... London: Ac-ademic Press. HURTADO, M., AND K. HILL. I990. Seasonality in a foraging so-ciety: ... more ... London: Ac-ademic Press. HURTADO, M., AND K. HILL. I990. Seasonality in a foraging so-ciety: Variation in diet, work effort, fertility, and sexual divi-sion of labour among the Hiwi of Venezuela. Journal of Anthro-pological Research 46:293-346. ...
For Marx, all forms of economics could be reduced to “an economics of time”. To restore a sustain... more For Marx, all forms of economics could be reduced to “an economics of time”. To restore a sustainable rhythm to our planet, our lifeways and economy, we need to decolonize time. The first part of this essay sketches a history of capitalism as robbery: ever tighter control of time yielding greater economic exploitation and inequality. The second part asks how we could reorganize and redistribute time. What can indigenous and egalitarian societies teach us today about the passage of time? What biological and cultural resources do we have for slowing down the rhythms of our economy and redistributing time? The evolution of women’s reproductive cycles and the lunar calendars shared by world religions give evidence for a deep time human lunar ecology.
Solarizing the Moon: Essays in honour of Lionel Sims, Archaeopress, 2022
The evolution of women’s reproductive cycles and the lunar calendars shared by world religions gi... more The evolution of women’s reproductive cycles and the lunar calendars shared by world religions give evidence for a deep time human lunar ecology. The question of the earliest human economy cannot be solved without a focus on women, the moon and menstruation. African hunter-gatherer cosmology takes the lunar cycle as the normative timeframe for ritual, sex and economic activities. The shared sources of this cosmology carry us back to earliest human symbolic culture, the very origins of art and ritual itself, over 100,000 years ago.
Given the antiquity of African forager genetic lineages tracing to source populations older than ... more Given the antiquity of African forager genetic lineages tracing to source populations older than the movement of modern humans outside Africa, and given significant cultural continuity and resilience, what are the prospects of reconstructing archaic structures of early modern human cosmology?
This is a fascinating, watchable documentary on the Hadza people of Tanzania. Anyone interested i... more This is a fascinating, watchable documentary on the Hadza people of Tanzania. Anyone interested in hunter-gatherers and their lives in today’s world, as well as their contribution to our understanding of human evolution, will want to see it.
On the cover: The journal’s logo represents the emergence of culture (dragons feature in myths an... more On the cover: The journal’s logo represents the emergence of culture (dragons feature in myths and legends from around the world) from nature (the DNA doublehelix, or selfish gene). The dragon is a symbol of solidarity, especially the blood solidarity that was a necessary precondition for the social revolution that made us human. For more on this, see our website-www.radicalanthropologygroup.org. The cover picture features Mbendjele women and children engaged in cooperative childcare. See Morna Finnegan’s article on page 31. Back cover: Climate Rush protestors storm Westminster Bridge under ancestral
Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males i... more Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males in mating systems. Langur monkey populations provide a natural experiment for observing alternative female strategies of confusing or concentrating paternity. Where females escape seasonal reproductive constraints, they desynchronize fertility and show visible cues (menstruation), enabling single males to monopolize matings. This increases female fitness by reducing food competition. Where langurs are seasonally constrained, females conceal fertility, confusing paternity and reducing infanticide. These case studies illuminate how hominin females could increase male numbers and investment. Fitness payoffs to male investors will be affected by degree of reproductive seasonal constraint, and by females either concealing or confusing menstrual cues of imminent fertility. Among ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals these strategies diverged. Under pressure of encephalization, modern huma...
Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males i... more Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males in mating systems. Langur monkey populations provide a natural experiment for observing alternative female strategies of confusing or concentrating paternity. Where females escape seasonal reproductive constraints, they desynchronize fertility and show visible cues (menstruation), enabling single males to monopolize matings. This increases female fitness by reducing food competition. Where langurs are seasonally constrained, females conceal fertility, confusing paternity and reducing infanticide. These case studies illuminate how hominin females could increase male numbers and investment. Fitness payoffs to male investors will be affected by degree of reproductive seasonal constraint, and by females either concealing or confusing menstrual cues of imminent fertility. Among ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals these strategies diverged. Under pressure of encephalization, modern huma...
