It's Siberia. How about frostbite. Easy to lose fingers that way.

How about numbers?

Lots of controversy about what civilization is. How to define it. Have we really considered that the one thing that defines civilization might be it's use of hierarchies of authority? Human societies might have language or monuments or agriculture, maybe even writing, all without organizing their societies in terms of hierarchical authority. What if we understand civilization as an authoritarian process? A way of living together that organizes society in such as way as to force everyone to a certain standard. Like religion... or law. Seen in this light the problems we typically associate with human nature instead become the problems that are inherent to authoritarianism, not humanity. Human social behavior is very much more plastic than any claim to some inherent human behavior understands. We can also then look directly at the nature of authoritarianism to identify what about that method creates our common civilized problems like poverty, elitism, corruption, etc. And, we can also notice that socializing people into an authoritarian process will create a environment in which certain kinds of personalities can thrive, while at the same time hindering the development of other personality types. An important consideration when trying to engineer a stable and healthy human society. Perhaps it's not the best solution to filter the greediest most ruthless people into our highest leadership positions... if we are concerned about quality of life and justice?

@@dasja9966 Cultural adaption within a group would tend to limit the loss of fingers to frostbite over time. Gloves and stuff.

@@dasja9966it (Siberia) may not have been cold like it is now.

I think you’re on to something there. Using chords and ropes are a possible reason for losing digits. I know farmers who’ve lost the ends of fingers because of a sudden snatching of a chord. Just wondering? A fascinating speculation👍👍

People that have never done real rough camping trying to discern what primitive people did with primitive tools. It's funny some of the stuff they come up with.

Frostbite is a common way to lose a finger or two when living in northern climates.

Fantastic hypothesis

Dumb idea

That I imagine is consistent with use of machinery just as with the terrifying woodworking machines of 100 years ago and it wd I imagine usually be the longest fingers missing.These paintings all show the smaller fingers missing i.e. frostbite.

@@chippysteve4524 it was usually the smaller fingers. I'm sure machinery had a good deal to do with it, but it was also a misplaced chop of a hatchet or something similar. I imagine plenty a finger has been smashed making an arrowhead or spear point. We just don't think k about when we have our fancy electricity and indoor plumbing.

I've worked with woodworking machines and axes for well over 20 years and seen and done a lot but I have never injured the smaller fingers,(I can't even recall a splinter) and seen plenty of photos of machining injuries and its always the biggest fingers that get injured in my experience because they are the ones that get used and stick out. I have zero experience of rodeo so can't comment on the likely injuries but I imagine the smaller fingers are used to hold the slack so potentially at risk. I would also suggest that in the distant past,people were in general far more skillful than modern humans as their lives depended on doing things well.I totally agree that most of us are so domesticated now that it is hard for us to grasp what life could have been like back then(e.g. not even thinking about bears or frost bite!!!),hence the dumb assumptions that most people make about the past .@@utbb57

Why would you even think you can compare those 2 very different ways of living?

Why would you even think you can compare those 2 very different ways of living?

I've read that more digits were subjected to the blade but this is not my field and I have no idea how common multiple amputations were.

Not sure life was all that short or all that brutal for the Indians of North America. Many different groups living in many different circumstances with different cultures. For example, the Innuit people live much farther north than SD and have developed genetic adaptions to survive these conditions as well as cultural adaptions. The evidence is that indigenous populations in the Americas lived about the same length of time as Europeans In fact, indigenous populations probably lived slightly longer due to the unhealthy lifestyle civilization carries with it. Living is cities hasn't been very healthy for most of civilized history. Levels of violence in European society were elevated due to organized civilized conflict. In additions Europeans were much more likely to suffer poverty and food insecurity than Native American indigenous populations of that time. Finally it is estimated that indigenous people average about 21 hours a week completing basic sustenance tasks. A lot depends on where the people live. People in civilization have to work much harder than indigenous populations would have ever dreamed of. So, no indigenous peoples of the America did not live notably brutal or short lives as compared to contemporary Europeans. If anything it was the other way around. The people of the Iroquois League expressed shock at the conditions Europeans tolerated within their society. A good book to read about this is the "Dawn of Everything" by Graeber and Wengrow. Also "An Indigenous People's History of the USA by Roxeanne Barr Ortiz. And "1491" by Charles Mann.

