Professor Caveman
July 1, 2017 4:00 PM Subscribe
Why Bill Schindler is teaching college students to live like early humans Fewer people have mastered basic survival skills today than at any other time in human history.
Schindler is keen to correct the popular conception of our ancestors as ignorant cavemen. People today have “thoroughly domesticated themselves,” he told me. Early humans, by contrast, had to be much more inventive, adept at problem-solving, and subtly attuned to changes in the natural environment. Their need to cooperate made them socially connected, as people nowadays are desperate to be
Schindler says “If there is a glitch with my computer, I break down. I mean I literally mentally cannot handle it.” .... Schindler says that his mastery of early-human technologies has given him a sense of personal competence.
Well, good for him, finding a way to make a career and philosophy out of his inability to cope with the modern world. I'll take the computer, thanks.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 4:42 PM on July 1, 2017 [15 favorites]
Well, good for him, finding a way to make a career and philosophy out of his inability to cope with the modern world. I'll take the computer, thanks.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 4:42 PM on July 1, 2017 [15 favorites]
I appreciate this project for the ways in which it teaches practical problem-solving and builds students' skills and confidence. It's a far cry from helicopter parenting, and from being parented in that way. If you've never done the things Schindler is teaching--like butchering, skinning, splitting wood--you might be surprised by just how much work they are, and how much skill you can develop at these tasks. It's not incompatible with the modern world, but complementary.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:49 PM on July 1, 2017 [13 favorites]
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:49 PM on July 1, 2017 [13 favorites]
I was at a party last night and one of the kids there was going to outward bound camps where they were teaching how to trap animals, eat ants and make fires. No matter how sophisticated we become, I think that is a great thing to have skills . The inability to crack an egg seems- regressive.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 5:07 PM on July 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 5:07 PM on July 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
My sister took an anthropology class in college that included making their own stone tools and butchering ... a deer? a pig? I forget ... anyway, butchering an (already dead) animal with them cooking it over an open fire on a spit they built from random wood gathered in the professor's wooded lot. Not quite as involved as this class, but she really enjoyed the hands-on project. It definitely made the information about stone tool making and use stick in her mind a lot more!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:10 PM on July 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:10 PM on July 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'll take the computer, thanks.
It's not either-or. You can know how to program the computer AND how to forage and catch and prepare game animals as food. It's not like one skill pushes the other out of your brain.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:40 PM on July 1, 2017 [31 favorites]
It's not either-or. You can know how to program the computer AND how to forage and catch and prepare game animals as food. It's not like one skill pushes the other out of your brain.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:40 PM on July 1, 2017 [31 favorites]
This is an excellent time for me to recommend one of my favorite books "Parasites Like Us" that features a character trying to live like an early ancestors for research which is alternatively hilarious, disgusting, and helpful.
posted by CMcG at 5:41 PM on July 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by CMcG at 5:41 PM on July 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
I also took a class like-but-not-quite-as-involved in this, and in grad school I helped flense deer legs for a friend's paper on fresh bone breakdown in fires. (That's when I found out the state DMV has a big pile where the roadkill goes. ) Because I'd already done knapping and some slate tool making as an undergrad, I switched about halfway through the first leg to tweak a flint scraper from a pile in the lab to use instead of the boxcutters she had grabbed. Worked so much better.
That reminds me, I have some chert in the closet I keep meaning to get started on...
posted by cobaltnine at 5:44 PM on July 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
That reminds me, I have some chert in the closet I keep meaning to get started on...
posted by cobaltnine at 5:44 PM on July 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
That's when I found out the state DMV has a big pile where the roadkill goes.
anyone up for a mefi meetup? i think i found the perfect site
posted by indubitable at 6:00 PM on July 1, 2017 [19 favorites]
anyone up for a mefi meetup? i think i found the perfect site
posted by indubitable at 6:00 PM on July 1, 2017 [19 favorites]
a leader in the growing field of “experimental archaeology,” which involves reproducing and using ancient technologies to gather data and draw inferences about life in the past
It may be ascendant once again, but this is not a new movement. It goes back at least to Thor Heyerdahl and had a strong academic vogue in the late 60s through 1980 or so - fueling a lot of what happened in living history museums, as long-defunct processes were researched and recreated. I also taught in an outdoor ed program in the 1990s that taught many of these skills - it wasn't my area, but the program director was adept at most of the processes above, and always had some brain-tanning or such process going on. So, it's not new stuff, but great that there are campuses on which it's couched in an academic context.
