Early Human Societies Research Articles

STONE AGE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF FERGANA VALLEY

The historiography of Stone Age archaeology, particularly in the context of the Ferghana Valley, remains underexplored despite its rich archaeological potential. Specific Background: This study critically examines the contributions of Ferghana archaeologists, providing a comparative analysis of their research methodologies and findings. Knowledge Gap: Existing literature lacks a comprehensive synthesis of modern archaeological excavations and their implications for understanding the Mesolithic settlements in this region. Aims: The primary aim of this article is to illuminate the archaeological significance of Stone Age monuments in the Ferghana Valley and to contextualize recent discoveries within the broader framework of Mesolithic studies. Results: The findings reveal a substantial concentration of Mesolithic sites in the Ferghana Valley, underscoring the area's importance for understanding human habitation and cultural development during this period. Novelty: This article presents new insights into the spatial organization and settlement patterns of Mesolithic communities, which have been inadequately addressed in previous research. Implications: The implications of this study extend to enhancing our understanding of early human societies in Central Asia and contribute to the global discourse on Stone Age archaeology, highlighting the need for continued research in underrepresented regions.

A Sustainable Collaborative Talent Management Through Collaborative Intelligence Mindset Theory: A Systematic Review

As society evolves, moving forward into the realms of Industry 5.0, it is imperative to develop a robust collaborative talent management model that can endure external crises such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the antiquity of collaborative practices—traceable back to early human societies—both practitioners and academics have frequently focused primarily on exploring the catalysts for collaboration, often neglecting to provide a holistic conceptualization of effective human collaboration. In alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals, this paper endeavors to critically review and delineate the evolution of talent management and collaborative intelligence literature. Employing a systematic review methodology, this study aims to formulate a novel framework for collaborative talent management, drawing upon the principles of a collaborative intelligence mindset, and to suggest avenues for future research in this domain. The findings propose the employment of collaborative intelligence through a mindset perspective as a means to bridge the literature gaps identified in areas such as interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration, digitalization and artificial intelligence, collaborative leadership styles, and performance measurement within the field.

Violence trends in the ancient Middle East between 12,000 and 400 BCE.

How did interpersonal violence develop in early human societies? Given that homicide records are only available for the more recent period, much of human history remains outside our purview. In this paper, we study violence trends in the very long run by exploiting a new dataset on cranial trauma and weapon-related wounds from skeletons excavated across the Middle East, spanning the pre-Classical period (around 12,000-400 BCE). The dataset includes more than 3,500 individuals. We find evidence that interpersonal violence peaked during the Chalcolithic period (around 4,500-3,300 BCE). It then steadily declined during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages (around 3,300-1,500 BCE) and increased again between the Late Bronze and the Iron Age (1,500-400 BCE). By documenting variations in violence patterns across a vast temporal and geographical scale in an incredibly rich historical setting, we broaden perspectives on the early history of human conflict.

Lateral river erosion impacts the preservation of Neolithic enclosures in alluvial plains

Situating prehistoric sites in their past environment helps us to understand their functionality and the organization of early sedentary human societies. However, this is a challenge as the natural environment constantly evolves through time and erases these constructions, especially along riverbanks, thus biasing the archaeological record. This study introduces a reassessment of the paleo-landscape evolution around the Neolithic enclosures at the Noyen-sur-Seine site based on new field observations as well as the synthesis of (un)published and new radiocarbon dating. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, our results show that the Noyen enclosures were not built along a Neolithic Seine River: the nearby channels were active in the Middle Age and Early Modern periods. Therefore, the results show that the enclosures were originally much larger: only a fraction that survived river erosion (lateral migration rates up to 2–3 m yr−1 estimated during the nineteenth century) has been preserved. Instead, an abandoned Mesolithic Seine River served as a natural delimitation of the SE part of the Neolithic enclosures. These results indicate that Neolithic enclosures in alluvial settings are often only partly preserved and that societies from that period lived farther away from active rivers than originally thought, where they were protected from floods.

