#african

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Article of the week by Wambui Esther Kimani here: diverse forms of are how we became human (and grandmothers need big respect!)

'The nuclear-only view of the family is truly unAfrican. Our stories are full of women who parent without partners, boys who grow up with grandmothers, queer folk who build homes full of joy, and communities that stretch wide enough to catch whoever is falling. Those are the true African families.'

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jul/09/african-families-diversity-communal-genderfluid-queer-history-rightwing-gender-nuclear#Echobox=1752038078

"If the of modern human origins has forced evolutionary and social anthropology into dialogue, it is appropriate for African to lead off in that process. The introduction focusses on evolutionary models of and how the gap between the ethnographic present and our speciation might be bridged; the body of the article provides the first cross-cultural comparative review of African hunter-gatherer ritual use of red substances and associated beliefs; while noting differences, the discussion draws out the commonalities and their bearing on evolutionary models."
@ochrewatts
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000588

Oh this is special, a documentary film on the 16,000 year-old record of human use of on the N American continent (Sunrise, Wyoming).

-red is very precious to us, it is the hallmark of human culture, taken all around the world as migrated. The record of ritual use goes back half a million years (the Zambian dates at Twin Rivers referred to here are NOT the oldest, I think it's an error of ill-informed AI).

Our very own Ian Watts researched the very oldest cosmetics of humankind at Wonderwerk (Northern Cape, S Africa). I post his paper 👇

https://aeon.co/videos/at-a-prehistoric-pigment-mine-researchers-glimpse-our-earliest-moments-in-the-americas

Very interesting model for historic populations reaching back 74,000 years -- that is before ancestors of everyone today began moving out of Africa. This factors in risk as contributing to movements and success of populations. Even that long ago, even with .

"Our results show that humans strongly avoided or were unsuccessful in potential malaria hotspots. The effects of these choices shaped human demography for the last 74 kya, and likely much earlier, by fragmenting human societies over time and contributing to the formation of modern population structure."

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.04.657870v1

replied to Radical Anthropology's status

, celebrating in time with the , is undoubtedly our favourite! The stories of the Moon and Hare/rabbit are widespread across click-speaking Southern language groups.

These are very very old tales about the 'Origins of Death', telling of a shift from cyclical dying and coming back to life to a linear death for good. The bunny -- in the role of initiate -- gets the blame (but fights back!).

This 'menstruating male' upstart steals these powers of death and resurrection (in fact he steals the menstrual powers from his mum, Mary, who is the woman with no blood). Bushman peoples who have been taught about xtianity are quite well aware this Jesus is a trickster.

Here is the famed image of Jesus' wound, shaped just like a bleeding cunt, spilling the secrets. We need to steal these secrets …

'Sacred' wound shaped like a bleeding cunt Jean le Noir, Bourgot (?), and workshop, Miniature of Christ’s Side Wound and Instruments of the Passion, folio 331r, in the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, before 1349
'Sacred' wound shaped like a bleeding cunt Jean le Noir, Bourgot (?), and workshop, Miniature of Christ’s Side Wound and Instruments of the Passion, folio 331r, in the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, before 1349
'Sacred' wound shaped like a bleeding cunt Jean le Noir, Bourgot (?), and workshop, Miniature of Christ’s Side Wound and Instruments of the Passion, folio 331r, in the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, before 1349
'Sacred' wound shaped like a bleeding cunt Jean le Noir, Bourgot (?), and workshop, Miniature of Christ’s Side Wound and Instruments of the Passion, folio 331r, in the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, before 1349

Being a potter means drawing from a vocabulary of tried-and-true forms: mugs, teapots, bowls, pitchers, etc. However, these archetypal forms have European & Asian origins.

I thought it would be interesting to everyone & affirming to other Black ceramicists to reference forms in contemporary tableware. The combining of European, Asian and African ceramics traditions goes back to mid-20th century, but that history is omitted from US education. See for details.

A small jug with a spout, made to reference the iconic form of Nupe storage vessels from Nigeria. The jug is spherical and voluminous at the bottom, narrow at the neck and flares out into a cup shape at the top. It is heavily decorated with carved geometric patterns, painted with orange clay slip from Tennessee, variegated brown clay slip from Lake Ontario and bright chartreuse green glazed accents.
A large storage vessels from the Nupe culture of Nigeria, 20th century. It is dark brown and mostly unglazed except for a few bands of shiny, vitrified slip that have flaked off over the years. It has the same proportions referenced in the piece Osa made, with similar carved geometric patterning. This vessel however does not include a spout and is too large to lift and pour. It was probably mainly used for storage of liquids, grains, seeds, etc.

If these guys displayed such obnoxious behaviour in a civilized society, they would be taken down mercilessly with and merriment -- almost always by older .

If they continued to throw their weight about with obnoxious behaviour, they would be taken OUT. Certainly in the Kalahari that could be done by a child with a poisoned arrow. Most likely by a bunch of hunters doing it together.

But if these guys had grown up in such a society, it's extremely unlikely they'd behave like such assholes. For tens and hundreds of thousands of years, women simply selected against obnoxious male dominance.

It is only a recent historic aberration in the life of our species, and most normal human beings know it.