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Tristan Rapp

@Afrosmilus

6 Oct

As a rule, it seems reasonable to contend that any practice which has been historically prevalent among non-agriculturalist groups, and which does not rely upon demonstrably recent technologies, is just as likely to have occurred 50,000 years ago as 500 years ago.

(2) To this category can be counted armour made of materials such as wood or animal hides. The practice of strapping protective material to yourself is hardly rocket-science, and is known to have occurred in hunter-gatherer societies such as the Haida.

(3) Hygenic/aesthetic practices such as complex facial- and body-paint as well as hair-braiding and cropping do not require advanced technology, and are documented from Palaeolithic art as well as modern hunter-gatherers.

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Tristan Rapp

@Afrosmilus

4 Oct

Cases such as the hyenas in the Lion King and the shark of Jaws are always tough, because while one does not want to be some over-censorious spoil-sport, these portrayals *have* had demonstrable conservation consequences. It is a tough balance, yet the problem is legitimate.

The consistently poor reputation of the hyena is a genuine and persistent obstacle for their protection, of which there is a very real need in places africasustainableconservation.com/2020/05/05/tim…

The author of the novel upon which Jaws was based, Peter Benchley, had such severe guilt about the effects of his novel that he dedicated the rest of his life to marine conservation.

(For the record, there are likely less than 4000 individual Great White Sharks in the world)

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Tristan Rapp

@Afrosmilus

22 Sep

Ppl often assume that stone-age cultures must have maintained very simple social organisation, living only in small, nomadic family-tribes. This idea is based in part on actual archaeology, and in part on comparison with modern hunter-gatherers, who largely share this lifestyle.

(2) The logic here seems straight-forward enough - social complexity is a function of resource availability & economic complexity. Hunter-gatherers can only gather small amounts of food, and so can only support small populations. Furthermore, they have to keep moving restock game

(3) The main issue with this conception is that it is wrong.

Most modern-day hunter-gatherers inhabit extremely marginal land - their inability to form and feed complex social structures is just as much a consequence of the land they inhabit as it is of their lifestyle.

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Tristan Rapp

@Afrosmilus

19 Sep

The Advent of Japan - a thread

(1) The Japanese archipelago today is one of old, entrenced cultures, political unity & relative ethnic uniformity. Yet the Yamato - the proper name of those often called simply the "Japanese ppl" - are not the only, nor the first on the islands

(2) Crucial to understanding any further discussion of Japan's past is the fact that the Yamato, much like the Celts and Teutons of the British isles, arrived in Japan as migrants & invaders - roughly at the same time the first Celts crossed into Britain, in fact.

(3) To begin our exploration of Japan's creation, we have to go back - far, far back, to the cold and desolate world of the Pleistocene, perhaps 40,000 years ago, when the Japanese archipelago was still connected to the mainland, and the first humans reached the area.

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Tristan Rapp

@Afrosmilus

27 Aug

The Womb of Nations - a thread on Danish history and the survival of ancient tribes in Denmark.

(1) Denmark as we know it today originated as a tribal gestalt - a myriad of different peoples, all closely related but originally distinct, united under the dominant Danes.

2) The movements and invasions of the Viking-Age Danes are of course well known, as is the earlier migration/invasion of Jutes and Angels into England. On the latter I have a thread.
Today, we will be going even further back - to the origins of the Cimbri, Burgundians and more.

(3) "Burgundians" - famous as the Nibelungs of Wagner and Norse legend, their name survives today in the French region of Burgundy. There is one other place their name survives - the Danish island of Bornholm. Likely the cradle of the tribe, its name in Norse was Borgundarhólmr.

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Tristan Rapp

@Afrosmilus

13 Aug

(1) Hwæt! - thread on Hengest & Horsa because I feel like it. The information here will be mostly based on scholarship by J. R. R. Tolkien.

There's so much to discuss that I will necessarily only touch on a fraction of it here.

(2) The tale of Hengest & Horsa comes to us from the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, where they are famously invited over by Wurtgern (Vortigern), in the Chronicle the king of the Britons, to serve as mercenaries.

They do so, only to turn on the Britons after seeing how weak they are.

(3) Many theories have been proposed as to the origins of the story. As both their names are words for "horse", the dominant explanation for years has been that they are a myth - a reflex of the Indo-European horse-twins also seen in the Greco-Roman Castor and Pollux.

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