Head cheese may not be for everyone but it has an intensely devoted following. Most head cheese recipes call for the removal of brain, eyes, and ears before preparation, but purists scoff at this and include everything except bones. It is doubtful that Upper Paleolithic humans made head cheese; it is too time consuming. It [...]
Tags:Buran-Kaya·cannibalism·crania·Crimean Mountains·defleshing·diet·funeral·Goat's Head Soup·head cheese·head-hunting·mortuary·ritual·ritual behavior·rockshelter·Sandrine Plat·skulls·symbolic behavior·Upper Paleolithic
Over at the Guardian, Andrew Brown asks if we should clone Neanderthals (assuming it could be done). For me, the easy answer is no.
Brown then asks a series of nonsensical questions which imply that because Neanderthal brains were different from human brains (Neanderthals in fact had bigger brains than humans; the difference is in shape), [...]
Tags:acculturation·Andrew Brown·Anglican·Buddhist·Christian·cloned Neanderthal·cloning·culture·enculturation·heresy·heretics·Hindu·monotheism·Muslim·myth·Neandertal·religious exclusivism·religious pluralism·Richard Dawkins·ritual form·shamanic·shamanisms·social construction·Upper Paleolithic
Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day researching Upper Paleolithic “Venus” figurines. These carved female figures began appearing in the Danube corridor about 35,000 years ago, and from that time forward become increasingly widespread in time and space. They have drawn more than their fair share of scholarly attention, and anyone interested in [...]
Tags:amulets·Bananarama·Danube corridor·female figures·Female Figurines of the Upper Paleolithic·fertility cults·fertility figuines·goddesses·Karen Diane Jennett·symbolism·Texas State University·Upper Paleolithic·Venus figurines
As serendipity would have it, during the past few weeks I have been immersed in arguments about the Upper Paleolithic transition some 45,000 years ago. Something critical and different seems to have occurred about this time, but what that something was is the subject of considerable dispute. Because clear indicators of supernatural belief and ritual [...]
Tags:agency·co-evolution·FOXP2·gradualist·grammar·history·intentionality·intersubjectivity·John Hawks·language·Marvin Harris·Michael Tomasello·Ofer Bar-Josef·ratchet effect·recursion·revolution·Richard Klein·saltational·Upper Paleolithic
In many books and articles addressing the origins of “religious” behavior, one will find the assertion that deliberate burials are indicative of soul beliefs and that because people began burying the dead approximately 100,000 years ago, this marks the beginning of what we today call religion. As I noted in this post, there are several [...]
Tags:afterlife·afterlife beliefs·burials·commonsense dualism·deliberate burials·fox·foxes·funerary·grave goods·guardian spirit·Jordan·Levant·Lisa Maher·mortuary·Native Americans·Natufian·pre-Natufian·Russia·social complexity·social organization·soul·spirit·Sunghir·Sungir·Upper Paleolithic·Uyun al-Hammam·vision·vision quest
In a recent post on group level selection and the evolution of religion, I observed that if we assume such selection was operating on human groups during the Paleolithic, three factors play a major role in determining which groups come out on top. These three factors are: (1) group size, (2) technology, and (3) language. [...]
Tags:altruism·art·behavioral modernity·cooperation·differential fitness·evolution of religion·group agonism·group competition·group level selection·group size·intergroup conflict·language·modern human behavior·ornamentation·Paleolithic·proto-religion·reproduction·Richard Klein·ritual·survival·symbolic thinking·technology·The Human Career·Upper Paleolithic
Over at Seed, Holly Capelo provides a helpful survey of the various ways in which the famous Upper Paleolithic cave paintings — found primarily in France and Spain — have been interpreted over the last several decades. The occasion for her survey, which strangely omits mention of David Lewis-Williams’ contention that the paintings were the [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·archaeoastronomy·aurochs·bovids·bull mythology·cave paintings·cyclical time·David Lewis-Williams·entoptic images·Hall of Bulls·Holly Capelo·Lascaux·linear time·lunar time·Magdalenian·Michael Rappengluck·Occams razor·paleolithic graffiti·parsimony·seasonal hunting·star time·Taurus constellation·time-keeping system·Upper Paleolithic
Archaeologists working in Europe have it good, really good. Depending on one’s interests, you can research just about anything. Paleoanthropologists can work on hominid evolution (i.e., Homo heidelbergensis, H. antecessor, H. neanderthalensis), while their colleagues can study a host of fascinating subjects, including the Upper Paleolithic transition, mesolithic hunter-gatherers, incipient agriculturalists, and the usual smattering [...]
Tags:afterlife·axes·barrows·celts·complex hunter-gatherers·cosmology·European archaeology·flints·folk beliefs·grave goods·hominid evolution·Homo antecessor·Homo heidelbergensis·Homo neanderthalensis·Iron Age·Kate Ravilious·Kwakiutl·magic·megaliths·mesolithic·mortuary practices·mythology·myths·Neanderthals·oldest house in Britain·pagans·ritual objects·ritualism·Romans·Sean Coughlan·sedentism·shamanist·shamans·soul·spirit·Stone Age·superstition·talismans·thunderstones·Upper Paleolithic·Vikings
