‘Appropriate to Her Sex?’ Women’s Participation on the Construction Site in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

By Shelley E. Roff
Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, edited by Theresa Earenfight (Palgrave, 2010)

Abstract: Until recently, studies in the architectural history of medieval and early modern Europe have assumed an all-male labor force on the construction site and in the related building trades. Historical chronicles and manuscript illuminations of construction sites support this notion, purporting the total exclusion of women from this complex industry. 

This chapter demonstrates the true nature of women’s contribution to construction sites from the 13th to the 17th centuries in western Europe, uncovering a wide range of occupations in which they engaged: poor women hired for manual labor, women working as slaves, women working with their husbands and fathers in the building trades, widows continuing the workshops of their deceased husbands, and women supplying building materials for particular sites. 

There is a history to be told of women’s repeated participation in and subsequent denial from working in the building trades that echoes a theme between towns and across language barriers and indicates a common experience shared by women in this era.

Introduction: The construction site, supported by numerous trades and material suppliers, was an important factor in the economy of cities in medieval and early modern Europe. When reading the literature on the history of architecture, construction, and the related trades, one has the impression that women made virtually no contribution to the built environment other than as aristocratic patrons of the art. Although it is true that the majority of day labourers and craftsmen at any given site were male, there is evidence in many regions of Western Europe that women were commonly employed alongside the men, albeit in the most menial tasks. 

Poor women and slaves worked as day labourers on construction sites, and women of better means were employed in the workshops of the various building-related crafts. One might not expect to find a woman in the historically male position of master of a craft, much less as a master of the works, or architect. 

The training and professional licensure required for it was not permissible for a woman to be built for a woman to be in this kind of a position of knowledge and leadership. However, aristocratic women were in a position to personally influence and guide the design of the projects they patronized, and there are cases where women have managed the design and construction of their own houses. Illuminating women’s participation on the construction site has implications for understanding women’s relationship to money. 

The construction site provides an opportune lens through which to observe societal attitudes toward women whose livelihood was secured through wages, rather than the socially sanctioned route to inheritance and to bring out of the shadows women’s work or ‘support’ that was continually a vital part of the economy.

Click here to read this article from Academia.edu

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Ancient Greek City Found in China (Facts, Newspaper Clippings, Videos)

Were Hellenic vestiges found in a Chinese city at the turn of the last century? The answer to this is YES. Historians claim that Alexander the Great had only reached the Hydaspes and Ganges River in the last quarter of the 4th century BC, and although there are no solid historical sources including China on the itinerary of Alexander —or any of his generals’— in the Far East, if one takes a hard look at the  geography of the Chinese provinces, they soon realize that the region where a Greek city was found is south of Kyrgizstan, is in the area which was crossed by Alexander’s troops during his campaign in Asia. Zoom to the present day, as shown in the video below, and you will see a people that differ greatly from the remaining Chinese people. Notice their eyes...

An article in a Melbourne newspaper confirmed this in 1993 ("Eagle" newspaper - Nov. 19th, 1993 - page 6:). It spoke of an “ancient Greek city in China where Alexander’s troops had settled is rediscovered after 2300 years!"

     "Members of the joint Chinese-Japanese team believe Niya was inhabited by Ancient Greeks. Potions of the city walls, houses & grape trellises still stand and the archaeologists found iron axes & sickles, wooden clubs, pottery urns and jars in the homes, coins bronze mirrors, rings and other possesions, all were Greek. All 8 mummies and skeletons that were found had blonde & brown hair,along with other Greek features. Guided by residents of nearby villages, the British archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein visited Niya in China in 1903 and removed wooden tablets with writing and other artifacts. Carvings on the tablets depicted ancient Greek Gods and the script was one used in the Greek-influnced Kushan Empire in what now is Pakistan."

From Wikipedia we discover that the ruins of Niya is an archaeological site located about 115 km (71 mi) north of modern Minfeng Town (also called Niya) on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin in modern-day Xinjiang, China. This city was once a major commercial center on an oasis on the southern branch of the Silk Road in the southern Taklamakan Desert. During ancient times camel caravans would cut through, carrying goods from China to Central Asia.

In 1900, an explorer by the name of Aurel Stein set out on an expedition to western China and the Taklamakan Desert. This British explorer heard from local villagers that there was an ancient city buried under the sand dunes.

To get to the site one has to trek more than 30 kilometres north into the desert from a small oasis called Kabake-Arsihan. The small oasis is home to about 110 households, whose members use water from wells dug in the middle of the dried bed of the Niya River. The site chosen for excavation was one of about 10 discovered ruins in the desert, among which were Loulan (Kroraina), Hotan (Khotan) and Kuqa (Kucha). The excavations of some groups of dwellings, allowed him to discover 100 wooden tablets written in 105 CE. These tablets bore clay seals, official orders and letters written in Kharoshthi, an early Indic script, dating them to the Kushan empire. He also discovered coins and documents dating from the Han dynasty, Roman coins, an ancient mouse trap, a walking stick, part of a guitar, a bow in working order, a carved stool, an elaborately-designed rug and other textile fragments, as well as many other household objects such as wooden furniture with elaborate carving, pottery, Chinese basketry and lacquer ware. 