@@blogintonblakley2708 "21 hours a week completing basic sustenance tasks" says someone that has NEVER camped rough even once in their life. I can tell you with bone/wood/stone tools and water needs, food preservation needs, etc., 21 hours is an absolute joke. In survival reality TV shows where the people already have clothes and tools better than any Native American ever had, 21 hours would be death. 21 hours wouldn't cover hauling and gathering water and firewood in a week for most people, let alone anything else. This is such a ridiculous claim that I can't believe anything else you say. I have spent a few years of my life in the woods and on farms and I can't stop laughing at your rank stupidity. I was a Boy Scout and an Army Ranger, you are clueless.

@@liwojenkins Group living is different than camping. So, for example in the Amazon, anthropologists would live with various groups and chart how much time they spent doing various things. Did you do that while you were camping by yourself? See? Different things.

Especially when your hands are numb and can’t feel where you are swinging that axe

The same could be said of the Yakuza, but that was actually the point of the practice. A finger seen as vital for proper control of the Katana was given up to the superior, in recompense for some transgression. The usefulness of the removed digit is what gives the action such significance in that culture. I can imagine something similar happening in any culture where skill with the hands equated to social standing.

Except as a defensive wound in hunting… Battle scars could be displayed as a right of passage.

actually, humans have the ability to adapt quite well to the loss of digits. i know a good handful(no pun intended) of folks who've lost all or part of one or two fingers and manage quite well with tasks using fingers, even archery. so, it is not so debilitating as one would think. however, folded fingers could also be the case. i saw one reply elsewhere that suggested counting. who knows? maybe even a combination of factors?

@@gerryjamesedwards1227 Mutilating your workers when every minute of work counts, so everyone else has to pick up the slack, is not a good practice in a survival oriented culture. They were also not likely better than us at treating infection, so it's also a bad practice to risk the life of your worker. A lot of these villages might have less than 20 people in them, 1/3 would be kids, elderly or sick at any given time, creating more casualties could mean the end of the tribe.

Yeah I think it’s some way to identify them or some kind of sign or symbol about that person and they fold their fingers down.

Loving your common sense there.Ther's no way that the area would not have been full of bears - rivers,lake,woodlands,migrating big mammals.

hear hear fort against animals

Siberian tigers can attack huts of hunters, imagine back then?

I been saying exactly that since this news appeared. There are known towns being raided in Siberia by dozens of bears even today. Of course they fortified their settlements when predators were much more abundant! I am glad to see at least one person also still uses his brain lol :) The Africans of course use their Bomas against lions and other bad ass animals etcetera. People just wanna speculate about human conflict in prehistory because it makes modern society look less uniquely fucked up and violent.

And wolves, but the ditches argue against that as the only reason.

I haven't heard anything in this discussion about the use of hands and fingers for counting. To me that seems the obvious place to start thinking about the why.

Personally I think it had little to do with a combative nature of any kind. I'm of the opinion it was more a way to show where the same people had traveled. A sort of family tree map that humankind lost along the way

A silent sign language to be used when hunting and tracking animals, visible over long distance and silent coms very useful in such a scenario.

I thought the same thing.

It’s true. Sign language has been historically important when different cultures began trading with one another

Even chimpanzees do similar tribal 'wars', they just haven't graduated to the point of building forts and weapons.

It also provides protection from large predators. I would assume those were more common than competition in Siberia.

