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Clearly, this is what they did when they found a spider of sufficient size in their hut.
by joncp 10y ago
Clearly, this is what they did when they found a spider of sufficient size in their hut.
- YokoZar 10y agoThis idea is actually in the article: > Fumigation: Another theory posits that the fires were used for sanitary reasons to smoke or fumigate a building, in order to get rid of pests, disease, insects, and/or witches. However, the evidence does not support this viewpoint. All of the structures within these settlements were completely burned and destroyed. Because the damage from the fire was almost total for the entire settlement, it would be illogical if fumigation was the only intent.
- Shivetya 10y agowhile I enjoy the spider meme I liked the last proposed idea that the culture treated it as the end of life for the house. perhaps it was tied to a certain number of generations having come and gone. the question I have is, how much at risk did this put these people at, did it retard their ability to expand?
- Chris2048 10y agoI have my own theory - artificial scarcity. They needed to keep their builders, potters and glass makers in business.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoYeah, they were probably already aware that real estate bubbles are dangerous for the economy.
- JackFr 10y agoNow on HGTV 'Flip or Flop: Neolithic'
- shuntress 10y agoSo why not keep the house and just give what they would have payed directly to the builders, potters and glass makers? They would probably pay much less because the builders, potters and glass makers time would not be taken up building, potting and glassmaking. And they wouldn't have had to to destroy their house. Or, are you simply saying they just wanted a new house? Who else would they pay to make it for them?
- mikeash 10y agoThe broken window fallacy is still not very widely understood. Expecting everybody to understand it 4-8,000 years ago may be a bit too much.
- VLM 10y agoDid those cultures have writing? Remember proper fumigation would have no observable effect now other than maybe there seemed to be "too high" population density for a predictable untreated parasite load. Even crazier look at the time intervals. "Hey Ug, hold my beer and watch this, I'm gonna light the ceremonial fires now... sure are a lot of fleas this season but they're going up in smoke for sure. Ya know, Ug, when I was a wee lad my grannie who's been dead 30 winters now, had some crazy story about destroying the whole village when she was a young lass herself because the chief used too much wood and doing it in the dry season, but you know crazy old people, our generation invented sex and music and I'm not going to listen to old wives tales from a woman seen elves in her garden bout every other day ... gosh those are some really big flames, maybe using ten times as much wood as usual wasn't a good idea after all. Ug? Hey Ug! Why you runnin' from the fire, bro?"
- restalis 10y ago"Did those cultures have writing?" Well, it seems that they were just working on that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%83rt%C4%83ria_tablets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%83rt%C4%83ria_tablets
- hinkley 10y agoBut if the problem was of general sanitation, there might be a tipping point where the offal and the flies and the fleas and the bed bugs got to be too much and they decided to burn it and start over. The offal would also burn in the fire.
- Semiapies 10y agoMany of the ideas people have brought up are mentioned and debunked for reasonable reasons in the article. The culture of TL;DR lives.