Nuclear Family Is Not A Given

New data using DNA from victims of the Pompeii eruption has highlighted the distorted conception our civilisation has been attempting to impose nuclear family as the forever and unique and culturally superior vision of family.

The DNA obtained on the corpses still intact from the eruption and the plaster cast has shown people in arms found under the same roof thought to be a parent and their child are not related. First of all, adoption was a trend at the time explaining some parenthood not being blood relationship. While we can deconstruct the idea on nuclear blood-related families leaving their final moments in each other’s arms, it does not necessarily mean households at the time were a mix of individuals living together. The reality is roman households were also the home of slaves and it was common practice for masters and slaves to live with their families together under the same roof.

Origins of Mankind Through Data Extrapolation

What is history and how does it relate to humankind’s story?

History is a series of events that shaped our species into being what it is. These events can be man made but are also beyond the scope of Man’s actions; such is the case of climate and geological formations that changed the landscape where our ancestors evolved. Not only did nature change our relation to the world and its environment and wildlife, but it also modifies greatly how we interact with our fellow man or woman. Our species is the only one to have spread on such a scale that we now inhabit every continent except Antarctica. While our adaptation and curiosity pushed our species to always venture further, we were however the subject of geographic distances and disturbances that created differentiation inside our species. And so much so that individuals discovering new land were surprised to see communities that had thrived there for thousands of years without any contact with others. And finally, because history does not permeates through time, we have to discover events that happened over the millennia.

Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood

The idea that theories of yesteryear were developed considering tools and information available at the time leads us to understand the writings not as true statements but as the start of critical thinking by rejecting them using new data.

Because Jean-Jacques Rousseau was living at a time when Europeans were discovering a new continent and new people displaying what appeared rudimentary customs (or so they thought by comparison with life in Europe), he was led to believe that they were the exact model of a way of life before civilisation transformed humans into a social species. To say that these “savages” reflected what humanity was stuck doing for thousands of years (we are here talking about those who still harbour this same line of thinking even with modern archaeological advancements), it is foregoing our creative, inventive and curious nature trying to rise above our condition: too simple of a thought.

The Dawn of Everything: Introduction

A few months ago, I was perusing a book shelf inside a book shop (evidently) looking for a book(Géohistoire - Une autre histoire des humains sur la Terre by Christian Grataloup) about how geography partially determined of the evolution of mankind that I might read later because on a complete struck of luck my gaze was captured by this book with a beautiful golden lettering on blue cover. After rapidly looking through the book and looking on the Internet what people interested/researching in history and ethnology were saying, I decided to take it home.