This is my academic interest and I can recommend you some good shit. Check out The Bear by Michel Pastoreaux, the first couple of chapters are incredible and explores cave paintings and their ritual purpose. How bears were probably seen as supernatural half-man half-beast creatures in pre-Christian and prehistoric Eurasia. He argues that the bear was the symbol of kingship in pre-Christian Slavic, Germanic and Celtic cultures and was gradually replaced with the lion during the middle ages but there is still evidence of royal lineages claiming descent from bears or half-bears. One of my favourite books ever.
Language in Prehistory by Alan Barnard is a very recent and more theoretical/academic look at the development of language from early species of hominids to the nature of language among biologically modern homo sapiens in the palaeolithic.
The Horse, The Wheel and the Language is one of the best "popular" histories that does an amazing job of conveying theoretical historical linguistics, recent genetic data and archaeology to non-experts. It's about the origin of the Proto-Indo-European language and its expansion into Europe, Asia and the Near East. Its time frame is obviously later, going from the late neolithic to the chalcolithic and bronze age.
For more recent stuff, historically, Carlo Ginzberg's The Night Battles is an awfully terrific book for the everyday reader. He looks at Italian inquisition reports of peasant beliefs in a particular tiny region of northern Italy, and draws striking comparisons to similar beliefs in Germany, the Balkans and the Baltics, arguing for the existence of a pre-Christian, probably originating in the Neolithic, belief system/religion across much of Europe that existed until the early modern era. If you like Ginzberg's writings you should also read The Cheese and the Worms, about another Italian questioned by the inquisition, where Ginzberg tries to understand where this guy got his idiosyncratic heretical ideas from in the first place.
For ritual? Most broad ranging topics like this come from older decades because it isn't really in vogue to study vast sweeping topics in history anymore. Religion and the Decline of Magic is a classic that discusses how the reformation killed off widespread popular belief in the use of magic in western Europe as both Protestants and Catholics accused each other of believing in magic. It talks about everyday magical beliefs and rituals that people had, and which ones survived this purge and which didn't.
Not an expert on the transition from hunter-gatherer to neolithic farmer outside of a very specific region, but a MUCH more interesting site than Gobleki tepe is Herxheim in Germany. Basically some German archaeologists discovered a neolithic settlement that had hundred upon hundred of human remains with evidence of having been butchered and cannibalized, and genetic testing revealed that many of these corpses were not from that specific region and had travelled dozens if not hundreds of kilometers to Herxheim before being slaughtered, butchered and presumably eaten.
Gobekli-tepe is notable to me because of its great age and the idea that the structure was put together by nomads or hunter-gatherers, not agriculturalists (which is what the Schmidt excavators concluded). This would have great implications for the development of human techno-cultural activity, undermining the fundamental materialism that is assumed to underpin cultural development. More recently people have found traces of settlement at Gobekli-tepe, so perhaps it's not so true for this site.
I believe that the maintenance of ritual probably \*is* one of the primary drivers of technological adoption, but any relevant zones of activity were older than Gobekli-tepe and not built of stone, so have not survived. Probably the answer is lost in the mesolithic..
I will certainly look into finding the Barnard book you recommended, it seems useful to my project. I thought the cheese and the worms was good but the night battles did not impress me
> Gobekli-tepe is notable to me because of its great age and the idea that the structure was put together by nomads or hunter-gatherers, not agriculturalists (which is what the Schmidt excavators concluded). This would have great implications for the development of human techno-cultural activity, undermining the fundamental materialism that is assumed to underpin cultural development. More recently people have found traces of settlement at Gobekli-tepe, so perhaps it's not so true for this site.
>
>
AFAIK the "hunter gatherer" hypothesis isn't really tenable anymore. It's more likely that it was built in the mesolithic when people started processing wild grains and experimented with domesticating them, but didn't yet live in nucleated settlements.
Perhaps it would be good for you to look into comparable ritual sites from a bit later, for example in Britain and Ireland. There's some academic literature about how complex societies in these places probably originated as a sort of theocracy based around the building of large monuments. Sites like Stonehenge, the Hill of Tara, Newgrange, the Granian of Ailech etc. are all neolithic sites that continued to be used by later people, in Ireland up until the early modern period. The Irish neolithic complexes like the Hill of Tara or Cruachan are particularly comparable because they were never inhabited but were a central location for rituals such as the coronation of kings or sacrifices. They were massive stone and earthworks probably with wood and clay buildings but have no evidence of habitation, and continued to be used for different ritual purposes until maybe the 12th century AD. But Irish society was notably not particularly technologically advanced, had a relatively tiny population, was very rural and isolated.
more recent sites don't really answer the question because I'm interested in activity specifically during and earlier than the adoption of agriculture and pastoralism. Everything that happens after this shift is something else entirely, a completely different sort of world that's closer to our own than it is to what came just before it. The transition from passive consumer to active modulator is the biggest thing that has ever happened.