What about folded fingers representing hand signals? Hunters would need to communicate silently

Excellent! @@bobhollis6077

In Native Americans we have to discern between Chalcolithic Mesoamerican ones for example but also many US and Canadian nations, who practiced agriculture and some copper proto-metallurgy too. There was some "Bronze Age" pioneer culture in NW Mexico for what I've read, Semi-Neolithic: groups that only used some minor agriculture or even none at all but were anyhow in that sphere of Neolithic/Chalcolithic technological and cultural development. Then there are true hunter-gatherers but those lived at the fringes only, especially in the polar regions. I wouldn't expect the Inuit, for example, who are one of those true HG populations to "raid for slaves" but they did bring the "Thule people" to extinction by active competition and war (and even by some accounts they ended the last Norses of Greenland).

During seasonal flooding could the ditches and walls have been used to protect the settlement (or a partial area used for retreat) from herds of animals congregating there to avoid fast or progressively rising water (the residents might harvest/kill a few) but having a few hundred caribou encroaching in on you in spring might be the cause of a civil engineering project later in the year and maybe even some fires hoping to drive them away that get out of control as well.

@@Don.Challenger location, location, location.

I had never considered the land shark hypothesis. Candygram!

aye, aye, Fox! i like to read your dissertions on......practically anything! always learn something.....and, what could be worth protecting more than yourself and your family? from other "land sharks" as well as the mega predators of the time. some form of fort is the logical way to do so. and, while i'm not a pig farmer, i was a not too bad carpenter.....until that argument with the table saw.....still an ok woodworker but, not as good.....saw-shy, i guess.....the possible symbolism of the handprints is a good point.....some hand signals are almost universal, even today......like the one you, and i, used, in our day;) or, perhaps, a form of counting, recording....whatever..... sssooo, hope you have a great New Year, Fox! enjoy your wassermelon!

@@floydriebe4755 Stick to the hand saw Floyd. And it’s New Year’s Day. Black eyed peas and cornbread. Watermelon comes in the spring. 🍉 Stay curious my friend. Fox out

@@vulpesvulpes5177 black eyed peas! cornbread! yum! thot you might have some preserved watermelon, for special occasions.....my bad....curiouser and curiouser, ever onward, my friend... and, yeah, good old arm muscle hand saw, for sure:) Bye!

They know nothing and you know better? Nope. Many confuse "savage" FARMERS with hunter-gatherers but absolutely NOT the same thing at all. Papuans have one of the oldest Neolithics of Earth, there are no true HGs there.

This finger cutting for deceased family also happen in Papua island in the Pasific.

@@jonpaul3868 - Farmers. Papua (and probably also Australia) had one of the oldest Neolithic revolutions on Earth but one that has been barely recognized by the rest of the world just because they go around quasi-naked and didn't build pyramids.

Right....so in the caves we have a sign language which has only 3 or 4 signs then. Not much of a sign language then is it? And we only have 4 or 5 caves where missing digits are seen on handprints. So apparently 99% of those ice age people did not speak your sign language then did they? Then of course there is the simple fact that sign language is expressed by signing and not by painting it on walls. And that is your " sign language expressed in ice age handprints hypothesis" debunked completely. Unless you care to explain why the hell an extremely small group of hunter-gatherers would choose to try to comunicate by painting gestures on a wall, while they were able to speak freely among each other...............and did so travelling from Switserland to France and Spain. That would be even more stupid.

@@forestdweller5581 - There was a decade ago an intriguin theory about "universal" cave painting sign language which did not include handprints but other signs, of which there are many types. I don't buy the "universal" theory (just as spoken languages evolve and diverge, so do scripts of any kind) but maybe regionally the signs did mean something everyone understood. As for the hands it's not a script but can account for some sort of numerical clues from 0 to 5.

Ok, but the Xhosa people of South Africa still practice deliberate finger amputation as part of a ritual. Usually the last segment of the little finger on the right hand.

Exactly: Neolithic peoples begin to operate by other social and cultural norms, which may be considered oppressive (patriarchy, class society) and unnatural (such as culturally-driven mutilations).