I do hope the syllabus includes more than the extremely biased notion that society has declined since primitive times, though. There's certainly room for debate, but technology has allowed us to evolve to new levels of complexity and achieve things primitive societies couldn't do - save the lives of the wounded and infected, for example. And the romantic lure of mastering primitive technology could itself be the focus of an anthropological study.
posted by Miko at 6:14 PM on July 1, 2017 [20 favorites]
It may be ascendant once again, but this is not a new movement. It goes back at least to Thor Heyerdahl and had a strong academic vogue in the late 60s through 1980 or so - fueling a lot of what happened in living history museums, as long-defunct processes were researched and recreated. I also taught in an outdoor ed program in the 1990s that taught many of these skills - it wasn't my area, but the program director was adept at most of the processes above, and always had some brain-tanning or such process going on. So, it's not new stuff, but great that there are campuses on which it's couched in an academic context.
I do hope the syllabus includes more than the extremely biased notion that society has declined since primitive times, though. There's certainly room for debate, but technology has allowed us to evolve to new levels of complexity and achieve things primitive societies couldn't do - save the lives of the wounded and infected, for example. And the romantic lure of mastering primitive technology could itself be the focus of an anthropological study.
posted by Miko at 6:14 PM on July 1, 2017 [20 favorites]
Some guy out in Queensland (of course it's rural Queensland) has a channel on Youtube about primitive technology. He shows off a lot of primitive innovations and his work to make things in a primitive style. It's all very interesting.
posted by Talez at 6:45 PM on July 1, 2017 [17 favorites]
posted by Talez at 6:45 PM on July 1, 2017 [17 favorites]
That guy is so meditative to watch. No words, no intro, right to unvarnished content. He's also approaching the Bronze Age.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:47 PM on July 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 6:47 PM on July 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
No "HEY!!! Neolithic Ned here comin' at ya..."
posted by thelonius at 7:01 PM on July 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 7:01 PM on July 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
The Primitive Technology dude is the best. The one where he extracts iron from bacterial sludge blew me away.
posted by um at 9:55 PM on July 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by um at 9:55 PM on July 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
Some guy out in Queensland (of course it's rural Queensland) has a channel on Youtube about primitive technology. He shows off a lot of primitive innovations and his work to make things in a primitive style. It's all very interesting.
I've seen this guy before and just like the last times, I just lost a few hours watching him do his thing. Hours well spent, thanks.
posted by ashbury at 11:11 PM on July 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
I've seen this guy before and just like the last times, I just lost a few hours watching him do his thing. Hours well spent, thanks.
posted by ashbury at 11:11 PM on July 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
It doesn't have to be either/or, but he's doing this because he can't do the other. Given that I can do the other, I don't see a need for his thing.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 11:13 PM on July 1, 2017
posted by the agents of KAOS at 11:13 PM on July 1, 2017
So, it's not new stuff...
"'It all goes back and back,' Tyrion thought, 'to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.'" - George R. R. Martin
posted by fairmettle at 12:38 AM on July 2, 2017
"'It all goes back and back,' Tyrion thought, 'to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.'" - George R. R. Martin
posted by fairmettle at 12:38 AM on July 2, 2017
I took an anthropology class where we tried making stone tools once. It's REALLY GODDAMN HARD. As in, none of us managed to produce anything other than a bunch of sharp little rock flakes and a slightly smaller rock.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:04 AM on July 2, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:04 AM on July 2, 2017 [6 favorites]
He did a survival TV show a couple years ago called The Great Human Race on NatGeo. Along with his partner (the total bad ass Cat Bigney) they replicated technology & problem solving in prehistory. It was fascinating stuff.
posted by Burgoo at 4:49 AM on July 2, 2017
posted by Burgoo at 4:49 AM on July 2, 2017
the extremely biased notion that society has declined since primitive times
I've been steadily making my way through the series posted by functionequalsform last week, and man we humans are clever (at least some of us).