This all changed in the 1980s, when it caught the attention of other archaeologists. When eight Chinese and Japanese researchers entered the desert on November 4, 1988 to investigate the Niya site, the only help they had were the rough maps drawn by Stein, and their compasses, telescopes and 20 camels. Spread out before them exposed in the sand desiccated remains of long-dead variform-leaved poplar trees in a site that stretches about 25 kilometres from north to south and 7 kilometres from east to west, with the 6.5-metre-tall stupa at the centre.

According to reports at the time, while excavating the ruins of this ancient Chinese city, they discovered “Hellenic style furniture, reliefs decorated with meanders, and vases bearing scenes of Homer’s epics dating to the Hellenistic era of Alexander’s campaign”!

The exciting news was not only released by the Chinese press instantly, it also appeared in the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia (page 20, on November 25, 1983 - Above Figures 1 and 2).

Official approval for joint Sino-Japanese archaeological excavations at the site was given in 1994. Researchers have now found remains of human habitation including approximately 100 dwellings, burial areas, sheds for animals, orchards, gardens, and agricultural fields. They have also found in the dwellings well-preserved tools such as iron axes and sickles, wooden clubs, pottery urns and jars of preserved crops. The human remains found there have led to speculation on the origins of these peoples.

Some archeological findings from the ruins of Niya are housed in the Tokyo National Museum, while others are part of the Stein collection in the British Museum, the British Library, and the National Museum in New Delhi. (no suprises there... since the UK somehow always has the final say on the treasures of ancient Greece).

The following article titled "The Most Important Findings of Niya in Taklamakan" was written by Wang Binghua and originally published at China Culture Pictorial Vol 1.2 April 1996.

 "No one can believe that there was a rich and varied community that once thrived deep in today's Taklamakan Desert some 1,600 years ago. The Niya River winds through the southern Taklamakan Desert for about 210 km and its head waters are fed by melted snow from the towering the Mount Kunlun, known was Nanshan Mountain in ancient times. The river gradually dries up near a small Uygur village Autonomous Region.

     After three years of research and digging, archaeologists and scientists have unearthed eight tombs in the Taklamakan desert. The bodies buried there still wear the colored clothing of their burials.

     Sprawling over an area 20 km in circumference around what is now the dried bed of Niya River, Niya is believed to have reached its zenith between 500 to 1,000 AD. Eventually, however, the city became buried in the desert sand and slipped in oblivion.

     The remains of the lost ancient city of Niya are believed to the ancient Jingjue Kingdom. The ancient Jingjue Kingdom was at the south end of the Silk Road, with a distance of 4,400 km to Chang'an, the ancient capital of the Han Dynasty. Just like other places in China, it was under the control of several officials appointed by the central government. There lived more than families with a population of more than 3,000 people. The extinction of Niya has left archaeologists and scientists many questions to answer. It has also given the ruins of the ancient holy city a feeling of mystery.

     The city's ruins were lost until the early of the 20th century, when the British explorer Sir Aurel Stein discovered the ruin and archaeologists have continued their exploration of the area ever since.

     The Chinese archaeologists took the steps to the ruins in Niya in 1959. They achieved great a lot in the exploration of Niya, but had to give up further research because of financial problems.

     A Sino-Japanese expedition team of archaeologists and scientists have led expeditions on the site with the approval by China State Bureau of Cultural Relics in 1993. On this year's trek, 36 members have discovered many new details that both answer and raise questions about the ancient mystery. This year has brought the richest yields in the field work about Niya in nearly a century.

     The 1995 expedition involved measuring the size of the Niya ruin, analyzing the ancient environment, and most importantly, digging out a tomb group. The eight tombs were discovered at the northern part of the ruin. Some of them were already exposed when they were laid out in hollowed out logs or wooden trunks with an outer coffin.

     Dried out by the deserts heat, the bodies, clothes and burial articles are in excellent condition. Due to the lack of adequate facilities on site, the artifacts and bodies were taken to Urumqi for further scrutiny. The archaeological analysis has already started for tomb number three and five.

     The tomb number three contains a male and female. Both are splendidly attired in silk hoods, colorful robes, trousers, shirts, and embroidered leather-- soled shoes. The two were buried along with special possessions. The man had a quiver and bow, metal arrowheads and a lined Chinese--jacket. The woman wore gold earrings and a glass--bead necklace. A lacquer box with her comb, makeup and sewing kit was set next to her. The identity of the two people has not been decided, but the artifacts seem to suggest that these were the buried sites for the wealthy.

     The details of the brocade showed great care. The edge of the silk hasn't been untraveled and the fabric still has its originally luster. Even the green and yellow, colors which easily fade, are preserved.

