We're thrilled to share a new FCS chapter, entitled "Mobility, autonomy and learning: could the transition from egalitarian to non-egalitarian social structures start with children?" from FCS members Rachel Reckin, Sheina Lew-Levy, Noa Lavi, and Kate Ellis-Davies. This chapter is part of a larger volume, "Social inequality before farming?" edited by Luc Moreau.
Click here to access the PDF of this chapter.
This new paper from Thomas Suddendorf and colleagues examines the development of our understanding of mobile containers — such as baskets and bags.
Abstract: Mobile containers are a keystone human innovation. Ethnographic data indicate that all human groups use containers such as bags, quivers and baskets, ensuring that individuals have important resources at the ready and are prepared for opportunities and threats before they materialize. Although there is speculation surrounding the invention of carrying devices, the current hard archaeological evidence only reaches back some 100,000 years. The dearth of ancient evidence may reflect not only taphonomic processes, but also a lack of attention to these devices. To begin investigating the origins of carrying devices we focus on exploring the basic cognitive processes involved in mobile container use and report an initial study on young children's understanding and deployment of such devices. We gave 3- to 7-year-old children (N = 106) the opportunity to spontaneously identify and use a basket to increase their own carrying capacity and thereby obtain more resources in the future. Performance improved linearly with age, as did the likelihood of recognizing that adults use mobile carrying devices to increase carrying capacity. We argue that the evolutionary and developmental origins of mobile containers reflect foundational cognitive processes that enable humans to think about their own limits and compensate for them.
This cool new paper reports on the discovery of a long, prehistoric human trackway from the Late Pleistocene in White Sands National Park, New Mexico. "These ancient footprints, found on a playa at White Sands in 2018, show what researchers believe to be a female or a young male walking for almost a mile, with a toddler's footprints periodically showing up alongside. The evidence reveals the person alternated from carrying the child, shifting the young one from side to side, by how the footprints broadened and slipped in the mud with the additional weight."
Abstract
"Human tracks at White Sands National Park record more than one and a half kilometres of an out- and-return journey and form the longest Late Pleistocene-age double human trackway in the world. An adolescent or small adult female made two trips separated by at least several hours, carrying a young child in at least one direction. Despite giant ground sloth and Columbian Mammoth transecting them between the outbound and return journeys, the human tracks show no changes indicative of predator/prey awareness. In contrast, the giant ground sloth tracks show behaviour consistent with human predator awareness, while mammoth tracks show no such apparent concern. The human footprints are morphologically variable and exhibit left-right asymmetry, which might be due to child carrying. We explore this morphological variability using methods based on the analysis of objective track outlines, which add to the analytical toolkit available for use at other human footprint sites. The sheer number of tracks and their remarkable morphological variability have implications for the reliability of inferences made using much smaller samples as are more common at typical footprint sites. One conclusion is that the number of footprints required to make reliable biometric inferences is greater than often assumed."
Click here to access the paper in Quaternary Science Reviews.