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:06 AM on July 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
I've been steadily making my way through the series posted by functionequalsform last week, and man we humans are clever (at least some of us).
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:06 AM on July 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
People today have “thoroughly domesticated themselves,” he told me. Early humans, by contrast, had to be much more inventive, adept at problem-solving, and subtly attuned to changes in the natural environment.
Well, I kind of bristled at being called "domesticated". First, because it sounds condescending, like I'm livestock or someone's pet. Second, because I think it's much more fitting to call it specialization, because inter-dependency is what is necessary for modern society and technology to exist.
And aren't there still many people who don't have a 20th/21st century lifestyle on this planet? And they probably have to invent, adapt, and be attuned. So, let's not pretend that this is some time period that's lost in the mists of time when there are still folks on this planet that live in similar ways.
posted by FJT at 8:21 AM on July 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
Well, I kind of bristled at being called "domesticated". First, because it sounds condescending, like I'm livestock or someone's pet. Second, because I think it's much more fitting to call it specialization, because inter-dependency is what is necessary for modern society and technology to exist.
And aren't there still many people who don't have a 20th/21st century lifestyle on this planet? And they probably have to invent, adapt, and be attuned. So, let's not pretend that this is some time period that's lost in the mists of time when there are still folks on this planet that live in similar ways.
posted by FJT at 8:21 AM on July 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
Fewer people have mastered basic survival skills today than at any other time in human history
Citation needed on that. It depends on your definition of basic survival skills. Those are heavily dependent on circumstance and geography. Knowing how to build an igloo or start a fire might save you life near the arctic circle, but would give you little advantage if you were trying to survive on the streets of a big city, or even a tropical island. Although, I guess making fire is a pretty good skill to have in most places.
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:01 AM on July 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Citation needed on that. It depends on your definition of basic survival skills. Those are heavily dependent on circumstance and geography. Knowing how to build an igloo or start a fire might save you life near the arctic circle, but would give you little advantage if you were trying to survive on the streets of a big city, or even a tropical island. Although, I guess making fire is a pretty good skill to have in most places.
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:01 AM on July 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Would I have to forgo denim and other cotton fabric varietals to unlock these secrets of understanding?
posted by oceanjesse at 10:15 AM on July 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by oceanjesse at 10:15 AM on July 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
It's great that he's doing this. It's even better that his classes are cooperative efforts. No early man was an island, and life was largely about interdependence even then.
Still, there's something that always makes me bristle about what's extrapolated that you can learn from this. What you can learn is how hard it is to knap or to tan hides, and that's important, especially if you study archaeology or anthropology and need to understand the movements of people. But it should come absolutely free of value judgments about modern life. As someone who, in a State of Nature, would have been nearsighted to blindness until my death of pneumonia at age sixteen, I am very well aware that romanticizing the primitive is to romanticize the idea that most of us should not be alive.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:36 AM on July 2, 2017 [9 favorites]
Still, there's something that always makes me bristle about what's extrapolated that you can learn from this. What you can learn is how hard it is to knap or to tan hides, and that's important, especially if you study archaeology or anthropology and need to understand the movements of people. But it should come absolutely free of value judgments about modern life. As someone who, in a State of Nature, would have been nearsighted to blindness until my death of pneumonia at age sixteen, I am very well aware that romanticizing the primitive is to romanticize the idea that most of us should not be alive.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:36 AM on July 2, 2017 [9 favorites]
Well, I kind of bristled at being called "domesticated". First, because it sounds condescending, like I'm livestock or someone's pet.