     Pieces of brocade, much less in quantity and variety, were found in Niya in 1959 and in Loulan. On cursory observation, the silk has three motifs: animal patterns, geo--metric designs and auspicious tokens, all of which have never been encountered before.

     The Chinese characters on the brocase read, "The appearance of the five stars in the east is favorable to China." This corresponds directly to the description written in two historical books of the Han and Jin dynasties. All this gives evidence of the date of the brocades.

     The field work also included the excavation of a large dwelling site, and the clearing of three ruined buildings. Through these efforts, archaeologists have gained a better understanding of the city planning and construction structure. The overall--planning seems to suit the climate and the geographic conditions. Among the burial articles is a place of food with mutton, pears, and grapes. This variety serves as evidence of oasis agriculture and livestock raising.

     Now deserted, the ancient Niya was a prosperous kingdom called Jingjue at the southern end of the Silk Road. Through a string of oasis towns like Jingjue, camel caravans would cut across the Taklamakan Desert and carry goods from China to Central Asia from where they eventually found their way to Europe.

     How did it comes about the mysterious end of the city? How many people were buried there in the tomb area? What did they die of? It is clear now that the man and woman were buried at a different times, but why should they be buried together? Archaeologists are still probing into these questions.

Still not convinced? This is from the China Daily news site: Article titled: "Niya yields buried secrets, By Wang Shanshan - Updated version: 2004-03-12"

  "From the dried-up corpses found on the site, some anthropologists speculate that the Niya people were of Caucasian origin. Others say they were descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who launched expeditions to the Orient, as the soldiers are said to have interbred with the local people."

Obviously ancient Greek elements were not confined to this one lost ancient city. Let us now examine some of the tribes that live in the Xinjiang Province, who researchers claim retain many ancient Greek elements in everyday life and culture.(Please note that the spelling of the tribes is phonetic)

- Ainian: The members of this tribe are natural communicators. They dress in black as the ancient Greeks did (something that is not encountered in other parts of China).

- Sani: They live in the forest of stone figurines (statuettes) and have a stringed musical instrument that is similar to that of the guitar. Women even carry the letter "Λ" on their forehead, known to be the symbol of Sparta.

- Muso: This tribe maintains the the system of matriarchal society that was established in Minoan Crete.

- Dai: The name of this tribe means "those who love freedom" apparently they  number around 1,000,000.

- Ghi: It is estimated that they number around 4,050,000 people. The distinctive characteristic of this tribe is the fire that they burn day and night in the center of their homes just as Greek homes did in ancient times. They love wine and their passion for the arts is something which they claim was bestowed to them by the founder of their nation.

- Hani: This tribe numbers around 1,300,000 people, and they usually dress in black costumes that look like traditional Pontian dress wear. They also have an annual wine tasting festival in honor of their founder.

- Zhuang: Before 1965 this tribe was known by the name of Pou. Today it numbers around 1,000,000 people and one of the distinctive characteristics of this tribe is their annual Spring celebration, that is also held many places in Greece, where men have to take the role of the woman for a whole day!

Other tribes with less population include the Deangk, the Wua tribe, the Lizu tribe, the Miao tribe, the Dulongk tribe, the Naxi tribe, etc. It is also claimed that some of these tribes even honor the ancient gods. All of them, however, have many characteristics that were common with ancient Greece.

Editor's Note: Whether the world wants to accept it or not, Greeks settled -and are still settling- all over the world, and as we proved in this report, Greeks even settled in China. Keep in mind that our ties with the Chinese people were not -and are still not- limited to this ancient Greek city during Alexander's time. Specifically in 1993 an Australian television channel presented a documentary on how ancient Greeks even helped the Chinese people to build PYRAMIDS. Yes even PYRAMIDS were a design of ancient Greece. Why do we believe this? Simple... The word PYRAMIDS is Greek! 

Article

Ancient Greeks may have built China's famous Terracotta Army – 1,500 years before Marco Polo

'We have discovered something more important even than the Terracotta Army,' says Chinese archaeologist

Ancient Greeks artists could have travelled to China 1,500 years before Marco Polo’s historic trip to the east and helped design the famous Terracotta Army, according to new research.

The startling claim is based on two key pieces of evidence: European DNA discovered at sites in China’s Xinjiang province from the time of the First Emperor in the Third Century BC and the sudden appearance of life-sized statues.

Before this time, depictions of humans in China are thought to have been figurines of up to about 20cm.

But 8,000 extraordinarily life-like terracotta figures were found buried close to the massive tomb of China’s First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who unified the country in 221BC.

The theory – outlined in a documentary, The Greatest Tomb on Earth: Secrets of Ancient China, to be shown on BBC Two on Sunday – is that Shi Huang and Chinese artists may have been influenced by the arrival of Greek statues in central Asia in the century following Alexander the Great, who led an army into India.

But the researchers also speculated that Greek artists could have been present when the soldiers of the Terracotta Army were made.

One of the team, Professor Lukas Nickel, chair of Asian art history at Vienna University, said: “I imagine that a Greek sculptor may have been at the site to train the locals.”

