowds.
A hypothesis of mine is that leader types are born with ‘happy’ neurotransmitter deficits. The strong correlation of substance use and abuse with artists, I think, is related to this deficit. In general, almost everything that makes us feel good — no matter what type of animal you are — does so because it fulfils some evolutionary prerogative. Leader types evolved to be sad — is what I’m saying. They are naturally sad. Therefore, they are forced to do things of a specific kind to alleviate that sadness. Michael is really good at being sad, but he’s also really good at alleviating that sadness. Drugs, alcohol, excitement, driving fast, athletics, dancing, bright colours, shiny things, movement, strong sunlight, making people feel and do things, eating certain foods, exploring, romance, helping and educating people, learning, discovering, conquering, mystery — all of these things alleviate the natural depression of the leader type. Fasting, too. What could more blatantly inspire a person to go out and hunt, besides hunger? Both Michael and myself had anorexia, but his was more extreme perhaps because he was more sensitive or his upbringing was more damaging, and he was constantly in the spotlight. But apart from the self-soothing reason, and the aesthetic reason (wanting a “dancer’s body”), I think we literally like to be hungry, as it were. I do believe he said, in his delightful hyperbole: “I hate food.” It keeps us searching. Anything that inspires a leader type to go out and be a leader will feel good, because that’s what nature wants us to do.
Mystery is integral for the leader type. It’s one of the main motivators of action and a guarantee of happiness and flourishing. I finally understand the propensity for this type to entertain idealistic romances and muses. Try making a person give up something that guarantees them happiness! As C. S. Lewis said so well “Desiring desire is the fullest possession we can know.” I finally understand this. What I want is to be in a state of desire, because it’s animating, life-giving, exciting. Why else would I love improvising so much? I love the mystery of not knowing what will come out of my guitar, what I will sing, or what dance moves I will come up with. I love mystery so much that all my essays are pretty much streams of consciousness.
Everything is on a spectrum, including family type/leader proclivity, and gender too. Effeminate men prefer masculine women; masculine men prefer feminine women. It’s all about balancing genetics to bring about the best complementarity. Who you’re attracted to is not a choice. Those with feminine hips are attracted to masculine hips; those with deep-set eyes are attracted to protuberant eyes; square-jaws are attracted to heart-shaped jaws; pinched-in cheeks are attracted to smoother, convex cheekbones. You can set your watch by this stuff.
Leader types also tend to be gender-indeterminate, or “in the middle” with respect to the male-female spectrum. This gives them the best of both worlds — e.g. deep empathy and nurture from the female side, and single-minded determination and action from the male. I do not think this is a degeneracy. Rather, in my view it is actually a requirement for leader types. To be too male or too female would be a hindrance for a leader.
In politics, there will always be conservatives and liberals, and more conservatives than liberals, because these represent the two primary types of humans, and their ratio, on earth.
The way to achieve world peace is to acknowledge the two broad types. Both are necessary for the survival and continuation of the human species. Conflict can seed change, but oftentimes we could do with a little less conflict and a little more understanding. Understanding of the millennia-old biology of our species that is — not politically correct ‘tolerance’. We need to understand things instead of merely tolerating them.
But the sobering reality is that family types can never fully understand leaders, and leaders can never fully understand family types. Each has a very different evolutionary prerogative that is very deeply ingrained. For one to understand the other, the one needs to literally inhabit the physical body of the other — which is currently impossible. Type ‘goes all the way down’ — the nervous system is different, the brain is different, the emotions are different, the values are different — everything is different.
This is why ‘black sheep’ — a derogatory term that betrays a lack of understanding on the part of the family types (but it is after all in their nature to demonise difference because it is threatening) — get along better with friends, aunties and uncles and other leaders unrelated to them instead of their own families. And it’s interesting that they’re called ‘black’: I have noticed highly sensitive leader types do often wear black, and I think this is to minimise stimulation. It’s one less item for them to process.
This is why certain kids act out at school, and why every person I admire from Debussy to Miles Davis to Isadora Duncan to Walt Disney quit the schools they were at. This is why Michael left the Jacksons and struck out on his own. This is why Zappa stayed up all night drinking coffee making the music he wanted to hear regardless of what other people thought about it.
This is also why the majority of people — the followers — shun, disbelieve and are afraid of leader types. The reason J. K. Rowling had to pitch her book to 200 publishers was because she saw the value of her work, but the publishers — who aren’t leaders — could not. The more innovative a thing, the less followers can comprehend its value. Followers are biologically programmed to play it safe and not take risks. This is infuriating for leaders, but the solution is not anger, but rather perseverance. Think of J. K. being turned away from the 199th publisher. Perseverance. Bang on long enough about something and family types will eventually stop feeling threatened because now you’re part of the furniture.
Another paradoxical thing about family types feeling threatened by leaders is that leaders are, in almost every instance, seeking to make the world a better place with their works. Think of Tesla. Leaders need family types — the two are in symbiosis — so it is definitely not in a leader’s interests to harm their followers. They are shepherds, not wolves. Empathy for their pack is high, because a leader who doesn’t care for their flock will not be followed for long.
