Re: Bad Archaeology

On Sep 7, 8:27 am, "J.LyonLayden" <JosephLay...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 7, 4:43 am, Eric Stevens <eric.stev...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:47:14 -0000, "J.LyonLayden"

<JosephLay...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 6, 8:35 pm, Eric Stevens <eric.stev...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:34:45 -0500, Tom McDonald

Even with agriculture you are limited by area of agricultural land
within the range set by the perishability of your food and the means
to transport it.

Large towns and cities are absolutely dependent on transport.

Eric Stevens

I'm thinking I have to mostly stick to fishing villages with 50-60
people for the sedentary clans.
I'm wondering if I can have them w/ fishing poles. We know they fished
but we don't know how.
Oldest stone hooks are 20,000...but was bone used before that date?

How about nets and spears?

We know maori used nets thousands of feet long. Why should not our
primitive ancestors?

Excellent thanks.

Maybe not entirely out of the question for the last few tens of
thousands of years; but I think using nets a half-million years ago
would be fraught with fraughtiness. I'd go with toggle hooks (see
below), and perhaps natural tidal pools for hand-catching or stick-
spearing.

But what about bone hooks? Is it plausible?

Bone might have preserved fairly well in some contexts, so you might
want to be careful with that.

Hooks, as the 'J" things we tend to think of, might be problematic in
any media.

However, I think using wooden toggles (double-pointed short, strong
sticks with a groove in the middle for the string) might solve all the
problems. They are attested in the archaeology (although I don't know
to what time-depth, nor to which Homo other than Hss), they are very
effective, and they would rot quite nicely in the interrum.

You'd probably have to have something to bait the toggle, and a stone
sinker of some sort to keep it down.

For the first sentence of a story something like:

"Half a million years ago, by a river near a bay, the sidhe sat with
his back to a luan tree, casting his fishing line into the water."

It kind of gives a rustic, hobbit-like mood.

*Sidhe*? Surely you jest!

The name is taken, and most folks will relate it to Great Britain and
Ireland. If you want them to be the *forbears* of the Sidhe, I think
you'd be better off giving them another name, and developing their
group characteristics with a Sidhe-oid bent. I think it'd be better to
have your readers make the connection through how your characters act
and how their culture develops, rather than telling them right out
loud.

I am a great believer in 'show me, don't tell me' in fiction writing.
It calls for a defter touch with back-story and dialogue than straight
exposition. However, I find that it engages the reader much more
effectively. It makes the reader think, and it allows the reader to
add nuances and coolness that the writer didn't think of--but gets
credit for anyway!

Just my $0.02 USD.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Bad Archaeology
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