• Zoabrown@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    6 hours ago

    I think this is a good reminder that traits we label one way today could have been real strengths in different contexts. Deep focus and strong memory would’ve been incredibly valuable skills in many ancient communities. It’s all about perspective.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      8 hours ago

      Some people are broken. They’re the narcissists and psychopaths and people who refuse to address their trauma(having trauma is fine, doing nothing about it and making it everyone else’s problem is less so) who we keep handing power to for some fucking reason.

    • Riverside@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      31 minutes ago

      Sven is more of a Germanic name, in Siberia reindeer herders are definitely not speaking Germanic languages.

  • how_we_burned@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    10 hours ago

    So I get to endlessly catalogue stuff and be around creatures who don’t judge me and, best of all, I don’t have to deal with any humans.

    Sign me up baby

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      10 hours ago

      and in the times you must speak to a human, it’s someone who’s coming to you deeply interested in your big tree diagram of reindeer

  • @fossilesque This does not surprise me at all. I used to work in the horse racing industry and there were legends of stable managers who had memorized the genealogy of the horses going back generations. Supposedly, these are the people who guided the horse breeding once upon a time.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      39
      ·
      edit-2
      16 hours ago

      Its still so upsetting that they send him to the doctor who was like, “that thing that makes you happy and does not hurt anyone”, lets help you stop doing that.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          40 minutes ago

          That “in this way he was cured of his illness” is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there. I’d bet that the method used could also be described as torture until he agreed to stop or acted like he no longer wanted to.

          I wonder how much faith in doctors came from vague references like this that only talk about the outcome and skips over the fucked up shit they called “treatment” back in the day. Makes me wonder if many people at the time saw doctors for the “knows a few things about some herbs and setting broken bones but otherwise is just a scam artist that might kill or maim you for no benefit” they were.

          And the sad thing is that a lot of doctors these days are still like that; their body of knowledge is better than back in the plague doctor days, but if a patient strays into unknown territory, they often keep up the “I’m an expert in this” front while talking out of their ass (often an indirect accusation of just trying to get the pain meds they used to push, or some other brush off).

    • chickenf622@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      42
      ·
      20 hours ago

      I immediately thought of this, and you beat me to it. Honestly it seems to be a very nuanced account of autism. It’s certainly unusual but bro got great joy from watching ships and people only found it a bit odd.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      edit-2
      11 hours ago

      Yeah, prehistoric life is sometimes portrayed as simplistic, skipping the fact that hunter-gatherers knew the landscape and all plants, grasses and animals for kilometres around. Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel ‘Shaman’ does a decent job of depicting what life in those times might’ve been like.

      Granted, I instead memorize my city’s streets and organization of my computer stuff.

    • tetris11@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      edit-2
      16 hours ago

      “Was that rock always there, or was it disturbed by a predator?”
      “Hmm. That rock I remember, rough sandstone, 25 sides, angled south-east. I’m unsure of its neighbour though with rough sandstone, 25 sides, angled south-south-east.”

      • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        16 hours ago

        It takes a village to survive. Some to remember the exact differences between safe, fun, and deadly mushrooms and others to turn predators into prey.

        • Tonava@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          9 hours ago

          And some stay up all night to watch the fire and be the guard when everyone else sleeps. And some see and remember the weather patterns and can tell when it’s a good weather and when the winter is going to come. And some look at the stars and the moon and can always remember and tell the directions where to go. And some know all the animal tracks and know all the animal sounds. And some smell and taste a lot better when things are funky, so nobody dies. And…

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    19 hours ago

    I initially misread that as ‘gynecological and medical history’ and it put an entirely different and quite unpleasant spin on the whole story.

  • Alexander@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    14 hours ago

    Hey just so that you know, it is not polite to discuss reindeer count with outsiders.

    But I know people just like that.

    • Ruthalas@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 hours ago

      I am not clear if this comment is a joke or serious.

      If serious, what do you mean, and why is that? I am curious.