Hey! Heyheyhey! There's a sale on at Steam! All your favorite videogames are discounted! You may have to upgrade your computer, fortunately there's a sale on at NewEgg! And did you know you can order premade meals online now?
posted by happyroach at 3:12 PM on July 2, 2017
Hey! Heyheyhey! There's a sale on at Steam! All your favorite videogames are discounted! You may have to upgrade your computer, fortunately there's a sale on at NewEgg! And did you know you can order premade meals online now?
posted by happyroach at 3:12 PM on July 2, 2017
I was on a nature walk in Glacier NP recently, and reading the info about which plants were used by native Americans made me realize how much knowledge of the natural world they required to survive. Recognizing plants that would sustain them over different seasons, which produced cloth-like fibers, which were medicinal, which were poisonous, which served as food for animals they were hunting, etc.
It's one thing to kill an animal and survive for a few weeks. Maintaining a functional society based on nature-tech is something else entirely.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:18 PM on July 2, 2017 [6 favorites]
It's one thing to kill an animal and survive for a few weeks. Maintaining a functional society based on nature-tech is something else entirely.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:18 PM on July 2, 2017 [6 favorites]
I wonder how the doomsday folks see this? They seem to be all about being off grid. And living in the PNW, we periodically are terrified by the volcano/earthquake/tsunami that will eventually wipe us all off the map. The idea of self sufficiency and being able to live off the land is a good one. But it reminds me of this episode of the twilight zone It would suck to live in this world
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 7:59 PM on July 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 7:59 PM on July 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Hey! Heyheyhey! There's a sale on at Steam! All your favorite videogames are discounted! You may have to upgrade your computer, fortunately there's a sale on at NewEgg! And did you know you can order premade meals online now?
Humanity worked collectively for tens of thousands of years to make that shit happen.
If that's being domesticated and it's wrong then I don't want to be right.
posted by Talez at 7:48 AM on July 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
Humanity worked collectively for tens of thousands of years to make that shit happen.
If that's being domesticated and it's wrong then I don't want to be right.
posted by Talez at 7:48 AM on July 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
I wonder how the doomsday folks see this? They seem to be all about being off grid.
If your doomsday prepper hasn't learned how to knapp flint, make a spear and atlatl, make clothing out of leather and furs and all the other stone-age skills, then all they're doing is preparing for a short-term emergency. They're extending their survival without civilization for a year or two, and then they'll be screwed when theri rations and ammunition run out..
posted by happyroach at 1:21 PM on July 3, 2017
If your doomsday prepper hasn't learned how to knapp flint, make a spear and atlatl, make clothing out of leather and furs and all the other stone-age skills, then all they're doing is preparing for a short-term emergency. They're extending their survival without civilization for a year or two, and then they'll be screwed when theri rations and ammunition run out..
posted by happyroach at 1:21 PM on July 3, 2017
I read somewhere once "the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces". For me, that includes keeping the skills of bygone times alive. I'm all for industrial farming with GM strains but let's find a way to keep a few farms around that do things with oxen and plough, or even just a digging stick. Let's not lose the rungs of the ladder that got us here. So let's praise the people who keep the leftover pieces our tinkering has produced.
posted by um at 5:58 PM on July 3, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by um at 5:58 PM on July 3, 2017 [5 favorites]
Let's not lose the rungs of the ladder that got us here.
This is one reason living history museums are finding themselves suddenly relevant for new reasons: they're little islands on which open-pollinated strains of produce, tools, and knowhow survive and are passed down.
You may be interested in Googling up "tools never die" or "no technology dies" for a really interesting, long-running discussion on the notion that we haven't actually lost any technologies. Radiolab did a good piece on the topic.
posted by Miko at 7:43 PM on July 3, 2017 [5 favorites]
This is one reason living history museums are finding themselves suddenly relevant for new reasons: they're little islands on which open-pollinated strains of produce, tools, and knowhow survive and are passed down.
