What Did Ancient Humans Do in Every Season?

What Did Ancient Humans Do in Every Season? What Did Ancient Humans Do All Year? 1:11 Autumn: a race against rot 2:53 Winter: the dark half of the year 5:34 Spring: the hunger gap 7:20 Summer: scatter or gather? What this covers: * Why most ancient humans never lived in four seasons * Why autumn was a race against rot * How pemmican turned a flood of meat into spring's rescue * What people did with the long winter nights * Why nearly a quarter of the genes tested follow the seasons * Why spring could leave you sick with meat all around * What 190 bison and 60,000 pounds of meat meant for one camp * Why summer scattered some families and gathered others You live by dates now. Parts of your body may still be watching the sky. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ If this made you see the year differently, a like helps a small channel more than you'd think. See you in the next one. Zain Files ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S O U R C E S ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE BOORONG AND ARCTURUS Stanbridge, W. E. (1857, 1861). Writings on Boorong astronomy and traditions, Victoria, Australia. The original record of Arcturus (Marpeankurrk) and the wood ant larvae. SEASONS THAT AREN'T FOUR Bureau of Meteorology. Indigenous Weather Knowledge. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander seasonal calendars across Australia. THE KALAHARI YEAR Lee, R. B. (1979). The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge University Press. Dry-season waterhole camps and wet-season dispersal. HEAD-SMASHED-IN BUFFALO JUMP UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (listing 158). Nearly 6,000 years of use. HOLIDAY WEIGHT GAIN Yanovski, J. A. et al. (2000). A prospective study of holiday weight gain. New England Journal of Medicine 342(12). 195 adults followed through the holiday season. ICE AGE LAMPS de Beaune, S. A. & White, R. (1993). Ice Age Lamps. Scientific American 268(3). Stone lamps that burned animal fat. FIRELIGHT TALK Wiessner, P. (2014). Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen. PNAS 111(39). 174 day and night conversations compared. DURRINGTON WALLS Wright, E. et al. (2014). Age and season of pig slaughter at Late Neolithic Durrington Walls. English Heritage, Stonehenge midwinter feasts. Pig bones that point to winter feasting. THE HIBERNATION DEBATE Bartsiokas, A. & Arsuaga, J.-L. (2020). Hibernation in hominins from Atapuerca, Spain half a million years ago. L'Anthropologie 124(5). A disputed hypothesis, with critics' objections. SEASONAL GENES Dopico, X. C. et al. (2015). Widespread seasonal gene expression reveals annual differences in human immunity and physiology. Nature Communications 6. More than 16,000 people, both hemispheres. LEAN MEAT AND THE SPRING PROBLEM Speth, J. D. & Spielmann, K. A. (1983). Energy source, protein metabolism, and hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 2(1). Why lean meat alone fails, and why hunters looked for fat. THE OLSEN-CHUBBUCK BISON KILL Wheat, J. B. (1972). The Olsen-Chubbuck Site: A Paleo-Indian Bison Kill. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology 26. The Colorado kill site, dated to roughly 8200 BCE. THE BOGONG MOTH Flood, J. (1980). The Moth Hunters. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. IUCN Red List (2021), Bogong moth. Moth gatherings in the Alps, and the species' decline. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #history #documentary #anthropology #prehistory #ancienthumans