Posted on 12/04/2006 12:38:58 PM PST by blam
Stone Age Role Revolution: Modern humans may have divided labor to conquer
Bruce Bower
Chalk up modern humanity's rise and the extinction of Neandertals to a geographic accident. That's the implication of a new analysis of material from previously excavated Stone Age sites.
Homo sapiens evolved in Africa's resource-rich tropics. As a result, a division of labor arose beginning around 40,000 years ago that roughly corresponds to the arrangement found in most foraging societies today, say Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, both archaeologists at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Men in these societies hunt small and large game, while women and children gather tubers, berries, and other foods.
In contrast, Neandertals evolved in Europe and Asia, where large animals were the most abundant food source. Kuhn and Stiner suspect that individuals of both sexes and all ages collaborated in hunting. The high risks of killing the large beasts kept Neandertals' numbers low, the researchers propose.
H. sapiens' switch to a division of labor for procuring different foods prompted population growth, the researchers say. As humans migrated north and the two species jockeyed for survival in the same areas, humans enjoyed a competitive advantage over Neandertals.
Kuhn and Stiner say that humans' survival at Neandertals' expense hinged not on being uniquely clever, as many scientists have assumed, but on a fortunate social structure. Their investigation appears in the December Current Anthropology.
Kuhn and Stiner reviewed evidence from well-excavated Neandertal and modern-human sites in Italy, Israel, and Turkey dating mainly between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago. Neandertals lived from around 250,000 to 30,000 years ago.
Before 45,000 years ago, large- and medium-size game—including gazelles, deer, and wild horses—account for virtually all the animal remains and potential food sources at most locations. Large game declined slightly in importance—to about 80 percent of all prey—beginning around 45,000 years ago. The decline appeared primarily at modern-human sites.
Kuhn and Stiner then determined that the range and amount of small game increased dramatically after 45,000 years ago at modern-human sites. Such prey included birds, rabbits, and fish. Furthermore, many of these sites contain evidence of elaborate clothing and specialized artifacts, including sewing implements likely used by women.
After 15,000 years ago, following Neandertals' extinction, the importance of large game dropped sharply—to about 30 percent of all prey—and evidence of plant foods became more prominent.
Kuhn and Stiner suggest that men and women first adopted specific social roles in tropical African regions where modern H. sapiens originated. However, scientists have examined only a handful of such sites.
Archaeologist John J. Shea of the State University of New York at Stony Brook regards Kuhn and Stiner's argument as a "reasonable hypothesis." Still, he cautions, much is unknown about the extent to which modern-human and Neandertal behavior varied from one region to another.
Archaeologist Olga Soffer of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign remains unconvinced. Kuhn and Stiner underestimate Neandertals' reliance on small game such as turtles and birds, and men and women alike may have used sewing implements to mend clothes, she says.
If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location.
Huh? You believe Marx thought up the Division of Labor theory?
Just keep in mind that unless you have division of labor, you can't have Marxism or Feminism, defined as one gender or class abusing another. So it's really important.
Marx didn't invent capitalism, class, or division of labor, but he made good use of all of them.
Plenty of class struggle in ancient Rome and Greece.
It's been persuasively argued that Marx didn't invent anything, he just twisted other people's ideas and stood them on their heads.
did the nenaderthal women - being part of the unisex hunting party - ever brign the kids - you know - to breast feed?
sounds like junk science to me.
His belief actually required that capitalism be developed to its maximum extent before socialism was even possible. This theory had to be dropped in order to explain how stages of economic development could be skipped thereby allowing Lenin to make the claim he was "Marxist."
I didn't say Marx invented the Division of Labor notion, but, as others have pointed out, he made extensive use of it and much of his thinking really hangs on the social differentiation which he said comes from the Division of Labor based on production.
The inherent biological fact that only females give birth and suckle the young - the latter period lasting several years for humans (Neanderthalis sapiens as well as homo sapiens) - means that human females of child-bearing age did not leave their young children to hunt big game.
So this article's underlying premise is wrong.
Anyone claiming to understand economics must understand the Division of Labor. It is not a Marxist concept. Adam Smith demonstrated the critical role the DoL plays in a modern economy.
Nor does it play much of a role in Marxian economics. I have no idea where you got that idea. Marx's social differentiation essentially had three components: proletariat, workers and petit bourgeoise and those were determined by the relation to the means of production.
Sounds like BS to me. Neanderthal women and children were almost certainly less-agressive, smaller, and slower than the men, and probably developed the same (obvious) division of labor. They have no evidence to the contrary.
Just so. I remember attending a meeting of the Milton Seminar in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR.
This is actually a pretty moderate group, for academia, but of course most are still leftists.
Anyway, I asked the most marxist of them what she made of the whole business. Was it a failure of Communism? She replied that Russia needed to spend the next century developing to a high state of capitalism, and then try it again. They never should have tried to take that shortcut!
"So simple, even a caveman can do it".
What's the difference?
If you have a car wreck tonight, was it God's will, or an accident? If you believe God has His hands in everything, then it was Gods will. If you belive otherwise, then it was just an accident. In either case, it happened, and the outcome is the same.
Same with Neaderthals. Whether you believe God did it or it was just an accident, it happened. The outcome was the same. There's no way to tell the difference between the two objectively. The only way to "know" is by your personal faith, which can be anything you want it to be, and so doesn't clear up the question.
I am a Christian. I believe in God and I believe in Jesus and am certain that everything I have and value, I have because of Him. Including my brain, which can and has read text books and bible verse as well.
Global warming is the territory of liberals. It involves their "religion" of environmentalism, and politicizing science to support the agenda of that religion.
Anti-evolution hysteria is the territory of conservatives. It involves Christianity and politicizing science to support Christian fundamentalists' interpretation of Genesis. Nothing in evolution challenges the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, or the teachings of Christ. Indeed, the tenets of natural selection confirm them. Civilizations that cleave to them, survive and thrive. Civilizations that don't, fall into degeneration and die.
The Devil comes very cleverly disguised, but one thing for sure -- he deals in falsehoods and denial. Christians who, out of pride, deny the evidence of paleontology because atheist paleontologists like Daniel Dennet conclude that it "proves" that God doesn't exist, are being dupes of the Devil. God is love, and He has told us that the truth will set us free. If the truth is that He created a world in which natural selection and evolution are part of His vast plan, I have no problem with it. Evolution doesn't challenge God, it challenges men.
Global warming and anti-evolution are "the bandwagons of fools parading as science."
Yes, humans of all ages took part in hunting. The two-year-olds would try to throw rocks at the mammoths...when the mammoths were rolling on the ground laughing, the grown-up humans would club them to death.
The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
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Interesting theory. Is grant money involved?
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