Humanities desk
< September 21	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 23 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 22

What are the problems with assuming that Paleolithic humans lived around 70 years, just because modern hunter-gatherers do?

A paper on the longevity of modern hunter-gatherers indicates that they usually live around 70 years:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.737.7899&rep=rep1&type=pdf

What are the problems with assuming that Paleolithic humans lived around 70 years, just because modern hunter-gatherers do? Yellow Sunstreaker (talk) 06:54, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From where do you derive that there is a problem in assuming that Paleolithic humans lived around 70 years? Bus stop (talk) 16:18, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The context of their existence is different. For example, consider the Pleistocene megafauna that existed then, versus the animals of today. Perhaps modern hunter-gatherers have refined their methods over the course of time, thereby improving their longevity. On the other hand, conditions may now be more difficult for hunter-gatherers, thereby reducing their longevity. Hence, making an assumption about the average lifespan of Paleolithic humans, based on modern estimates, is problematic.--MarshalN20 ^✉🕊 16:44, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yellow_Sunstreaker -- I'm having difficulty reading the document you linked, but I wonder if it really states that hunter-gatherers leading traditional lifestyles have a life expectancy at birth of 70 years (something which is almost impossible without modern medicine). Anyway, the main difference between hunter-gatherers now and before the rise of agriculture is that hunter-gatherers today only survive quasi-autonomously in marginal environments (the arctic, the Kalahari, deep jungles), whereas before agriculture, they were found in all ecological environments. AnonMoos (talk) 00:49, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you believe people died at 30–40 before modern medicine, you're wrong. This myth seems to be fairly widespread because that is roughly the average human life expectancy at birth without modern medicine. The biggest contributor to this by far is child mortality; without modern medicine a lot of humans don't survive to adulthood, thus lowering the average. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 06:35, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, I doubt that the linked PDF (which I can't read on this computer) states that hunter-gatherers leading traditional lifestyles have a life expectancy at birth of 70 years, so it would be nice to know what it does actually say... AnonMoos (talk) 13:46, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The article states in its summary of the results: "Post-reproductive longevity is a robust feature of hunter-gatherers and of the life cycle of Homo sapiens. (...) The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68–78 years." It also states that over two thirds of people who reach sexual maturity live to 'grandparental age', which lasts an average of 20 years. The study is based on "mortality profiles of all extant hunter-gatherers for which sufficient high-quality demographic data exist." - Lindert (talk) 14:19, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Up to Elizabethan times in England the average lifespan was 30 or 40 years. Then a huge improvement in public health pushed it rapidly up. 92.31.140.53 (talk) 18:07, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, mostly because of a) child death and b) women dying in childbirth. For adult males, and for females past reproductive age, people tended to die in their 70s and 80s. This is noted above, and is why you have to CAREFULLY define your terms here. If you saw an average adult in Britain in Elizabethan times, it was a good chance they would make it to 70. There were not (excepting years of the Plague) large numbers of adults dying off in their 30s. --Jayron 32 17:36, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, it says that if they made it to age 45 they would most likely live to be roughly 70. It's getting to age 45 that is fairly difficult. But if a person could make it past all the childhood diseases and didn't die from accident or injury during their prime adult years (such as being gored by a wild boar during the hunt or succumbing to difficulties of childbirth), they had a good chance of living another 20-30 years.--Khajidha (talk) 00:59, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From The Ordnance Survey Atlas of Great Britain (1982, page 152):

The dynamic character and the vicissitudes of life in medieval Britain should be stressed, for the economic and human geographies of regions and settlements were continually changing. There was a decline in the population of England from six or seven million in 1348 to about 2.75 million in the early 16th century with changes of a similar order in Wales and Scotland. This was mainly due to the effects of epidemic and infectious diseases. The best-known epidemic was the Black Death, which affected Britain from 1348 to 1350, though there were many other epidemics including tuberculosis, measles and smallpox. In some respects the decrease of population which began in the late 14th century was related to a weakening of a feudal mode of production, and paved the way for the early advent of rural and urban capitalism, culminating in the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. It has been suggested that in 1509, when Henry VIII succeeded to the throne of England, Britain was still medieval in many aspects: by the end of the Tudor dynasty this medievalism was rapidly disappearing, and nearly all traces of it had vanished by 1700.