Vegetation and climate dynamics at the dawn of human settlement: multiproxy palaeoenvironmental evidence from the Hashilan Wetland, western Iran

ABSTRACTThe scarcity of high‐resolution palaeoclimate records from the interior of West Asia has limited our understanding of the mechanisms of past climate change and their potential impacts on early human societies of the Eastern Fertile Crescent. Here, we present a multiproxy sedimentological, geochemical and palynological record from the Hashilan Wetland in the central Zagros Mountains, spanning the time interval from 22 to 2.2 kcal bp. Our results indicate a cold, dry climate for the last deglaciation (22 to 10 kcal bp) with amplified aridity during the Last Glacial Maximum, Heinrich Stadial 1, the Younger Dryas and the 8.2 and 3.2 ka events. The Early Holocene (11.6 to 7.8 kcal bp) is characterised by prolonged dry summers, frequent spring/summer dust storms and restricted oak woodlands that gradually expanded as summers shortened toward the second half of the Holocene (<6 kcal bp). We show an out‐of‐phase Holocene moisture variation between the interior of West Asia and the Indian Summer Monsoon domain and conclude that summer insolation‐driven latitudinal shifts of the Hadley cell played a key role in seasonality changes in the interior of West Asia by modulating the strength and pathway of the subtropical high‐pressure cells. Finally, we explore possible impacts of these changes on regional prehistoric human communities.

Historical dynamics of the human-environment interactions in Cyprus during the 12th-10th millennia cal. BP: The last 30 years contributions of the Amathous area (Limassol district)

The interdisciplinary approach and analytical tools applied in the last 30 years in the Amathous region (Cyprus), especially at the sites of Shillourokambos and Klimonas, generated a huge quantity of archaeological, geoarchaeological and bioarchaeological data. They significantly contributed to document the interactions between the early Neolithic human societies and the environment and natural resources of an isolated island, during this pivotal period when both the climate and the human subsistence strategies went through radical changes. This paper briefly reviews these changes through several insights: hydrological changes and their impact on the establishment and preservation of Neolithic sites; plant and vertebrate faunal evolution, especially as a consequence of the introduction of new wild and domestic species in the island; birth and evolution of the commensal fauna (e.g. mice, cats); local domestication of wild boar and goats; adaptation and intensification of cultivation and breeding to the local environments. Altogether, these insights can provide a heuristic model at a regional scale to further understand the incipient human niche construction of the Eastern Mediterranean area.

Why Story Matters: The Fitness Enhancing Strategies in Storytelling

Did storytelling in ancestral society help individuals to accrue fitness benefits? Here I explore what benefits storytelling brings to the storyteller and the audience respectively from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Early human societies did not have the large number of technological innovations that we have that let us accomplish more and more in ever less time; time was relatively precious to ancestral humans. In this context, the emergence of "storytelling" presents a quandary. Why did people organized such collective activities and why did they spend time listening to the content of stories?

SOCIAL COMMUNICATION IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE PLASTIC ARTS

Most contemporary studies and theories have been based on the concept of Communication and its function in human societies to address the crises of today's world because of its fragmentation, isolation, and disintegration as a result of several accumulations and the effects of wars that have transformed human thought at various levels. As one of the most important human activities associated with human life, the arts were able to communicate with their mental and sensory perceptions from their first steps in existence on earth to the present; the emergence of the arts from the earliest human societies was the result of the beginning of interactions and understanding between individuals using signals, symbols, and movements. Without Communication, it would be impossible for human civilization to reach where it is now.

The dawn of everything?

The Dawn of Humanity is a sweeping account of how the human species adopted agriculture, central bureaucracies, and inequality despite numerous early experiments with other modes of subsistence, high degrees of freedom from hierarchical power, and many examples of egalitarian social organization. The problem, as the author of this guest editorial sees it, is that the historical examples in the book are chosen without an eye for falsification, the main question about the origins of bureaucracy is evaded, and early human societies end up looking suspiciously like the authors' own preferred anarchist idea of the best possible world.

Food storage facilitates professional religious specialization in hunter-gatherer societies.

