My search for the origins of clothing(sapiens.org) |
My search for the origins of clothing(sapiens.org) |
After that she discusses the enormous amounts of labor required to turn raw materials into threads and how the development of different tools was an important part of developing civilization. This book mostly talks about cloth, which is an entire other chapter owing to how that is its own step up in complexity from producing thread.
Jon Plant secures a stone tool head to a shaft by building a stone axe called a "celt" with more primitive methods [0]. The friction fit he achieves is likely more robust than a twine lashing because it helps deliver a higher impulse to the work-piece than a mount made of cordage.
One very low tech method is to drill a hole in the stone and wedge the handle in it - just like how a modern axe haft is attached.
Drilling a hole in stone isn't that hard. One twirls a stick (the drill) between one's hands, and use a mixture of sand and water at the work face. It's slow, but it works. I read that the ancient Egyptians used this technique.
surprisingly copper works better than bronze for this
possibly better abrasives like emery (the ancient egyptians used quartz) or something like fire-hardened wood might enable this technique to work without metals, but the ancient egyptians don't seem to have managed it
celt axes are attached to the handle in the opposite way: a slot is cut through the wood handle, and then the stone head is wedged into it, pressing against the ends of the slot (which are end grain) but not touching the sides, because that would split the handle
This is why so many people cannot fathom things like rocks cut accurately or large structures like pyramids, Stonehenge or the Moai; they don't consider what can happen if you spend days, weeks, years on something. I think it's evidence of this claim that people back when had much more spare time for things not directly related to their survival.
Hermit crabs and octopi come to mind. Do any other species make anything to wear?
Taylor birds sew their nests, but not something to wear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQMYpzbQIDA&t=53s
But they don't make clothing, they repurpose found objects.
https://www.uaex.uada.edu/environment-nature/anr-blog/posts/...
Being able to control your temperature (reasonably) independently of the seasons is a very useful adaptation in a migratory species.
Personally I think aesthetics and whatnot became a bigger factor in our development over time, that is, preferring partners with less hair so it was "bred out".
The idea is attachment by alternation. You can create roofs, baskets, clothing and so on. You use leaves, vines, sinew.
You are probably wearing woven cloth right now.
I guess clothing made for comfort is usually knitted instead of woven, so that it can stretch in any direction.
There's variety. Ancient Egyptian dress didn't amount to much. Traditional Bedouin dress (granted, a much more recent tradition) is full-body robes.
Not for Harari or Pinker readers, see here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/23/the-dawn-of-ev...?
I don't have detailed notes for what I've disliked about it. When I pick it up again, I'll start from the beginning and keep a log. But, broadly, the authors make a great deal of claims that are unsupported by their fields of study and they don't consult with people from other fields of study. Also, at least up to the point that I had read it, the far East was entirely absent from any mention of human history, which seems like quite a grave oversight given the kind of book it set out to be.
FWIW, a good friend of mine is a recently-degreed archaeologist, does cultural anthropological work, and I was able to reliably get her wound up with excerpts from the book.
My impression is that the authors started out with some particular ideologies of their own, and sought to support those ideologies with evidence from their fields. ...which is fine, but it's not what I was expecting from it. The book is pronounced on places like HN as a must-read re-examination of human history, but framed in that way, it's not a very good book (IMO).
I haven't read The Dawn of Everything, but I have read other Graeber books. His ideas are interesting, but "clear on what is research and what is opinion" is not the impression I would take away. "Willing to draw grand conclusions about the arc of history from research based on tiny, unrepresentative data sets" is more like it.
Specifically these:
> Neanderthals were more inclined to stay in their family groups and were warier of new people.
In the absence of living Neanderthals to study or written records describing them, I don't see how what's stated there about their thoughts and mental attitudes could be known at all, let alone with such certainty.
Archeological evidence might be able to say they tended stay in their family group, but it seems like a speculative leap to say they did so for particular subtle psychological reasons.
> ...given that they were genetically disposed to being less friendly to those beyond their immediate family.
I'm no expert on genetics, but I'm skeptical any kind of existing genetic analysis could give that kind of behavioral detail.
> SAPIENS is a publication of the Wenner-Gren Foundation and published in partnership with the University of Chicago Press, while maintaining unconditional editorial independence.
Their advisory board is all university people from across the world; from a distance it seems pretty legit to me.
Because then using the axe would quickly force the stone through the handle, as the only restraining force will be grip from the sides. That force on the sides will also encourage the handle to split. With it in a cup, the force will be on the back.
say the blade is 100 mm long and 30 mm thick with a cylindrical back edge; the moment is being applied to the blade edge 85 mm from the center of moment, while the glue is resisting the moment from only 15 mm away, giving a 6.7:1 mechanical advantage, and the force is the full force being applied to the workpiece multiplied by sin θ, where θ is the angle the central axis of the blade makes with the force applied by the workpiece on the blade; typically this will be on the order of 0.1, but in a bad strike perhaps closer to 0.3
i don't know, give it a try?