The extremely high degree of similarity between myself and Michael can be, to a great extent, explained by the fact that we are of the same human type (and probably share some genetics too). He has all the characteristic leader type qualities: he’s highly sensitive, an artist and a musician, he’s obsessed with the way people and animals move and is very curious. He loves bright colours and shiny things, which are food. I believe he said he loved Disney films so much “I could just eat (them)!” (I told a friend once that his photographs made me hungry; he looked at me like I was insane.) And of course the beautiful — Michael loves beauty — he goes weak in its presence. If there’s something he doesn’t understand, he’s fascinated by it and will obsess over it. He has a highly developed somatic-neuronal ability (that’s my term; I don’t know the correct neurological term), which is why his movements are so fluid and why he can imitate others so easily. He’s both male and female, has a great strong voice, resists authority, is ingratiating and immediately loveable, likes climbing trees and running around, staunchly believes in his own vision and he made looking after his ‘tribe’ the central mission of his life. He owned thousands of books and was constantly reading, usually by himself.
All Michael’s searching made him very knowledgeable, of course. He liked to associate with fellow talented and driven people, from whom he gathered even more leadership advice. Michael’s not messing around — the advice he gives you is the advice he’s given himself. He experiments on himself. He’s a leader — a real leader — so he wants to help.
One day I was dancing at home and came up with a certain move. Two weeks later, I happened to be watching a video of Mike’s and saw him do the exact same move. I couldn’t believe it. At the time I came up with it, I had no memory of having seen him do any such move. I was dancing in the mirror, and happened to trace the outline of my thigh with a finger — it was totally spontaneous and improvised. I liked that I was drawing and dancing at the same time — I do draw and dance, so it was exciting for me to do them simultaneously. In his video he was dancing to Dangerous, and he did that move. I thought “So now he’s copying me?!”
This kind of thing happens often, and not just in dancing. For example, I’ll have some opinion about something, then later hear that he has the same opinion about that thing. Or I’ll happen to think of something I did when I was a lot younger, and it turns out he did the exact same thing. Then there’s the Star Wars thing, the one glove thing, the cape thing, the cutting the front of our shirts thing, the liking the same colours thing, the gum and TicTac thing, the similar music taste and compositional style thing, the sitting down with one leg or arm stretched out thing, the liking the exact same part of the flight attendant demonstration thing... We even have the same taste in women. Type, type, type. Once you know someone’s type, you can pretty much get out your checklist and starting ticking things off. Although, I don’t at this point know where type ends and genetics begin, because a lot of these similarities must owe to genetics, not type. I’ll work on this.
Being childlike is, I am positing, an integral part of the leader-hunter-HSP type. Mike and I both retained our childlike attitude to the world. For me, I distinctly remember the day I made the decision to never grow up. I was 14, on the basketball courts in junior high school near the end of the day. I thought “It’s just so much fun being a kid, I’m not going to grow up. Why should I?” It was also around that time that I decided what my life’s goal would be, having just read Freud: to be myself. I didn’t want to be a fireman or a lawyer or a teacher — I wanted to be myself, my truest self. Even back then, I knew this was a worthy goal, and I knew that it would be difficult.
Mike famously identified with Peter Pan, and passionately championed a childlike view of the world. He often claimed this was because he was denied a childhood, but I think there’s more at work here than that fact alone. Even if he had had a more normal childhood, he’d still probably have remained pretty childlike, because that’s an integral characteristic of the leader type. Being childlike — being open, innocent, relentlessly curious, able to withhold judgement, and trusting — is essential to being a leader. If leaders weren’t open to new information (i.e. adaptable), etc — they wouldn’t be effective leaders. If a leader didn’t trust his advisors, he couldn’t get anything done. Suspicion is poison.
It’s known that Mike was trusting. He advised his friend Brett Ratner that one of the big lessons he learned was “not to trust everybody in the industry; there are a lot of sharks.” But a person who is naturally trusting has a hard time trying to become the opposite, let me tell you. To be trusting is beautiful; when a trusting person is betrayed, it is not they who have erred.
It has fascinated me over my lifetime to observe the way sexual desire can be completely decoupled from child-rearing. Leader types definitely have sexual desire: just think of Jimi. Mike too, Madonna, Greta Garbo, Picasso. With men it’s fairly straight-forward, but I always wondered how female leaders could get away with it, seeing as they’d be having so many children but no desire to look after them — clearly a less-than-ideal situation. Maintaining a pregnancy and then a baby would definitely slow them down and make them vulnerable to attack. Nature may have solved this problem by making leader types infertile. After all, their genes will be passed on via their siblings’ children, so there’s no need for them to do it personally. It prevents overpopulation. And besides, their legacy is cultural innovation, not physical progeny. Some say that Mike was infertile. It could well be that this is by nature’s design.
Barbara Sher calls leader types ‘scanners’. Scanners are people who flit from one thing to the next, seemingly at random, are reading 50 books at any one time, and change careers frequently — you get the idea. But my contention is that leader types do this in order to get the best ‘lay of the land’. If they didn’t, if they were a specialist in some tiny nook of expertise, what would they know about the world? Nothing! All they’d know is their little area (which there’s nothing wrong with by the way, it’s just not the scanner approach). Scanners scan. They try to get the best view of everything — figuratively and literally.