@@julianb5844- Xhosa are also farmers and herders and, as part of the wider Bantu expansion wave, they should be considered culturally "Iron Age".

@@LuisAldamiz Didn't say otherwise. Just that I have firsthand experience of the practice. Your information is innaccurate though. "Broadly Iron Age" would be better. The language and culture of what we can call the Xhosa language group is for the most part that of the Bantu language group, who were the most sucessfull Iron Age culture in Africa. However genetic studies show that the Xhosa are blended to a high degree with earlier Khoena and San peoples especially along matralineal lines. Early Bantu language group peoples entered Southern Africa in smaller groups and were absorbed at the interface. This is part of a oral tradtion. The KhoeSan were a copper age people. I have not seen much written on this because in modern day ZA being "Bantu" carries higher status, but I suspect there is considerable cultural overlap still present. Certainly if you look at the dances of the (northern) Xhosa speakers they are more reminiscent of Khoena than Northern Nguni. I think painting the Xhosa as "just another Bantu group"does them a disservice.

@@julianb5844 - Xhosa are clearly admixed with Khoikhoi but those were herders (Neolithic at least) and not hunter-gatherers, who are only the San or Bushmen, a somewaht distinct population, where none of the Neolithic practices existed until recently. The Bushmen should be the reference here and they are a totally primitive-communist people, I've read about them (Leakey first of all) and I also know that recently with Botswanan policies of giving goats to some of them, they have got massive cultural contradictions and those with herd property abandon primitive-communism and also the status of women collapses as well, because it's the men who manage the herds (rise of Patriarchy, which surely happened in similar ways in the past of other societies, including ours). There was in pre-Bantu Southern Africa a partly demographic and partly cultural Neolithic (herder) inflow, which separated the Khoikhoi from the Bushmen, who remained hunter-gatherer at the fringes. The Xhosa admixed with the herders and not with the hunter-gatherers. As for the Siberian population mentioned here, they were probably early Uralics, who were hunter-gatherers at the time but had some "Mesolithic" elements, notably pottery, which was first invented in China and these proto-Uralics brought to West Eurasia first of all (West Asian and even Greek Neolithic was firstly without pottery, even if well developed in all other aspects, one wonders if pottery was imitated from these early Uralics rather than be an independent development). I wouldn't say that pottery is enough to trigger some pre-Neolithic developments of Neolithic type but, much like with Göbekli Tepe, we're learning that maybe some affluent groups of pre-Neolithic people (with some sort of "potlach economy" maybe) could not initiate some hierarchist developments and even some early form of Patriarchy. Pottery could allow to preserve food better anyhow, so it may have helped.

Thank you! ☺️

Totally agree it is a form of counting which we just need to decipher.

Thank you!

aaahhh, yesss! working hands are susceptible to many forms of disfigurement. i lost about 1/2 an inch of my left ring finger to a table saw. after it healed i could still play guitar.....not quite as well, tho😢

@@floydriebe4755 Ouch! 🤕 Happy New Year Floyd! I guess you were lucky that finger still worked. 🎸

​@@barrywalser2384aye, lad....thankfully it wasn't worse.....multiple missing fingers woulda put the kibosh on guitar playing😢 no sweat! Happy New Year, Barry!

@@floydriebe4755 hi Tony!

True! I’ve always wondered why they went to so much effort to do that!

Researchers found "possible" evidence of waves of mass migrations that could "possible" dated to the end of the Green Sahara event. It's understood the end of the Green Sahara event was due to a climate shift. what did the climate shift do to other parts of the world? did it cause wave mass migration worldwide?

Happy new year!! 🥳

Awesome, thank you!

Happy new year!

I'm missing the tip of my right hand pinky and it hinders me very little right down to writing, no problem at all. I second this.

Glad it was helpful!

Thanks for watching!

Thanks for watching. That’s really interesting!

There is a very interesting talk/tour/etc coming up in March regarding megaliths in Malta.

You're welcome

Thanks a lot!