Thousands of years before ancient people in Central Eurasia learned to farm, hunter-gatherer groups in the subarctic were building some of the first permanent, fortified settlements, challenging the notion that agriculture was a prerequisite for societies to ‘settle down’.
Researchers now think they have dated the earliest known fortifications in the icy north, if not the world, near a curve of the Amnya River in Western Siberia. […]
Traditionally, archaeologists have assumed that foraging communities were not yet societally or politically ‘complex’ enough to build monumental, permanent structures that needed to be maintained or defended.
Yet ongoing research at the Amnya promontory and other archaeological sites around the world suggest that cultivating crops and rearing animals aren’t the only incentives for such activity.
Paper here.
I’d guess that prior researchers were partially correct, agriculture is a reasonable proxy for abundant and surplus food supply in the local area. This community looks like it had the same conditions, abundant and surplus food, without the development of agriculture. A reliable food source and good hunting and fishing skills.
“The West Siberian taiga is a sometimes swampy, coniferous forest habitat present in the subarctic. Around 6,000 BCE, the taiga near Amnya would have hosted herds of elk and reindeer, while the river would have been swimming in fish, like pike and salmonids.”
“The development of fishing and hunting strategies, or the advancement of food storage may have then led to a surplus of food, which needed to be defended.”
“… while the river would have been swimming in fish, …”
That scientific discovery deserves a report all to itself.
LOL
Well, times were different.
That’s pretty far north. I wonder if they used permafrost to store food over the summer months. Nature’s ice-box.
Although not fortified, as far as we know, Göbekli Tepe is even older.
Archaeology isn’t a real science.
Like Climatology and Public Health, its occasional dalliance with actual science is exploited by its practitioners to elevate their self-worth.
I guess the bog standard response ,for confused archaeologists, of “Religious Icons” ..failed?
Now why would this encampment be fortified?
Was some party of “We were here firsters” attacking?
Or Denying access to another group?
Or had the local bears taken up arms?
Without agriculture, a given area cannot support as many people as with agriculture, so I guess places where forage and game were plentiful enough to actually support a non-nomadic population were in pretty high demand.
Build the Wall. LOL
“Oh no, are we having salmon again?”
I imagine the area around Campbell River might have been such that it could support a stable, non-nomadic population, given the productivity of those waters.
Hahahahaha … you made me LOL. Or like the residents of Maine … oh gawwwd … not Lobster AGAIN!?
So what agriculture was practiced by the Eskimos? Aquaculture? The penned and bred Walrus?
Kenji,
Good to hear from you. We’re holding a place for you in Free America.
I think the Eskimos were actually nomadic. Probably following seal and whale movement.
There it is…them damned Orcs again.
“There is a long history of hunter-gatherer fortifications in western Siberia, extending from the Stone Age through to the Russian conquest of the region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD.”
How dare you?
“Early fortified sites in western Siberia first appeared shortly after the 8.2 ka BP cooling event, one of the most pronounced global climatic changes of the Holocene that lasted from c. 6200–6050 cal BC …”
This can’t possibly be right, as we all know the planetary climate was utterly stable, benign and unchanging until the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
roadhog
Sorry, I didn’t mean to cause climate change by firing up my coal burner 4X4, the mongols made me do it!
orcCOLON is an IDIOT
Bless you. Eat more cow, burn more coal.
I’ve read stunning reports that suggest that at one time the Earth was more advanced than we find it today, but was destroyed utterly, causing what remained to start over. I’ve, also, read reports that suggest the presence of massive amounts of xenon 129 on Mars indicate the same thing happened there.
I, also, believe Big Foot is a tall Italian guy with a hairy back who moved to the country due to his wife’s incessant nagging.
Orson: “I’ve read stunning reports that suggest that at one time the Earth was more advanced than we find it today, but was destroyed utterly, causing what remained to start over. I’ve, also, read reports that suggest the presence of massive amounts of xenon 129 on Mars indicate the same thing happened there.”
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H.R. – I see hints that people in ancient times were far more advanced than we believe possible; metallurgy, electricity, astronomy. e.g.. But a glaciation and the catastrophic events of the onset of an interglacial would tend to wipe out most of the evidence that our forebears were much more advanced than we give credit them for. Archeologists are beginning to catch on and are looking under the oceans on the continental shelves for evidence. Then, like now, the major cities were on coasts and waterways. The melting glaciers scoured the waterways and created new ones and the rising sea levels covered the old coasts.
Survivors would head for the hills, so to speak. That’s why “surprising” archeological finds are discovered at elevation.
It takes a long time to advance technology. It takes very little to lose it all or most all of it.
For example, there is no one person who knows everything necessary to make a pencil. Lose a few key people and the the ability to make a good ol’ #2 pencil with an attached eraser is lost. (The link is a short read, but instructive.)
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/read-i-pencil-my-family-tree-as-told-to-leonard-e-read-dec-1958
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Orson: “I, also, believe Big Foot is a tall Italian guy with a hairy back who moved to the country due to his wife’s incessant nagging.”
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H.R. – We happen to be in 100% agreement on that point.
That’s why “surprising” archeological finds are discovered at elevation.
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That makes a lot of sense. I seem to recall a find in Morocco in a barite mine (or some such mineral) that proved to be a 300,000 year old skeleton of a homo sapiens… It turns out it was way up in the mountains. That find sort of put a damper on the Africa’s “Garden of Eden” theory which is why I assume it didn’t get much media play other than the novelty of it all.
Slavery had more to do with ancient architecture than farming.. Make something nice for my wife and I won’t drop a rock on your head?.. We call this culture..
I haven’t formed an opinion yet. I’ll have to wait till I see it on Smithsonian TV with a tranny archaeologist.