[Prev] [Next] [Masterlist]
Pairing: Heimdall x fem!Reader
Word count: 6.3k
Summary: You find yourself all alone in the icy cold of Fimbulwinter in Midgard. But absence makes the heart grow fonder, right...?
A/N: i'm so sry for the delay, writing this chap was a struggle and a half honestly, just,, pure angst fest ajskd💀 but you know meee~ i promise i'll make sure the payoff will be worth it teehee<33
***
Part 25
Touch your ring before you black out girl! 😭
tucks you in and kisses your forehead then shows you my knuckle tats that say SEEP TITE
lil 16 page zine that i made at the coffee shop this weekend! a sort of pick your path style mini game, because i love wizards + interactive fiction. hope you get out of the wizard dungeon!!
good. you do not deserve to have bird imagery
Tumblr has the opportunity to do the funniest fucking thing with their next mobile icon update
for the love of god someone take me to a museum i need to cry over some ancient childrens toys or something
slovakia, 7th century / 2022
Talking about how humans have always been humans, here is one of the archeological finds that makes me cry. Like, tears rolling down the face as I’m typing this.
They posed the little boy like he was sleeping. They covered him in a shroud and placed a pillow under his head before they buried him. 78000 years ago they put time and effort and love into tucking their baby in for the last time. We still bury our loved ones like they are sleeping. We place pillows under their heads.
look: our neanderthal ancestors took care of the sick and disabled so if ur post-apocalyptic scenario is an excuse for eugenics, u are a bad person and literally have less compassion than a caveman
Yes but they also when extinct which implies whatever they were doing at the time wasn’t fit for their environment.
So, it’s been awhile since I took a human evolution course, so some of this might be a little out of date, but
1) Whether or not Neanderthals went extinct is still kind of up for debate, and seems to hinge largely on whether you think that Neanderthals are a H. Sapiens subspecies or not, which often seems like a mildly pointless argument to me since it’s largely a fight about which definition of “species” to use
2) Even if we argue that Neanderthals are our direct ancestors and never went extinct, several Neanderthal *traits* (like their noses and their forheads) *have* left the population. Care for the disabled is not one of them.
Saying “Neanderthals cared for their sick and injured and are now extinct, therefore care for the disabled is maladaptive” is like saying “Dodos are extinct therefore beaks are a terrible idea”
Statements about “less compassion than a caveman” still stand.
–Peter
I teach human evolution to college students, so in addition to that, here’s what we know. There’s some citations (and footnotes) behind the cut, if you’re interested.
So Neanderthals aren’t our direct ancestor- more like a branch of the family tree that didn’t lead to us. Close cousins- close enough to breed- but they evolved outside of Africa about 400kya, while our species evolved in Africa about 200kya*. This is important because it means that altruism can’t possibly be a Neanderthal trait that left the population during the evolution into modern humans; we didn’t evolve from them, so it’s not like we can say “well, this was maladaptive in our ancestors.” This is a behavior you see in two temporally coexisting species (or subspecies), and I do mean two, because it wasn’t just Neanderthals practicing altruism. We did it too.
We have really good evidence that early Homo sapiens sapiens (i.e., us, just old) also took care of their injured, elderly, and disabled. At Cro-Magnon in France, a few individuals clearly suffered from traumatic injury and illness during their lives. Cro-Magnon 1 had a nasty infection in his face; his bones are pitted from it. Cro-Magnon 2, a female, had a partially healed skull fracture, and several of the others had fused neck vertebrae that had fused as a result of healed trauma; this kind of injury would make it impossible to hunt and uncomfortable to move. This kind of injury can be hard to survive today, even with modern medical care; the fact that the individuals at Cro-Magnon survived long enough for the bones to remodel and heal indicate that somebody was taking care of them. At Xujiayao, in northern China, there’s evidence of healed skull fractures (which would have had a rather long recovery time and needed care);
This evidence of altruism extends past injured adults, as well. One of the most compelling cases is at Qafzeh, which is in Israel. Here we see evidence of long-term care for a developmentally disabled child (as well as a child who had hydrocephaly and survived). Qafzeh 11, a 12-13 year old at time of death, suffered severe brain damage as a child. Endocasts (basically making a model of the inside of the skull, where the brain would be) show that the volume of the brain was much smaller than expected; likely the result of a growth delay due to traumatic brain injury. The patterns of development suggest that this injury occurred between the ages of 4 and 6. They very likely suffered from serious neurological problems; the areas of the brain that were injured are known to control psychomotricity. This means that the kid may have had a hard time controlling their eye movements, general body movement, keeping visual attention, performing specific tasks, and managing uncertainty; in addition, Broca’s area might also have been damaged, which likely would have affected the kid’s ability to speak. Long and short of it, without help, this kid wouldn’t have survived to age 12-13.
