Women left their mark on prehistoric society
One of the main textbooks on archaeology when I began studying the subject years ago was entitled. This gender bias reflected the fact that most archaeologists were men and prehistoric women were virtually invisible. It took a woman, Jane Goodall, to find that female chimpanzees make tools.
A lesson I have learned from excavating the graves of well over 1000 prehistoric humans, is that where I work in Southeast Asia, prehistoric women were socially very prominent. This is seen in how they were honoured in death, interred in their graves with, to cite just one example, gold and agate beads, fine ceramic vessels and bronze ornaments. We can reconstruct the feasting and rituals that accompanied this woman's last journey. In September 2021, this very point was taken up in a French television documentary entitled Lady Sapiens. Two years later, it was published in English, and it has generated a strong debate on the role of women in early hunter gatherer societies.
A second book,has taken up the same theme and posed an issue that some see as intractable: how do we actually know what the daily activities of women were so many thousands of years ago. Is it a safe assumption that men hunted mammoths while women collected berries and roots? Let us take a test case: the renowned cave art of the last Ice Age. There is a site called Cap Blanc in the Dordogne region of France, where someone carved the heads of horses, bison and deer. By examining the directions of the chisel cuts, the sculptor must have been left-handed. The investigation took an interesting turn when a burial was found under the frieze. It was a female and the muscle ridges on her left hand were particularly well developed, so she was probably left-handed and responsible for the carvings. Finding a skull is one thing, but reconstructing the face is another. Elisabeth Daynes has provided us with such an image, so we can gaze on the face of the woman who lived about 15,000 years ago, with the bead headdress she wore when she was buried. She is not the only example of a ritually impressive burial of a woman.
At the Spanish cave of El Miron, a woman who lived about 19,000 years ago was buried covered in red ochre laced with sparkling haematite crystals. And one can also look at surviving hunter gatherers, such as the Agta of the Philippines, where the women are just as adept as men at hunting pigs and deer.
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NZ Herald
a day ago
- NZ Herald
Norway is undertaking a grand renovation of its lighthouses, with Fresnel lenses being cleaned and repaired
But they remain essential to mariners as a visual back-up — in case the fancy electronics fail or are scrambled by Russia's military — and to small boats that lack the proper technology. Norway is undertaking a grand renovation of its lighthouses in accordance with the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities, which sets the standards for maritime signalling. The effort coincides roughly with the 200th anniversary of the Fresnel lens, a marvel of glassmaking artistry and optical science that revolutionised seafaring and global commerce. 'Another heaven' on Earth Early lighthouses were lit by open wood fires; later ones with lamps fuelled by pitch, tar, coal and, starting in 1780, oil. This light, in turn, was cast outward by ever more elaborate mirrors that sat behind the lamp. Even the best light was scattered and feeble, visible from no more than a few kilometres away. A ship could founder on sandbars by the time it saw the warning. In 1823, a French engineer, Augustin-Jean Fresnel, unveiled the Fresnel lens: concentric rings of glass prisms that, meticulously aligned, bent the light into a unified beam. Much less light was lost, and much fuel was saved. Stationed high enough, the light could be seen by ships 80km away. At the time, scientists insisted that light was composed of particles. Fresnel championed the new 'undulationist' theory, that light acts as a wave, and his lens proved its utility beyond doubt. (Physicists today recognise that, improbably, light is both a wave and a particle.) Lighthouses equipped with Fresnel lenses soon lined the French coast. Other nations quickly adopted the technology, starting with Norway in 1832. The number of shipwrecks around the world plummeted. 'For the sailor who steers by the stars, it was as if another heaven had descended to earth,' French historian Jules Michelet wrote in 1861. Upgrading a nation's lightscape The Fresnel lens focused the aspirations of the Industrial Age. It made shipping safer, projected global ambition and catalysed international trade. 'The moment a Fresnel lens appeared at a location was the moment that region became linked into the world economy,' Theresa Levitt wrote in A Short Bright Flash, her history of the invention. Today, small Fresnel lenses are everywhere, from traffic lights to stage lights. But the production of lighthouse-scale glass lenses ceased in the 1960s. Those that remain are fragile, expensive to maintain and hard to repair, for lack of parts. Many of Norway's Fresnel lenses were destroyed in World War II by retreating German forces. Only 80 or so are still in use. Technicians with the Norwegian Coastal Administration have been visiting the lighthouses one by one, upgrading older lamps and replacing diesel generators with solar arrays. Some Fresnel lenses are moved to museums; some are dismantled, to serve as spare parts elsewhere. Where Fresnel lenses remain, they are delicately cleaned and repaired. Naturally, this work is best done in summer, when daylight lasts for weeks and most lighthouses are turned off. The lenses are kept shrouded under curtains or cosies to prevent the sun, focused as if through a magnifying glass, from starting fires. A radiant culture As well as a guardian to mariners, the lighthouse served as anchor and emblem to many isolated coastal communities. Norway's lighthouses are no longer staffed, but in their time, each was maintained by locals, sometimes clusters of families, who kept the lamp working, did repairs and wiped the lens free of smoke. At some lights, this work was done around the clock in four-hour shifts — a life as arduous, meticulous, and vital as any aboard a ship. For four generations, the family members of Espen Jensen Wilhelmsen, an electrician with the Norwegian Coastal Administration, tended the light at Maursund by rowboat from their farm across the strait. With Wilhelmsen's help, the light is now fully modernised and automated. Waves upon waves 'The most surprising part about dealing with lighthouses is how much they are a sensory experience,' photographer Michal Siarek said. During the polar summer, the low sun hits the lens and projects hypnotising patterns on the walls. In winter, the light catches your eye as it sweeps across the landscape. 