Stone Age Herbalist Profile picture
After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.
18 subscribers
Nov 16 19 tweets 8 min read
In AD 256 a unit of Roman miners led a counterattack against their Sasanian besiegers at the city of Dura-Europos.

What happened next has been recorded in minute detail by archaeologists, and remains amongst the earliest and most horrifying uses of chemical weapons in war 🧵 Image The fortified city of Dura-Europos on the Syrian Euphrates had been founded by the Seleucids. After falling to the Parthians and then the Romans in AD 165, it became an important outpost and border fort, somewhere between a town and a military garrison. Image
Nov 14 19 tweets 9 min read
In Oct 2012 a strange object was found whilst a canal was being drained in western Massachusetts. A cauldron - filled with railroad spikes, a knife, coins, herbs, a padlock and a human skull.

Welcome to the world of Palo Mayombe in America 🧵 Image
Image
Afro-syncretic religions in the Americas are plentiful, and include some well known examples like Santeria, Haitian Voodoo and Rastafari. These religions are a mix of native African and American beliefs, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Image
Nov 12 14 tweets 7 min read
In 2015 British officials travelled to Nigeria to help track down a witchdoctor who had used a juju magical oath to prevent trafficked girls in Britain from testifying against a smuggling gang.

Why did this happen? 🧵 Image The trafficking of young women and girls from Nigeria into Europe for the sex trade and cheap labour increased dramatically after the death of Gaddafi and Libya's descent into anarchy. Image
Nov 11 15 tweets 7 min read
How do you legislate against a belief in witchcraft? If you genuinely believe your neighbour is trying to kill you with black magic, do you have the right to use violence against them?

Let's take a look at how the 'reasonable belief' test has been applied in Africa 🧵 Image First off, how many people are killed as suspected witches every year in Africa? That's hard to say, but some estimates from South Africa alone suggest many thousands. Image
Nov 10 13 tweets 6 min read
Having examined the invasion and consolidation of the Argentine ant in California, in particular their control over the major port cities, we can now turn to their colonisation of the rest of the world through the exploitation of human-run shipping lanes. Image For background details on World War Ant and the Argentine ant supercolony phenomenon start here:

Nov 9 10 tweets 4 min read
The Argentine ant global set of supercolonies is one of the largest cooperative societies on earth, it is also one of the most aggressive. World war ant has been raging for over a century, from Japan to South Africa.

But where did it all begin? 🧵 Image Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) are about 2.5mm in size, native to Argentina, and considered an opportunistic, flexible and aggressive species. Within their native range their genetic diversity is wide and different colonies regularly fight each other.Image
Nov 8 12 tweets 5 min read
"Each month millions of Argentine
ants die along battlefronts that extend for miles around San Diego, where clashes occur with three other colonies in wars that may have been going on since the species arrived in the state a
century ago"

Some notes on ant warfare 🧵 Image Many are aware that a world war between Argentine ant supercolonies is currently underway, across multiple continents, and against multiple ant 'nations'. Image
Nov 4 15 tweets 6 min read
The story of Pakistan's nuclear research and defence programmes perfectly illustrates the battle for science against 'djinnthink' or religious superstition. A struggle between Nobel prize winning physicists and men who believed in acquiring electricity from the spirit world. 🧵 Image Although post-war Pakistan was not initially interested in researching nuclear technology, by the 1960s the country was in a relatively good position to start building up scientific infrastructure, including a space agency and nuclear tech institute both in 1961. Image
Nov 3 11 tweets 6 min read
One straightforward theory as to why prehistoric Venus figurines are overweight, is because they depicted real obese Palaeolithic women. But is it possible to get so fat during an Ice Age, and why would you? Are there modern ethnographic examples of such overfeeding? 🧵 Image Let's assume that Upper Palaeolithic foragers were capable of bringing down a mammoth or rhino once in a while (they were). This level of fatty meat caloric excess for a band of say, 25 people, would be more than comfortable. Especially if one or two women were chosen to get fat. Image
Nov 2 7 tweets 4 min read
Many people know that pre-industrial pollution from Greek and Roman metalworking can be identified in ice cores.

Many don't know that lead pollution from Native American metalworking also appears in sediment cores, from pre-Columbian copper and lead metallurgy. 🧵 Image
Image
Image
Copper working in North America may have started between 10-7,000 years ago. During the Archaic period hunter-gatherers were making copper tools and ornaments in a region stretching from central Canada to the eastern Great Lakes Image
Oct 28 13 tweets 5 min read
5,700 years ago a hunter-gatherer in Denmark chewed on a piece of birch tar.