Professional religious specialists centralised religious authority in early human societies and represented some of the earliest instances of formalised social leadership. These individuals played a central role in the emergence of organised religion and transitions to more stratified human societies. Evolutionary theories highlight a range of environmental, economic and social factors that are potentially causally related to the emergence of professional religious specialists in human history. There remains little consensus over the relative importance of these factors and whether professional religious specialists were the outcome or driver of increased socio-cultural complexity. We built a global dataset of hunter-gatherer societies and developed a novel method of exploratory phylogenetic path analysis. This enabled us to systematically identify the factors associated with the emergence of professional religious specialists and infer the directionality of causal dependencies. We find that environmental predictability, environmental richness, pathogen load, social leadership and food storage systems are all correlated with professional religious specialists. However, only food storage is directly related to the emergence of professional religious specialists. Our findings are most consistent with the claim that the early stages of organised religion were the outcome rather than driver of increased socio-economic complexity.

Hunter-gatherer foraging networks promote information transmission.

Central-place foraging (CPF), where foragers return to a central location (or home), is a key feature of hunter–gatherer social organization. CPF could have significantly changed hunter–gatherers’ spatial use and mobility, altered social networks and increased opportunities for information-exchange. We evaluated whether CPF patterns facilitate information-transmission and considered the potential roles of environmental conditions, mobility strategies and population sizes. We built an agent-based model of CPF where agents moved according to a simple optimal foraging rule, and could encounter other agents as they moved across the environment. They either foraged close to their home within a given radius or moved the location of their home to new areas. We analysed the interaction networks arising under different conditions and found that, at intermediate levels of environmental heterogeneity and mobility, CPF increased global and local network efficiencies as well as the rate of contagion-based information-transmission. We also found that central-place mobility strategies can further improve information transmission in larger populations. Our findings suggest that the combination of foraging and movement strategies, as well as the environmental conditions that characterized early human societies, may have been a crucial precursor in our species’ unique capacity to innovate, accumulate and rely on complex culture.

Palaeolithic archaeology: a review of recent research

In contrast to a relatively long history of Palaeolithic investigations in western Europe, research on the Palaeolithic period in Greece has lagged behind considerably. This article reviews the last decade of Palaeolithic research in Greece, with the aim of highlighting key aspects of recent developments in the field. Newly discovered Lower Palaeolithic sites, such as Marathousa 1 in Megalopolis, have offered rare, high-resolution windows into hunter-gatherer adaptations during the earliest-known peopling of the Greek peninsula. Palaeolithic sites in insular settings, exemplified by the latest discoveries in Crete and Naxos, have stirred up intriguing discussions about early seafaring but, most importantly, provide support to a revised view of the role of the Aegean in early human dispersals. Zooarchaeological, palaeoenvironmental and dating analyses of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic materials from new and older assemblages have provided valuable insights that help contextualize the information distilled from lithic industries. In sum, recent excavations, surveys and assessments of new and older collections have together contributed to the compilation of an important corpus of novel and significant data. Palaeolithic Greece is no longer a terra incognita, and it carries the potential to become a key player in understanding early human societies in southern Europe.

THE PERPETUAL STRUGGLE: HOW THE COEVOLUTION OF HIERARCHY AND RESISTANCE DRIVES THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY AND INSTITUTIONS

AbstractSince the earliest human societies, there has been an ongoing struggle between hierarchy and resistance to hierarchy, and this struggle is a major driver of the evolution of moralities and of institutions. Attempts to initiate or sustain hierarchies are often met with resistance; hierarchs then adopt new strategies, which in turn prompt new strategies of resistance; and so on. The key point is that the struggle is typically conducted using moral concepts in justifications for or against unequal power and involves the stimulation of the moral emotions. Both parties to the struggle treat morality as a valuable strategic resource; and the dynamic of interaction between hierarchs and resisters generates changes in that resource. The hierarch/resister struggle is in part a competition between moral concepts and justifications, and that competition drives the emergence of new moral concepts and justifications, just as competition in other contexts generates innovations. Among the moral concepts generated by the struggle are the following: authority, legitimacy, aristocracy, the divine right of kings, the mandate of heaven, natural rights, civil and political rights, constitutionalism, the rule of law, sovereignty, collective self-determination, exploitation, oppression, and domination.