I know this type is rare, but I don’t know how rare. I’ve certainly never encountered anyone as similar to me before, but then I don’t know everyone. Surely a person with such obvious and anomalous qualities would rise to prominence, almost by default. They’re generally in art, but not just anywhere. They’re in the ‘I’m either myself or dead’ camp. Michael’s well-known because he’s well-known, and because he so strongly felt the need to share his values with the world, he thereby revealed himself. There could be many of us. Some may prefer to remain unknown. I don’t know yet.
As I said before, everything is on a spectrum, so you could be a more or less extreme leader type, and a more or less extreme family type. There may be sub-types. The ‘lone wolf’ is an extreme leader type. Aldous Huxley said “The more original and powerful a mind, the more inclined it is to the religion of solitude.” I think lone wolves relate best to other lone wolves; other types will simply be too different. They’re introverted because there’s a whole world inside their heads, and much of the outside input they’d encounter would actually hinder their progress.
As a leader, stepping outside of the leader pack can be incredibly demoralising. Out there, there's a flattening going on. If you have a sleepover with kids, all of a sudden it's about sex. If you say the n word, it's suddenly all about race. And you think, “Why is everything about sex and race? Are there not more things to discuss? Develop some granularity in your approach already!” The flattening is in full swing at the moment, with so many red herrings slapping around that you can’t hear yourself think. (Contemplating that kinda makes me hungry... All those shiny fish...) Maybe the majority do this in order to feel safer: if they can reduce indeterminate phenomena to something simple, then they can feel like they know what they're dealing with. Simplify and blame. It’s a stupid game, and so boring. I'm not at all surprised that artists feel the need to invent entirely new worlds to escape this shit.
So there you have it: there is a naturalistic, evolutionary explanation for so many of the specific human behaviours that we observe in society. The choices people make are, in large part, due to their evolutionary type. Encountering Michael was the icing on my cake of investigation, because I reasoned there had to be an explanation as to why we’re so similar and I knew that it wasn’t due to mere chance.
So if you’re a sensitive, introverted kid who likes doing their own thing and your family gives you hell for being strange and different — for God’s sake, understand that there’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all. You’ve been designed to be the way you are over millions of years of evolution, because this is the only way humanity can work. You are the reason we have electricity, cars, great works of art, beautiful films and music, incredible dancers and athletes, mathematics, poetry, physics, philosophy, engineering, comfortable houses and beds, heating, space exploration, wonderful stories and the rule of law. All of these things were invented by leader types.
The most important thing is to know who you are. It’s Quincy Jones’ first rule too. Once you know that, you will make much better decisions in all areas of your life. “A guy can dig ditches and enjoy it”, as Jimi said. If you want to be happy and effective, you must be doing things that align with your particular nature.
Don’t waste years doing things other people tell you to do. What do they know about you, anyway? Do they know your deepest desires? No they don’t, because to discover them is long, personal work. No-one can do it for you. Your mum can’t do it for you. I don’t care if she’s your mother and she wants the best for you -- she’s not you.
Don’t do things for extrinsic rewards like money or fame. I recall reading a teacher who complained that all his kids just want to be famous, but then he asked them “Famous for what?” People who become famous do so because they’re passionate and obsessed with something and thereby become very good at it. Don’t desire to be famous, desire to become obsessed with something. Fall in love with something. Then you’ll probably become famous anyway, but by then you won’t care, because all you want to do is the thing you’re obsessed with.
But family types are essential too. Just because they don’t innovate, they create a stable society in which everyone — including leader types — can live. They create and maintain order, follow instructions and implement your ideas. They start families and actually create the people society needs, including all future leaders.
The two types must know about, respect and be thankful for each other, for neither could live without the other.
Masses of conflict rage each day because people think that other people act the way they do by choice. But things are so incredibly ingrained, that it’s quite absurd to think that anyone makes any kind of choice. We do have free will, but can only exercise it to the point our fundamental orientation allows. Can’t fight one’s nature, as Orwell said. Fight it too long and she’ll make you pay, with your health or your life.
It is apparent to me that my entire discussion has remained completely materialistic. I’ve not touched upon so-called ‘supernatural’ phenomena at all. I don’t like the term ‘supernatural’ because, if something exists, it is natural — no matter how perplexing or odd, everything is Nature, everything is natural. It’s not like the earth and its rocks are natural, and then precognition of the future and witnessing midnight processions of long-deceased people — as Jung and others did, centuries apart mind you — are outside of the natural. Everything is natural. If it happened, it was natural, and there is an explanation.
Now it might seem boring to learn that all these things in fact have a boring materialistic explanation. But as usual, there are many more things that we don’t yet know. The perplexing nature of time, for example. I suspect that time is very different to how most people conceive of it, but that discussion is for another time.
Back to the strictly material. A few hundred years of culture won’t put a dent in millennia of evolution. Culture is itself an outgrowth of evolution, and it needs to humbly acknowledge this fact instead of thinking that now it is king. The patterns and drives of Nature are king, and they explain everything.