But they did. They lived, and they were loved. When they died, they were given a funeral- we know this based on body position and funeral offerings. Mortuary behavior was common among both Neanderthals and archaic Homo sapiens, and this burial was particularly interesting. The body was placed on its back, its legs extended and the arms crossed over the chest. Deer antlers were laid on the upper part of the chest; in the archaeological context, they were in close contact with the palmar side of the hand bones, meaning it’s likely that they were placed in the hands before burial. This points to Qafzeh 11 being valued by the community- why go to the effort for somebody you don’t care about? Compassion is a very human trait, and to call it maladaptive is to ignore hundreds of thousands of years of human experience.
for some reason the idea of a caveman stubbing his toe and going “oh fuck oh shit” is so funny to me, like people have been experiencing little agonies like getting hangnails or burning their fingers while stoking the fire for hundreds of thousands of years, a dude 40,000 years ago rolling his ankle chasing a mammoth and absolutely eating shit and falling face first in front of all of his buddies and then standing up and trying to play it off…..so embarrassing
everyone is like “is gorg…..okay”
and gorg stands up with mud on his face and goes “don’t look at me right now”
The idea of ancient children going to play with their parent's tools and breaking one only to panic and set it back in place like it never happened? Amazing. Dude getting a bruise from hitting the ground too hard after falling from a tree and lying about it? Incredible.
This is a bit more recent but I’m reminded of the archeological find of a 3000 year old pot somebody burned cheese to the bottom of and they just threw the whole thing away. Were they worried their mama was going to be upset they fucked up the pot? Was cleaning it too much work? Were they really embarrassed? I’ve totally been there. I’ve thrown away a pot I scorched too badly in the past year.
Ceramic vessels in the past were often not the permanent fixtures we have today! Back then ceramics were being fired at much lower temperatures, meaning that they broke or wore down much faster than the high fired stuff we're used to today. That's why we find so many broken pieces in middens at archaeological sites!
So while this is still totally #relatable, it's not quite the same as getting rid of your metal pot in your modern kitchen.
ancient humans were also just some guy, if you got a baby from 60,000 BC and raised him in the 21st century he’d just be another teen boy named logan who tech decks off your arm
this boy from tom björklund’s art WOULD own a minecraft creeper plushy
ok ok ok I’m so sorry but I HAVE to talk about this
there’s something so loving about what tom björklund does and just- fuck I’m foaming at the mouth here
facial reconstruction isn’t a new concept (see the Kennewick Man/Patrick Stewart incident) but it’s difficult to find people that are truly good at it! genuinely there is a big gap in this field because there just aren’t a lot of people who do it professionally!
facial reconstruction, especially from bone or bone fragments, is such a fascinating intersection of art and science, and a tremendous amount of care is put into determining what these people might have looked like.
with that said, it’s VERY easy to screw it up
configuring muscle attachments and fat distribution is genuinely *very* difficult to do, and when you do it badly, you get this (pictured above). by adding too much muscle, they gave this 600 year old man a VERY interesting jawline (notice that the bottom of the chin doesn’t match up with the bone at all!) and they *really* made him look older than he was. would you believe me if I said that he was estimated to only be 46 years old?
basically I’m just REALLY excited about Tom Björklund’s art because it’s amazing work, just from an anthropology perspective
just look at this!!!
facial reconstructions aren’t just an artsy thing that you can just say “oh, that’s cool!” to
by giving these people faces, even if they aren’t always accurate, we open the doors for the average person to connect with the past at a very human level. sure, looking at bones is cool, but looking at art of someone that lived millions of years ago is *incredible*
looking at a picture of a boy that lived millions of years ago and thinking “yeah, he would’ve loved Minecraft” is EXACTLY the reaction that these pieces are meant to elicit
More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.
