Michael Schmidt

@michaelschmidt.bsky.social

90 Followers 91 Following

Creative Director at @virtualidentity.bsky.social, talks about #Feminism / #ClimateCrisis. Opinions mine.

Some of the first cities or "mega-sites" with tens of thousands of residents, such as Nebelivka and Taljanky in today's Ukraine or Çatalhöyuk in Turkey, had no monumental architecture or elite graves—no acropolis, palaces, or great temples. Humans surely had the usual disagreements, but there are no indications of mass violence or war, nor signs of classes of elite and poor. It does not appear that hinterland farmers dragged crops to these cities to feed urban popula-tions. Rather people built comfortable houses surrounding some sort of community center and engaged in small-scale gardening on the edges of their settlements, where they kept small livestock, cultivated orchards, and gathered a wide spectrum of wild foods. Despite a high population density, they don't appear to have been hungry or stressed. They governed themselves, making decisions in public forums. People of Taljanky left behind statues of full-bodied women, which earlier archeologists took to be fertility goddesses but now are interpreted to be likenesses of community leaders. Archeologists speculate that female elders led their communities in improving soil, selecting wild plants for cultivation, and inventing ways to use clay and plant fibers to devise tools and clothing for more comfortable living. These Neolithic urbanites inhabited their cities without draining local resources, which means they did not need to take over other people's territories. In Nebelivka, archeologists postulate that gardeners accelerated the formation of the black earth of the Ukrainian breadbasket. Ukraine's famously rich soils, some of the most fertile in the world, were not a gift of nature but a creation of human ancestors.
Ducks walk in front of Vienna's Museum of Natural History in April.
A Financial Times infographic showing that since 2014 people say the use social media less and less for typical social behaviour and rather use it to follow celebrities or fill spare time.