DS 06-07/2020
#society#hsp#highlysensitive#leaders#followers#sociology#anthropology#philosophy#orwell#michaeljackson#nature#evolution#biology#physiology#physiognomy#sexuality#attraction#neurobiology#dancing#movement#intelligence#psychology#Jung#spirit#love#art#artists#writers#music#singers
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Inside of a dog: Book review
SUMMARY
“It is when language stops that we connect most fully”
Alexandra Herowitz, explains that the non-linguistic silence of a dog is the most enduring trait about them. In short, this book is devoted to understand a dog’s perspective of the world: what it’s like to be able to smell not only food but emotions, or even the passage of time? what’s it’s like to use your mouth as a hand? or experience life from two feet off the ground, gazing at human’s ankles and knees?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A psychologist with a PhD in cognitive science, Alexandra Horowitz has studied behaviour in humans and animals and Inside of a Dog is the result of her studies of numerous canines. Herowitz began her career observing rhinos and bonobos, which are apparently much more respectable subjects for a young graduate. Then she took a camera to her local park to film other people's dogs and, sitting through hours of footage, realised that she was watching "a complex dance requiring mutual cooperation, split-second communications and assessments of each other's abilities and desires. The slightest turn of a head or the point of a nose now seemed directed, meaningful."
REVIEW AND EVALUATION
The heart of Herowitz's work is an empathetic quest to experience the world from a dog's perspective. In every chapter she has cited examples of her own dog, Pumpernickel, which illustrates the beautiful relationship of a dog and his owner. Professionally she is wary of anthropomorphising animals, that is, attributing human characteristics or behaviour on them; this is the most intriguing aspect of the book.
She takes the reader on a beautiful ride to understand the world through the dog’s sensory organs. Not only the exceptionally sensitive olfactory system but also the uniqueness of the vomeronasal organ that can detect fear, anxiety or sadness attains special
mention. Imagine how he must feel when he goes out on a walk, assaulted by all the smells around him because he can not only establish what those smells are, he can also smell a time line – where a paw print came before another, where one smell has been overlaid by another. To see the world through the dog’s eyes from two feet off the ground is one hell of an experience . As for dogs’ ability to respond to language, it has more to do with the “prosody” of our utterances than the words themselves. Herowitz also discusses about the evolutionary history of dogs, claiming their descent from wolves. “Dogs do not form true packs,” she writes. “They scavenge or hunt small prey individually or in parallel,” rather than cooperatively, as wolves do. Herowitz reminds us of one obvious but easily forgotten difference between our perspective and a dog's: they are much closer to the ground. Dogs , unlike wolves are keen observers and can interpret human behaviours: They take their cues from their owners, following our wishes and learning how to use us to get what they want.
Most interestingly, Herowitz describes how dogs also learn to confirm our prejudices about other people. Dog owners often claim that their pet is a good judge of character; in fact, when their dog greets a stranger with a wagging tail or raised hackles, he will be mimicking his owner's own unconscious signals, which he has gleaned through body language and smells.
In crisp, clear prose, she draws on her research in the field of dog cognition to give readers a sense of a dog’s perceptual and cognitive abilities—and paints a picture of what the canine experience is like. Horowitz’s own scientific journey, and the insights she uncovered, allowed her to understand her dog better and appreciate her more.
The tone of the book at times is perplexing: an almost insistence on the value of dogs, as if they’d long been neglected by world opinion. But then Herowitz will drop in some lovely observation, some unlikely study, some odd detail that causes one’s dog-loving heart to flutter with astonishment and gratitude.
Although I have never had the opportunity to pet a dog at home, but I am a keen observer of their behaviour. Being a dog person , I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the way Herowitz contradicted the habit of anthropomorphism on them.
On a scale of 10, I would give this book a 7. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone who considers them a dog person.
LEARNINGS FROM THE BOOK
This book has got a lot of things to deliver to the readers. The reader can gather an impressive amount of information on the biology of dogs — their sensory abilities, their behaviour — and on the psychology of dogs — their cognition.
I gained an insight of the efforts made to study animal cognition.It was also interesting to know how the relationship between dog and man evolved. The primary learning is that to be able to understand their world through their eyes and not by anthropomorphising them.
Although this book certainly isn't a training manual, Herowitz offers all kinds of useful advice for dog owners. Such as “Let your dog dawdle and sniff”, she suggests, rather than yanking him on a speedy jog around the park”.” Don't bathe him too often; he'd much rather smell of himself than shampoo”. She neatly dismisses several of the simplistic theories that are often trotted out by trainers.
To be able to get into the mind of the dog and have a glimpse at the dog’s point of view have changed my perception on that furry pile of doggies.
#nshm #maractivities
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ADhD, something to think about.
A friend sent me this: (I’m copy/pasting, mistakes are the authors.)
“Kan, saw this on FB, thinking of you.”
I was asked a while ago by a friend to share my thoughts on ADHD, and what I believe about this unique neuro-diversity that we all seem to have. It has taken me some time to put it into words, but here is the basic gist of it and I hope it can help someone to understand the “why” behind what we all experience.
