This is about human things, but mediated by culture, which is more powerful than engines, or fuel, or multiplexed photonic quantum computers:
Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
July 2024 phys.org
My god, a 12,000 years old tradition:
They discovered some 12,000 year old sticks in a cave. The discovery was made inside Cloggs Cave in the foothills of the Victorian Alps in Australia's southeast, in a region long inhabited by the Gunaikurnai people. An anthropologist from the 1880s recorded the rituals of Gunaikurnai medicine men and women. One ritual involved tying something that belonged to a sick person to the end of a throwing stick smeared in human or kangaroo fat. The stick was thrust into the ground before a small fire was lit underneath. The medicine men would then chant the name of the sick person, and once the stick fell, the charm was complete. The sticks used in the ritual were made of casuarina wood. And the sticks found appear to be the same sticks, so they're evidence that this tradition has been happening since then, and was passed down by oral tradition, but since the advent of the written word, we've lost a connection to this.
via Monash University and Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation: Bruno David et al, Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01912-w
Image credit: AI Art - Rave Party - 2023
Culture, and fashion in particular, reduces social conflict, enabling a more complex society:
Colorful traits in primates ease tensions between groups, data suggest
Aug 2024, phys.org
"Species that shared more space with their neighbors had significantly greater differences in ornamentation between the sexes. In species where groups frequently interact, males are more likely to sport flashy traits that set them apart from females."Vivid physical traits might help to reduce conflict between groups, possibly by allowing them to quickly assess potential rivals from a distance.
via Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at University of Zurich and University of Western Australia: Cyril C Grueter et al, The role of between-group signaling in the evolution of primate ornamentation, Evolution Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1093/evlett/qrae045
We should be reminded, via Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants (2011) that technological evolution follows relatively strict trajectory, independent on the civilization, so that bone needles always come before bellows (how else do you sew the skins to make the bellows), and ceramics before metal (metal kilns are much hotter than ceramic kilns, and require the advent of bellows).
The beginnings of fashion: Paleolithic eyed needles and the evolution of dress
Jun 2024, phys.org
"Eyed needle tools are an important development in prehistory because they document a transition in the function of clothing from utilitarian to social purposes,""What intrigues me is the transition of clothing from being a physical necessity in certain environments, to a social necessity in all environments."The earliest known eyed needles appeared approximately 40,000 years ago in Siberia. Eyed needles are more difficult to make when compared to bone awls, which sufficed for creating fitted clothing. Bone awls are tools made of animal bones that are sharpened to a point. Eyed needles are modified bone awls, with a perforated hole (eye) to facilitate the sewing of sinew or thread.The innovation of eyed needles may reflect the production of more complex, layered clothing, as well as the adornment of clothes by attaching beads and other small decorative items onto garments, and which may have allowed larger and more complex societies to form, as people could relocate to colder climates while also cooperating with their tribe or community based on shared clothing styles and symbols.Dr. Gilligan and his co-authors argue that clothing became an item of decoration because traditional body decoration methods, like body painting with ocher or deliberate scarification, weren't possible during the latter part of the last ice age in colder parts of Eurasia, as people were needing to wear clothes all the time to survive.
via University of Sydney: Ian Gilligan, Palaeolithic eyed needles and the evolution of dress, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adp2887
Post Script: Read Bernard Rudofsky's Are Clothes Modern? (1944)
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