chill dog !!81dzJNNYL joined in and replied with this 3 years ago, 11 hours later[^][v]#1,218,481
I have not. Skimming the wikipedia article, it looks interesting. I am concerned whether they are drawing conclusions which require a bit of a leap from the extant evidence but obviously I haven't read it myself. I wish i still had access to academic journals&databases such as jstor, they are such good resources and i miss them.
I have had a mental block on reading books since finishing university. I read plenty of long-form articles and still prefer text to video or audio formats but for some reason i can't bring myself to open a book and get started. I have a couple of them staring at me waiting to be read.
Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU joined in and replied with this 3 years ago, 7 minutes later, 11 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,218,484
@previous (chill dog !!81dzJNNYL)
With a free personal jstor account you can read 6 articles free per month. Currently they've bumped that up to 100(!) So if you wanna do research now's a good time.
chill dog !!81dzJNNYL replied with this 3 years ago, 23 minutes later, 11 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,218,485
@previous (Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU)
Shit i did not know that. Thanks for the hot tip! Jstor is great for humanities topics. I used to use a few different databases for scientific research but these days i'm doing a lot less of that obviously.
There is a surprisingly large amount of journal articles and books on there. I've pretty much found every textbook I've ever wanted to find on there. And also tons of non-fiction. I found the Dawn of Everything there too. There's even a lot of fiction.
The interface sucks, though. You have to click around to get the download started. It's never obvious to me which one is the right link to start the download, but after a few attempts you'll find it.
> I am concerned whether they are drawing conclusions which require a bit of a leap from the extant evidence but obviously I haven't read it myself.
I'm about half-way through. I think that's about a half-accurate criticism. Although I think they're reasonably clear about what they're speculating about and what's known (surprisingly little, since it seems very little is known about pre-historic human societies).
To me it's most interesting the arguments they put up against the common narratives about how society came to be how it is now. Whether or not the picture they suggest as an alternative is accurate, I don't know. But it's interesting to speculate. And to wonder if how we live today was inevitable or simply a (reversible) anomaly on the larger scale of human existence. I think the latter.
Anonymous A (OP) double-posted this 3 years ago, 1 minute later, 19 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,218,520
ALso, scholar.google.com sometimes links to pdfs that it finds on things like professor's websites. It's faster to check than libgen. Although it doesn't tend to link to full books.
tteh !MemesToDNA replied with this 3 years ago, 1 hour later, 20 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,218,529
@1,218,519 (A)
Yeah, the UI is atrocious. And unfortunately a lot of SciHub mirrors are blocked in the UK (lol) and presumably elsewhere, although it's easily circumventable. @previous (A)
Plus, although it's hardly the fastest route, a lot of authors will share docs/PDFs with you if you email them and politely ask. It's useful, even if it's a last resort.
chill dog !!81dzJNNYL replied with this 3 years ago, 2 hours later, 23 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,218,577
@1,218,519 (A) > what's known (surprisingly little, since it seems very little is known about pre-historic human societies).
This is very true in my experience and what prompted me to say that. Like i said i only read the wiki article on it but it mentions some very...detailed? Intricate? I don't know what word i'm looking for. They draw conclusions that, from my limited experience, we have zero evidence for or against, not even enough evidence to build a speculative societal structure upon which to base such conclusions. I have not studied every area mentioned in the wiki article but I have studied some, enough to make me very skeptical of their methods.
I agree with what you say except that the linear societal development theory that they are arguing against has not been the accepted theory in quite some time. During my studies it was quite heavily emphasised that societal development is not linear and does not always follow the same progression, i don't think i need to explain why but if you want me to i can give a rough explanation. It just seems like the authors are railing against a long-debunked (or at least no longer accepted as valid) theory with tenuous evidence and massive leaps of logic. Even if the book were well-researched and had clear logic and evidence, it's just....not ground-breaking or necessary, in academic circles anyway. They're arguing an already-accepted premise but with worse evidence. If this book is targeted towards laypeople, many of whom do still hold these beliefs (usually unconsciously), then i do see a purpose but that doesn't excuse the methodology.
chill dog !!81dzJNNYL double-posted this 3 years ago, 2 minutes later, 23 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,218,578
@1,218,520 (A)
Yeah google scholar is usually my go-to.
@1,218,504 (tteh !MemesToDNA)
Libgen/scihub are great! Ime they're not great when it comes to researching a topic and finding the relevant articles so much as finding the specific article you want. Which is still great, don't get me wrong! Just a little bit more roundabout. I will have to give it another go as well.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 3 years ago, 18 minutes later, 23 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,218,583
@1,218,577 (chill dog !!81dzJNNYL)
Ah, so it sounds like they're building up strawmen and beating them down. I'm not in the field so I wasn't aware what they're arguing against hasn't been taken seriously for a while. From what I've seen in other, completely unrelated fields of research, the quality of the most prominent ideas in the field are often not up to the standards they're often presented as. So, I took what they were saying at face value about the rough idea of "tribes -> agriculture -> societies -> industrialization, etc" being the field's general belief.
Even still, I think I'll (eventually) finish reading this book since I know so little about this subject, that it's interesting regardless.
I hadn't really considered or thought much about the various megaliths that seemed to come about without any obvious agriculture or permanent settlements.
And I hadn't been aware that there seems to be at least some evidence for some societies abandoning agriculture.
Or about the various examples of societies that were seasonal, switching between permanent settlements and foraging (along with changes to their social structures/"governments") depending on the time of the year.
Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU replied with this 3 years ago, 4 hours later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,218,660
@1,218,516 (Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE)
I forgot to mention but if you look up Olga ball ass papers it permabans you and launches a cruise missile at your house. Best of luck.