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#Post#: 821--------------------------------------------------
Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: August 17, 2020, 4:23 am
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OLD CONTENT
HTML http://en.brinkwire.com/science/life-was-easier-when-humans-hunted-for-food/
[quote]Switching from hunting to farming made life more
difficult and forced people to work longer hours, a Cambridge
University study on modern tribes has claimed.
The agriculture revolution is heralded as a major turning point
in human history as it ushered in stable settlements and allowed
culture to blossom.
But scientists found it was not without its costs as the arduous
work was less productive and took longer to make the same amount
of food as a hunter-gatherer.
In a study of modern day Agta tribes scattered around remote
regions of the Philippines, they found hunter-gatherers spend 20
hours a week getting food whereas those that had recently taken
up farming took 30 hours to get the same quantity.
The research goes against the commonly held belief that the
advent of agriculture benefited humans and made life easier, and
researchers are yet to understand why.
...
Dr Mark Dyble, first author of the study, says: ‘For a long
time, the transition from foraging to farming was assumed to
represent progress, allowing people to escape an arduous and
precarious way of life.[/quote]
Actually, what farming allowed was a less violent way of life
than hunting, at the cost of more labour. That it was maintained
despite the ergonomic cost fits our conjecture that noble
behaviour was what mattered most to the people of the Golden Age
(which is what made it the Golden Age!).
---
More mainstream journalists are now using a more accurate
definition of agriculture:
riverdalepress.com/stories/without-agricultural-revolution-today
s-society-wouldnt-exist,69621
[quote]Agriculture — which is the domestication of plants —
began between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago during the Neolithic
period in several different global centers. Wheat, barley,
lentils and peas were domesticated in the Near East. Millet and
rice were grown around the same time in China.
In Mesoamerica, squash plants were also grown around that period
as well as the early ancestor of corn (teosinte). Corn, as we
know it today, was only developed around 4000 B.C.[/quote]
It wasn't that long ago when it was common for the term to be
misused to include herding.
Of course, strictly speaking, agriculture is cultivation of
plants with or without domestication (ie. mutation such that the
cultivated plant is no longer capable of growing uncultivated)
occurring. But this is a minor detail.
#Post#: 822--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: August 17, 2020, 4:29 am
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HTML https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/neolithic-mass-burial-site-discovered-in-xaghra.810723
[quote]“The Xagħra community has no evidence of violence or
war, but we see examples of fractures that needed time to heal,
where that person would have also required assistance from other
people to continue to survive during that time.”
...
“The beauty of Xagħra is that the people were very
resilient, living to the point of getting arthritis and
continuing to do manual labour,” Mercieca Spiteri explained.
“The teeth also have interesting grooves which indicate that
there was a common profession in the area that involved holding
some kind of string in bet-ween their teeth.”[/quote]
Any guesses on what this profession might have been?
Side note:
[quote]The results gave an interesting insight into the
livelihoods of the Xagħra people and their diets, curiously
absent of fish despite being surrounded by bodies of
water.[/quote]
We would expect no less. Reinforcing the first post, just
because it would be convenient to fish does not mean we will
fish. The Aryan way is to refuse initiating violence although
the alternative requires that we do more labour.
#Post#: 1218--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 19, 2020, 1:08 am
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HTML https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191011131858.htm
[quote]Private property, not productivity, precipitated
Neolithic agricultural revolution
...
A common explanation is that farming increased labor
productivity, which then encouraged the adoption of private
property by providing incentives for the long-term investments
required in a farming economy.
"But it's not what the data are telling us," says Santa Fe
Institute economist Samuel Bowles, a co-author of the paper. "It
is very unlikely that the number of calories acquired from a
day's work at the advent of farming made it a better option than
hunting and gathering and it could well have been quite a bit
worse."
...
Bowles and co-author Jung-Kyoo Choi, an economist at Kyungpook
National University in South Korea, use both evolutionary game
theory and archaeological evidence to propose a new
interpretation of the Neolithic. Based on their model, a system
of mutually recognized private property rights was both a
precondition for farming and also a means of limiting costly
conflicts among members of a population. While rare among
foragers, private property did exist among a few groups of
sedentary hunter-gatherers. Among them, farming could have
benefited the first adopters because it would have been easier
to establish the private possession of cultivated crops and
domesticated animals than for the diffuse wild resources on
which hunter-gatherers relied.
