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New open access paper - 'A Deceptive Curing Practice in Hunter-Gatherer Societies', exploring what I suspect is one of the oldest and most widespread healing practices/'magic tricks' in the world mdpi.com/2673-9461/2/3/…
Will
17.9K posts
Will
@Evolving_Moloch
Evolutionary Anthropology. RA @HSB_Lab. Blogs on violence, magic, rituals, deception. traditionsofconflict.com
Joined December 2016
- I have long thought that if pretty much anyone other than Mel Gibson had made Apocalypto it would be more widely hailed as a masterpiece and considered relatively pioneering in terms of representation in Hollywood films. Great movie, and the entire film is spoken in Yucatec Maya.
- In contrast to this though something I found striking while reading The Iliad is that it both clearly describes a very violent patriarchal social context with numerous examples of coercive concubinage and wife capture, and is also filled with dozens of examples of men weeping.bell hooks: "The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. 1/2
- Replying to @DiscussingFilmLooks fucking terrible, nothing like the desolate lonely vibe of the comic
- Just one thing to note since some people in the comments and QTs seem confused is that this wasn't everyday wear but ceremonial and involved impersonating different kinds of spirits.
- One of my favorite films. I say this all the time but the emphasis on costumed deception as a tool of social control was incredibly insightful.
THE VILLAGE (2004, Shyamalan): “And yes, I will dance with you on our wedding night.” - There are psychologists who argued the average 8 year old European child is smarter than the average adult Kalahari forager because they scored poorly on a pen and paper maze test, although, “This is probably still better than the conclusion a Bushman would draw should he put theCollectively, humans are more capable than ever. Individually, humans are less capable than ever.
- Pseudoarchaeology fans are desperate to see sites like Gobekli Tepe recklessly destroyed because real carefully conducted archaeology conflicts with bullshit ideas from people like Graham Hancock and Jimmy Corsetti about Atlantis and the Nephilim & pyramids made via telekinesis
- Gobekli Tepe is one of the strangest archaeological sites in the world--not because of the site itself but because it's possibly the only site where the more someone talks about it on here, generally the less they actually know about archaeology. It's become a meme among pseudsMore than anything it would seem a true excavation of Gobekli Tepe is being slowed down because it would make archeologists appear foolish. No scholar/academic wants to appear as such, history has taught us that despite their intelligence people such as this will deliberately
- It's probably my favorite movie ever, but one area where Eggers pulled his punches a bit was the conventional romance (which I nonetheless liked). In Saxo's account Amleth takes a second wife, but this would undoubtedly make the character less sympathetic to modern WEIRDosReplying to @MuseZackThe Northman was great filmmaking but didn't do Gladiator-level business partly because Eggers was so unflinching about being true to the protagonist's Norse pagan worldview, which is alien and even horrifying to us as modern viewers (well, I hope it is...)
GIF - Anthropologists grappling with the ethical dilemma of publishing secret knowledge from Australia
- My most centrist and self-righteous opinion is that large numbers of supremely intelligent people on all sides of the political spectrum are wasting their considerable intellects by immersing themselves in toxic and often trivial culture war psychodrama.
- A great benefit of reading lot of ethnography is realizing 1) a lot of things people blame on capitalism or agriculture are found in non-capitalist, non-agricultural societies, but also 2) a lot of what people attribute to ‘human nature’ are non-universal Western/industrial norms
- Maybe one day a hereditarian will be able to explain why aboriginal America contained both large scale agricultural empires & small scale nomadic hunter-gatherers, in some cases speaking same language, intermixing, & living within few hundred miles of each other, but I doubt itLike it or not, culture comes from race If the race of a country changes significantly, so too does the culture No way to avoid this reality