You may be interested in Googling up "tools never die" or "no technology dies" for a really interesting, long-running discussion on the notion that we haven't actually lost any technologies. Radiolab did a good piece on the topic.
posted by Miko at 7:43 PM on July 3, 2017 [5 favorites]
Odd to see so much hostility over the concept of self-domestication. It's not just that we live comfortably and specialize in detailed professions. Our bodies have changed significantly and are still changing as evolution adapts us to our new domestic life. Many of those changes are similar to the changes that have affected domestic animals. Domestication is not necessarily an inherently bad thing; it's just a difference, and a pretty clear one. If you can digest milk, or if you had to have your wisdom teeth surgically removed because your new-diet jaw was too small for your less quckly adapting teeth, you are demonstrating the effects of human self-domestication.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:32 AM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:32 AM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
Odd to see so much hostility over the concept of self-domestication.
I'm not hostile to modernization and using science to improve people's lives. The quote I picked up (and that was in the original post) made it sound like either Schindler or the writer thinks things or people were better back then, that we were more "inventive" and more "connected". And the word "domesticated" is kind of a loaded word when used to refer to your fellow human beings. I wouldn't use that word to describe anyone, but that's just me.
posted by FJT at 11:23 AM on July 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm not hostile to modernization and using science to improve people's lives. The quote I picked up (and that was in the original post) made it sound like either Schindler or the writer thinks things or people were better back then, that we were more "inventive" and more "connected". And the word "domesticated" is kind of a loaded word when used to refer to your fellow human beings. I wouldn't use that word to describe anyone, but that's just me.
posted by FJT at 11:23 AM on July 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Re: Primitive Technology guy - his blog is worth reading. Plus if you turn on captions on his videos, there's explanatory text of what he's doing in each shot.
In the last year or so I've been helping out at an outdoor camp catering mainly for kids, doing basic bushcraft stuff like building debris shelters, firelighting, carving, working with ropes and so on. It's enormous fun and it's amazing how quickly kids from all kinds of different families drop into the kind of 'kid mode' I remember from growing up in the 80s and 90s, screaming off into the forest to explore, try stuff out and generally figure out the world around them.
The kids are all right, I reckon. It's the decisions we've made as a society that have gradually closed them off from learning new skills, facing risks and learning useful skills. Thankfully, those decisions are reversible on an individual and familial basis.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:25 PM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
In the last year or so I've been helping out at an outdoor camp catering mainly for kids, doing basic bushcraft stuff like building debris shelters, firelighting, carving, working with ropes and so on. It's enormous fun and it's amazing how quickly kids from all kinds of different families drop into the kind of 'kid mode' I remember from growing up in the 80s and 90s, screaming off into the forest to explore, try stuff out and generally figure out the world around them.
The kids are all right, I reckon. It's the decisions we've made as a society that have gradually closed them off from learning new skills, facing risks and learning useful skills. Thankfully, those decisions are reversible on an individual and familial basis.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:25 PM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
And the word "domesticated" is kind of a loaded word when used to refer to your fellow human beings.
It describes a set of changes which have come about in our animal companions and those changes are closely mirrored by general changes in humans over the same course of time. It's not a pejorative, it's a description.
Domestic animals tend toward obesity and neurotic behavior. So do we. Domestic animals tend to be hypersexual and to reproduce much more frequently than their natural ancestors; as far as we can tell so do we. Domestic animals tend to be very tolerant of close living arrangements. Prehistoric humans tended to live in groups of at most 30-50; more than that was apparently a problem. In a group that size every individual can find something to give them importance and primacy. But modern humans live in cities of millions, where for the most part none of us is very important at all, and we are mostly OK with that.
We are domesticating ourselves, full stop. And what that means is that we are adapting ourselves to live in a new environment of shelter and food supply which we are creating, which allows us to sustain a very high population compared to what we could naturally. Some of those adaptations are harmless, or even beneficial; one of them is broad spectrum immunity to disease, which our ancestors didn't enjoy, and lack of which caused numerous genocides of aboriginal peoples. But then again, some of those adaptations aren't completely harmless; the sickle cell trait seems to have been an advantageous reaction to the presence of malaria-bearing mosquitoes, fatal as it can be in other ways.