Other evidence of connections to Greece came from a number of exquisite bronze figurines of birds excavated from the tomb site. These were made with a lost wax technique known in Ancient Greece and Egypt. 

Previously, human figures have been stiff and stylised representations, but the figures carved on the Parthenon temple were so life-like it appeared the artists had turned stone into flesh. There was a breakthrough in sculpture particularly in ancient Athens at about the time when the city became a democracy in the 5th century BC.

Their work has rarely been bettered – the techniques used were largely forgotten until they were revived in the Renaissance when artists carved statues in the Ancient Greek style, most notably Michelangelo’s David.

Dr Li Xiuzhen, senior archaeologist at the tomb’s museum, agreed that it appeared Ancient Greece had influenced events in China more than 7,000km.

“We now have evidence that close contact existed between the First Emperor’s China and the West before the formal opening of the Silk Road,” the expert said.

“This is far earlier than we formerly thought.

“We now think the Terracotta Army, the acrobats and the bronze sculptures found on site have been inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art.”

And Professor Zhang Weixing, lead archaeologist at the tomb site, said: “The archaeological work undertaken here recently is more important than anything in the last 40 years. 

“By systematically examining the First Emperor’s main tomb and subsidiary burials we have discovered something more important even than the Terracotta Army.” 

The mitochondrial DNA samples revealed Europeans had settled down in China and died there during the time of the First Emperor and even before then.

Hamish Mykura, of the National Geographic Channel, which made the documentary with the BBC, said: “The scope of these archaeological finds and what they mean for world history are astonishing.

“The new revelation that two of the world’s ancient super powers may have been in contact is a vital reminder today of the need for intercultural communication on a global scale.”

And BBC presenter Dan Snow said: “I hope audiences will find the new evidence as astonishing and thought-provoking as I did. 

“It is extraordinary to think that history as we know it is changeable.”

The Terracotta Army – more than 8,000 figures buried less than a mile from the tomb – was found in 1974, but new geophysical survey evidence suggests the complex is much bigger than previously thought at 200 times the size of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.

And the bones of 10 young women buried with precious jewellery made of gold and pearls have been found at the site.

Disturbingly, it is thought these women were the First Emperor’s concubines, who were murdered and mutilated as part of his funeral. There are 99 similar graves.

And the skull of a very high-ranking male was found with a crossbow bolt embedded in the back of the skull.

It is thought the bolt was fired at close range, suggesting the man was executed. 

Chinese archaeologists believe it could be the remains of Prince Fu Su, the First Emperor’s eldest son, who was murdered along with his siblings by their younger brother Prince Hu Hai following their father’s death. The grave contains a total of seven different bodies, all of whom had been killed.

World news:The Independent

Can the power of thought stop you ageing? Ellen Langer - psychologist -

A study was done in 1979, by psychologist Ellen Langer and her team at Harvard, which demonstrates the power of the mind to reverse ageing. Deepak Chopra describes this study in “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind” – “The subjects, all 75 or older and in good health, were asked to meet for a weeks retreat at a country resort. 

They were informed in advance that they would be given a battery of physical and mental exams, but in addition one unusual stipulation was placed upon them; they were not allowed to bring any newspapers, magazines, books or family photos dated later than 1959. The purpose of this odd request became clear when they arrived – the resort had been set up to duplicate life as it was 20 years earlier. Instead of magazines from 1979, the reading tables held issues of Life and Saturday Evening Post from 1959. The only music played was 20 years old, and in keeping with this flashback, the men were sked to behave entirely as if the year were 1959. All talk had to refer to events and people of that year. Every detail of their week in the country was geared to make each subject feel, look, talk and behave as he had in his mid 50′s.

During this period, Langer’s team made extensive measurements of the subjects biological age. Gerontologists have not been able to fix the precise markers that define biological age, as I noted earlier, but a general profile was compiled for each man using measurements of physical strength, posture, perception, cognition and short term memory along with thresholds of hearing, sight and taste.

The Harvard team wanted to change the context in which these men saw themselves. The premise of their experiment was that seeing oneself as old or young directly influences the ageing process itself. To shift their context back to 1959 the researchers had their subjects wear ID photo’s taken 20 years before – the group learned to identify one another through these pictures rather than present appearance, they were instructed to talk exclusively in the present tense of 1959 (“I wonder if President Eisenhower will go with Nixon next election”); their wives and children were referred to as if they were also 20 years younger; although all the men were retired, they talked about their careers as if they were still in full swing.

The results of this playacting were remarkable. Compared to a control group that went on retreat but continued to live in the world of 1979, the make believe group improved in memory and manual dexterity. They were more active and self sufficient about such things as taking their own food at meals and cleaning up their rooms, behaving much more like 55 year olds than 75 year olds (many had become dependant on younger family members to perform everyday tasks for them).