'It brings a sense of reassurance that someone is on duty and watching,' Siarek said. 'The low machine hum of the rotor and the warmth of the light in the lantern room feel like basking in the sun, against a raging storm outside that makes the tower tremble and sing.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Alan Burdick ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
Otago Daily Times
6 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Women left their mark on prehistoric society
The reconstructed face of the Cap Blanc woman who carved the heads of deer, bison and horses. IMAGE: COURTESY OF PAUL BAHN One of the main textbooks on archaeology when I began studying the subject years ago was entitled. This gender bias reflected the fact that most archaeologists were men and prehistoric women were virtually invisible. It took a woman, Jane Goodall, to find that female chimpanzees make tools. A lesson I have learned from excavating the graves of well over 1000 prehistoric humans, is that where I work in Southeast Asia, prehistoric women were socially very prominent. This is seen in how they were honoured in death, interred in their graves with, to cite just one example, gold and agate beads, fine ceramic vessels and bronze ornaments. We can reconstruct the feasting and rituals that accompanied this woman's last journey. In September 2021, this very point was taken up in a French television documentary entitled Lady Sapiens. Two years later, it was published in English, and it has generated a strong debate on the role of women in early hunter gatherer societies. A second book,has taken up the same theme and posed an issue that some see as intractable: how do we actually know what the daily activities of women were so many thousands of years ago. Is it a safe assumption that men hunted mammoths while women collected berries and roots? Let us take a test case: the renowned cave art of the last Ice Age. There is a site called Cap Blanc in the Dordogne region of France, where someone carved the heads of horses, bison and deer. By examining the directions of the chisel cuts, the sculptor must have been left-handed. The investigation took an interesting turn when a burial was found under the frieze. It was a female and the muscle ridges on her left hand were particularly well developed, so she was probably left-handed and responsible for the carvings. Finding a skull is one thing, but reconstructing the face is another. Elisabeth Daynes has provided us with such an image, so we can gaze on the face of the woman who lived about 15,000 years ago, with the bead headdress she wore when she was buried. She is not the only example of a ritually impressive burial of a woman. At the Spanish cave of El Miron, a woman who lived about 19,000 years ago was buried covered in red ochre laced with sparkling haematite crystals. And one can also look at surviving hunter gatherers, such as the Agta of the Philippines, where the women are just as adept as men at hunting pigs and deer.
Otago Daily Times
6 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Four-day work week benefits
Working less could give us more, a new study suggests. Four-day work weeks without a reduction in income are found to boost workers' job satisfaction and physical and mental health, driven by enhanced work performance, lower levels of fatigue and fewer sleep problems, new research suggests. The findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour , highlight the potential for organisations and policymakers to improve employee well-being by re-evaluating workplace hours. Initiatives that reduce working hours - such as a six-hour workday or a 20% reduction in working time - have recently been trialled around the world. For example, the 4 Day Week Global initiative has run trials in many countries, with participation from about 375 companies, to understand how a shortened work week - without a reduction in pay - can result in a better working environment. To test the effects of the four-day work week (with no reduction in worker pay) intervention, Wen Fan, Juliet Schor and colleagues conducted six-month trials that involved 2896 employees across 141 organisations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States. Using survey data, they compared work- and health-related indicators (including burnout, job satisfaction, mental and physical health) before and after the intervention. They also compared these outcomes with those from 285 employees at 12 companies that did not trial the intervention. Fan and colleagues found that after the four-day work week intervention, there was a reduction in average working hours of about five hours per week. Employees with a reduction of eight hours or more per work week self-reported experiencing larger reductions in burnout and improvements in job satisfaction and mental health, as compared with those at companies that maintained a five-day workweek. Similar, though smaller, effects were observed among employees with between one and four hour and five and seven hour reductions in their work week. These benefits were partially explained by a reduced number of sleeping problems and levels of fatigue, and improved individual work ability. The authors suggest that shorter work weeks and reduced working hours without a reduction in salary can help to improve job satisfaction and worker health. They note that a key limitation of the study was companies self-selecting to participate, and resulted in a sample that consists predominantly of smaller companies from English-speaking countries. - Science Media Centre