I've mentioned teeth, which have not adapted very well to our receding jawline which is receding because of changes in the texture of our food. And for a certain period in our history lactose tolerance meant life or death, and with that the ability to reproduce. So today most of us adults can digest milk. Few of our wild ancestors could.
This is domestication. We are in the middle of it, like it or not.
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:03 PM on July 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
It describes a set of changes which have come about in our animal companions and those changes are closely mirrored by general changes in humans over the same course of time. It's not a pejorative, it's a description.
Domestic animals tend toward obesity and neurotic behavior. So do we. Domestic animals tend to be hypersexual and to reproduce much more frequently than their natural ancestors; as far as we can tell so do we. Domestic animals tend to be very tolerant of close living arrangements. Prehistoric humans tended to live in groups of at most 30-50; more than that was apparently a problem. In a group that size every individual can find something to give them importance and primacy. But modern humans live in cities of millions, where for the most part none of us is very important at all, and we are mostly OK with that.
We are domesticating ourselves, full stop. And what that means is that we are adapting ourselves to live in a new environment of shelter and food supply which we are creating, which allows us to sustain a very high population compared to what we could naturally. Some of those adaptations are harmless, or even beneficial; one of them is broad spectrum immunity to disease, which our ancestors didn't enjoy, and lack of which caused numerous genocides of aboriginal peoples. But then again, some of those adaptations aren't completely harmless; the sickle cell trait seems to have been an advantageous reaction to the presence of malaria-bearing mosquitoes, fatal as it can be in other ways.
I've mentioned teeth, which have not adapted very well to our receding jawline which is receding because of changes in the texture of our food. And for a certain period in our history lactose tolerance meant life or death, and with that the ability to reproduce. So today most of us adults can digest milk. Few of our wild ancestors could.
This is domestication. We are in the middle of it, like it or not.
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:03 PM on July 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Domesticated is an actual word with an actual meaning, which is "tame and dependant on (a superior species/)humans, often kept as a pet". If you want to describe the changes that go along with this condition, you'll need to use a word that actually has that meaning.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 11:46 PM on July 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by the agents of KAOS at 11:46 PM on July 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Domesticated is an actual word with an actual meaning
Well yes it is, but there are several ways of stating that meaning and yours is actually rather sloppy. Ask yourself, if you were an alien sorting out Earth's life forms and you recognized that some of those life forms were domesticated, i.e. had modified form and behaviors to optimize their relationship with humans, in order to identify the domesticated species you would have to enumerate those changes in form and behavior and ask which species demonstrated them. And you would quickly conclude that humans ourselves have undergone enough of those changes to be considered domesticated ourselves. That is the precise thing that is meant by "humans are domesticating ourselves," and it is not a very controversial thing to say in circles where these things are studied closely.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:31 AM on July 5, 2017
Well yes it is, but there are several ways of stating that meaning and yours is actually rather sloppy. Ask yourself, if you were an alien sorting out Earth's life forms and you recognized that some of those life forms were domesticated, i.e. had modified form and behaviors to optimize their relationship with humans, in order to identify the domesticated species you would have to enumerate those changes in form and behavior and ask which species demonstrated them. And you would quickly conclude that humans ourselves have undergone enough of those changes to be considered domesticated ourselves. That is the precise thing that is meant by "humans are domesticating ourselves," and it is not a very controversial thing to say in circles where these things are studied closely.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:31 AM on July 5, 2017
it is not a very controversial thing to say in circles where these things are studied closely.
This isn't one of those circles. Maybe read the room.
posted by Etrigan at 8:40 AM on July 5, 2017
This isn't one of those circles. Maybe read the room.
posted by Etrigan at 8:40 AM on July 5, 2017
Read the room? Seriously? Have you considered how big a room Metafilter really is?