Perhaps the most remarkable change had to do with aspects of ageing that were considered irreversible. Impartial judges who were asked to study before and after pictures of the men detected that their faces looked visibly younger by an average of three years. Measurements of finger length, which tends to shorten with age, indicated that their fingers had lengthened, stiffened joints were more flexible and posture had started to straighten as it had in younger years. The control group also showed some improvements (Langer explained this by the fact that going on a trip and being treated specially made them feel younger too). But the control group actually declined in certain markers such as manual dexterity and finger length. Intelligence is considered fixed in adults, yet over half of the experimental group showed increased intelligence over the five days of their return to 1959, while a quarter of the control group declined in IQ test scores. Professor Langer’s study was a landmark in proving that the so called irreversible signs of ageing could be reversed using psychological intervention.”

What a stunning experiment! Those results were obtained in one week! Pause for a few moments and let the meaning of this sink in. These men “youthed” significantly in SEVEN days.

Dr Bruce Lipton talks of studies in the field of Epigenetics that show that ‘perceptional shifts’ can create 30000 variations on each gene blueprint. WE are the programmers of the GENES – we are not victims of our genes. Become aware of your thoughts, emotions ,words and actions – they all create results in your reality. Are they contributing to vitality and life or sickness, ageing and death?

Start dismantling your social conditioning today, reprogram your subconscious and watch the miracles unfold!

No, War Is Not Inevitable

Science writer John Horgan begs to disagree with E. O. Wilson, saying that war is a cultural development, not an indelible part of our evolutionary heritage.

There is no scientist whom I admire more than Edward O. Wilson. He is an indefatigable investigator, explicator, and champion of all living things, from ants to humans, and he advances his views in prose more elegant and intricate than that of many accomplished novelists. His new book, The Social Conquest of Earth, eloquently elaborates upon his hope, first expressed in his monumental work Sociobiology, that science can help us achieve self-understanding and even, perhaps, salvation.

I have one serious complaint against Wilson, though. In his new book and elsewhere, he perpetuates the erroneous—and pernicious—idea that war is “humanity’s hereditary curse.” As Wilson himself points out, the claim that we are descended from a long line of natural-born warriors has deep roots—even the great psychologist William James was an advocate—but like many other old ideas about humans, it’s wrong.

The modern version of the “killer ape” theory depends on two lines of evidence. One consists of observations of Pan troglodytes, or chimpanzees, one of our closest genetic relatives, banding together and attacking chimps from neighboring troops. The other derives from reports of intergroup fighting among hunter-gatherers; our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers from the emergence of the Homo genus until the Neolithic era, when humans began settling down to cultivate crops and breed animals, and some scattered groups still live that way.

But consider these facts. Researchers did not observe the first deadly chimpanzee raid until 1974, more than a decade after Jane Goodall started watching chimps at the Gombe reserve. Between 1975 and 2004, researchers counted a total of 29 deaths from raids, which comes to one killing for every seven years of observation of a community. Even Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, a leading chimpanzee researcher and prominent advocate of the deep-roots theory of war, acknowledges that “coalitionary killing” is “certainly rare.”

Some scholars suspect that coalitionary killing is a response to human encroachment on chimp habitat. At Gombe, where the chimps were well protected, Goodall spent 15 years without witnessing a single lethal attack. Many chimpanzee communities—and all known communities of bonobos, apes that are just as closely related to humans as chimps—have never been seen engaging in intertroop raids.

Even more important, the first solid evidence of lethal group violence among our ancestors dates back not millions, hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, but only 13,000 years. The evidence consists of a mass grave found in the Nile Valley, at a location in modern-day Sudan. Even that site is an outlier. Virtually all other evidence for human warfare—skeletons with projectile points embedded in them, weapons designed for combat (rather than hunting), paintings and rock drawings of skirmishes, fortifications—is 10,000 years old or less. In short, war is not a primordial biological “curse.” It is a cultural innovation, an especially vicious, persistent meme, which culture can help us transcend.

The debate over war’s origins is vitally important. The deep-roots theory leads many people, including some in positions of power, to view war as a permanent manifestation of human nature. We have always fought, the reasoning goes, and we always will, so we have no choice but to maintain powerful militaries to protect ourselves from our enemies. In his new book, Wilson actually spells out his faith that we can overcome our self-destructive behavior and create a “permanent paradise,” rejecting the fatalistic acceptance of war as inevitable. I wish he would also reject the deep-roots theory, which helps perpetuate war.

Study

New Study of Foragers Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots

"Killer ape" scene in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey has no basis in fact.

One of the most insidious modern memes holds that war is innate, an adaptation bred into our ancestors by natural selection. This hypothesis—let's call it the "Deep Roots Theory of War"--has been promoted by such intellectual heavyweights as Steven Pinker, Edward Wilson, Jared Diamond, Richard Wrangham, Francis Fukuyama and David Brooks. *[After reading this post, please see followup posts: "New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim that War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots," "Survey of Earliest Human Settlements Undermines Claims That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots."]