In 2019 scientists were able to extract her DNA, as well as fragments of DNA from her mouth.

The result is a fascinating snapshot into prehistoric life, health and death. 🧵 Image To start with, what is birch tar?

If you heat the bark of the birch tree without too much oxygen being present you get a sticky black tarry substance. This was used throughout the Stone Age as a type of glue for arrowheads and hunting weapons. Image
Oct 22 11 tweets 5 min read
Chinese archaeology often fits in relatively neatly with the historical written record. Settlements like Taosi and Erlitou have been matched to later descriptions.

The discovery of the Neolithic city of Shimao was a great shock then, a long-lost fortress, without description🧵 Image On the edge of the Ordos Desert stands a huge archaeological site: a 400 hectare enclosure of double-layered stone walls surrounding a central structure. When it was first discovered it was interpreted as a section of the Great Wall, but it dates back to around 2,300 BC. Image
Oct 17 13 tweets 5 min read
My favourite slightly esoteric data point for the aquatic ape hypothesis is that human fetuses are unique amongst land mammals for having a vernix layer, made of the same fatty acids as those from juvenile sea lions 🧵 Image The vernix caseosa (cheesy varnish!) is a waxy white substance which coats the skin of late stage fetuses and newborn babies. The exact function of the vernix layer is still under investigation.Image
Oct 16 9 tweets 4 min read
Cycladic art is iconic. Made between 3200-1100 BC in the Aegean, the figurines are sought after by museums and collectors for their striking, modernist appearance.

There's a good reason for that. We have no idea how many of them in circulation are fakes. 🧵 Image
Image
The figurines are typically made from marble and often represent a stylised figurine of a woman. They are now scattered far and wide in private hands and galleries around the world. Image
Image
Oct 15 8 tweets 3 min read
Any discussion of Mesoamerican archaeology has to be mindful that this one guy - Brigído Lara - managed to forge around 40,000 ceramic objects, manufactured so perfectly they fooled museum curators and researchers for decades. Image He may be responsible for forging virtually all the Totonac pottery on record, opening up not just the possibility that some artwork might be fake, but that everything ever written about this culture is nonsense. Image
Image
Image
Oct 8 14 tweets 6 min read
Malawi is hardly the only country in Africa struggling with the problem of illegal moonshine production. A picture thread mostly from Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda. Image
Image
Image
Image
Sep 1 15 tweets 5 min read
On May 4th 2021, the Ugandan Parliament passed the The Prevention and Prohibition of Human Sacrifice Bill - a piece of legislation aimed at stamping out the pervasive problem of child sacrifice in the country.

A quick thread on how it's been going in Uganda since then: Image 'Hunting dogs lead police to den of human sacrifices'

The data is difficult to gather but maybe two children a week are abducted and ritually murdered in the country. Image
Aug 23 9 tweets 5 min read
The story of the Arctic Dorset people, Palaeo-Eskimos who lived in Canada between ~ 700 BC to ~ 1200 AD, is quite well known now. They disappeared in the face of the advancing Thule Inuit. But - what if some of them survived in some isolated form until recent times? Image Dorset culture technology was more limited compared to the Thule. They didn't hunt whales, use dogs or use bows-and-arrows. Instead they were masters of hunting seals. The broader diet of the Inuit certainly helped them move into and conquer a climatically unstable Arctic.
Image
Image
Aug 17 8 tweets 4 min read
The power of Orkney during the late Neolithic period is best seen through the movement of grooved ware pottery and the associated ritual package. This map shows the locations of grooved ware pottery finds, expanding outwards from Orkney down the coast and over to Ireland...
Image One part of the ritual package may have been the spread of timber and stone circles, and henges.
Image
Image
Jun 18 15 tweets 8 min read
*The Tasmanian Fish Question*

The enduring story of Tasmanian aboriginal cultural decline includes the fact that they stopped eating fish around 2000 BC, or worse - that they lost or forgot the skills to do so.

Let's examine this claim 🧵 Image The origin of the claim is two-fold, firstly ethnographic evidence from Europeans on Tasmania, who observed that the inhabitants ate no fish, and secondly an absence of fish in the archaeological record starting around 1,800 BC. Image
Jun 13 11 tweets 9 min read
Thread of some unusual mixed peoples from around the world

🧵 Image Hakka or Chinese-Jamaicans are the descendants of Chinese workers brought to Jamaica in the 1850s. Genetically there are more paternal Chinese markers in the population than maternal.


Image
Image
Image
Image