Look, we get it that you don't like the sound of it. But if we aren't playing the Merriam-Webster game the plain, widely agreed upon fact is that humans change animals in certain specific ways, a process we call "domestication," and humans ourselves have been changing in many of those same ways ourselves for closely related reasons. That is a fact nobody with any kind of serious reputation in science or biology would deny, and which anybody can easily check for themselves by inspection.
When that fact is discussed, the people who find it worth discussing don't find a different word because they have a word. "The room" is the people who research and write about this topic, and those people universally call it domestication, as in humans have been domesticating ourselves since the invention of agriculture. That is the phrase which is always used to describe the phenomenon, because it is an accurate description of what is going on.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:55 PM on July 5, 2017 [3 favorites]
Look, we get it that you don't like the sound of it. But if we aren't playing the Merriam-Webster game the plain, widely agreed upon fact is that humans change animals in certain specific ways, a process we call "domestication," and humans ourselves have been changing in many of those same ways ourselves for closely related reasons. That is a fact nobody with any kind of serious reputation in science or biology would deny, and which anybody can easily check for themselves by inspection.
When that fact is discussed, the people who find it worth discussing don't find a different word because they have a word. "The room" is the people who research and write about this topic, and those people universally call it domestication, as in humans have been domesticating ourselves since the invention of agriculture. That is the phrase which is always used to describe the phenomenon, because it is an accurate description of what is going on.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:55 PM on July 5, 2017 [3 favorites]
"The room" is the people who research and write about this topic
No, "the room" is MetaFilter, and it is this discussion that we are having here, and a few different people have raised objection to your use of that word, and maybe the best possible response when people do that isn't "I am inarguably correct in this and you're being sloppy."
posted by Etrigan at 4:11 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
No, "the room" is MetaFilter, and it is this discussion that we are having here, and a few different people have raised objection to your use of that word, and maybe the best possible response when people do that isn't "I am inarguably correct in this and you're being sloppy."
posted by Etrigan at 4:11 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
Well I admit I find this exchange flummoxing. It's like dealing with someone who insists WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY DAMMIT when you try to tell them that no, we actually live in a representative republic where individual voters were deliberately distanced from the final decisions, and the response is NO WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY DAMMIT!!!!!!
I am not going to continue in circles about the other d-word except to say that welp, I have been hearing it applied to us for my entire life so I know that's not a new or controversial thing. It would be more useful if you don't like the idea to ask why professionals like historians and anthropologists think it's an appropriate description than to go dictionary shopping for proof that you're really not like a dog or a sheep after all.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:11 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
I am not going to continue in circles about the other d-word except to say that welp, I have been hearing it applied to us for my entire life so I know that's not a new or controversial thing. It would be more useful if you don't like the idea to ask why professionals like historians and anthropologists think it's an appropriate description than to go dictionary shopping for proof that you're really not like a dog or a sheep after all.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:11 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
Well, you're wrong about democracy too, isn't that funny.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 12:09 PM on July 6, 2017
posted by the agents of KAOS at 12:09 PM on July 6, 2017
It's like dealing with someone who insists WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY DAMMIT when you try to tell them that no, we actually live in a representative republic where individual voters were deliberately distanced from the final decisions, and the response is NO WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY DAMMIT!!!!!!
You're characterizing the people who are saying "maybe" and "kind of" and "that's just me" as the shouty ones, while you're the one saying "Seriously?" and "full stop" and "like it or not". Clearly, there is some amount of flummoxing going on here.
posted by Etrigan at 12:16 PM on July 6, 2017
You're characterizing the people who are saying "maybe" and "kind of" and "that's just me" as the shouty ones, while you're the one saying "Seriously?" and "full stop" and "like it or not". Clearly, there is some amount of flummoxing going on here.
posted by Etrigan at 12:16 PM on July 6, 2017
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Not knowing how to crack an egg reminded me of a story I read about kids in Singapore on an Outward Bound course not knowing how to peel an orange.
posted by Bee'sWing at 4:41 PM on July 1, 2017 [2 favorites]