Speleofacting

Anthropologists and their hate crimes against cave people wear me out. “No other hominid species could possibly have been one-tenth as sophisticated and emotional and toolly as us, the amazing Homo sapiens.” That  is the working assumption of the average archeologist.

“Homo erectus ate raw food,” they allege, “because they were too dumb to manage fire.” Oops. Erectus seems to have been barbecuing in Africa more than a million years before sapiens was a twinkle in the eye of Homo habilis.

“Paddling a boat 25 miles in a strong current is too intellectually demanding for anyone but us,” scholars assert, “therefor erectus must have spread through the Pacific islands by accident, like ants bobbing around on driftwood. Poor things.” Oops. Not only erectus, but also a second species of “hobbit people“, seem to have been exceptionally lucky floating ants, given that they first colonized the “remote” Indonesian island of Flores 700,000 years ago. (We sapiens are about 200,000 years old.)

“Neanderthals knew nothing of home decorating,” the anthropologists sniff. “They just threw their bear skins down at the mouth of a cave and called it good.”

Oops. The recent discovery of structures laid out 300 meters deep in a French cave suggest neanderthalensis not only managed fire for cooking, but also managed fire for exploring 300 meters into the pitch black gut of the earth, and also hung out there in well-appointed rooms. The construction method: stalagmites harvested from the cave floor, whacked into uniform lengths, and stacked to form barriers. The novelty of this homemaking style was sufficiently unique to demand a new word: Speleofacts, from the Latin “cavemaking supplies.”

The bias that makes such discoveries surprising bothers me. Anybody who presumes only Homo sapiens appreciates a comfortable and attractive territory is crying out for an introduction to another species of talented home-makers. Allow me: The photos below are of huts made of sticks, landscaped with color-sorted stones, petals, bottle caps, etc. Scroll down to meet the artist.

wikimedia commons pd

Satin bowerbird. Wikimedia commons pd

Queen Mary’s Bedchamber: Intimate it’s not.

This question came to me when I came across a study claiming that people who live in the upper floors of apartment buildings feel more secure at night. Duh, right? A territory that’s hard to invade is a plum territory whatever species you may be. But then I got to wondering if this is why we also tend to sleep upstairs.

Duh again? Probably.

The history of bedrooms is pretty brief: Until quite recently, we slept on the ground, on crumpled up plants or animal skins. To say we were vulnerable in our slumbering state is an understatement. The invention of walls allowed us to harden the defenses during this perilous overnight period. But windows were only adopted about five minutes ago, historically speaking: In the long, dark era between the invention of the wall and the invention of the window, to accomplish much of anything besides sleeping, we had to go outside where we could see.

A number of cultures have paused house development right there. The Korowai people of Papua, New Guinea, build their one-room houses in treetops, where extended-family members hang out with pigs and whatever else is valuable enough to haul up the ladder. During the day they descend to tend gardens, hunt, gather, and let the pigs stretch their legs. But their down-time is spent in the safety of the tree-fort. The igloo and the tee-pee are similar: They’re not good for much beyond sleeping.

But with the rise of “civilization” and economic disparity, a class of folk emerged who didn’t have much need to go outdoors. These people delegated their food-chasing and enemy-spearing to others. In the great halls of medieval Europe, great walls protected a heated space where the upper class could plot, play, and sleep en masse.

Further income disparity produced greater domestic stratification, as the cream of the crop now built a fort-within-a-fort over the great hall. Like the great hall this was a multipurpose space, where business, pleasure, and sleep took their turns.

So this seems to be the nub: Sleeping was a fairly public, or at least social, activity for most of human history. And as humans gain wealth, we often seem to spend it increasing the privacy and security for our sleeping hours.

And like many other creatures, we seem to understand intuitively that the higher you climb, the safer you are.

PLOS One

Thanks, Arab States. Here’s a nifty illustration of how the “Arab oil embargo” of 1973 threw a cold bucket of moderation over an oil-drunk nation.

I well remember when the Arab members of OPEC stopped selling us oil. Wood stoves sprouted all over our leaky old farmhouse. Well, not quite everywhere–the Mason jars of boiling water we used to warm our beds still froze if we kicked them out onto the floor in the night. But the living room got a giant airtight stove with Nordic deer prancing on its sides, and Dad’s study got a small Jotul, and he glued panels of blue Styrofoam insulation to the inside of that room. Plastic sheeting went up over the windows, and never really came down again. I guess that had less to do with the Arabs than it did with intensifying conflict within the Organization of Petroleum Importing Holmeses. Anyway, the embargo made an impression.

And it left a mark on our national petro-gluttony, too. The red lines in these graphs track total energy use in residential buildings over the years. That hiccup in the early 1970s represents the the time oil jumped from $3 to $12 a barrel. People insulated their houses. They replaced old windows with double-paned ones. Building standards improved. We did better. We consumed less. Thanks, Arabs.

(The top graph is less impressive, because it tracks total energy use, to run refrigerators, water heaters, clothes dryers, massive TVs, etc. The lower graph tracks energy per square foot of house.)

If you bought a house at the peak of the real estate bubble and then watched your value tumble, congratulations: You’re back in the black.

Well, if you’re in Greater Portland. In fact, in Greater Portland, you’ve probably soared somewhat over what you paid back in the previous bubble. Here’s the graph for the past ten years of average sale prices in Portland.

The bubble is busting on the left side of this graph; values wallow for a few years; and then jump out of bed in 2012. Now we’re at a point where most people’s values are a click above the previous peak. In Greater Portland.

Let’s count our blessings. Here’s how other parts of the state are doing:

Here’s Bath, just up the coast. Bath is juuuuuust breaking even.

Bangor: Just a little bit more…

But Lewiston!

Local economic conditions, that’s the big lever on price of real estate.

So what do we do, as Maine’s agrarian and manufacturing economy continues to crumble, taking down communities that have stood for two hundred years? How does a society manage that? I find the question fascinating, in a painful kinda way.

We Euro-humans distributed ourselves across the landscape in a pattern dictated by water power and sheep pasture.

But we have outgrown water power, and synthetic fibers cost a fraction of what it takes to grow sheep. Our old patterns of living off the land are recorded in the houses of Washington County and Lewiston. But those old patterns don’t match the new economy.

Something will have to move.

Lincoln County: Land of Lincoln, slowly sinkin.

Washington County: Where is the bounty?

mreis data