Few things are more enticing to a youngster than a muddy puddle. The children — likely four in all — raced and splashed through the soppy sloth trackway, leaving their own footprints stamped in the playa — a dried up lake bed. Those footprints were preserved over millennia, leaving evidence of this prehistoric caper, new research finds.
The finding shows that children living in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) liked a good splash. “All kids like to play with muddy puddles, which is essentially what it is,” Matthew Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at Bournemouth University in the U.K. who is studying the trackway, told Live Science. Read more.
Okay, but I would pay extra for this driveway.
Um, can I please get every neighborhood kid and animal to come walk across my driveway? Can I get a cat to just run around on there? This flock of ducks did such an amazing job!
I was 18 months old when my parents built their house. After pouring the concrete slab for the foundation, my father, world’s most sentimental man, carried me down into the hole so he could preserve a single imprint of my little baby foot in the house he was building for me to grow up in.
Naturally, I wriggled loose, so what is actually preserved for posterity in my parents’ basement floor is my mad dash through this glorious new mud pit, followed by my father’s footprints in hot pursuit, a visible scuffle where the fugitive was captured, and then my father’s prints returning to the ladder.
I hope some future archeologist finds your parent’s basement floor because they’re going to lie down on the ground and cry about it.
This would absolutely be the find of a lifetime. I would fucking WEEP
animal prints on roman tiles from calleva (modern day silchester)! feat.:
Why do you study history
'people have always been people' goes for simple human compassion & humor but only if it also means understanding that historical people have always been as complex and nuanced and innovative as they are now. their food and clothing and language and tools, particularly of ordinary people, however different than you're used to, should not be assumed to represent cultural inferiority or that those people had inferior tastes or intelligence or capacity for feeling than you do
The legacies people leave behind in you.
My handwriting is the same style as the teacher’s who I had when I was nine. I’m now twenty one and he’s been dead eight years but my i’s still curve the same way as his.
I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We haven’t spoken in four years.
I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.
I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.
I learned to love books because my father loved them first.
How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I don’t know it. How beautiful.
absolutely obsessed with these tags
You know what’s cool about humans?
For most animals, going blind, deaf, or losing a limb might be a death sentence.
But for humans, it’s like,
“Oh, you’re blind? Have a cane, no biggie. You can hold my arm while we cross the street if you want.”
“You’re deaf? No problem! We can talk with our hands! Yay!”
“You’re blind AND deaf? It’s cool, we can talk with touch.”
“You lost a limb? That’s badass dude. Nice prosthetic btw.”
And archeological evidence suggest we’ve been doing stuff like this since the Paleolithic era. We are just SO DETERMINED to care for each other that we can survive and thrive with disabilities that would KILL other animals. And we do it with love and intelligence.
“You lost a limb? That’s
badass dude. Nice prosthetic
btw.”
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
reading this article about love notes written in rhunes dating back to the 12th century… and they’re as simple as “kiss me,” or “Ljótgeirr and Jóhan are eachother’s friends” … insane. i’m losing my mind thinking of this.
This is a medieval wooden vessel with the text “kiss me” carved on the inside of it… like. speechless. (picture Runinskrifter.net via this article)
But Who Will Confess to Drawing the Dog?
We discovered these delightful “decorations” on a 16th century book discussing the topic of confession of sins.
Alas, sometimes the mind wanders.
pitter patter putter patter *you look down and see this*
I trust him
Okay but this is exactly what I love.
The above image is a historical artifact. Colima dog. It dates back to circa 100 BCE-300 CE. (x)
And, around two thousand years later it was originally shaped with care, painted with love, and adored… someone draws it. Draws it using a new technological device that allows modern people to shape things with care, paint with love, and even move them -on a screen, glowing.
And the said person decides to share it with the world. The whole world adores it.
I love the connection between past and today. We were humans back then, and we are still the same.
Cute dog :)