The Limited Nutritional Value of Cannibalism and the Development of Early Human Society

The Limited Nutritional Value of Cannibalism and the Development of Early Human Society

The Far East in the Prehistoric Period

This chapter describes the events and the records of the era of prehistory of the Far East of Russia, dating back as far as periods between 300 thousand years ago to the midst of the 1st millennium AD. The main subjects of the chapter are such as the sites of the early hominids on the territory of the Far East, the role of climate in the early history of mankind and the problems of adaptation of the genus Homo to the harsh conditions of the Ice Age. The development of the early human societies in the continental and the insular parts of the Far East and the related processes were discussed. The movement of the Far Eastern tribes of the Late Paleolithic to North America is one of the important subjects of the discussion. The chapter also deals with the changes in the economy and the everyday life of people of the Neolithic and the of the Paleo Metal (Bronze and Early Iron) age. The main results of the development of ancient societies from the emergence of the first people to the development of political relations between the tribes of the Far East were described here.

What drives biodiversity patterns? Using long‐term multidisciplinary data to discern centennial‐scale change

Abstract Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem functioning, habitat recovery following disturbance and resilience to global environmental change. Long‐term ecological records can be used to explore biodiversity patterns and trends over centennial to multi‐millennial time‐scales across broad regions. Fossil pollen grains preserved in sediment over millennia reflect palynological richness and diversity, which relates to changes in landscape diversity. Other long‐term environmental data, such as fossil insects, palaeoclimate and archaeologically inferred palaeodemographic (population) data, hold potential to address questions about the drivers and consequences of diversity change when combined with fossil pollen records. This study tests a model of Holocene palynological diversity change through a synthesis of pollen and insect records from across the British Isles along with palaeodemographic trends and palaeoclimate records. We demonstrate relationships between human population change, insect faunal group turnover, palynological diversity and climate trends through the Holocene. Notable increases in population at the start of the British Neolithic (~6,000 calendar years before present [bp]) and Bronze Age (~4,200 bp) coincided with the loss of forests, increased agricultural activity and changes in insect faunal groups to species associated with human land use. Pollen diversity and evenness increased, most notably since the Bronze Age, as landscapes became more open and heterogeneous. However, regionally distinctive patterns are also evident within the context of these broad‐scale trends. Palynological diversity is correlated with population while diversity and population are correlated with some climate datasets during certain time periods (e.g. Greenland temperature in the mid‐late Holocene). Synthesis. This study has demonstrated that early human societies contributed to shaping palynological diversity patterns over millennia within the context of broader climatic influences upon vegetation. The connections between population and palynological diversity become increasingly significant in the later Holocene, implying intensifying impacts of human activity, which may override climatic effects. Patterns of palynological diversity trends are regionally variable and do not always follow expected trajectories. To fully understand the long‐term drivers of biodiversity change on regionally relevant ecological and management scales, future research needs to focus on amalgamating diverse data types, along with multi‐community efforts to harmonise data across broad regions.

Holocene coastal change at Luce Bay, South West Scotland

ABSTRACTCoastal change during the Mid‐ to Late Holocene at Luce Bay, South West Scotland, is examined using morphological, stratigraphic and biostratigraphical techniques supported by radiocarbon dating. Deglaciation left extensive sediments, providing a source for depositional coastal landforms. Glacio‐isostatic uplift resulted in the registration of evidence for former relative sea levels (RSLs), which support the pattern of Holocene RSL change for the northern Irish Sea as determined by shoreline‐based Gaussian trend surface models. The rate of RSL rise was rapid from before ca. 8600 to ca. 7800 cal a bp, but then slowed, changing by <3 m over the next 3000 years, a pattern reflected in the convergence of shorelines predicted in the models. By ca. 4400 cal a bp RSL was falling towards present levels. As these changes were taking place, coastal barriers developed and dunes formed across them. In the West of the Bay, a lagoon forming to landward of the barriers and dunes acted as a sediment sink for dune sand. Changes in the coastal landscape influenced the occupation of the area by early human societies. This study illustrates the value of combining an understanding of process geomorphology, RSL and archaeology in studies of coastal change.

