Monday, November 19, 2007

mothers of invention

While poking around the intarwebs today, I found an interesting article about human evolution and our closest primate cousins, the chimpanzee.

Seems the weaker sex got creative, with some surprising and violent results.

7 comments:

Weer'd Beard said...

That's what I always say! I mean there will always be a bigger Dog than I out-and-about, and frankly I know nothing about unarmed combat. Still at 6'0" and 190 and in decent shape, I should be able to give many a run for thier money.

Ladies, on the other hand, have the disadvantage of thier size and upper-body strenth, you guys need the tools a LOT more than I do.

Anonymous said...

We've now been closely observing ape behavior for 150 years, and we just noticed this for the first time. We're not really very observant, are we? And lookit how much theory they can extract from one obesrvation! Why, it's all figured out already. It certainly is Margaret Mead's brand of science. I hope the chimps didn't spoof in the interview.

There's about neutral evidence for that whole male-dominance branch of evolutionary anthropology. When confronted with skeletal evidence that [human] women and men hunted together, they all get to stammerin' something fierce. Anthropology was cooked up by some veddy fey early-Victorian gentlemen, and priority one for them was building the case for an ideal world they were just engineering into existence ("Inventing the Pedestal"). No other field bases so much conjecture, with such obvious bias, on so little evidence.

Except for the part about red-headed Neanderthals. Now, that's got to be true.

Roberta X said...

A) I knew it! Ha! ;)

B) Comatus, what? If your main point is the we can't look at anthro. without seeing a mirror, fine; but your examples seem to pull in opposite directions?

Anonymous said...

Bobbie X: (&if I know my Midwest anthro., you've been called that half your life, and hated it): I'm a capital-R-Romantic, and so believe that [justifiable] human society arose from a woman and a man going hunting together (after beating off the competition, or after beating off, I don't really care). I do NOT believe that females as a group invented weapons;(1)"Weapon" is Anglo-Saxonish for "penis" (2)I am open for discussion that females invented brewing, and am on record for having said so; I'd like to say that all advances in social organization were joint in nature, except I 'speck you know what "joint" means in Anglo-Saxon, so I'll just let that stand, heh{SHIT: two semi's/forgive me Tam}. I say this: The [pseudo-male] 'Establishment' against which anthropologists wail is of their own making, and almost never existed in real history. Fallacy of false dichotomy. I hope that takes care of the two directions thing. Da Beard is not wrong on this, but I'm just not inviting Prof. Gingrich in to the discussion.

Roberta X said...

Comatus, are you familiar with Heinlein's notion that most technological advances (and let us include the thrown rock and improvised club as "technology") are made by the lame, weak and/or lazy?

Anonymous said...

Bob never said that. Ginny said that.

Roberta X said...

Oooo, check and mate! There is no internally-supported counter to his gambit, must buy time....

Aha! ;)

He did so too say it, or had a character say it. If I ever get mah librareh unpacked and reshelved, I'll cite chapter and verse.