Archive for the ‘Palaeolithic’ Category

The Evolution of Sex

Friday, April 1st, 2011

The human line began with apes. Anyone watching documentaries about bonobo chimps knows that they shag almost constantly and our distant lineage was probably no different. In fact, the bonobo chimp humps through virtually anything. Some birds might do everything on the wing, bonobo chimps do everything whilst performing the horizontal hustle with their partner. And not always their partner but their friend’s partner, their friend’s same-sex partner, their sister, their mother, their grandma, for goodness sake. If our distant ancestors were indeed like this then the complete human line started as an inbred group of monkeys. Actually, that explains a lot.

The first recognisable human, well, recognisable through its habit of walking on two legs not carrying an ipod and wearing aftershave, was Australopithecine. You can tell straight off the bat that this poor creature had very poor PR to come up with a, quite frankly, bizarre name like Australopithecine, but there you are. Lucy was the first of the species to be found and, without being too harsh, she resembled a monkey. Sex was likely a bit passé; she hadn’t even got breasts. Mind you, walking on two legs did have advantages. It had the effect, as the palaeontologists tell us, of thrusting out the hips and this meant that sex could take place face-to-face and lose none of its, er, thrust. That’s if you would want to look at Lucy’s face if you were shagging her. I suppose if you were another Australopithecine you might want to. Some clearly did as Australopithecines rapidly – million years or so – gave way to a new species, Homo.

The first species of real human, as opposed to those who climbed trees and drank PG Tips and went into politics, was Homo habilis, meaning handy man. Immediately, you can tell their PR is better. If you’re an early human looking to get laid, there is no better advertisement to the opposite sex than saying you’re a handy man. You’ve seen the videos, yes? Plumbers, electricians, even window cleaners. They turn up at some sorority house and before they can even whip out their tools they’ve whipped out their tool and are hammering away like there’s no tomorrow. Homo habilis was like this. Sex on legs. For a rocking Friday night in the Palaeolithic, there was only one call to make.

Next came Homo rudolfensis. But with a ridiculous name like that he got absolutely no sex whatsoever and that is why the entire line of rudolfensis is represented by a single skull. I imagine when we find the rest of him old Rudolf will have a hugely enlarged wrist and several subscriptions to some dodgy magazines.

The most successful human after Homo habilis had steep competition to outdo the handy man image. He doubtless agonised over what to call himself that would get the chicks to leave the window cleaner alone and come flocking. Not known for his subtle approach, this new type of human settled on Homo erectus. Girls, I bet you’re wet already. Homo erectus was so incredibly popular that he ranged widely and, according to evidence of fossilised Kleenex tissues and cigarette ends, shagged his way around the world. In particular, he is well known from the islands of south-east Asia and, let’s face it, most people today if they were named for their constant erection, would probably end up there. He also learnt a new trick: cooking his own food. So you have brains in the kitchen and brawn in the sack. It’s a wonder Homo erectus ever needed to evolve into anything else.

But he did and along came Homo heidelbergensis. He was German and had corresponding sex appeal, which is to say, absolutely none whatsoever. It should be noted that, even then, female Homo heidelbergensis did not shave her armpits. Enough said.

Next on the scene and, frankly, with Homo erectus away in the South Seas it wasn’t a particularly happening scene sex wise, were the Neanderthals. These were the real deal. Archaeologists are in complete agreement that Neanderthals had big brains, pecs of steel, and threw the best parties since the monkeys’ orgies. Neanderthal was legendary. Females used to dress in fur and required no more foreplay than a crack over the head and dragging back to your place. To them, the G-spot was the position on the headboard that their head whiplashed onto when the fireworks started. Absolutely outstanding. Admittedly the brow ridges were a drawback, and they couldn’t read a train timetable to save their lives, but in the bedroom department Neanderthal man could go all night and still have energy to wrestle a woolly mammoth for breakfast. In an age when Brian Cox is the new pin up, we can perhaps appreciate that these were real men with a real appetite for sinking the pink torpedo. In fact, the Joy of Sex textbook was written by Neanderthals. Just look at the pictures.

It’s incredible that the human line didn’t stop with the Neanderthals but it didn’t. Next were Homo sapiens, meaning thinking humans and that says it all really. Brian Cox was on his way. Whilst the Neanderthals still rumbled the jungle, Homo sapiens fussed over the cave decorations – do you want the picture of the rhino on this wall or on the wall with another thousand pictures of bloody rhinos. Sex was low on the agenda. This may be why several of the women sought out Neanderthal men and got a real old-fashioned seeing to. Apparently, we are all 4% Neanderthal as a result, although some people have a lot more than that. Like footballers. In a desperate attempt to work up some sex appeal, Homo sapiens tried to emulate Homo erectus and go around the world. Good call buddy, but you blew it with the arctic. Nobody thinks an eskimo is sexy.

