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Freadus t1_j1bi0l4 wrote

Reply to comment by l397flake in Knowledge of how to make and use pottery was shared between hunter-gatherer communities in Europe via kinship-driven, regional communication networks prior to the spread of agriculture, a paper in Nature Human Behaviour proposes. by MistWeaver80

Exactly what I was about to say "Knowledge of how to make and use pottery was shared between hunter-gatherer communities in Europe via kinship-driven, regional communication networks"......or...."hey nice thing how did you make that?"......what the hell else did they think was an alternative? I guess there is a chance that people independently discovered stuff but that's the only thing I can think of.

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DuncanYoudaho t1_j1blt3i wrote

They could have kidnapped potters.

They could have stolen pre-made pottery exclusively.

They could have solely bartered instead of learning to make their own without kinship being involved.

They could have developed it independently in multiple areas because local soil conditions make clay easily accessible and almost effortless to make.

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Freadus t1_j1bp2xa wrote

I guess my point is that kinships networks and communcation should surely be the norm in terms of theories about the spread of knowledge. A newsworthy article WOULD be "prehistoric Humans spread knowledge and advancement usually through the kidnapping of superior members of other tribes." People spread knowledge through communication....I dunno seems a bit obvious doesnt it?

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DuncanYoudaho t1_j1bpuwq wrote

How does China get a lot of its advances these days? Maybe guilds weren’t a purely medieval phenomenon? Maybe it was through religious ceremonies and a controlling priest class that was skilled because people supported them with offerings but celibate to control their generational power? Maybe familial relationships are a modern invention post-agriculture?

The obvious is not really obvious. But it’s nice when it lines up.

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jupitaur9 t1_j1ehrep wrote

>The speed of the spread suggests potterymaking knowledge passed from group to group, rather than being introduced by new people migrating into the region. “There’s no way a population could grow that fast,” McLaughlin says.

>Lucy Kubiak-Martens, an archaeobotanist at BIAX Consult, a commercial archaeology company in the Netherlands who was not involved with the paper, agrees with that interpretation. “It seems the knowledge traveled, not people,” she says.

https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-hunter-gatherers-were-potters-too

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