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Human Skulls Mounted on Stakes Found at 8,000-Year-Old Burial Site in Sweden
- roymckenzie 9y agoI can appreciate how European Mesolithic cultures dealt with the corrupt CEOs of their big banks.
- tw1010 9y agoYou're sort of implying that "free riders" were less of a problem earlier in our history because aggressive coalitions of lower ranked members were able to force the hierarchy more in favour of egalitarianism. But that is hardly supported by the facts. Kings are an obvious counter-example. The caste system in India is another good example of a structure that were very robust (for many many many years) against any kind of aggressive revolution from below.
- codezero 9y agoThere is a lot of recent research showing hunter gatherers were not as passive as once thought. Quite a few discoveries of mass graves from attacks on rival tribes and things like this are new in our understanding of ancient peoples. This is a neat find.
- ProAm 9y agoNo different than today.
- menacingly 9y agoI think it was a response to how often we have heard that peaceful hunter societies _were_ different from today
- dforrestwilson 9y agoPut a killing tool into a human's hands and they will find a way to use it. Modern day equivalent: drone strikes.
- singularity2001 9y ago6000BC might mark the invasion of proto-PIE groups via Anatolia? See Vinca culture.
- baybal2 9y agoI wonder how do such news get to line one of this website? An algo or actual human moderation?
- brentm 9y agoThis is one explanation: https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-hacker-news-ranking-algorithm-works-1d9b0cf2c08d https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-hacker-news-ranking...
- laumars 9y agoBecause people found it interesting. Also it's against HN policy to moan / comment about why non-tech / VC news features on the front page.
- unicornporn 9y agoBlog spam. Go here instead: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/keep-your-head-high-skulls-on-stakes-and-cranial-trauma-in-mesolithic-sweden/39BD3070DCC745A9CBAB1DF52FEC2782/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/ke... It isn't a particularly long or difficult read.
- curtis 9y agoI think calling it blog spam is a little bit unfair. The Gizmodo article is about 1/4 the size of the paper, but nevertheless reads like the writer actually read the original paper and tried to fairly summarize it.
- shrimp_emoji 9y agoBut what can summarize the Gizmodo article in 1/4th of its size? Parasitism all the way down!
- staunch 9y agoAncient people almost universally suffered from severe childhood trauma and abuse. A majority must have lived with deep psychological problems. They did all kinds of messed up stuff, including perpetuating the cycle of abuse all the way to today. Impaling a few skulls is (sadly) the least of it. Children being born today are some of the first to have parents that even understand what child abuse is. Which means it's possible that there will be a drastic reduction over the next generations. It's likely that this would result in a markedly different global society. Maybe even one that eliminates most forms of abuse and needless suffering.
- megaman22 9y agoDan Carlin, as ever, is worth a listen on this subject[1]. People until very recently lived with a level of casual violence that would be unheard of to most of us today. I'm not sure the modern pampering and preciousness of children is exceptionally healthy, but it is certainly different than ancient, medieval or early modern conceptions of childhood. [1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-31-blitz-suffer-the-children/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-31-blitz-...
- staunch 9y agoYes! Also James Burke, who inspired a lot of Carlin's thinking. They talked on his show at least once: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-18-a-fly-on-james-burkes-wall/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-18-a-fly-... Another subject Burke talks about is the exciting idea the 99% can actually contribute to society now, because education and science is no longer the exclusive domain of the wealthy. More of the 99%'s brainpower coming online could fully explain the cycle of accelerating technology development that we're observing.
- whatshisface 9y agoThat's rapidly sliding back in America as higher (grad) education is increasingly becoming a good idea for only the independently wealthy. (That, and people in search of citizenship.)
- pavel_lishin 9y agoProbably just children's toys.
- zeveb 9y ago> Displaying decapitated heads on wooden stakes is something you might expect from the Middle Ages … I dunno, I tend to think of Amazonian headshrinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrunken_head https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrunken_head > Historical examples include European colonists mounting the skulls of murdered indigenous peoples, or indigenous peoples using skulls in both burial rituals and as trophy displays. Ah, so Europeans mount the skulls of murder victims, while indigenous peoples bury them, or keep them as trophies. What a very interesting viewpoint on human history prevails amongst the editors at Gizmodo.
- acheron 9y agoYou can take the Gizmodo out of Gawker, but you can’t take the Gawker out of Gizmodo.