9 min
Anthropology just keeps finding stuff that rewrite how we think about human history. Known habitation is now pushed back to 26,000 years.
LiDAR has revealed the massive extent of cities in the forests of south and Central America I think other discoveries have been made in North America demonstrating that cities emerge in the Americas roughly the same time as though as in the old world.
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This is an addition to coming to an understanding that social organization is much more diverse, and the old teleology of civilization evolution wasn’t accurate.
Anthropologist had already come to criticize theology of civilization evolution, even in the 80s. More and more sites demonstrate the amazing diversity of human social order. Tyranny was not the destiny of large groups of people.
Anthropology continues to be one of the most remarkable and dynamic scientific disciplines out there.