"It is a lot easier to define and defend property rights in a
domesticated cow than in a wild kudu," says Choi. "Farming
initially succeeded because it facilitated a broader application
of private property rights, not because it lightened the toil of
making a living."[/quote]
I will elaborate. In absence of private property, suppose two
farmers (each with their own distinct ideas about how best to
farm) both cultivate the same field, and the crop fails to grow.
Whose fault is it? It would be almost impossible to isolate
whose actions caused the failure, which in turn makes it
similarly impossible to determine which farming ideas are bad.
This is the most important reason why private property is
essential for farming: to make it much harder for any farmer to
blame someone else for crop failure, and hence much easier for
all farmers to learn from experience. (Only then can farmers can
pool their experiences and thus improve the entire community's
farming skills.)
#Post#: 3042--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: December 27, 2020, 11:11 pm
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HTML https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/neolithic-axe-dated-4000-2000-bc-discovered-in-nagarkurnool-district/articleshow/79982865.cms
[quote]A Neolithic axe, made out of solarising stone, was
discovered at Somasila village, Kollapur mandal in Nagarkurnool.
...
The tool was found in the agricultural field of Telugu Pentaiah
of the same village from which Neolithic tools like discoids,
pestles and grinding stones were recovered two decades ago by Dr
Reddy and are now kept in the local museum.[/quote]
The latter are tools used for processing cereals to make flour
etc., which constitutes another significant portion of labour
back in those days.
The axe itself was probably used for splitting firewood. The
good thing about using locally sourced firewood is that it
places another strict limit on population, whose demand for fuel
cannot exceed the availability of firewood in the immediate
vicinity (especially if we limit ourselves to collecting wood
fallen by itself rather than chopping it from trees).
#Post#: 4421--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: February 23, 2021, 1:23 am
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HTML https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/neolithic-grooves-found-in-krishnagiri-district/articleshow/81133715.cms
[quote]"We have discovered 16 grooves used by Neolithic people
to sharpen stone axes and other tools. The approximate length of
the grooves was 15-20cm, and width 5-8cm,"[/quote]
#Post#: 5132--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: March 28, 2021, 4:11 am
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HTML https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/textile-tools-dating-back-8-600-years-found-in-denizli-157783
[quote]Archeologists in western Turkey have discovered textile
tools nearly twice as old as Egypt’s Great Pyramids.
Bone needles and round stones used for spinning thread dating
back some 8,600 years were found in an excavation site in
Ekşi Höyük, one of the oldest settlements in western
Anatolia, located in the present-day Denizli province.
"During excavations carried out in this Neolithic-era
settlement, we discovered some of the first tools used for
textiles in history," Ege University’s Fulya Dedeoğlu, head
of the excavation team, told Anadolu Agency.
...
She stressed that Denizli is known for its history in textiles
and that many bone needles used in textiles were found at the
excavation site.
"The findings here prove that the textile tradition in Denizli
dates back to earlier times. We've discovered them in a building
that we think was built in 6400 B.C.," Dedeoğlu
added.[/quote]
Again, think carefully. Making fibre cloth from scratch by hand
requires a lot more labour than turning animal hides into
garments which are also likely to be more durable:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hide_materials
[quote]Tanning of hides to manufacture leather was invented
during the Paleolithic.[/quote]
Similar to subsistence farming (see first post in topic), why
would the Aryans bother to put in the additional labour to
produce less durable clothes if (as non-Aryanist archaeologists
posit) the Neolithic Revolution was motivated purely by
ergonomic interests?
#Post#: 5209--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: April 1, 2021, 5:54 am
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HTML https://phys.org/news/2021-03-evidence-neolithic-people-salt-seawater.html
[quote]Archaeologist Stephen Sherlock, an independent scholar,
has found evidence of Neolithic people extracting salt from
seawater 5,800 years ago at Street House, Loftus, making it the
oldest salt production facility ever discovered in Britain.
...