There is evidence that some women took matters into their own hands – literally – and a number of dildos are known from cave sites in eastern Europe. Nothing has changed much in that part of the world since, but it is notable that the dildos are all at least eight inches long and very thick. This is the best evidence we have that early male genitalia was a little lacking in the size department and that their women were still lusting over those horse-hung Neanderthals. Shame they went extinct really.

Sex never really recovered from the loss of the playboy Neanderthals but at least the time that earlier humans used to spend hiding the sausage was now put to more productive pursuits. Farming, civilisation, cities, and writing blogs; what an incredible curve of human excellence. But from a high point with the Neanderthals, sex withered and died until it reached a real low point when the Romans came. From contemporary records, this was always too quick and never with real vigour. It’s no wonder they had time to forge an empire.

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Taming the Wolf – Domesticating the Dog

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

The first evidence for domesticated dogs has just got earlier with the recent dating of a dog’s skull and teeth from Kesslerloch Cave in Switzerland. That puts the transition from wolf to dog to over 14,000 years ago. Previously, the earliest date was from a single jawbone that was found in a human grave at Oberkassel, in Germany, dating to about 13,000 years-ago. (There are earlier dates claimed for the first definite identification of dogs but these are usually discounted by experts).

The finds from Switzerland were uncovered in 1873 but it was only last year that archaeologists at Tuebingen University in Germany recognised that the remains came from a dog rather than a wolf. The dating carried out on a tooth has revealed the animal died between 14,000 and 14,600 BP (before present).

These early dates are curious, as hunting strategies at that time would not necessarily require the assistance of dogs. Studies from northern France show that hunting was ambush based with animals speared as they passed through natural bottlenecks in the landscape, such as the Ahrensburg Valley. Here, the use of a spear-thrower increased the effectiveness of the weapon and the migrating reindeer died in great numbers. Interestingly, some people engraved their spear-throwers with scenes of the hunt but none shows the appearance of dogs. Indeed, in such a massacre, it is difficult to see how dogs would fit in at all and, yet, the remains from Switzerland suggest that they existed by this time.

Stalking, the hunting method where a dog might have proved invaluable, came later. The warming climate at the end of the Ice Age caused large game animals to either die-out or move north and it was red deer and wild boar that took advantage of the advancing tree cover to expand their range. The people of the time changed their hunting strategy accordingly and the bow and arrow now became the weapon of choice. Dogs would have proved invaluable for stalking, flushing, and tracking dying animals. This is the time that we might expect people to have actively sought to domesticate the dog but, from the evidence at Switzerland, it had already happened, presumably without any human intervention. The change from wolf to dog requires a different explanation.

It is likely that wolves had always been aware of humans in the landscape. Scavenging human kill sites would have been a sure way of obtaining food and it is likely that this became the main survival strategy for a few packs. Over time, they may have ventured closer to human camps and even started to forage leftovers or eat any excrement that lay nearby. The people at the camp may have welcomed this cleaning service and tolerated the presence of the wolves. They may have even kept other, more dangerous predators at a safe distance.

Over time, it is likely that animals that chose to live with humans bred with other animals that adopted a similar lifestyle, replicating the traits that made the animal tolerant of humans. Slowly, the camp-wolves became the camp-dogs. In effect, the dog domesticated itself.

It is likely that the dogs did not remain in packs for long but divided themselves between the family groups of the hunters. Evidence from modern hunter-gather villages where semi-tame dogs roam, shows that these animals do not necessarily form packs but tend to organise themselves into groups of no more than three, which then adopt a particular dwelling (and its occupants) as their own. In the past, perhaps this was the reason that people began to interact with dogs on an individual basis and the first relationships, with which we are now so familiar, began.

A burial from Israel dating to around 11,000 BP contained an elderly woman with her hand resting on the flank of a puppy. This may be the first sign of the affection we still hold for dogs but it was not until much later, during the Mesolithic, that the esteem in which people held them becomes apparent.

In the earliest cemetery at Skateholm in southern Sweden, dating to around 5,000 BC, dogs were sometimes buried in the same graves as people. These were likely animals that were sacrificed to accompany their masters into the afterlife. Clearly, the dog was considered indispensable by some.

