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jackpot ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

i think they mean 'man' as in 'mankind'. also any ideas why would they carve it into bone and not bark or something more flat?

Rowan ,

Likely durability and portability. Think of it as something they use month over month and just mark the day with something like a string band. Bone would be light enough to keep with you, strong enough to not break, and common enough to be available for household use.

TokenBoomer ,

Whoosh.

dangblingus ,

It seems pretty clear that they mean "male" as they follow the mention of "man" up with "woman".

jackpot ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

no i mean, by the people 'who consider it'. i think the speaksr didnt understand that theyre saying it's mankind others are talkint abkut

Rodeo ,

Oh but the word mankind in itself overlooks women. We're all supposed to be saying humankind now.

jackpot ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

etymologically speaking im not even sure if thats right. i heard somethibg like this and they either said woman doesnt derive from man or that man used to mean woman and man but woman became its own thing, cant recall

John_McMurray ,

"man" in the contexts not directly related to being a male, means human. "Man" used to have a prefix vaguely pronounced "were" and "woman" used to be "wifman". Female werewolf would be a "wifwolf" then. So anyways, "Man" never changed it's meaning, it really just gained an additional one, and yet again, whiners need to read a book.

John_McMurray ,

nah. it's a double entendre.

PM_Your_Nudes_Please ,

Likely durability. A bone and a stick can both be thrown into a bag and carried with you, but a bone is much more durable than a stick. It’ll be less likely to break or wear down as it rubs against everything else in your bag.

feedum_sneedson ,

What about blackthorn wood versus chicken bone? What's it like being wrong on the internet, champ. Adding this one to my scoreboard (dry-wipe, wall-mounted, magnetic).

NikkiDimes ,

Do you mean dry erase?

DAMunzy ,

🎤 💧

feedum_sneedson ,

Yes I do, the terms are interchangeable here.

LodeMike ,

They probably did but only the bone survived time

jackpot ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

ahh survivorship bias thats it thanks

LodeMike ,

Always remember to check for survivorship bias. It's the most fundamental way to lie with statistics.

survivalmachine , (edited )

Sure, you can say "man" means "mankind", but when you use gendered language like that, most people picture a couple of caveMEN sitting around a fire carving bones rather than caveHUMANS (edited -- I think it would benefit us to picture all genders around this hypothetical fire). Even though we try to use gendered language in a neutral way, listeners will often perceive the language in a gendered way.

bane_killgrind ,

Cave humans

survivalmachine ,

Thank you <3

Juno ,

Just FYI the origin of "woman" is "wife-man" which (forgive if I do these slightly out of order) was "wyfe-man" to "wife-man" to "wieman" to woman 👩

The misogyny is built into the language. Or the common word used originates from "wife of man"

Paraphrased source Websters word origins

Drusas ,

"Man" also means "humankind". In fact, it was originally a gender-neutral word.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/man

survivalmachine ,

Yes, I know. I explained that. That doesn't change perception.

jackpot ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

this is it tjank you

usualsuspect191 ,

Cave humans hupeople

survivalmachine ,

No

BCsven ,

Do they, or is it just men that think that? While women might think of their own gender around a fire, and assume either gender/ non-gendered

endhits ,

That's exactly what is meant, but they have to find something to complain about

LemmyKnowsBest ,

I'm a woman and I have never needed to chart 28 days.

that screenshot up there reads like some academic person with too much time on their hands trying too hard to congratulate themselves for solving some anthropological mystery.

astreus ,

Yeah, I don't get it either. Weren't most, if not all, ancient calendars lunar based? Far easier to work out a 28 day cycle than a 365.25 day cycle.

workerONE ,

But since before you were born people knew how long a woman's menstrual cycle lasts. Most likely the Internet existed when you became an adult and thought about measuring things. The society you lived in had existing calendars that you were aware of if/when you had a menstrual cycle. You've never needed to "chart 28 days" but someone who lived long long ago may have wondered and they would have had no frame of reference so they decided to count.

