What's your favorite prehistoric POD?

Jonathan Edelstein said:
So there are two places to look for PODs. First, how might Çatalhöyük have developed the leadership to get them through environmental changes - religion seems the most obvious way, bu were there others? Second, would it be possible for a Neolithic society to organize collective action without social stratification? Is there a way, other than through kings or ensis, to govern a Stone Age community of this size?

Such a discussion will always be political but anarchy could be a way to go, with a representative elected by the people with a clear mandate as opposed to a divine king.
 
Butterflying climate change might need bit help of ASBs.

Not really. We're doing climate change quite well without ASBs at the moment. Whats more, climate is prone to metastable states of equilibrium, but can be knocked from one into another by chaotic effects.

Different patterns of early agriculture, earlier logging of the Amazonas forest, volcanic eruptions at the right time and Place...all of these may possibly affect climate.
 
AIUI, Druids also refused to use written records and relied on memorisation, even though they must have been aware of writing from contacts with Greeks and Romans. Presumably this was for religious reasons.

On surviving pre-sapiens hominids, it's worth remembering that the latest known dates for Neanderthals, Denisovans and H. floresiensis are just that, 'latest known dates', and are open to revision from future discoveries. There are also the recent (~10k years) and rather primitive 'Red Deer Cave people' in southern China (supposedly not any of sapiens, Neanderthals or Denisovans, though no DNA yet). Some would argue that the supposed cryptid hominids 'Almas' in Central Asia and 'Orang Pendek' in Sumatra could be surviving examples of respectively Denisovans (or Neanderthals, or other more primitive hominids), and of H. floresiensis or a close relative, though given the continuing absence of hard evidence, and the improbability of viable populations of such forms surviving at the necessary low densities for them to remain cryptids, it seems increasingly likely that they either never existed or, if they did, are recently extinct.

Yeah, we know that at one point humans, Neanderthals, H. florensiensis, Denisovans, and possibly H. erectus all existed on earth at the same time. I heard a scientist once refer to it as a "Lord the Rings-type world." If that had continued on until the present day.....things.....things would be different.
 
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