KonzeptioNerd

Experimental Stoneage

Last Sunday, the ARD showed the first of four episodes of their recent historical reenactment series Steinzeit - Das Experiment (Stoneage - the Experiment).

Last summer, seven adults and six children had moved into the recreation of a Neolithic lake dewlling near the Bodensee - 3.200 B.C. Unlike precursors like Das Jahrhunderhaus or Das Schwarzwaldhaus, Steinzeit does not appear to focus on interpersonal struggles, but on gaining insights about life 5.000 years ago.

I’d heard about this show before, in a podcast from SWR 2 Wissen: Steinzeit - das Experiment. Takeaways:

Health

Life 5.000 years ago was extremely exhausting: strenuous physical work, insufficient insulation, lack of high-tech medication and caries developing after the shift to cereal-based diets. The participants in the experiment arrived with a modern fitness-level and they all survived the wet and cold summer of 2006. Born 5.000 years ago, they might not have been so lucky.

Time

Back then, everything took ages. Procuring and preparing the next meal was paramount. Everything else had to take second place. Making fire could take hours. Grinding flour took all day. Blades flew from handles all the time (until they came up with pitch and tar to glue things up).

The programmers I work with would as soon create a tool that generates code as code repetitive tasks over again. In the Neolithicum, setting time aside for a meta-task was a luxury. A clan had to be pretty well off to be able to risk wasting time on trial and error or to feed someone who’d think of ways to simplify tasks. On the other hand, every new tool invented freed up time that could be devoted to further innovation.

Even at Shakespeare’s time, progress and the passing of time went so impercpetibly slow that the bard happily decipted ancient Romans in Elizabethan attire. Freeing up time has been such a painfully slow process - until the internet came along and - bang - conflated time (as well as space). I’m currently working with Tobias Kirchhofer on a presentation on the Homo Digitalis and her media usage. The disappearance of time will be one focus. Watch this space.

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