The Deep Roots Theory addresses not just violent human aggression in general but a particular manifestation of it, involving attacks by one group against another. Deep Rooters often contend that--as warlike as we are today--we were much more warlike before the advent of civilization.

Pinker claims in his bestseller Better Angels of Our Nature that "chronic raiding and feuding characterize life in a state of nature." In The Social Conquest of the Earth, Wilson calls warfare "humanity's hereditary curse." The Deep Roots Theory has become extraordinarily popular, especially considering that the evidence for it is extraordinarily flimsy (see "Further Reading" below).

A study published today in Science, "Lethal Aggression in Mobile Forager Bands and Implications for the Origins of War," provides more counter-evidence to the Deep Roots Theory. The study's authors, anthropologists Douglas Fry and Patrik Soderberg of Abo Akademi University in Finland, say their findings "contradict recent assertions that [mobile foragers] regularly engage in coalitionary war against other groups."

Fry and Soderberg focus on mobile forager bands, also called nomadic hunter-gatherers, because their behavior is thought to provide a window into human evolution. Our ancestors lived as wandering foragers from the emergence of the Homo genus some 2 million years ago until about 10,000 years ago, when humans began raising crops, domesticating animals and settling down into more complex, hierarchical societies.

Fry and Soderberg examine data on deadly violence within 21 mobile foraging societies observed by ethnographers. The societies include the Aranda and Tiwi of Australia; Kaska, Copper Inuit and Montagnais of North America; Botocudo of South America; !Kung, Hadza and Mbuti of Africa; and Vedda and Andamanese of South Asia.

Fry and Soderberg count a total of 148 "lethal aggression events" in the societies. The researchers distinguish between violence involving people who belong to the same group and are often related; and violence between people in different groups. They also distinguish between violence involving just one perpetrator and victim and violence involving at least two killers and two victims.

These distinctions are crucial, because war by definition is a group activity. Deep Rooters often count all forms of deadly violence, not just group violence, as evidence of their theory. (They also often count violence in societies that practice horticulture, such as the Amazonian Yanomamo, even though horticulture is a relatively recent human invention.)

Of the 21 societies examined by Fry and Soderberg, three had no observed killings of any kind, and 10 had no killings carried out by more than one perpetrator. In only six societies did ethnographers record killings that involved two or more perpetrators and two or more victims. However, a single society, the Tiwi of Australia, accounted for almost all of these group killings.

Some other points of interest: 96 percent of the killers were male. No surprise there. But some readers may be surprised that only two out of 148 killings stemmed from a fight over "resources," such as a hunting ground, water hole or fruit tree. Nine episodes of lethal aggression involved husbands killing wives; three involved "execution" of an individual in a group by other members of the group; seven involved execution of "outsiders," such as colonizers or missionaries.

Most of the killings stemmed from what Fry and Soderberg categorize as "miscellaneous personal disputes," involving jealousy, theft, insults and so on. The most common specific cause of deadly violence—involving either single or multiple perpetrators--was revenge for a previous attack.

These data corroborate a theory of warfare advanced by Margaret Mead in 1940. Noting that some simple foraging societies, such as Australian aborigines, can be warlike, Mead rejected the idea that war was a consequence of civilization. But she also dismissed the notion that war is innate--a "biological necessity," as she put it--simply by pointing out (as Fry and Soderberg do) that some societies do not engage in intergroup violence.

Mead (again like Fry and Soderberg) found no evidence for what could be called the Malthusian theory of war, which holds that war is the inevitable consequence of competition for resources.

Instead, Mead proposed that war is a cultural "invention"—in modern lingo, a meme, that can arise in any society, from the simplest to the most complex. Once it arises, war often becomes self-perpetuating, with attacks by one group provoking reprisals and pre-emptive attacks by others.

The war meme also transforms societies, militarizes them, in ways that make war more likely. The Tiwi seem to be a society that has embraced war as a way of life. So is the United States of America.

The Deep Roots Theory is insidious because it leads many people to succumb to the fatalistic notion that war is inevitable. Wrong. War is neither innate nor inevitable.

Further Reading:

Horgan, "Quitting the hominid fight club: The evidence is flimsy for innate chimpanzee–let alone human–warfare": http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2010/06/29/quitting-the-hominid-fight-club-the-evidence-is-flimsy-for-innate-chimpanzee-let-alone-human-warfare/

Horgan, "Will War Ever End?" (review of Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker): http://www.slate.com/articles/Arts/books/2011/10/steven_pinker_s_the_better_angels_of_our_nature_why_should_you_b.2.html

Horgan, "No, War Is Not Inevitable" (review of The Social Conquest of Nature, by Edward Wilson): http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/02-no-war-is-not-inevitable#.UefeMRZ8LlI

Horgan, "Worst Column Ever By Times Pundit David Brooks: 'When the Good Do Bad'": http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/05/21/worst-column-ever-by-times-pundit-david-brooks-when-the-good-do-bad/

Horgan: "Are We Doomed to Wage Wars Over Water?": http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/03/26/are-we-doomed-to-wage-wars-over-water/

