Posted on 05/03/2014 9:37:13 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
From shooting their enemies with darts and arrows to crushing their skulls and even harvesting body parts as trophies, the ancient foragers of central California engaged in sporadic, and sometimes severe, violence, according to a new archaeological study spanning 5,000 years.
In an effort to understand life and death in one of the ancient West’s most populous regions, anthropologists conducted a landmark study of its dead, cataloging signs of violence found in burials between the Sierra Nevada and the San Francisco Bay, dating from historic times all the way back to 3000 BCE.
After 13 years of mining the data, the researchers identified what they say is a complex pattern of episodic violence, driven by forces as diverse as competition for territory, pressure from a changing climate, and the arrival of Europeans.
Chronicling 16,820 burials from 329 sites among 13 different ethnographic groups, the data reveal that the most common type of violence over the millennia was so-called sharp-force trauma, caused by projectiles like arrows or atlatl darts, which appeared in 7.2% of the burials studied.
Another 4.3% of the hunter-gatherers suffered apparent blunt-force trauma to the head, while just under 1% showed evidence of dismemberment, with limbs, scalps, or heads having been removed after death.
These grim findings illustrate the periodic conflicts that took place among California’s prehistoric groups in response to the historical, environmental, and social circumstances around them, said Dr. Terry Jones, an anthropologist at Cal Poly who co-authored the new study.
“Many people still seem to think that prehistoric California was a violence-free paradise, but the archaeological record shows clearly that that was not the case,” he said in an interview.
“People are people, and most of us believe that an inclination to resort to violence in certain situations is part of the human condition.”
(Excerpt) Read more at westerndigs.org ...
Oh no.... golly you mean as folks moved back and forth across territory, they fought with each other???? Who would have ever guessed that?
Sometimes as interesting as the data is, the modern studiers just seem to be so thrilled with their obvious conclusions. Our taxpayers dollars went for these studies
My tax dollars helped build the internet, which ordinarily I consider a good thing.
off the subject, I really like that reflection text in the FReepathon post.
and your tax dollars support the military.....
not even comparing fruits let alone things that might be similar
Oh great, now I have to throw out my theory, which was that it was originally the home of a guy named Semmitee, and people stopping by to see him would holler, “Yo, Semmitee!”.
:’) Thanks married21.
:”D
Thanks SL, I can’t prove it, but I *may* actually have that title around, I seem to remember buying it used in great condition at one of the big local (non-chain) bookstores.
;’)
That’s why this was in the excerpt, shows how attitudes have begun to shift off the ideological crap-basket that is the academic leftist bias:
> “Many people still seem to think that prehistoric California was a violence-free paradise, but the archaeological record shows clearly that that was not the case,” he said in an interview.
Yeah, they’d have run him right out of town, or maybe just cut him into chutney on some stone temple.
Thanks, great posts!
;’) If they wanted to hang out, they had to take someone out, (cocaine).
Thanks. I think I used cooltext.com
Really, we shouldn’t be surprised I suppose. Hmm, maybe this whole article is just a stealthy attempt to lower our threshold of tolerance.
most of us believe that an inclination to resort to violence in certain situations is part of the human condition.”....How much money did they get for this realization? Animals is animals, that’s why we call them animals.
I grew up in Contra Costa County. The local naitives were peace loving fishermen that traded shells. Oh and they ate acorns. At least that is what the story was back in the day. I wonder where they found the stone dart at.
Is that a spine?
That specimen wasn’t Chumash, it was Costanoan.
does this help explain the violence of the youth gangs?...Actually, the idea of tribalism explains it.
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