Gabu ,

Sandi is a comedian and presenter of UK show QI, not a researcher. She's literally just talking about an epiphany.

LemmyKnowsBest ,

"When I was a student at Cambridge..."

Gabu ,

Believe it or not, in civilized countries it's common for people to get higher education for the sake of education.

Her predecessor on QI, mr. Stephen Fry, was also an OxBridge fellow – known as one of Britain's greatest comedians.

Quastamaza ,

This is a refreshing comment, if any. Especially coming from a woman. Thank you.

merc ,

I’m a woman and I have never needed to chart 28 days.

Is this because you don't care when your next period is? Or because you don't need to record it to remember it?

I can imagine a modern woman might not care if she always has menstrual products on hand or nearby. But, it might have been more meaningful in ancient times when there might have been more taboos associated with menstruation, plus it might have been more important to know as part of family planning. And, it might have been much less convenient to carry around whatever was needed to handle menstruation.

Also, in a modern world where calendars are everywhere, I can imagine someone might say "ok, so my next period will be in early July". But, there was a time when days and months were not tracked, or were only tracked by priests, etc. In that kind of situation, I could imagine it might be useful to count the days until the next period was expected. On the other hand, a primitive society probably spends a lot more time outdoors and sees the moon a lot more often, so it might be just as easy to go "ok, so my next period will be when the moon's 3/4 full".

28 notches means that the bone had 29 sections, which more closely matches a lunar month than a typical menstrual period. But, I could see it being used either way.

feedum_sneedson ,

yeah, that sounds like an anthropology professor

Zehzin ,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

For some reason I thought they meant they carved the calendar on their own bone and thought "damn that's metal af".

Anyway, don't farmers also need to tell the date? Was this bone from before we started doing that?

iAvicenna ,
@iAvicenna@lemmy.world avatar

this proves metal has existed since the dawn of man! enter Miocene epoch heavy metal

fishbone ,

First off: Everyone who played the historical documentary Brutal Legend knows that metal was a gift from the gods.

Second: Miocene epoch heavy metal is my favorite genre!

mister_monster ,

I keep track of my girlfriend's ovulation because she can't be bothered to do it. I don't want her to get pregnant either. Just pointing that out.

ChexMax ,

I hear you but it's far more likely for a woman to track her own period than for a nearby man to track it. You're the reason this professor felt the need to give this example. Because men assume all progress and intellectual pursuits were obviously sought by men. You guys think it's the automatic default, and even the suggestion that a woman might have accomplished something is met with, "hey! It could have been a man!"

crapwittyname ,

There's some faulty reasoning here.
Parent comment challenges the assumption that the marks were made by a female, and you say "you're the reason the professor felt the need to give this example", although the example was given in order to challenge assumptions of gender.
OP is actually learning from the example if anything, since they are challenging gender assumptions.
On top of that, your use of "you guys", and your generalisations about men are evidence of the exact type of biased thinking this example is trying to challenge.

kromem ,

Yep. A bit like a 7 day publicly displayed tracker of days on a 28 day lunar calendar cycle.

Was "I am the God of your Father" an editorial attempt to distinguish the deity from the gods of Egypt, or from the god of a Mother?

There's some pretty odd details in that book, like in Isaac's supposed patriarchal blessing which discussed "the sons of your mother bow down to you" or it being the only place there's the male form of gebirah ("Great Lady") - a title first applied in the text to Isaac's mother whose name is based on the word for 'chief.' Who is supposedly later followed by a figure 'Deborah' ('bee') who is a leader of the people around the time we now know bees were being imported into Tel Rehov and regularly requeened to avoid genetic drift with local bee populations. Also weird that the events regarding a "land of milk and honey" supposedly take place in a land with no honey and only one discovered apiary.

That apiary gets burned down right around the time Asa allegedly deposed his grandmother the gebirah ("Great Lady").

rekabis ,

A woman’s cycle varies between 15 and 45 days, averaging 28.1 days, but with a standard deviation of 3.95 days. That’s a hell of a lot of variability from one woman to the next. And the same variability can be experienced by a large minority of women from one period to the next, and among nearly all women across the course of their fertile years.

