Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
Kristen Hawkes is an anthropologist at the University of Utah. She tries to figure out our past by studying modern hunter-gatherers like the Hadza, who likely have lived in the area that is now northern Tanzania for thousands of years. Groups like this are about as close as we can get to seeing how our early human ancestors might have lived.
Over many extended field visits, Hawkes and her colleagues kept track of how much food a wide sample of Hadza community members were bringing home. She says that when they tracked the success rates of individual men, “they almost always failed to get a big animal.” They found that the average hunter went out pretty much every day and was successful on exactly 3.4 percent of those excursions. Which meant that, in this society at least, the hunting hypothesis seemed way off the mark. If people here were depending on wild meat to survive, they would starve.
So if dad wasn’t bringing home the bacon, who was? After spending a lot of time with the women on their daily foraging trips, the researchers were surprised to discover that the women, both young and old, were providing the majority of calories to their families and group-mates.
Mostly, they were digging tubers – which are deeply buried and hard to extract. The success of a mother at gathering these tubers correlated with the growth of her child. But something else surprising happened once mom had a second baby: That original relationship went away and a new correlation emerged with the amount of food their grandmother was gathering.
She describes this finding as “mind-blowing.” In this foraging society, it turns out, grandmothers were more important to child survival than fathers. Mom and grandma were keeping the kids fed. Not Man the Hunter.
This finding led Hawkes to completely re-evaluate what she thought she knew about human evolution. Grandmothers were crucial in this environment to childhood survival. So maybe it wasn’t an accident that humans are the only great ape species in which women live so long past reproductive age. If having a helpful grandmother increased a kid’s chances of survival, natural selection may well have started selecting for older and older women. (This endowment would have passed also to human men.)
aliens: because theres people who think that english is the only language they need to speak
me: thats fair i understand
For some reason I find this all the more amusing because it’s written in English
moi: pourquoi vous détruisez le monde!!! l'extraterrestre: parce que il y a des gens qui pensent que l'anglais est le seule langue pour parler moi: ah ça c'est bien
ich: warum zerstört ihr die erde!!!
aliens: weil es leute gibt die glauben dass englisch die einzige sprache ist die sie sprechen müssen
ich: das ist fair ich verstehe
ég: af hverju eyðileggið þið jörðina!!! aliens: af því að það er fólk sem finnst að enska sé sú eina tungumál sem þau þurfa að tala ég: oh, það er vit í þessu. ég skil.
ik: waarom vernietig je de aarde!!!
aliens: omdat er mensen zijn die denken dat engels de enige taal is die ze hoeven te spreken
ik: oh zo, ik snap het
minä: miks te tuhootte maapalloo?
alienit: koska tääl on ihmisiä joitten mielestä englanti on ainoo kieli jota niitten täytyy puhua
minä: toi on reilua, ymmärrän
私: どうして地球を滅ぼしているんですか？
宇宙人: 英語しか喋る必要がないと思う人がいるからです
私: なるほど、わかりました
me: Wosück maakt ji de Welt twei!!!
aliens: wieldat dat Lüüd gifft, de dinkt dat Engelsch de allenige Spraak weer, de een snacken mütt
me: jo, daar seggst wat. Nu versta ik’t
aniga: dhulka maxaad u burburinaya !!!
shisheeyaha: dadka intiisa badani u malaynayaan in Ingiriisidu tahay afka oo kaliya ay u baahan yihiin inay la hadlaan
aniga: waxaan fahamsanahay. waa wax cadaalad
我：你们为什么在毁灭地球?！！
外星人：因为有人以为他们只会英语就可以了
我：懂了，说得有道理
ako: bakit niyo sinisira ang mundo!!!
taga-ibang planeta: kasi merong mga taong akala nila Ingles lang ang kailangan nilang matutunang lenggwahe
ako: ah, sige naiintindihan ko
Aku : kenapa kau hancurkan bumi!!! Alien : karena masih banyak orang berpikir hanya bahasa inggris satu-satunya bahasa yang terpenting Aku : oh, oke lah..
tôi: tại sao các người hủy diệt trái đất!!!
người ngoài hành tinh: bởi vì có người nghĩ rằng tiếng Anh là thứ tiếng duy nhất mà họ cần biết
tôi: ồ thế thì tôi hiểu
Eu: Por que vocês estão destruindo a Terra?! Aliens: Porque há pessoas que pensam que o inglês é a única língua que eles precisam falar. Eu: Isso é justo, eu entendo.
jag: varför förintar ni jorden!!!
utomjordingar: för det finns folk som tror att engelska är det ända språket de behöver kunna
jag: rimligt, jag förstår
Já: Proč ničíte Zemi?
Mimozemšťani: Protože tu jsou lidé, kteří si myslí, že angličtina je jediný jazyk, který potřebují znát
Já: To je fér, to chápu.
ja: dlaczego niszczycie Ziemię?
kosmici: ponieważ są ludzie, którzy myślą, że angielski to jedyny język, którego potrzebuję
ja: rozumiem, w porządku
io: perchè state distruggendo la terra!!!
alieni: perchè ci sono delle persone che credono che l’inglese sia l’unica lingua di cui hanno bisogno
io: capisco, mi sembra giusto
Yo: porqué estás destruyendo la tierra!?!?
Extraterrestre: porque hay personas quienes creen que inglés es la única lengua que se tiene que hablar.
Yo: te entiendo, es justo.
Я: Почему вы уничтожаете Землю?!?! Инопланетяне: Потому что есть люди, которые считают, что им нужно говорить только по-английски. Я: А, ну понятно, тогда ладно!
Ok so imagine your fantasy setting with your typical giant spiders.
Ok, now imagine that these spiders have largely been domesticated for their incredibly valuable silk. They help make clothes, rope, textiles, even ARMOR. They’re almost treated like carnivorous cows in the regions that can support them. They might even name these girls the classic names like “Bessie”. They’re great mothers and produce many young; useful for trade and… even food if you like The Crunch.
People in this world are hardly afraid of big spiders the same as we’re hardly afraid of big dogs. Wary of wild ones, but not scream and cry terrified. Smaller spiders…it depends. Would you be scared if you suddenly saw a tiny cow crawling on your wall? The only type of spider people collectively fear are the hunting types: the ones that don’t spin webs, and instead attack their prey with brute force and a much stronger venom.
These large domestic spiders are incredibly lazy. They’ll sit in their webs and wait for their handlers to put their food on the web. Unless you get tangled, they don’t see you as food. This makes them great guards as well. They build traps for you. The venom isn’t deadly to humans…but can still be used as a weapon or in medicine. They’re just so damn useful that millennia ago, people put aside their instinctual fear just to get those sweet benefits.