In addition to charcoal deposits, there was a hazelnut shell and
pottery, all of which was dated back approximately 5,800 years.
...
it appears the seawater was captured in jugs from the North Sea,
approximately 2.5 miles away. It would have been distilled
onshore before transport to the salt-producing facility near
what is now Loftus. Sherlock suggests the briny water was dumped
into a pit where it was stored for use. To retrieve the salt,
workers would collect a quantity of the brine using pots and
heat it over a fire for up to seven hours. Doing so removed most
of the remaining water. The pots full of salt cake would then be
set aside to cool or would be taken to other places. When people
wanted to use the salt, they simply broke the pots.[/quote]
Recall:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt#History
[quote]There is more salt in animal tissues, such as meat,
blood, and milk, than in plant tissues.[11] Nomads who subsist
on their flocks and herds do not eat salt with their food, but
agriculturalists, feeding mainly on cereals and vegetable
matter, need to supplement their diet with salt.[12][/quote]
So yet again the same pattern: the Aryan lifestyle requires more
labour, not less, to maintain.
#Post#: 11615--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: March 2, 2022, 12:10 am
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HTML https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944163
[quote]How humans in middle-late Neolithic China process plant
food
...
Recently, researchers discovered that the combination of
grinding slabs and rollers in the middle and lower Yellow River
reaches declined gradually after 7,000 years BP. In the
meantime, more efficient mortars and pestles were frequently
used by prehistoric humans with the rapid development of
agriculture and a transitional lifestyle from hunting and
gathering to farming.
In a study published in Archaeometry, Prof. YANG Yuzhang's team
from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences made an investigation into the plant
food processing tools in the Shuangdun site. The team conducted
damage characteristics analysis of excavated artefacts dated
back to the middle-late Neolithic period and for the first time
provided solid evidence for the rise of mortar and pestle for
their high processing efficiency in that period.
Researchers extracted plant starch grains from six stone
artefacts, including two grinding slabs, two pestles, one
mortar, and one special cake-shaped artefact, which were made of
sandstone, diabase and crystal tuff. A widely used micro-remain
analysis method was adopted to probe into the similarities and
differences between two sets of food processing tools: slabs and
rollers, as well as mortars and pestles.
The results indicated that based on their morphology and size,
various plants such as Triticeae, Job’s tears, lotus root, and
bean were found in both types of grinding tools. However, starch
grains of rice (Oryza sativa) only appeared in mortars and
pestles, suggesting this set of tools was particularly adopted
to process rice in middle-late Neolithic China.
The damage type analysis of a variety of starches showed that
mortars and pestles were also used for grinding plant foods in
the same way as grinding slabs, while some roughly made slabs
might not be used for grinding but only for pounding specific
plant food.
All statistics demonstrated that with the rise of mortars and
pestles, they were frequently used to hull plant seeds and to
process plant foods into small pieces or powder. Grinding slabs
and rollers, however, were gradually replaced, and began to
decline in human economic life.
This study pioneered the research of mortars and pestles in
prehistoric China. It not only deepens the understanding of the
processing approaches of grinding tools, but also advances
exploration into prehistoric plant food processing tools.
Additionally, it provides a full picture of the evolution of
food processing tools and reflects abundant details of
lifestyles in prehistoric Eastern China.[/quote]
I have liked the mortar and pestle ever since the first time I
saw one as a young child.
#Post#: 16983--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: December 9, 2022, 9:47 pm
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HTML https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221207163043.htm
[quote]A new study analyzing stone tools from southern China
provides the earliest evidence of rice harvesting, dating to as
early as 10,000 years ago. The researchers identified two
methods of harvesting rice, which helped initiate rice
domestication.
...
Wild rice is different from domesticated rice in that wild rice
naturally sheds ripe seeds, shattering them to the ground when
they mature, while cultivated rice seeds stay on the plants when
they mature.
To harvest rice, some sort of tools would have been needed. In
harvesting rice with tools, early rice cultivators were
selecting the seeds that stay on the plants, so gradually the
proportion of seeds that remain increased, resulting in
domestication.
