Ah, for the halcyon days of yore, when Man lived in harmony with nature, the ebb and flow of the seasons, bringing in the harvest , a time of the noble savage, one with nature and with each other.
Just kidding. Actually, aside from things like malnutrition and diseases and predators, neolithic Man was pretty freaking brutal to each other.
IF YOU are worried about being attacked or killed by a violent criminal, just be glad you are not living in Neolithic Britain. From 4000 to 3200 BC, Britons had a 1 in 14 chance of being bashed on the head, and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries.
Grisly figures from the first systematic survey of early Neolithic British skulls reveal that life then was no rural idyll. “It’s certainly more violent than we’d considered,” says Rick Schulting of Queen’s University Belfast, UK, who conducted the study with Mick Wysocki at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.
They’ve basically done a survey of 350 skulls in Southern England from that era. Most of the injuries are to the left side of the head (where a rock or club or axe wielded left- right-handedly would hit).
Nasty, brutish, and short, as Hobbes described life in the “state of nature.”
(via Collision Detection)
*psst*
Right-handly…Right-handly.
Your “lefty” bias is showing. ;P
So what you’re saying is that left-handedness was an evolutionary dead-end?*
Oh, and just to show that I recognize the title of your post:
“No, no! You’ve got the wrong foolie!”
“Study, study, study, bad kids!”
*Unless, of course, they were struck from behind by devious, cowardly right-handers.
I swear to God I was *thinking* “right-” as I was typing it. Yeesh.
Yes, Avo, and though it’s not stated in the article, presumably the skulls are all from grups.
“You know, there are times when it’s a source of personal pride to not be human.”
–Hobbes (the other one)