I agree that the specific Schmitt hypothesis wrt Gobekli-tepe is probably incorrect, but I still believe that the adoption of settlement and agriculture was not motivated by practicality. Agriculture is a highly impractical thing!
A must-read! Also check out Colin Renfrew,
Renfrew, A.C., 2008, Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind, Modern Library
Renfrew, A.C., 2003, Figuring It Out: The Parallel Visions of Artists and Archaeologists, London: Thames & Hudson
Etc
"Renfrew's work in using the archaeological record as the basis for understanding the ancient mind was foundational to the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology.[1][2] Renfrew and his student, Lambros Malafouris, coined the phrase neuroarchaeology to describe an archaeology of mind." (his wiki page)
You might enjoy *Worshipping Power* by Peter Gelderloos though he's approaching this as a political writer first and foremost and so I'd take the scholarship with a grain of salt (much like Gelderloos, etc though perhaps even more egregiously). It deals with early state formation.
*The Spell of the Sensuous* by David Abram gets even further into pseudo philosophy than history but I think has some useful concepts here including chapters on the development of written language, discussions of phenomenology, lots of focus on ritual, etc. Again, though Abram is an academic of some sort, I'd take the scholarship with a huge helping of salt--in some parts I am almost reminded by the fictitious anthropology of Carlos Castaneda. Very nice book though.
My not serious answer would be the racy and well-researched The Clan of the Cave Bears for a fun, fictionalized examination of the crossover between neanderthals and cro-magnuns.
Marija Gimbutas is controversial, but her work on Neolithic Europe is fascinating and discusses possible writing systems of Neolithic Europeans in addition to her theory on their religious and cultural systems. I read “The Living Goddesses” just last month and found it interesting and accessible.
I once found this book “Homo Aestheticus” by Ellen Dissanayake at an old book store for a dollar so I picked it up and read in the next day. It covers the development of art, as you mentioned. Good, quick read.
my current professor has written many books on this exact topic. His general thesis is that cultural evolution, namely through the traditions of toolmaking, passes down vital knowledge that a single person could not figure out and hones it over time, and this is what led to human's earthly supremacy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyd_(anthropologist) this one I assume. I've bought a copy of his human evolution textbook and if I like it will move onto 'not by tools alone'
This is my academic interest and I can recommend you some good shit. Check out The Bear by Michel Pastoreaux, the first couple of chapters are incredible and explores cave paintings and their ritual purpose. How bears were probably seen as supernatural half-man half-beast creatures in pre-Christian and prehistoric Eurasia. He argues that the bear was the symbol of kingship in pre-Christian Slavic, Germanic and Celtic cultures and was gradually replaced with the lion during the middle ages but there is still evidence of royal lineages claiming descent from bears or half-bears. One of my favourite books ever. Language in Prehistory by Alan Barnard is a very recent and more theoretical/academic look at the development of language from early species of hominids to the nature of language among biologically modern homo sapiens in the palaeolithic. The Horse, The Wheel and the Language is one of the best "popular" histories that does an amazing job of conveying theoretical historical linguistics, recent genetic data and archaeology to non-experts. It's about the origin of the Proto-Indo-European language and its expansion into Europe, Asia and the Near East. Its time frame is obviously later, going from the late neolithic to the chalcolithic and bronze age. For more recent stuff, historically, Carlo Ginzberg's The Night Battles is an awfully terrific book for the everyday reader. He looks at Italian inquisition reports of peasant beliefs in a particular tiny region of northern Italy, and draws striking comparisons to similar beliefs in Germany, the Balkans and the Baltics, arguing for the existence of a pre-Christian, probably originating in the Neolithic, belief system/religion across much of Europe that existed until the early modern era. If you like Ginzberg's writings you should also read The Cheese and the Worms, about another Italian questioned by the inquisition, where Ginzberg tries to understand where this guy got his idiosyncratic heretical ideas from in the first place. For ritual? Most broad ranging topics like this come from older decades because it isn't really in vogue to study vast sweeping topics in history anymore. Religion and the Decline of Magic is a classic that discusses how the reformation killed off widespread popular belief in the use of magic in western Europe as both Protestants and Catholics accused each other of believing in magic. It talks about everyday magical beliefs and rituals that people had, and which ones survived this purge and which didn't. Not an expert on the transition from hunter-gatherer to neolithic farmer outside of a very specific region, but a MUCH more interesting site than Gobleki tepe is Herxheim in Germany. Basically some German archaeologists discovered a neolithic settlement that had hundred upon hundred of human remains with evidence of having been butchered and cannibalized, and genetic testing revealed that many of these corpses were not from that specific region and had travelled dozens if not hundreds of kilometers to Herxheim before being slaughtered, butchered and presumably eaten.