On the other hand, the moon’s cycle (as seen from Earth) takes 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes to pass through all of its phases. And it does so like clockwork, century after century.

Of the two, I am finding the second to have a much stronger likelihood of being the reasoning behind the notches.

Strange how gender-bigotry style historical revisionism and gender exceptionalism seems to get a wholly uncritical and credulous pass when it’s not done by a man.

Seasoned_Greetings , (edited )

While I agree with you that the teacher in this post is wrong about what this is, I don't think labeling "gender bigotry" indiscriminately as something both sexes do under one umbrella is accomplishing anything but minimizing the struggle women have endured for basically all of human existence up until the last few decades.

Personally, I wouldn't fault this woman for thinking what she does if she's willing to accept a broader explanation later, given that women have literally been sold as property up until a couple hundred years ago.

Women have the right to at least posit the ways they as a group have been held down, and that includes accepting their indignation and allowing them grace for when they're wrong, because without those things they won't actually learn the truth.

Further than that, I think it's necessary for women learning now to have the same realization this one did that women throughout all of history save for this recent tiny sliver have been oppressed. Even if it's built on an incidentally faulty premise, that doesn't mean the realization itself is wrong.

Covering up the discourse by labeling the process of realization as "gender bigotry" is itself an attempt at erasure, and very much puts you on the side of the oppressors, just because you think it's distasteful to have this realization yourself.

I'm sure gender bigotry exists in the direction of women towards men. This ain't it.

reric88 ,
@reric88@beehaw.org avatar

The gender-bigotry comes from the "what man needs to mark 28 days?" There's snark behind the comment, and it's unnecessary. That said, a woman could be just as likely as a man to mark moon phases. But saying "man" doesn't mean "male" when talking about us as a species from my understanding. Seems like a broader term to use which includes the entirety of the homo-whatevers.

I'm just some guy here and am not educated in this stuff, though!

bouh ,

So you're arguing that people would have more use to write moon cycles than women cycles?
And you talk about bigotry?!

SqueakyBeaver ,
@SqueakyBeaver@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I doubt the teacher really believed this, and they were likely striving to just open their students' minds to the idea that most innovations are probably assumed to be made by men

AstridWipenaugh ,

The point would be a lot more impactful if they didn't make up a story to support their position.

WldFyre ,

This is a class on anthropology, the point was to challenge the assumptions made when interpreting artifacts/history with little context. No one made anything up lol

rekabis ,

Why not use a real and confirmed example, then? Because they do exist.

Making a story up - such that it can be actively undermined - certainly does the job poorly at best, and actively hurts the objective at worst.

ChexMax ,

Other than tides, why do you need to know when the next full moon is? And can't you just look at the moon and see how close it is waning to the full moon?

Not saying the calendar is definitely a woman's, but wanting to know when you're going to start leaking blood onto everything near you seems like a good reason to track a period. Plenty of women are regular like clockwork, I was at 26 days almost exactly for years.

KredeSeraf ,

If you start to notice one thing happens pretty regularly and another thing happens regularly but on a larger scale... Say the monthly moon phases and the seasons, you can use the more frequent one to roughly track the less frequent one.

takeheart ,

There's both practical and more spiritual/philosophical reasons for this.

Before artificial light sources, especially electrical ones, moon light let people stay productive longer whilst outside. This was especially important for comunal activities like hunting, harvests or celebrations too. Keeping track of moon cycles is thus valuable for preparation in scheduling. And once you do that it can also be used to organize other social events around that. Similar to how our modern calendars and schedules are built around important fixed events.