Horgan, "Margaret Mead's War Theory Kicks Butt of Neo-Darwinian and Malthusian Models": http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2010/11/08/margaret-meads-war-theory-kicks-butt-of-neo-darwinian-and-malthusian-models/

Horgan, "Is 'Sociobiologist' Napoleon Chagnon Really a Disciple of Margaret Mead?": http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/02/25/is-sociobiologist-napoleon-chagon-really-a-disciple-of-margaret-mead/

Horgan, "RIP Military Historian John Keegan, Who Saw War As Product of Culture Rather than Biology": http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/08/04/rip-military-historian-john-keegan-who-saw-war-as-product-of-culture-rather-than-biology/

Horgan, "New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim that War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots": http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/07/24/new-study-of-prehistoric-skeletons-undermines-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/

Horgan, The End of War, McSweeney's, 2012.

Douglas Fry, Beyond War, Oxford University Press, 2007.

Image from 2001: A Space Odyssey courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

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New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim that War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots

13,000 year old skeletons in mass grave near Nile are oldest evidence of group violence.

When did war begin? Does war have deep roots, or is it a modern invention? A new analysis of ancient human remains by anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli of Chicago's Field Museum provides strong evidence for the latter view. [*See also next post, "Survey of Earliest Human Settlements Undermines Claims That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots."]

But before I get to the work of Haas and Piscitelli, I'd like to return briefly to my last post, which describes a study of modern-day foragers (also called hunter gatherers), whose behavior is assumed to be similar to that of our Stone Age ancestors. The study found that modern foragers have engaged in little or no warfare, defined as a lethal attack by two or more people in one group against another group. This finding contradicts the claim that war emerged hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago.

Defenders of the Deep Roots Theory have leveled various criticisms at the forager study. [*See Clarification below.] They complain that foragers examined in the study—and modern foragers in general--have been pacified by nearby states. Or the foragers are "isolated," living in remote regions where they rarely come into contact with other groups. In other words, these foraging societies are atypical.

But you could argue that all modern tribal societies are atypical, including those cited by Deep Rooters as evidence for their position. Take, for example, the infamous Yanomamo, an Amazonian society that is extremely warlike, according to anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, who began observing them in the 1960s.

The Yanomamo practice horticulture, which makes them a poor proxy for nomadic Stone Age hunter gatherers. Atypical. Moreover, even Chagnon acknowledges that some Yanomamo are much violent than others. Of course, Deep Rooters assert that these relatively peaceful Yanomamo are atypical.

When Deep Rooters complain that a society is atypical, they really mean that the society is not as violent as predicted by the Deep Roots theory. They are guilty of egregious confirmation bias, and circular reasoning.

Deep Rooters display this same trait when it comes to Pan troglodytes, our closest genetic relative. Since the mid-1970s, researchers have observed chimpanzees from one troop killing members of another troop--proving, Deep Rooters claim, that the roots of intergroup violence are even older than the Homo genus.

Deep Rooters conveniently overlook the fact some Pan troglodytes communities have been observed for years without carrying out a lethal raid. Moreover, researchers have never observed a deadly attack by the chimpanzee species Pan paniscus, also known as Bonobos. Deep Rooters insist that only the most violent chimps are representative of our primordial ancestry, even though Pan paniscus is just as genetically related to us as Pan troglodytes.

To be fair, proponents of the view that war is a recent cultural invention—I'll call them Inventors--also play this game. They find reasons to discount extremely violent behavior--by either chimps or humans—as atypical. For example, both chimp raids and Yanomamo warfare may be responses to recent encroachment on their habitat by outside societies.

But Inventors can also point to a far more persuasive source of data supporting their position: the archaeological record. The most ancient clear-cut evidence of deadly group violence is a mass grave, estimated to be 13,000 years old, found in the Jebel Sahaba region of the Sudan, near the Nile River. Of the 59 skeletons in the grave, 24 bear marks of violence, such as hack marks and embedded stone points.

Even this site is an outlier. The vast majority of archaeological evidence for warfare—which consists of skeletons marked by violence, art depicting battles, defensive fortifications, and weapons clearly designed for war rather than hunting—is less than 10,000 years old.

Deep Rooters try to dismiss these facts by resorting to the old argument that absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. They allege, in other words, that there is not significant evidence of any human activity prior to 10,000 years ago.

To rebut this charge, Haas and Piscitelli recently carried out an exhaustive survey of human remains more than 10,000 years old described in the scientific literature. They counted more than 2,900 skeletons from over 400 different sites. Not counting the Jebel Sahaba skeletons, Haas and Piscitelli found four separate skeletons bearing signs of violence, consistent with homicide, not warfare.

This "dearth of evidence," Haas continued, "is in contrast with later periods when warfare clearly appears in this historical record of specific societies and is marked by skeletal markers of violence, weapons of war, defensive sites and architecture, etc."

