Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023Liked by Justin S. Bailey
The history of hominids emergence on this planet is incredibly complex as you know. I am no expert but one who has dabbled from Jacob Bronowski's Assent of Man to a 400-mile canoe trip to the Arctic Ocean and the study of the inhabitants of those lands. The life expectancy of prehistoric humans was 25 years give or take a few. There was a lot of procreation going on in that short life to keep the specie viable. If fathers were bound to their children and families, there was probably little time for adventure unless it was to find food and shelter for the family, not to mention the displacements caused by warring competitors and glaciations. There is no question, if our historic record (1492) is a valid predictor of the past, that adventurers were the trailblazers that opened up new paths, which others followed in the quest for survival. While some were inspired by the bounty of the unknown, I postulate that many trailblazers, who ventured over unknown horizons, were disenchanted with their culture and were outcasts.
Fair points David. One thing I would submit for our consideration is that the the average life expectancy of prehistoric humans being 25-30 years old strikes me as apocryphal and very challenging, if not impossible, to accurately evaluate scientifically. From the bioarchaeological evidence for just Homo sapiens, there is a lot of variability in estimated ages I've come across in the literature. Many individual skeletons' age of death have been estimated to be 50, 60, and sometimes older that 70 years dating tens of thousands of years ago. Some of the famous skeletons like Kennewick Man (~9,000 years BP) and Ötzi (~5,000 years BP) I believe were estimated to being in their 40s-50s, both of which sustained lethal wounds it seems. I'm more uncertain of much older hominins. I don't think it's possible to infer much about life expectancy of a population on such low numbers of hominin skeletons over such an expansive amount of time. But I do take your point that the world was full of many more risks that humans were likely more susceptible to, e.g., predators, diseases, other human groups, deaths from accidental injuries) that likely did bring life expectancy for populations down significantly.
Another line of evidence I would point to is the ethnographic record of hunter-gatherers. Although, I would caution about using them as direct analogies for inferring the behaviors of all humans across all time, especially hominins, it has been shown that many hunter-gather groups were incredibly adept at intimately knowing and navigating very large areas of the landscape. One book that was useful in my research on hunter-gathers is by Professor Robert. L. Kelly's 'The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum.' Even more interesting to consider is the archaeological evidence for exchange networks among hunter-gather groups that demonstrate that humans were linking up over large distances for at least some stretches of time (see for instance the exotic material found at Poverty Point in northeastern Louisiana).
Your last point about adventurers often being the outcasts, I think is spot on and another important thing to keep in mind in studying the phenomenon of adventurers or wanderers in our history. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and giving me a lot to think about!
The history of hominids emergence on this planet is incredibly complex as you know. I am no expert but one who has dabbled from Jacob Bronowski's Assent of Man to a 400-mile canoe trip to the Arctic Ocean and the study of the inhabitants of those lands. The life expectancy of prehistoric humans was 25 years give or take a few. There was a lot of procreation going on in that short life to keep the specie viable. If fathers were bound to their children and families, there was probably little time for adventure unless it was to find food and shelter for the family, not to mention the displacements caused by warring competitors and glaciations. There is no question, if our historic record (1492) is a valid predictor of the past, that adventurers were the trailblazers that opened up new paths, which others followed in the quest for survival. While some were inspired by the bounty of the unknown, I postulate that many trailblazers, who ventured over unknown horizons, were disenchanted with their culture and were outcasts.
Fair points David. One thing I would submit for our consideration is that the the average life expectancy of prehistoric humans being 25-30 years old strikes me as apocryphal and very challenging, if not impossible, to accurately evaluate scientifically. From the bioarchaeological evidence for just Homo sapiens, there is a lot of variability in estimated ages I've come across in the literature. Many individual skeletons' age of death have been estimated to be 50, 60, and sometimes older that 70 years dating tens of thousands of years ago. Some of the famous skeletons like Kennewick Man (~9,000 years BP) and Ötzi (~5,000 years BP) I believe were estimated to being in their 40s-50s, both of which sustained lethal wounds it seems. I'm more uncertain of much older hominins. I don't think it's possible to infer much about life expectancy of a population on such low numbers of hominin skeletons over such an expansive amount of time. But I do take your point that the world was full of many more risks that humans were likely more susceptible to, e.g., predators, diseases, other human groups, deaths from accidental injuries) that likely did bring life expectancy for populations down significantly.
Another line of evidence I would point to is the ethnographic record of hunter-gatherers. Although, I would caution about using them as direct analogies for inferring the behaviors of all humans across all time, especially hominins, it has been shown that many hunter-gather groups were incredibly adept at intimately knowing and navigating very large areas of the landscape. One book that was useful in my research on hunter-gathers is by Professor Robert. L. Kelly's 'The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum.' Even more interesting to consider is the archaeological evidence for exchange networks among hunter-gather groups that demonstrate that humans were linking up over large distances for at least some stretches of time (see for instance the exotic material found at Poverty Point in northeastern Louisiana).
Your last point about adventurers often being the outcasts, I think is spot on and another important thing to keep in mind in studying the phenomenon of adventurers or wanderers in our history. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and giving me a lot to think about!