-Windows in prehistoric buildings align exactly on summer solstice. I’ve no doubt that some ancient buildings were consciously built for a once-a-year event, but surely some are just gratuitous accidents?
-This is a ritual site! Maybe it’s just a bunch of stones assembled by bored Neolithic teens?
-These chicken scratches on a rock are sacred texts made by Druidic priests! Sure, some are definitely Ogham, but maybe Gal was stuck in a boring committee meeting and was trying to amuse himself?
Everything is a fertility symbol. Now a lot things probably are, but you can take anything and find a reason to claim it’s a fertility symbol.
Ooh, good one!
Everything that can be worn was “ceremonial”. No such thing as fashion or aesthetics; prehistoric humans found no pleasure in the creation or consumption of art or music of any kind. We must have gained those traits only recently, because it was all ceremonial. That drum? Ceremonial. That amulet? Ceremonial. Those earrings, piercings and other jewelry? Ceremonial.
When no one knows why the site was abandoned, “climate change” will always be suggested before “people got bored and moved on.”
I’m sure climate change did happen , but boredom and malaise happen too.
So does war.
They do. But while you or I might make a five hundred mile trip out of boredom and malaise, I feel it probably took a larger motivation back when people had to walk those five hundred miles carrying all their stuff on their back.
Can you provide cites where human population centers have been abandoned out of boredom?
This fossil skull not only represents a new species of Hominin, but is the direct ancestor of modern humans (as opposed to all the other finds about which the same claim was made).
I left Ohio cuz I was bored:D
ISTM that (many/some) humans crave change and adventure and therefore do abandon communities in search of newness.
Unless it’s just graffiti.
You left Ohio in a (mostly) safe, thoroughly-mapped, rich country with cheap, easy transportation to go to a place with roughly equivalent, known conditions. Would you have moved somewhere else if the only way to get there was walking, your clothes (including your shoes) were hand-made, the only money or other tradable items you would have continued to own would be the ones that you physically carried with you, you ran a very real risk of running across someone who would kill you for those paltry items, you had to live off the land (or off what supplies you could physically carry with you) during your trip, and you had little idea of what kind of conditions you would find when you reached the end of your trip? Even though the conditions that you lived in were perfectly acceptable, no pressure of war, famine, drought, disease, persecution, overpopulation, etc., just because you were “bored?” Do you think every person in your community would join you on that trip, abandoning the site so thoroughly that it would be nothing but buried debris thousands of years later?
Not only that, but this fossil we just found changes everything we thought we knew about human evolution. See, before we found this fossil we didn’t have evidence of an ancient Hominin with these exact features from this exact place at this exact time period. I mean, before we had evidence of the same thing at the same time, just from a slightly different place, so this is completely revolutionary. And also there’s evidence for the same thing at the same place, just at a slightly later time, so you know. Anyway, we’re re-writing the history books to include the fact that this incredible fossil we just found was found at this place from this time.
Umm . . . my comment was a joke.
Have you ever been to Ohio?
I realize that the first part of your comment was a joke, but “got bored” still does not seem to be a highly likely reason for towns/cities/empires to be abandoned.
Archeologist: Joe, come here.
Joe: Sup?
**Archeologist:**Look at this stick. Look how phallic it is. This must have been a fertility symbol.
Joe: Hobble me cobblestones! That there is a diddly-doo it is. Good find.
All that’s missing now is for some genius journalist to call it “The Missing Link”. (Where is that “pulling my hair out” smiley when you need it?)
Anything longer than it is wide, anything with some generally spherical shape, anything with a hole in it, anything that resembles any animal or plant must be a fertility symbol. And then anything not fitting those categories must have been used in a fertility ceremony.
Anything longer than it is wide is a male fertility symbol.
Anything wider than it is long is a female fertility symbol.