Page 154:

The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed widespread change of an economic and political nature. In England population trends saw a continuing recovery, probably beginning after about 1470; in 1541 the total was about three million, increasing to four million by 1600, to 5.5 million by 1651, followed by a slight decline before further increase in the 18th century.

I just found out that Jethro Tull was an agriculturist. 92.31.140.53 (talk) 09:12, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, modern H-G's have problems that their paleolithic ancestors didn't. Modern H-G's are marginalized - in many case to the very edges of habitable areas. It's basically the same problem that you see in wildlife conservation, where each problem seems to multiply with all the others: exposure to pollution, lack of resources, lack of physical space, interrupted migrations, exposure to unfamiliar diseases, etc. Matt Deres (talk) 14:00, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Project business cases

In large programmes containing many projects, does each level require its own business case or is it only the top level? Clover345 (talk) 09:16, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"require" is a to strong term. In history some absolute rulers chose to keep everything in check themselves or leave just a few trusted people in charge of many "sublevels" of the gouvernement. That worked out for them apparently, since they did'nt change their power structure. Today large projects are much more split up, because we are capable to estimate much better what management structures are most effective, because in history management was just an "art" of the mighty. Today its an established academic science. --Kharon (talk) 12:08, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There where a few "early adopters" in the history of management as science tho. Best known are probably the Chinese with their tradition of Confucianism, which is still very respected in academic management science today. (See Confucianism#In modern times). --Kharon (talk) 12:25, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Contradiction between two articles regarding start of strip mining

Quoting Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages#Expansion_of_mining:

By the end of the 12th century, the older method of acquiring iron ore through strip mining was being supplemented by more advanced techniques…

Quoting Surface_mining:

Surface mining, including strip mining, open-pit mining and mountaintop removal mining, is …

Surface mining began in the mid-sixteenth century

The two articles seem to contradict each other regarding the period in which strip mining was in use. 79.178.38.36 (talk) 18:12, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I notice that the second article is somewhat US-centric (and ideally ought to be expanded in scope by editors knowledgeable in the field, which I am decidedly not), and the statement is cited to a source specifically about mining in Appalachia. It may be, then, that either the source, or the article, or both, intend the statement to refer only to mining in North America. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.221.81.75 (talk) 19:47, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We also have Mining and metallurgy in medieval Europe, does that help? Adam Bishop (talk) 11:12, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Where was Kalimuskaya?

In relation to Allied intervention in the Russian Far East during the First World War, a despatch from the Japanese Government dated 19th May 1918 says "[Ataman Semenoff] is continuing his advance encouraged by the success he has so far achieved over the Bolsheviks, and, thanks to the continuous enlistment of the Cossacks in his detachment, its strength has already reached 5,000 and is growing stronger every day. He is now menacing Kalimuskaya…" I have been unable to find any trace of Kalimuskaya on Google except in this telegram. Where was it? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 18:25, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if it's ultimately an OCR mistake for Kalininskaya? There are several places with that name...although none of them seem to be in the Russian Far East. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:28, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I had a similar thought. There's a Kalinskaya mine near Sverdlovsk, but again, that's quite a haul from the Transbaikal area. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:45, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an OCR mistake, unless David Lloyd George was using OCR in the mid-1930's when writing his War Memoirs. The telegram is also quoted in Mirage Of Power Pt3, by C. J. Lowe & M. L. Dockrill, Volume 5 of Foreign Policies of the Great Powers DuncanHill (talk) 21:54, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it's also unlikely anything was named after Kalinin in May 1918. Still, it could be a misspelling/misreading that made it into Lloyd George's memoirs. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:05, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

He was pretty good at keeping papers (tho' it was Sylvester and Stevenson who kept them in order), and the quotation in Lowe & Dockrill is complete and taken from Cabinet Office archives. DuncanHill (talk) 22:13, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just an idle thought, but it seems likely that the Japanese military would have transliterated the original name from Cyrillic into Katakana, and then transliterated again into Roman letters. The scope for error might be enormous. Alansplodge (talk) 08:58, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Karymskoye, Karymskaya then. 77.69.25.66 (talk) 17:16, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That would be make geographic sense, and fits well with Alansplodge's surmise. DuncanHill (talk) 18:05, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect - and it's not far from Semenoff's headquarters in Chita. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:38, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]