ADHD is not a curse, It is not broken, it is NOT a malfunction of the brain or a “Mis-wiring”. It is not from your mother smoking cigarettes when you were in utero, and it is NOT from too much television as a child. ADHD is a Nuero-diversity. It is a different wiring of the brain as it relates to the body and to information collection AND most importantly it has a purpose! Before I get to that piece though, let me share with you what I KNOW about ADHD.
ADHD is a label that we have assigned to individuals that present with a specific set of symptoms associated with a diagnosable neuro-diversity. These symptoms can include things like distractibility, forgetfulness, inattention, hyper-focused attention, emotional storms, irritability, feelings of worthlessness, active or overactive imagination, tardiness or skewed senses of time, imposter syndrome, out of control thoughts, and severely low self-esteem.
Recently, research studies have identified three (3) aspects of ADHD that are experienced by almost everyone with this neuro-diversity and not experienced by almost none without it.
Interest-based nervous system: Not just interest-based attention, but your entire nervous system functions differently based on your level of interest. When you find something truly interesting it will actually energize you. Sleep is irrelevant, Food is a fleeting thought. You are sustained by interest. Have you ever found yourself up way past time to go to bed, forgot that you had to go to the bathroom, or didn’t eat, just because you were so interested in something? Yeah, me too.
Emotional Hyper-Arousal: Imagine this like you have a volume knob for “Emotions” and yours is turned up 5 notches higher than the neuro-typical people around you. Your highs are higher, your lows are lower. Merely funny is hilarious and mildly sad is sorrowful. Everything is extreme. Not worth humor is funny and not worth heartache is indeed sad. Every emotion felt is more-than.
Rejection-sensitive-dysphoria: Basically, we are hypersensitive to rejection, from anyone. It doesn’t really matter if we consciously care about the individual or group that is enacting the rejection. We are just hyper-sensitive to being rejected by anyone for any reason. Even if we don’t want to be part of the club, we are sensitive to the club not wanting us as a member kind of thing.
Now if we combine these symptoms and aspects we begin to see some pretty obvious and reoccurring traits that cause problems in daily life.
Imposter syndrome: Minimizing our accomplishments and maximizing our failures or faults. If we succeed, then it was easy or luck, but if we fail it is because we are flawed or broken and we are totally responsible.
Hyper-focus: I can be focused on something that I am interested in, but cannot manage to pay attention to a board meeting. I am all about the next book coming out, but forget my anniversary.
Emotional storm: I have a thousand thoughts running through my head and each one has an emotion that I have to feel as it passes and therefore I feel a thousand emotions in the span of a few seconds and cannot differentiate between them.
There are many many more that I don’t think that I need to list. You can see the patterns I am sure.
What if…..?
What if ADHD was natural?
What if ADHD was not ADHD, but something else?
What if ADHD was NOT a Deficit or a Disorder, but an adaptation?
Scientific research now suggests that what we know as ADHD is actually an evolutionary adaptation to a Hunter/Gather lifestyle.
In a natural environment, where there are predators and prey, where the rustling of leaves, or the flash of game in the periphery, or the trickling of water heard, could mean the difference between life or death, it is actually an extreme benefit to have an overabundance of involuntary attention. It is a bonus to be hyper-aware (distractable).
This is why so many that have ADHD wired brains find solace in natural environments. There is so much to “Pull” our attention, but so little to “Pay” attention to. We find ourselves recharged by walks in the forest or sitting near a babbling brook. This is our natural born element and so it invigorates us.
So why so few of us then? Well, let's look at that. Darwin’s theories of evolution state that: If there is a mutation in an individual that is part of a species that makes that individual more likely to survive, then that mutation will be passed along to its offspring and therefore make the offspring more likely to survive than it’s counterparts of the same species and thus, the mutation will eventually, though the process of natural selection, be distributed to the entire species and will no longer be a mutation, just part of the species. For example: if a bird has a mutation that increases its beak size and that increases its survivability, then eventually the entire species will have larger beaks.
So, let's look back at 20,000 years into our human history. Everyone that existed on the planet were hunter/gathers. It is very likely that at that time, the majority of individuals were also what we call today, ADHD. Then one day, someone decided that it would be a good idea to plant & farm & build walls & raise livestock & stay in one place.
Now we have these sedentary people that are NOT hunting or gathering in dangerous environments. They are protected by walls and removed from danger.
However, we still have all these ADHDers that cannot stand being still, so they are still hunting and gathering and putting themselves in danger.
Who is more survivable now?
Fast forward 20,000 years…..97% of all humans are sedentary and only 3% are ADHDers.
ADHD is not new, it is not made up by Pharma, it has always been here, just never called the same thing. The first mention of an individual that appeared to display ADHD symptoms that I found was from the writing of Hippocrates, also known as the father of modern medicine, he stated:
The patient has quickened responses to sensory experience, but also less tenaciousness because the soul moves on quickly to the next impression.
Back then, “soul” was the word for mind and “impression’ was the word for thought. So what he was saying is ...The patient has heightened responses to external stimulation but has less follow-through because the mind moves on quickly to the next thought.
If that is not ADHD I don’t know what is.
