Posted on 05/11/2006 11:50:02 AM PDT by blam
Muggings were rife in New Stone Age
11 May 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Emma Young
IF YOU are worried about being attacked or killed by a violent criminal, just be glad you are not living in Neolithic Britain. From 4000 to 3200 BC, Britons had a 1 in 14 chance of being bashed on the head, and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries.
Grisly figures from the first systematic survey of early Neolithic British skulls reveal that life then was no rural idyll. "It's certainly more violent than we'd considered," says Rick Schulting of Queen's University Belfast, UK, who conducted the study with Mick Wysocki at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.
The discovery of craniums from the New Stone Age with signs of human-inflicted trauma is nothing new but this is the first clue to the overall frequency of violence. Schulting and Wysocki have so far identified and studied the remains of about 350 skulls, mostly from southern England. The pair found healed depressed fractures in 4 to 5 per cent of the skulls, and unhealed injuries in about 2 per cent - suggesting the person died from their wounds, or at some point in the attack.
Most of the fatal blows were to the left side of the head, which would make sense if two right-handed people were fighting, says Schulting. The injuries were mostly caused by blunt objects, although some of the skulls seem to have been hacked by stone axes and there is some evidence that ears were chopped off. Schulting presented the work at last month's annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
From issue 2551 of New Scientist magazine, 11 May 2006, page 16
You must understand that the neolithics were not able to cope properly with their society, and as such, violence was their only form of expression. Opression from richer, more affluent tribes contributed widely to a feeling of hopelessness and eventually manifested itself as anger and youthful rebellion.........
1/14= .0714 not .714
1/50= .02 not .002
but your mistakes canceled each other out and you got the right result! LOL
Gen. 6
ping...you're being referenced on this thread.
Here's another clue: these weren't muggings. War-making is deeply embedded in everything we are and do. Those of us alive today are the descendants of the winning warriors. Most of us haven't killed anyone in war but most of us can, and surprisingly not lose any sleep over it. Long ago Darwin wrote about the role war plays in human evolution however modern archaeologists can't accept it and public schools won't teach it.
They were on early neolithic steroids. BTW, today's toon strip "BC" fits this subject.
Sounds like muslims were there.
Me and my fat fingers head!
Thanks for the reality check!
Those doing the muggings were liberal stone agers, who didn't hunt, fish, trap nor farm.
This was before they invented the income, sales and inheritance taxes.
"I thought the noble savages were supposed to be granola- munching, kumbaya-singing pacifists, that made love, not war, and not just with one another, but even with other (sub)species?"
These were the forerunners of the nasty, imperialist, racist Europeans.
"Yeah, but that was back in the day when if a girl wanted to play hard to get, she would cut her hair short."
In parts of our major cities, short hair on some womyn is still a statement to" Forget it Neanderthals".
The correct translation is "the land is filled with..". Makes a BIG difference
afraid I don't see your point. In any event, "land" is used as a synecdoche throughout the OT for the people, the nation, etc.
You don't? "The flood" - was it local ("the land of")or global ("earth"-wide)?
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