"For quite a long time, one of the puzzles has been that
harvesting tools have not been found in southern China from the
early Neolithic period or New Stone Age (10,000 -- 7,000 Before
Present) -- the time period when we know rice began to be
domesticated," says lead author Jiajing Wang, an assistant
professor of anthropology at Dartmouth. "However, when
archaeologists were working at several early Neolithic sites in
the Lower Yangtze River Valley, they found a lot of small pieces
of stone, which had sharp edges that could have been used for
harvesting plants."
"Our hypothesis was that maybe some of those small stone pieces
were rice harvesting tools, which is what our results show."
In the Lower Yangtze River Valley, the two earliest Neolithic
culture groups were the Shangshan and Kuahuqiao.
The researchers examined 52 flaked stone tools from the
Shangshan and Hehuashan sites, the latter of which was occupied
by Shangshan and Kuahuqiao cultures.
The stone flakes are rough in appearance and are not finely made
but have sharp edges. On average, the flaked tools are small
enough to be held by one hand and measured approximately 1.7
inches in width and length.
...
The findings from the use-wear and phytolith analyses
illustrated that two types of rice harvesting methods were used
-- "finger-knife" and "sickle" techniques. Both methods are
still used in Asia today.
The stone flakes from the early phase (10,000 -- 8,200 BP)
showed that rice was largely harvested using the finger-knife
method in which the panicles at the top of the rice plant are
reaped. The results showed that the tools used for finger-knife
harvesting had striations that were mainly perpendicular or
diagonal to the edge of the stone flake, which suggests a
cutting or scraping motion, and contained phytoliths from seeds
or rice husk phytoliths, indicating that the rice was harvested
from the top of the plant.
"A rice plant contains numerous panicles that mature at
different times, so the finger-knife harvesting technique is
especially useful when rice domestication was in the early
stage," says Wang.
The stone flakes however, from the later phase (8,000 -- 7,000
BP) had more evidence of sickle harvesting in which the lower
part of the plant was harvested. These tools had striations that
were predominantly parallel to the tool's edge, reflecting that
a slicing motion had likely been used.
"Sickle harvesting was more widely used when rice became more
domesticated, and more ripe seeds stayed on the plant," says
Wang. "Since you are harvesting the entire plant at the same
time, the rice leaves and stems could also be used for fuel,
building materials, and other purposes, making this a much more
effective harvesting method."
Wang says, "Both harvesting methods would have reduced seed
shattering. That's why we think rice domestication was driven by
human unconscious selection."[/quote]
#Post#: 17292--------------------------------------------------
Re: Aryan labour
By: 90sRetroFan Date: December 29, 2022, 6:36 pm
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HTML https://assamtribune.com/assam/why-assams-neolithic-site-needs-governments-attention-1454672
[quote]The lesser known, Bambooti excavation site, in the
foothills of Goalpara, is the last neolithic age cultural site
in Assam. The new stone age site in the region reflects the
cultural and historical aspects of ancient Assam, but has
remained unidentified since ages.
...
The discovery of the site was based on a research which was
carried out by Ali, along with young researchers where some
major objects could be discovered. This includes, axes, celts,
shouldered axes, scrapers or abraders. The geomorphology of the
site, along with the material content, clearly indicated that
Bambooti is a Neolithic habitation site which was clearly based
on intensive food collection and dependent on farming
activities.
The other tools recovered from the site were used for domestic
purposes, predominantly for the purpose of cooking which
included items found in kitchen like pitchers, cooking pots,
platters, lids, earthen pots. Research stated that the objects
existence can be dated back to 3000-3200 years ago, during the
stone age. Besides, the discovery of the platters confirmed that
the concept of making rice-cakes has been prevalent in the
region since the Neolithic age.[/quote]
Background:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asura_Kingdom
[quote]Asura Kingdom (Sonitpura Kingdom) is a mythological
kingdom that is mentioned in a multiple of Hindu epics[1] which
later came to be associated with modern-day Tezpur in central
Assam and Banasura Hill in Kerala.
...
In Assam, the name of the legendary kingdom might be applied to
the local inhabitants who were outside of the Hindu fold.[3] In
Kalika purana, Banasura, the last ruler of the asura kingdom is
represented as an anti-Brahminical character.[4] [/quote]
Related?
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