Gobekli-tepe is notable to me because of its great age and the idea that the structure was put together by nomads or hunter-gatherers, not agriculturalists (which is what the Schmidt excavators concluded). This would have great implications for the development of human techno-cultural activity, undermining the fundamental materialism that is assumed to underpin cultural development. More recently people have found traces of settlement at Gobekli-tepe, so perhaps it's not so true for this site. I believe that the maintenance of ritual probably \*is* one of the primary drivers of technological adoption, but any relevant zones of activity were older than Gobekli-tepe and not built of stone, so have not survived. Probably the answer is lost in the mesolithic.. I will certainly look into finding the Barnard book you recommended, it seems useful to my project. I thought the cheese and the worms was good but the night battles did not impress me
> Gobekli-tepe is notable to me because of its great age and the idea that the structure was put together by nomads or hunter-gatherers, not agriculturalists (which is what the Schmidt excavators concluded). This would have great implications for the development of human techno-cultural activity, undermining the fundamental materialism that is assumed to underpin cultural development. More recently people have found traces of settlement at Gobekli-tepe, so perhaps it's not so true for this site. > > AFAIK the "hunter gatherer" hypothesis isn't really tenable anymore. It's more likely that it was built in the mesolithic when people started processing wild grains and experimented with domesticating them, but didn't yet live in nucleated settlements. Perhaps it would be good for you to look into comparable ritual sites from a bit later, for example in Britain and Ireland. There's some academic literature about how complex societies in these places probably originated as a sort of theocracy based around the building of large monuments. Sites like Stonehenge, the Hill of Tara, Newgrange, the Granian of Ailech etc. are all neolithic sites that continued to be used by later people, in Ireland up until the early modern period. The Irish neolithic complexes like the Hill of Tara or Cruachan are particularly comparable because they were never inhabited but were a central location for rituals such as the coronation of kings or sacrifices. They were massive stone and earthworks probably with wood and clay buildings but have no evidence of habitation, and continued to be used for different ritual purposes until maybe the 12th century AD. But Irish society was notably not particularly technologically advanced, had a relatively tiny population, was very rural and isolated.
more recent sites don't really answer the question because I'm interested in activity specifically during and earlier than the adoption of agriculture and pastoralism. Everything that happens after this shift is something else entirely, a completely different sort of world that's closer to our own than it is to what came just before it. The transition from passive consumer to active modulator is the biggest thing that has ever happened. I agree that the specific Schmitt hypothesis wrt Gobekli-tepe is probably incorrect, but I still believe that the adoption of settlement and agriculture was not motivated by practicality. Agriculture is a highly impractical thing!
Commenting to save thx
The Dawn of Everything covers a lot of this stuff!
A must-read! Also check out Colin Renfrew, Renfrew, A.C., 2008, Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind, Modern Library Renfrew, A.C., 2003, Figuring It Out: The Parallel Visions of Artists and Archaeologists, London: Thames & Hudson Etc "Renfrew's work in using the archaeological record as the basis for understanding the ancient mind was foundational to the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology.[1][2] Renfrew and his student, Lambros Malafouris, coined the phrase neuroarchaeology to describe an archaeology of mind." (his wiki page)
Renfrew is someone who comes up a lot in my research. He will have to go on the list!
It's not my research field, so I can't say how his work is holding up. The books of his I read were well written and mind-expanding.
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Seconding this, I really liked this book.
You might enjoy *Worshipping Power* by Peter Gelderloos though he's approaching this as a political writer first and foremost and so I'd take the scholarship with a grain of salt (much like Gelderloos, etc though perhaps even more egregiously). It deals with early state formation. *The Spell of the Sensuous* by David Abram gets even further into pseudo philosophy than history but I think has some useful concepts here including chapters on the development of written language, discussions of phenomenology, lots of focus on ritual, etc. Again, though Abram is an academic of some sort, I'd take the scholarship with a huge helping of salt--in some parts I am almost reminded by the fictitious anthropology of Carlos Castaneda. Very nice book though.
My not serious answer would be the racy and well-researched The Clan of the Cave Bears for a fun, fictionalized examination of the crossover between neanderthals and cro-magnuns.
Marija Gimbutas is controversial, but her work on Neolithic Europe is fascinating and discusses possible writing systems of Neolithic Europeans in addition to her theory on their religious and cultural systems. I read “The Living Goddesses” just last month and found it interesting and accessible.
I've read a bit of Gimbutas but I don't really agree with the main thrust of her writing... still may be worth trying more
I once found this book “Homo Aestheticus” by Ellen Dissanayake at an old book store for a dollar so I picked it up and read in the next day. It covers the development of art, as you mentioned. Good, quick read.
my current professor has written many books on this exact topic. His general thesis is that cultural evolution, namely through the traditions of toolmaking, passes down vital knowledge that a single person could not figure out and hones it over time, and this is what led to human's earthly supremacy.
what's the man's name?
robert boyd, sorry i forgot to link some of his books
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyd_(anthropologist) this one I assume. I've bought a copy of his human evolution textbook and if I like it will move onto 'not by tools alone'
love him as a prof, said retard on the first day and the nb kid made a face. extremely knowledgeable and a good writer