This is not a bad thing though. All we need to do is look throughout history to see ADHDers in action. We can take the symptomatology that we know now and apply it to historical figures and we see that the most innovative and influential individuals in history were probably ADHDers.
Socrates
Leonardo Da Vinci
Mozart
Benjamin Franklin
The Wright Brothers
Salvadore Dali
Walt Disney
Nikola Tesla
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstien
John F. Kennedy
And if those names don’t do anything for you then how about these names of self-professed ADHDers:
Justin Bieber
Simone Biles
David Blaine
Terry Bradshaw
Richard Branson
Andre Brown
Jim Carrey
James Carville
Jim Caviezel
Wendy Davis
Katherine Ellison
Josh Freeman
Ryan Gosling
Viglil Green
Ed Hallowell, M.D.
Woody Harrelson
Mariette Hartley
Cameron Herold
Paris Hilton
Christopher Knight
Solange Knowles
Adam Kreek
Jenny Lawson
Greg LeMond
Adam Levine
Howie Mandel
Audra McDonald
Alan Meckler
Rep. Kendrick Meek
Matt Morgan
David Neeleman
Paul Orfalea
Ty Pennington
Michael Phelps
Pete Rose
Michele Rodriguez
Louis Smith
Leigh Steinberg
Payne Stewart
Shane Victorino
Bubba Watson
Henry Winkler
Brookley Wofford
ADHD is not the “fault” it’s the exception. We have always been here and we have always been the ones that are changing the world.
There is statistically a higher percentage of ADHD in America than in Europe. Researchers believe that this is because our founding fathers and the immigrants that are our heritage had the out-of-the-box impulsiveness to pack up and go across an entire ocean to make a better life!
ADHD is not a curse, it is not a disorder, society has the disorder because as much as it touts individuality, it is only acknowledged once an individual complies with the obligation of normalcy. You cannot be creative unless you can get to work on time. You cannot be innovative unless all your bills are paid. Blah Blah Blah….
Being born with ADHD is like being born with a beautiful pair of raven black angel wings. Imagine for a moment how that would be. You would be shunned as a freak. Called an abomination. You would try to hide your birthright if only to “Fit in” or be “normal”, and always throughout all of the insults and put-downs, through all of the pain and sorrow, all you would have to do is spread those beautiful black wings and soar….
We are not the problem. We are the solution. We are the R&D while everyone else trudges on the assembly line. We are the inventors and the visionaries, while the neuro-typical are content with the status quo. We take the risks and run the chance….sometimes to our detriment, but also sometimes to glory.
Doubt yourself all you want. Tell us all that “your” ADHD is a disorder or a disability, but make no mistake…..You are amazing.
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My story is going to place in prehistoric times and I cannot find any information on the existence or status of plus sized people that I believe is neutral and not fat-shaming. Most sources say there weren't any, since better diet and a lot more exercise, but I doubt that, to be honest. Should I just say screw it and add plus sized characters anyway or would you suggest finding scientific sources first?
Mod Miri Note: Hi folks, there’s a lot of talk in this post about body size which I can be triggering for some readers, and with tumblr’s tag system being pretty unreliable, I just wanted to put up a quick warning in case that would be an issue for any of our followers who may want to skip this post.
Feral: Yes. If you want to include plus sized characters, include plus sized characters. First of all, waist size is not actually a great indicator of physical fitness level. Second of all, at some point in prehistory humans evolved and when we did that, we evolved to store fat; this was likely for a reason. And third of all, no one is going to care if you do or do not find "scientific proof". The truth is, people have been people for as long as there have been people.
Tex: I would suggest to first figure out why you are defining things in the term "plus sized" - Google's Ngram Viewer finds that this wasn't in public circulation until almost 1950, which means that the vernacular would be entirely different the further back you go into the past. Wikipedia's article on "Plus-size clothing" indicates that the origins for this size group in fashion had comparatively very recent roots.
"Plus-size", "curvy", "big and tall", "stout"- these are all euphemisms to refer to a body type that is considered larger than the normal range. Human bodies are delicately-organized organic machines, and while they can tolerate a wide variety of stressors, they can only tolerate any given stressor for a certain amount of time before it damages the body - sometimes permanently, and fatally, if it's allowed to go unchecked.
The human body is built to be within a certain weight range for given heights - despite the flaws of the BMI, with its difficulty in telling apart muscle from fat (and which type of fat), it's still a good tool when used in conjunction with other diagnostic tests. To be overweight and to be obese are separated by very thin lines, and is better discussed in @ucsdhealthsciences' post "Fat but Fit: a pleasing myth or something else? ".
Given the comorbidities of being either overweight or one of the three grades of obesity, carrying more fat on your body than your body can safely tolerate is quite literally dangerous for your health. Prehistoric peoples rarely had the luxury of idleness or having someone transport them instead of walking (or even riding a horse/similar animal). Walking in and of itself is ridiculously good for your health, to the point where exercising in the form of a gym or even manual labor can be a marginal part of one's exercise routine if someone has a choice about it.
