Even more than "Culture First" over "Culture Last", we need to think of earlier humans as smart people. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the perception was that of early people were stupid brutes. As more evidence piles up, we see these people were creative and smart, maximizing their ability to survive and often flourish in changing environments. I know I could never survive in the Paleolithic, unless I had an excellent education from childhood. If we think of Neandertals and Denisovans as races separate from our current single Human race, then a presumption of ignorance or stupidity is racism. In our current world, we have people doing brilliant things and those doing stupid things. No doubt, this is a common theme across our shared history as humans.
Thanks so much for this comment! Yes, I think that it's a basic issue of attributing humanity to earlier people, even if they can't tell you themselves what they were thinking when they made something.
One of the most important lessons from anthropology, and for me one of the earliest, is that just because people do things differently than you would, they almost certainly are guided by reasons you may not be in a position to know or appreciate. But you can work it out, and often perceive the logic in what they do.
Even more than "Culture First" over "Culture Last", we need to think of earlier humans as smart people. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the perception was that of early people were stupid brutes. As more evidence piles up, we see these people were creative and smart, maximizing their ability to survive and often flourish in changing environments. I know I could never survive in the Paleolithic, unless I had an excellent education from childhood. If we think of Neandertals and Denisovans as races separate from our current single Human race, then a presumption of ignorance or stupidity is racism. In our current world, we have people doing brilliant things and those doing stupid things. No doubt, this is a common theme across our shared history as humans.
Thanks so much for this comment! Yes, I think that it's a basic issue of attributing humanity to earlier people, even if they can't tell you themselves what they were thinking when they made something.
One of the most important lessons from anthropology, and for me one of the earliest, is that just because people do things differently than you would, they almost certainly are guided by reasons you may not be in a position to know or appreciate. But you can work it out, and often perceive the logic in what they do.