Early human impact in a 15,000-year high-resolution hyperspectral imaging record of paleoproduction and anoxia from a varved lake in Switzerland

20th century eutrophication and global spread of anoxia is a threat for freshwater ecosystems. Little is known about Holocene anoxia and meromixis events when anthropogenic impacts were weaker and natural ecosystem variability played the dominant role. In this study, we examine the relationship between lake mixing and lake production, climate variability, vegetation cover, catchment erosion and (pre)historic anthropogenic impacts in Moossee (Switzerland), over the last 15,000 years. We use sub-annually resolved calibrated hyperspectral imaging data (total chlorophyll for paleoproduction, bacteriopheophytin for anoxia and meromixis) combined with X-ray fluorescence and pollen data. Production shows a first increase at 14,500 cal yr BP, a further increase after 7500 cal BP, relative maxima in the late Bronze, Iron and Middle Ages, and the unprecedented peak in the 20th Century. Until 7500 cal BP, the lake was well mixed with only scarce phases of seasonal to multiannual anoxia. Repeated meromixis events occurred between 7500 and 2500 cal BP when temperatures were high, forests closed, and lake production was already enhanced. After the forests were cleared (2500 cal BP) the lake remained mostly holomictic. Holocene meromixis events were systematically terminated by local deforestation related to Neolithic and Bronze Age lakeshore settlements: charcoal peaked, tree pollen dropped below a threshold of 80%, soil erosion and lake production increased and bacteriopheophytin disappeared. Meromixis re-established after the termination of lakeshore settlements and the onset of afforestation with tree pollen exceeding 80%. These repeated cycles unambiguously document how even early human societies affected the mixing regime and biogeochemical cycling in this lake.

BRAN THE BROKEN: CLASSICAL PRECEDENTS FOR THE FIGURE OF BRAN STARK IN G R R MARTIN’S A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE NOVELS AND IN THE GAME OF THRONES TELEVISION SERIES

This article seeks to explain why many viewers and fans of the Game of thrones series and the novels that inspired them were disappointed and frustrated with the ending of the eighth season. Although it has long been observed that kingship often coincided with magical powers or the abilities of the seer in a wide range of early human societies, we have come to prefer the heroes whom we celebrate and the seers or wise people who advise them to be separate entities. Bran Stark endured physical disability as the result of an attempted assassination as a child; either in spite of this or because of this, he developed soothsaying powers as a ‘greenseer’ and journeyed beyond the Wall to become the next Three-Eyed Raven. While disability has traditionally been linked to the ambiguous powers of the seer, there is also a strong tradition for this not to be associated with kingship. Then there is the nature of Bran himself. In some ways Bran has remained a child, avoiding normal human relationships and the usual progression of life; at the same time, however, Bran is an old man, with hints of omniscience, longevity and even immortality. He fulfils the Jungian puer-senex archetype. Both Classical and other precedents are used to view Bran as an ambiguous and dualistic figure with whom most fans of Game of thrones can no longer sympathize.

Concept of Good Faith in Domestic Laws – To Debrief the Common Understanding

Good faith is described as 'the foundation of all law, or a fundamental principle of law'. O'Connor suggests that good faith derived from 'the necessity for a minimum of human cooperation and tolerance if group living is to emerge and survive'. Although good faith has origins in the earliest human societies, O'Connor suggests that the Roman concept of bonafides (associated with trustworthiness, conscientiousness and honourable conduct) represents its most direct ancestor. By about 1450 it was applied in both civil and common law systems, and was 'reflected in specific rules incorporating or referring to good conscience, fairness, equitable dealing and reasonableness'.4 As early as 1659, good faith was mentioned in Treaty between France and Spain, signed to end the Franco-Spanish War that had begun in 1635. Before that, in 1625, Grotius had referred to the Aristotelian parameter that if good faith has been taken away, “all intercourse among men ceases to exist”. Grotius also referred to Cicero‟s famous observation according to which “in good faith what you meant, not what you said, is to be considered”. The civil law regimes tend to require that contracts be formed and performed in good faith. If parties act in bad faith, this leads to mistrust, making contracting more complex and expensive. A rule of good faith increases contracting parties' confidence that contractual obligations will be performed. The principle of good faith is less established and less uniform in common law systems. At one extreme is the United Kingdom, which has no general doctrine of good faith. However, equity developed many doctrines to promote specific notions of good faith, including the concepts of undue influence and promissory estoppel. Good faith is also recognised in relation to particular classes of contracts, for example, contracts of insurance. At the other extreme is the United States, “where every contract imposes upon each party a duty of good faith and fair dealing in its performance and its enforcement”.