The moon and sun as celestial bodies also gained prominent religious and mystical significance in ancient cultures. Remember that people didn't actually know what the moon or sun were in the modern scientific sense. But for some strange reason these mystical glowing disks on which people were so reliant kept rising with unerring synchronicity. The inquiry into the movements on the firmament lead many a civilization down the paths of observation, record keeping and math too.

iAvicenna ,
@iAvicenna@lemmy.world avatar

Never mind anything, making the abstract connection between one event and the number of marks you scratch on a wall was probably the equivalent of genius of the time, the first mathematician.

demonen ,
@demonen@lemmy.ml avatar

It occurs to me that the solution might be to start referring to men as "wermen" again, and revert "men" to it's gender neutral roots.
That also means we can have a bunch of other prefixes for other genders.

Languages are fun.

TIMMAY ,

just lean all the way in and call us vermin

Ultraviolet ,

That's also where the "were" prefix in werewolf comes from.

bob_lemon ,

Does that mean female werewolves should be called wowolves? (Or even better, woowolves)

Ultraviolet ,

Wifwolves, unfortunately.

kibiz0r ,

https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=551

huf ,

lol what the fuck, yeah right, ancient germanic word "man" derives from latin... whoever drew this didnt bother to open up the dictionary once...

kibiz0r ,

¯\(ツ)/¯

I’m not an entomologist.

blawsybogsy ,

"Entomology (from Ancient Greek entomon 'insect', and -logia 'study')[1] is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term insect was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arachnids, myriapods, and crustaceans. This wider meaning may still be encountered in informal use."

huf ,

pff nah, entomologists are experts at entoming people. you know, like putting them in a tom underground. dead. like that cara loft lady.

blawsybogsy ,

i need to branch out with my sources

milicent_bystandr ,

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wrong_superhero.png

hessenjunge ,

Scholars seem to agree it stems from Proto-Indo-European, so Latin is not the source.

D61 ,

A man makes blankets and he "works in textiles" a woman makes blankets and she "has a hobby making quilts".

uSpetzWon ,

a man with a wife.

it's good to know when it's time to spend couple of days hunting the sabre tooth tiger.

WldFyre ,

Wife bad amirite

Dkarma ,

PMS deniers 🤣

WldFyre ,

Oh no my loved one is about to experience terrible pain that comes every few weeks, better complain about how this affects me and go do my own thing for awhile

FarFarAway ,

More like he needs to know when to take a break when she's most fertile so they can procreate. He's already gone by the time she's having "her time of the month"

DadVolante ,
@DadVolante@sh.itjust.works avatar

Tell me you've never found the man in the boat without telling me you've never found the man in the boat.

computerscientistI ,

A woman invented the windshield wiper. Granted, a man inventes the whole effing rest of the car...

smileyhead ,

Yeah, no way to know what gender someone had so we just pick one based on our twisted worldview where some gender must be better than other because reasons.

Tankiedesantski ,

we just pick one based on our twisted worldview where some gender must be better than other because reasons.

The only one doing this here is you.

smileyhead ,

In which words did I choose which gender that inventor was?

nat_turner_overdrive ,
@nat_turner_overdrive@hexbear.net avatar

well you seem upset that an archaeologist suggested it was likely a woman, so something made you mad

smileyhead ,

I am as upset with suggesting it was a man, as some may try to do.
Maybe my comment sounded weird with just the context of the post, but I wrote it also with other comments in mind.

zzx , (edited )

Not sure why you got down voted because you are absolutely right

  • we don't know
  • society ascribes everything to the male

If we defaulted to "he or she (they probably)" then things would be better but we simply don't. It is always the man's contribution and it's disappointing

smileyhead ,

We should have a neologism for gender neutral version of "mankind" definitely.
I am just this one person always pushing a stick into an anthill every time gender is assumed out of preference and getting all the hate from both sides.

steakmeoutt ,

Bruh relax

zzx ,

Lmfaooooo I can't believe you came and found me on another comment. You really do need to relax

OozingPositron ,
@OozingPositron@feddit.cl avatar

He died before he could carve 29.

I_am_10_squirrels ,

Maybe they were narrating it

Dkarma ,

Some guy tracking the moon.

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