[Picture of text that reads:]
Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken the time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said
Wholesome, but not a meme.
It’s a meme in the original sense of the word meme:
an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another by imitation or other nongenetic means.
I think we should share those memes too.
I think there could be a place for that, but the sidebar for this community does say ‘When you need a laugh’, so maybe we could create another community for that kind of meme?
Or just change the sidebar description? But this is something for the mods of this community to decide. If they think this thread is off topic they can easily delete or lock it.
Fair enough, and it did get quite a lot of upvotes to be fair.
Your shirt is a meme.
Me: Reads this and feels temporarily good.
Comments: This isn’t a meme, it’s fake, healthcare is expensive, murder exists.
You pretty much summed up my entire experience with this post. Thank you. I see you, and appreciate you.
The takeaway, i guess, is that US healthcare only counts as civilized to those with money.
They’ll fix your broken bone, they just won’t provide any rehab if you don’t have insurance.
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I was gonna say, members of a group caring for one another is a sign of a social species. Like, we have a sample size of one species becoming “civilized” but I can’t imagine a civilization developing in a species that isn’t social. But there are plenty of present and historical examples of this kind of social behavior without civilization.
So it’s cute and could have some relative usefulness but there are some problems with this mythical anecdote:
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animals heal broken legs all the time. It’s not a guaranteed death sentence, if it were there actually wouldn’t even be a way to repair it at all. See: brain, lungs, heart. All things which can very slightly repair themselves from minor injuries, not catastrophic ones.
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bipeds are worse off, but quadrupeds can generally manage, poorly, with only three legs. There are exceptions, but that’s one of the main benefits of having four legs.
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a broken femur can already be a death sentence regardless of early medicine. Very easy to bleed out, the actual maiming is the least of your worries.
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Not a meme
I mean I’m not saying I could, (also not saying I couldn’t) but also isn’t it conceivable that a person managed to crawl back to their cave where they had food stored, bound their own leg, and was lucky enough to avoid infection? Nothing about a healed leg implicitly demands intervention from other beings.
They must have had food stored for a few weeks to months, in a time before preservation techniques.