Other dogs were afforded their own grave and people gave them items such as tools and weapons that would usually be the preserve of a hunter. But then, perhaps this is exactly what these dogs were considered to be: hunters and, accordingly, they were buried as such. At this time, grave wealth usually accumulated to the young and fit, likely reflecting their ability to provide food for the others. The dogs were no different: they provided food from the hunt and they were honoured in the same way. Moreover, this was a time before any other animal had been domesticated and the cognitive boundary between humans and animals was still fluid enough to be breached: sometimes human into animal and, on this occasion, animal into human. It was a very different way of seeing the world and is almost diametrically opposed to everything we think about animals.

It was not to last. Perhaps familiarity bred contempt, but in a later cemetery at Skateholm (and possibly dating to only a few hundred years after the first cemetery), dogs were afforded a separate area for their burials, before being excluded altogether. Dogs had moved from being equal to humans in the hunt to being subservient to their masters. Perhaps, as their usefulness increased, their worth actually diminished. We still retain something of this contradiction in our own relationship with dogs. They can be our closest companions but are also the source of our cruellest insults. A bitch can be both our best friend or our worst enemy.

There is even evidence that the minds of dogs have evolved since they have been interacting with humans. Observing and identifying the attention state of others was thought to be the sole preserve of humans and yet it appears to be something dogs can also accomplish. Anyone who has had their dog watch their every move when they walk towards the dog lead will know how this appears.

Our relationship with dogs has come a long way since the first wolves started to follow the camps of our Palaeolithic forebears. We may never know for sure what made these wild animals befriend us and change to become an altogether different species but I am sure that I am not alone in being extremely grateful that they did.

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Bringing the Spirits to Life

Monday, August 9th, 2010

This is the first of five edited extracts to be posted this week from my new book, Prehistoric Belief: Shamans, Trance and the Afterlife. I really hope you enjoy them.

Nicholas Conard, an American archaeologist working in Germany, is usually very calm when he digs. He was excavating a cave called Hohle Fels during 2003 when something, in his own words, ‘got my heart pumping a bit’. Conard can be forgiven, for he had just lifted out of the ground a Palaeolithic ivory carving, dating to around 30,000 years ago. A wonderful find in itself but when he looked closely at the subject of the carving that his heart began to race: held in his hand was a figurine that was half-lion and half-human. He knew that, potentially, here was the proof that people in the Palaeolithic were shamanic and that they regularly shapeshifted into animals whilst in trance. For this was not the only half-human half-lion figurine that had been found. At Hohlenstein-Stadel, another cave in Germany, a similar figurine had been discovered in 1939. As Conard puts it, ‘If there are two, there must have been hundreds of these things; they must have been part of daily life’.

With the figurine, Conard also found the head of a horse and a water bird, both in ivory. The bird was stretched out, as if in flight, and it was not lost on Conard that, here, was another find with potentially shamanic roots. Water birds are equally at home on the water on the land, and in the air. Consequently, in crossing between these worlds, many shamanic people believe that they can also cross between this world and the otherworld. The birds were seen as messengers of the spirits.

Southern Germany is particularly rich in figurines carved out of ivory and most come from the earliest occupation of Europe by modern humans, around 32,000 years ago. Although many have finely carved bodies and heads, the limbs are often stumpy with no hooves or paws, as if the figurines are flying above the ground. However, if, like the water bird, these figurines represent the spirits of the otherworld, then perhaps an ability to fly was an integral element to their form. Moreover, as if to emphasise that these animals were indeed spirits, many of the figurines have geometric patterns engraved on their sides, which match the phosphenes that are sometimes seen in shamanic trance. These were not ordinary animals that were depicted but, like the paintings on the cave walls, these were animal spirits.

The figurines are often worn smooth by the hands that have carried them, or are stained red by being tied onto clothing (ochre was used as a preservative for animal hide and rubbed off with use). These images were clearly made to be seen and used in everyday life. Perhaps they were similar to Native American fetishes, carried for the power that is believed to emanate from them. If so, then the type of animals represented may give some indication as to what sort of power was being sought. Most of the animals represented are large land mammals and many are predators rather than prey. Moreover, many of the animals take aggressive or threatening stances, perhaps as a prelude to attack. A lion from Vogelherd in Germany has its ears cocked back in a threatening pose, and a bear from Geißenklösterle is in a similar pose. It seems that it was the strength and ferocity of these animals that people sought when they made and carried the figurines. However, a beautifully crafted stallion, also from Vogelherd, was not in an aggressive pose at all but, rather, was in a pose that seemed designed to impress the mares. Whoever carried this figurine had very different aims in mind; but then, since Conard also found an eight-inch, 28,000 year-old dildo in his cave at Hohle Fels, perhaps there were times when Palaeolithic man felt a little under pressure.

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