I don't know why you doubt that a better diet and more exercise wouldn't reduce the occurrence of overweight/obese individuals - excess weight from specifically white fat has serious detrimental effects on the body and has a tendency to kill people off:
- "Study in mice suggests drug to turn fat 'brown' could help fight obesity"] from the University of Cambridge- Wikipedia- University of Virginia Health System - National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases - "The Definition and Prevalence of Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome" by Atilla Engin - "Prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome in Chinese obese women of reproductive age with or without metabolic syndrome" by Liang, Peiwen et al.- ittybittykittykisses, archived version - Stanford Health Care - PDF "Mechanisms, Pathophysiology, and Management of Obesity" by Steven B. Heymsfield, M.D., and Thomas A. Wadden, Ph.D.- "Review of Childhood Obesity: From Epidemiology, Etiology, and Comorbidities to Clinical Assessment and Treatment" by Seema Kumar, MD and Aaron S. Kelly, PhD- "A Proposal of the European Association for the Study of Obesity to Improve the ICD-11 Diagnostic Criteria for Obesity Based on the Three Dimensions Etiology, Degree of Adiposity and Health Risk" by J Hebebrand et al.- "Health Effects of Overweight and Obesity in 195 Countries over 25 Years" by The GBD 2015 Obesity Collaborators - "Study of nearly 300,000 people challenges the 'obesity paradox'" from the European Society of Cardiology
The Archaeology News Network has an article about prehistoric obesity, and how it relates to fat storage in humans - the mutation of the uricase gene that was originally meant to help ancient humans survive famines and seasonal periods of low food. "Evolutionary history and metabolic insights of ancient mammalian uricases" by James T. Kratzer et al backs this idea up and goes into some further detail. "Archeologia dell’alimentazione umana [PDF]", or "Archaeology of nutrition" in English, by F. Gregorio and M. Sudano (abstract also provided in English) talks about how the human genotype has changed as diet and sedentary levels shifted.
Perhaps you're thinking of the Venus figurines as an example of "plus size"? But that's still not quite right - many of these figurines are meant to display what fertile women look like, especially pregnant ones (peak fertility for a great many cultures, but also a temporary state for women), and real-life steatopygian body types are mostly restricted to either parts of Africa or parts of India, often by tribe.
In China, and I believe parts of Asia with similar cultures, fat under the chin heralds many good things - possibly because it meant you weren't starving and thus had enough food to be considered wealthy. Your mileage will vary on that, because China and many other cultures frown upon consumption unto excess for a variety of reasons.
People with more weight on them than average for their population, historically, have access to more food - which means ruling families, wealthy people - and once it was invented, (wealthy) farmers. But many cultures that were around in prehistory didn't have those kinds of societal structures, and pre-agricultural societies were inherently on the thin side because they were nomadic (which meant lots of walking), and had a diet primarily of gathered fruits/vegetables and whatever meat they could hunt down. It's usually the carbohydrates and other complex sugars in processed grains, such as breads, noodles, and bread-beers, that incite weight gain which is difficult to slough off, so it's something you need to keep in mind when worldbuilding your prehistoric societies.
If you want these kinds of body types in your worldbuilding, that's fine, but I would recommend that you don't try to view the past through the context of the present - life was very different back then, for very legitimate reasons, in ways that are neither wholly good nor wholly bad.
Saphira: Tex effectively nailed it, but I realize that you are likely writing "Plus-sized" characters into your narrative for representative purposes. You see how people under that title are treated in our current era, and you want to give them a more positive experience through your story. This is benevolently spirited, and so I understand your frustration with the situation. Being that history is not giving you a foothold for your vision, it's time to try another method.
Let's take a look at the Venus Figurines! They were made to represent women with bounty of life within them (as they were pregnant). They were also structures that represent faith. It gives us a fun, and positive, perspective on figures who are plus-sized. If we add a few degrees of separation, we get a foothold! First step: Pregnant people are plus sized. Second Step: Plus-sized means fertility and life. Third step: Anyone representing that plus-size is a bringer of fertility and life.
If Humans didn't have that plus-size due to their lifestyle and resources, then they may have idealized it. Look at how the renaissance models their women. They are plump and wealthy. Would not the people in your era feel similarly? Would they seek out, would they dream of, someone with that stature? Would they have a divine figure with those attributes? "This Venus figure represents a woman who is pregnant." "This Venus figure is not a pregnant woman, for it does not give birth to human children. Instead, it gives birth to vibrant fields, fresh water and honeybees."
If you are using divines or magic itself, you can find ways to representing plus-sizes in more creative ways. If you are working in a natural world, you can represent them with faith, or impressions of other creatures (like the bounty of a fruit, or the strength of a bear). Honestly, if we can worship skinniness through the art of Photoshop, others can worship the equally idealistic forms of the plus-size and all the wealth it represents in a pre-historic era.
Constablewrites: Another thing to remember about the Venus figurines is that recent scholarship has argued that they aren't just pregnant women, but they're self-portraits of pregnant women. That is, what was generally assumed to have been created by someone else *koff* men *koff* as an idealized depiction may have in fact been a way for women to explore and understand their own changing bodies. Perspective is critical when talking about beauty standards.