... London: Ac-ademic Press. HURTADO, M., AND K. HILL. I990. Seasonality in a foraging so-ciety: ... more ... London: Ac-ademic Press. HURTADO, M., AND K. HILL. I990. Seasonality in a foraging so-ciety: Variation in diet, work effort, fertility, and sexual divi-sion of labour among the Hiwi of Venezuela. Journal of Anthro-pological Research 46:293-346. ...
For Marx, all forms of economics could be reduced to “an economics of time”. To restore a sustain... more For Marx, all forms of economics could be reduced to “an economics of time”. To restore a sustainable rhythm to our planet, our lifeways and economy, we need to decolonize time. The first part of this essay sketches a history of capitalism as robbery: ever tighter control of time yielding greater economic exploitation and inequality. The second part asks how we could reorganize and redistribute time. What can indigenous and egalitarian societies teach us today about the passage of time? What biological and cultural resources do we have for slowing down the rhythms of our economy and redistributing time? The evolution of women’s reproductive cycles and the lunar calendars shared by world religions give evidence for a deep time human lunar ecology.
Solarizing the Moon: Essays in honour of Lionel Sims, Archaeopress, 2022
The evolution of women’s reproductive cycles and the lunar calendars shared by world religions gi... more The evolution of women’s reproductive cycles and the lunar calendars shared by world religions give evidence for a deep time human lunar ecology. The question of the earliest human economy cannot be solved without a focus on women, the moon and menstruation. African hunter-gatherer cosmology takes the lunar cycle as the normative timeframe for ritual, sex and economic activities. The shared sources of this cosmology carry us back to earliest human symbolic culture, the very origins of art and ritual itself, over 100,000 years ago.
Given the antiquity of African forager genetic lineages tracing to source populations older than ... more Given the antiquity of African forager genetic lineages tracing to source populations older than the movement of modern humans outside Africa, and given significant cultural continuity and resilience, what are the prospects of reconstructing archaic structures of early modern human cosmology?
This is a fascinating, watchable documentary on the Hadza people of Tanzania. Anyone interested i... more This is a fascinating, watchable documentary on the Hadza people of Tanzania. Anyone interested in hunter-gatherers and their lives in today’s world, as well as their contribution to our understanding of human evolution, will want to see it.
On the cover: The journal’s logo represents the emergence of culture (dragons feature in myths an... more On the cover: The journal’s logo represents the emergence of culture (dragons feature in myths and legends from around the world) from nature (the DNA doublehelix, or selfish gene). The dragon is a symbol of solidarity, especially the blood solidarity that was a necessary precondition for the social revolution that made us human. For more on this, see our website-www.radicalanthropologygroup.org. The cover picture features Mbendjele women and children engaged in cooperative childcare. See Morna Finnegan’s article on page 31. Back cover: Climate Rush protestors storm Westminster Bridge under ancestral
Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males i... more Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males in mating systems. Langur monkey populations provide a natural experiment for observing alternative female strategies of confusing or concentrating paternity. Where females escape seasonal reproductive constraints, they desynchronize fertility and show visible cues (menstruation), enabling single males to monopolize matings. This increases female fitness by reducing food competition. Where langurs are seasonally constrained, females conceal fertility, confusing paternity and reducing infanticide. These case studies illuminate how hominin females could increase male numbers and investment. Fitness payoffs to male investors will be affected by degree of reproductive seasonal constraint, and by females either concealing or confusing menstrual cues of imminent fertility. Among ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals these strategies diverged. Under pressure of encephalization, modern huma...
Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males i... more Reproductive synchrony or desynchrony of primate females influences number and fitness of males in mating systems. Langur monkey populations provide a natural experiment for observing alternative female strategies of confusing or concentrating paternity. Where females escape seasonal reproductive constraints, they desynchronize fertility and show visible cues (menstruation), enabling single males to monopolize matings. This increases female fitness by reducing food competition. Where langurs are seasonally constrained, females conceal fertility, confusing paternity and reducing infanticide. These case studies illuminate how hominin females could increase male numbers and investment. Fitness payoffs to male investors will be affected by degree of reproductive seasonal constraint, and by females either concealing or confusing menstrual cues of imminent fertility. Among ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals these strategies diverged. Under pressure of encephalization, modern huma...
