Listening to these Papua New Guinea episodes reminds me of a lot of other archeological sites such as in Time Team, were Archiolofist are always trying to make sense of what they find. I find curious that everything they find that is of uncertain use, is always for rituals, worship or weapon. How about a musical instrument? I believe music is a natural part of human development. We have found songs and hymns dating back to thousands of years. There are four basic type of producing music. Membranophones, Chordophones, Idiophones and Aerophones. If you stretch a piece of leather, pluck a rope or string, bang a rock or hard surface, or blow through it and it makes different sounds, you got an instrument. Have any archeologist considered this? I can imagine several people making tools, one bang on two rocks, another blow through a pipe, someone tensed a string while another scrapped a piece of leather. All of a sudden, they had a musical chord. They keep on doing it and the first band was born.
Great podcasts and article - thanks! I respectfully agree with Patrick's guest Tim that the changed climate of the Holocene is just a guess for why agriculture took off. Several reasons IMHO:
1. Ag in Southwest Asia and New Guinea took off in Younger Dryas (IIUC), which was more like Pleistocene conditions.
2. There were likely periods of climate stability during the Pleistocene, especially at regional levels and especially at low latitudes.
3. Topographic variation would make it easy to move the proto-agriculture up or down hill to accommodate change in temps. A 500m elevation change is comparable to the entire Pleistocen-Holocene difference. Even getting too wet could be compensated by getting on the dryer side of a hill.
I'd guess it's something else that kicked off agriculture.
Again, love the podcasts! Just starting to pay attention here as well.
O/T But I think you will find this very interesting. This article may be paywalled. If you cannot read it, contact me off line and i will copy it and send it to you.
"Archaeology: Mounds of ancient Ohio, Wisconsin residents tell similar tales of creation" By Brad Lepper For The Columbus Dispatch
"Ohio’s Adena culture, around 2,300 years ago, built conical burial mounds and small, circular earthen enclosures. The succeeding Hopewell culture built huge enclosures in a variety of shapes. And about 1,000 years ago, the Fort Ancient culture built at least two mounds in the shapes of animals – the Great Serpent Mound in Adams County and the so-called Alligator Mound, actually an Underwater Panther, in Licking County.
"Both the Great Serpent and the Underwater Panther are powerful spirits of the Beneath World in the traditions of many American Indian tribes.
"A few centuries before Ohio’s Fort Ancient culture built their Serpent and Alligator, people in Wisconsin and neighboring states already had begun building animal-shaped, or effigy, mounds. Archaeologists assumed Ohio’s effigy mounds had nothing to do with them, but in a paper published online last month in the journal North American Archaeologist several colleagues and I propose that Wisconsin’s and Ohio’s effigy mounds are telling the same, or a closely related, series of stories. "
Listening to these Papua New Guinea episodes reminds me of a lot of other archeological sites such as in Time Team, were Archiolofist are always trying to make sense of what they find. I find curious that everything they find that is of uncertain use, is always for rituals, worship or weapon. How about a musical instrument? I believe music is a natural part of human development. We have found songs and hymns dating back to thousands of years. There are four basic type of producing music. Membranophones, Chordophones, Idiophones and Aerophones. If you stretch a piece of leather, pluck a rope or string, bang a rock or hard surface, or blow through it and it makes different sounds, you got an instrument. Have any archeologist considered this? I can imagine several people making tools, one bang on two rocks, another blow through a pipe, someone tensed a string while another scrapped a piece of leather. All of a sudden, they had a musical chord. They keep on doing it and the first band was born.
Great podcasts and article - thanks! I respectfully agree with Patrick's guest Tim that the changed climate of the Holocene is just a guess for why agriculture took off. Several reasons IMHO:
1. Ag in Southwest Asia and New Guinea took off in Younger Dryas (IIUC), which was more like Pleistocene conditions.
2. There were likely periods of climate stability during the Pleistocene, especially at regional levels and especially at low latitudes.
3. Topographic variation would make it easy to move the proto-agriculture up or down hill to accommodate change in temps. A 500m elevation change is comparable to the entire Pleistocen-Holocene difference. Even getting too wet could be compensated by getting on the dryer side of a hill.
I'd guess it's something else that kicked off agriculture.
Again, love the podcasts! Just starting to pay attention here as well.
Really interesting! As I was born to Australian parents in the New Guinean Highlands, this was personal too.
O/T But I think you will find this very interesting. This article may be paywalled. If you cannot read it, contact me off line and i will copy it and send it to you.
"Archaeology: Mounds of ancient Ohio, Wisconsin residents tell similar tales of creation" By Brad Lepper For The Columbus Dispatch
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/columns/2021/04/11/column-big-10-not-only-link-between-ohio-wisconsin/7124022002/
"Ohio’s Adena culture, around 2,300 years ago, built conical burial mounds and small, circular earthen enclosures. The succeeding Hopewell culture built huge enclosures in a variety of shapes. And about 1,000 years ago, the Fort Ancient culture built at least two mounds in the shapes of animals – the Great Serpent Mound in Adams County and the so-called Alligator Mound, actually an Underwater Panther, in Licking County.
"Both the Great Serpent and the Underwater Panther are powerful spirits of the Beneath World in the traditions of many American Indian tribes.
"A few centuries before Ohio’s Fort Ancient culture built their Serpent and Alligator, people in Wisconsin and neighboring states already had begun building animal-shaped, or effigy, mounds. Archaeologists assumed Ohio’s effigy mounds had nothing to do with them, but in a paper published online last month in the journal North American Archaeologist several colleagues and I propose that Wisconsin’s and Ohio’s effigy mounds are telling the same, or a closely related, series of stories. "
Actually banana is the world's largest herb, not flowering plant.