Haas and Piscitelli present their data in "The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography," a chapter in War, Peace, and Human Nature, a collection of essays published this year by Oxford University Press. The book was edited by anthropologist Douglas Fry, co-author of the forager study I described in my last post.

"Declaring that warfare is rampant amongst almost all hunters and gatherers (as well as those cunning and aggressive chimpanzees) fits well with a common public perception of the deep historical and biological roots of warfare," Haas and Piscitelli write. "The presumed universality of warfare in human history and ancestry may be satisfying to popular sentiment; however, such universality lacks empirical support."

Many people think that war, if ancient and innate, must also be inevitable. President Barack Obama seemed to be expressing this notion in 2009 when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, just nine days after he announced a major escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

"War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man," Obama said. He added, "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes."

When will Deep Rooters acknowledge that they are wrong?


Clarification: Some readers might conclude based on my criticism of Deep Rooters that they are all hawks, warmongers, who think that war, because it is innate, is inevitable and perhaps even beneficial in some sense. Such views were once quite common, especially in the era of social Darwinism. President Teddy Roosevelt once said, for example, "All the great masterful races have been fighting races. No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war." None of the Deep Rooters I have cited subscribe to such odious balderdash. All fervently hope that humanity can eradicate or at least greatly reduce the frequency of war. Deep Rooters believe that we will be better equipped to solve the problem of war if we accept the Deep Roots theory. Of course, I disagree with them on this point. As indicated by the above comments of President Barack Obama—as well as comments on my blog--the Deep Roots Theory leads many people to be pessimistic about the prospects for ending war, a view that can be self-fulfilling. I would nonetheless accept the Deep Roots theory if the evidence supported it, but the evidence points in the other direction. That is my main source of disagreement with Deep Rooters. In the interests of constructive dialogue, however, I'm providing a link, sent to me by anthropologist and prominent Deep Rooter Richard Wrangham, to a column supporting his position. In the column, political scientist and self-described "conservative Darwinian" Larry Arnhart asserts that "explaining the evolutionary propensity to war in human nature is not to affirm this as a necessity that cannot be changed. In fact, understanding war as a natural propensity can be a precondition for understanding how best to promote peace." Okay, so we all want peace. We just disagree on how to get there. More to come.

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Metrodorus of Chios (4th century BC, Greece)

“To suppose that earth is the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to believe that in an entire field sown with millet, only one grain will grow.” 

Metrodorus of Chios (4th century BC, Greece)
~physician, mathematician, philosopher,~ Book: On Nature

"Musical neurons" discovered in the brain's auditory cortex .

The cells, dedicated to understanding music, reveal the evolutionary importance of music on humans.

A new study has discovered that the human brain contains a collection of nerve cells that are dedicated to processing the sound of music. The discovery contradicts the widely accepted theory that musical appreciation is merely a byproduct of our human ability to hear and distinguish between different sounds.

The study, conducted by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published last week in the online journal Neuron, made its fascinating conclusions by analysing brain scans of participants as they listened to music, speech and other everyday sounds, such as footsteps or a ringing phone. The results showed that a specific area of the auditory cortex of the brain was only stimulated by music, while another area was dedicated to the understanding of speech. The implications of the findings are profound, suggesting that not only does musical aptitude and understanding have a specific seat within the brain, but that music may have played a crucial role in the evolution of the human nervous system.

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Josh McDermott, said of the discovery, “In both [areas of the auditory cortex] the responses were strikingly selective - the neural response is strong when people listen to music, in one case, or speech, in another, and much less strong to every other type of sound that we tested.”

Further study is required to explore the MIT findings, as it still remains unclear if people are born with these musical neurons already developed, or whether this population of cells is cultivated over time. However this early research offers a tangible biological connection between a person’s experience of music and their brain function, offering the potential for more empirical study of the substantial psychological and scholastic advantages that have been attributed to both playing and listening to music. 

“Our research suggest the presence of a set of neurons in the adult human brain that respond selectively to music. It remains to be seen whether these neurons are present from birth,” Professor McDermott said. “It is possible that they emerge over time, developed in response to the massive exposure most of us have to music throughout our lives.”

None of the test subjects in this initial study were trained musicians, but MIT plans to conduct similar studies to understand if these new discoveries shares any connections with musical prowess. The team also intends to study the response in infants to explore how hardwired this are of the brain is. “One of the core debates surrounding music is to what extent it has dedicated mechanisms in the brain and to what extent it piggybacks off mechanisms that primarily serve other functions,” Professor McDermott said. “We don’t yet know whether the neuronal tuning is to any degree innate.”

The revelations that could arise from such studies may also offer a further insight into a great anthropological conundrum: did humans invent music or was music acquired by humans due to some evolutionary advantage? Discoveries of ancient musical instruments, some dating back as far as 70,000 years, hint at the social and ritual importance of music that continues to this day. Understanding the biological origins of the consistently vital part music has played in human life will offer a fresh perspective on how specific cultural influences have guided the development of musical expression across the ages.

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