Solarizing the Moon: Essays in Honour of Lionel Sims, 2022
Lionel Sims’ work has illuminated how Neolithic ritual communities ‘solarised’ the moon, deceptiv... more Lionel Sims’ work has illuminated how Neolithic ritual communities ‘solarised’ the moon, deceptively transforming a lunar syntax into a solar one. But where did the ‘time-resistant’ lunar syntax come from? It is unlikely that patriarchal Neolithic societies invented this form of time-keeping. Yet it persists even in modern patriarchal ‘world’ religions derived from Neolithic forebears.
Marx said ‘All forms of economics can be reduced to an economics of time'. How a society organises time reveals what it truly values. The question of the earliest human economy cannot be solved without a focus on women, the moon and menstruation. African hunter-gatherer cosmology takes the lunar cycle as the crucial timeframe for ritual, sex and economic activities. The shared sources of this cosmology carry us back to earliest human symbolic culture, the very origins of art and ritual itself, over 100,000 years ago.
Contrary to presumed Neolithic gender relations, these hunter-gatherer societies are among the most gender egalitarian on earth. But how does such egalitarianism work? Women especially assert power through their bodies collectively to resist any threat of male exploitation. As the moon waxes and wanes, the dynamic of power switches in more or less playful battles between the sexes. Rather than patriarchy or matriarchy, we observe lunarchy – rule by the moon, expressed in a pulse of waxing and waning, ritual power ON, ritual power OFF.
This book brings together a group of social anthropologists with other scholars to examine how cu... more This book brings together a group of social anthropologists with other scholars to examine how culture and society evolved. No other discipline has more relevant expertise to consider the emergence of humans as the symbolic species. Yet, despite the relative recency of modern human origins and the archaeological record of symbolism, social anthropologists have been conspicuous by their absence from debates on what made us human. Why is that? How can social anthropology shed light on early kinship and economics, gender politics, ritual, cosmology, ethnobiology, medicine or the evolution of language?
A rift runs through anthropology. Year on year we explain to our
students that anthropology is th... more A rift runs through anthropology. Year on year we explain to our students that anthropology is the overarching study of what it means to be human; and yet our discipline is fragmented. We can, we explain, study humans as biological beings, understanding the anatomical, physiological and life-history differences between ourselves and the other great apes, or the Neanderthals. Or we can study humans within their own communities as cultural beings, analysing the rituals they perform and the stories they tell. What defines us as Homo sapiens compared with other hominins appears a tractable scientific area of enquiry. Interpretations of cultural voices, values and meanings feel by contrast negotiable and contested, throwing into question the prospect of scientific objectivity. On each side of this divide data takes different forms and is collected quite differently; theory and hypothesis are applied with hypothetico-deductive method, inductively or not at all; and epistemologies are radically opposed.
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Papers by Camilla Power
Marx said ‘All forms of economics can be reduced to an economics of time'. How a society organises time reveals what it truly values. The question of the earliest human economy cannot be solved without a focus on women, the moon and menstruation. African hunter-gatherer cosmology takes the lunar cycle as the crucial timeframe for ritual, sex and economic activities. The shared sources of this cosmology carry us back to earliest human symbolic culture, the very origins of art and ritual itself, over 100,000 years ago.
Contrary to presumed Neolithic gender relations, these hunter-gatherer societies are among the most gender egalitarian on earth. But how does such egalitarianism work? Women especially assert power through their bodies collectively to resist any threat of male exploitation. As the moon waxes and wanes, the dynamic of power switches in more or less playful battles between the sexes. Rather than patriarchy or matriarchy, we observe lunarchy – rule by the moon, expressed in a pulse of waxing and waning, ritual power ON, ritual power OFF.
students that anthropology is the overarching study of what it means
to be human; and yet our discipline is fragmented. We can, we explain,
study humans as biological beings, understanding the anatomical,
physiological and life-history differences between ourselves and the
other great apes, or the Neanderthals. Or we can study humans within
their own communities as cultural beings, analysing the rituals they
perform and the stories they tell. What defines us as Homo sapiens
compared with other hominins appears a tractable scientific area of
enquiry. Interpretations of cultural voices, values and meanings feel
by contrast negotiable and contested, throwing into question the
prospect of scientific objectivity. On each side of this divide data takes
different forms and is collected quite differently; theory and hypothesis
are applied with hypothetico-deductive method, inductively or not at
all; and epistemologies are radically opposed.