And Tex's point about the connection between economic status and beauty really needs to be underscored. You can see the point in history where a white person with a suntan went from being someone who worked outdoors (which meant they were poor and therefore undesirable) to being someone who could travel somewhere sunny and lounge around outside (which meant they were rich and therefore desirable). People are inclined to look for a mate whose children will be healthy, well cared for, and prosperous; the outward indicators of that status, whatever they might be in a given society, end up being conflated with an abstract idea of beauty.
Feral: As Tex, Saphira, and Constable pointed out "plus sized" has a wide definition (and can mean as small as an American size 10 depending on the brand), and it's important to also remember that "prehistory" has a wide definition - specifically a 3 million+ year definition. Prehistory covers everything from the first stone tools 3.3 million years ago to maybe somewhere around 5,300 years ago. Kinda. Prehistory means "before written record" and runs through the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, which all end in different places at different times.
So, what this means is that depending on which epoch your civilization falls under, there may absolutely be the necessary agriculture and division of social class that have been brought up. Narrowing down when and where you are trying to base your worldbuilding in will help you as you develop you characters and do further research on a variety of issues that may come up.
Another thing to consider is that you're probably not going to be describing your characters as "plus-sized" in your story (and if you did, all your readers would have different concepts about what that actually means), so the clearer your idea of what the characters' body shape (aka "where mass tends to accumulate"), the easier I think it will be for you to describe the character to your reader in a way that expresses what you specifically mean when you're thinking "plus sized." The fashion designer Justine Leconte has a great video to teach people how to recognize different body types using celebrities [Youtube]. It is geared towards fashion and what to wear based on your body type, but the knowledge is still helpful.
You might have seen this post on Tumblr with the body shapes of all the greatest athletes in the world that might also be helpful for you. But ultimately, I stand by my original point. This is a topic that no matter what you choose to do and what evidence you use to back up your choice, some of your audience is going to have a problem with it. So, just create your world and characters as you see them.
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Our prehistoric forebears are often portrayed as spear-wielding savages, but the earliest human societies are likely to have been founded on enlightened egalitarian principles, according to scientists.
A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history.
Mark Dyble, an anthropologist who led the study at University College London, said: “There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated. We’d argue it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged.”
Dyble says the latest findings suggest that equality between the sexes may have been a survival advantage and played an important role in shaping human society and evolution. “Sexual equality is one of a important suite of changes to social organisation, including things like pair-bonding, our big, social brains, and language, that distinguishes humans,” he said. “It’s an important one that hasn’t really been highlighted before.”
The study, published in the journal Science, set out to investigate the apparent paradox that while people in hunter-gatherer societies show strong preferences for living with family members, in practice the groups they live in tend to comprise few closely related individuals.
The scientists collected genealogical data from two hunter-gatherer populations, one in the Congo and one in the Philippines, including kinship relations, movement between camps and residence patterns, through hundreds of interviews. In both cases, people tend to live in groups of around 20, moving roughly every 10 days and subsisting on hunted game, fish and gathered fruit, vegetables and honey.
The scientists constructed a computer model to simulate the process of camp assortment, based on the assumption that people would chose to populate an empty camp with their close kin: siblings, parents and children.
When only one sex had influence over the process, as is typically the case in male-dominated pastoral or horticultural societies, tight hubs of related individuals emerged. However, the average number of related individuals is predicted to be much lower when men and women have an equal influence – closely matching what was seen in the populations that were studied.
“When only men have influence over who they are living with, the core of any community is a dense network of closely related men with the spouses on the periphery,” said Dyble. “If men and women decide, you don’t get groups of four or five brothers living together.”
The authors argue that sexual equality may have proved an evolutionary advantage for early human societies, as it would have fostered wider-ranging social networks and closer cooperation between unrelated individuals. “It gives you a far more expansive social network with a wider choice of mates, so inbreeding would be less of an issue,” said Dyble. “And you come into contact with more people and you can share innovations, which is something that humans do par excellence.”
Dr Tamas David-Barrett, a behavioural scientist at the University of Oxford, agreed: “This is a very neat result,” he said. “If you’re able to track your kin further away, you’d be able to have a much broader network. All you’d need to do is get together every now and then for some kind of feast.”
The study suggests that it was only with the dawn of agriculture, when people were able to accumulate resources for the first time, that an imbalance emerged. “Men can start to have several wives and they can have more children than women,” said Dyble. “It pays more for men to start accumulating resources and becomes favourable to form alliances with male kin.”
Dyble said that egalitarianism may even have been one of the important factors that distinguished our ancestors from our primate cousins. “Chimpanzees live in quite aggressive, male-dominated societies with clear hierarchies,” he said. “As a result, they just don’t see enough adults in their lifetime for technologies to be sustained.”
The findings appear to be supported by qualitative observations of the hunter-gatherer groups in the study. In the Philippines population, women are involved in hunting and honey collecting and while there is still a division of labour, overall men and women contribute a similar number of calories to the camp. In both groups, monogamy is the norm and men are active in childcare.
Andrea Migliano, of University College London and the paper’s senior author, said: “Sex equality suggests a scenario where unique human traits, such as cooperation with unrelated individuals, could have emerged in our evolutionary past.”
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