Comments on: 45,000 years of caring for the disabled

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 23:15:00 +0000

Ahh….I don’t follow UK politics as much anymore. So, this guy is too radioactive for UKIP, huh? We have a few of those, too.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:11:00 +0000

The UKIP is the UK version of the Tea Party.

By: BunnyShank

BunnyShank — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:27:00 +0000

You think the fact that there is evidence of care means that you can put a subjective intent on it?

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:19:00 +0000

Glad to see he’s been suspended and his party has disavowed him in no uncertain terms. He also argued for “killing grandma” at the other end of the life cycle….so maybe all the Tea Partiers over here should look to the UK for proof of their fears.

By: niktemadur

niktemadur — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:42:00 +0000

A plausible thing that occurs to me is that people with certain physical abnormalities could have been seen as having spiritual powers. Born with them to boot, as opposed to acquiring them via a “traditional” shaman route.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:44:00 +0000

Money and power in a cave 45,000 years ago?

By: BunnyShank

BunnyShank — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 09:23:00 +0000

Any one and more of the following, status, money, power, things that objectify, rather than empathize, or combination of these and the above. Its that we can’t know from the evidence what the subjective purpose was for the care, its just evidence that they were cared for.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:40:00 +0000

Meanwhile, in the year 2012..... UK candidate calls for mandatory abortions for fetuses with spina bifida or Down's Syndrome.

"It's the only way to be sure." -- Lt. Ellen T. Ripley

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 06:59:00 +0000

No. But they might not have thought in terms of able bodied and disabled. If you do not have complete use of your legs you can develop other essential skills such as drumming or storytelling. It could be quite simply a natural economic calculation making full use of all human resources available. This doesn’t stop anyone leaving granny out in the cold to feed the wolves when she can no longer even sew.
The mediaeval Christian development of the Western sense of compassion requires us first of all to create others who suffer and are deserving of compassion and then to punish them properly (to make absolutely sure that they are truly deserving of compassion). There are infinite ways of making the suffering of The Son of Man real.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:22:00 +0000

What other motive would you propose?

By: BunnyShank

BunnyShank — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 02:29:00 +0000

Is it only me that read it and thought “Cared for them for what?” People can give care to those who need “accommodations” but it doesn’t mean it was with altruistic intent or any intent that we would recognize as compassionate. Maybe I have worked in too many nursing homes.

By: Thomas Shellock

Thomas Shellock — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 01:23:00 +0000

None of these people would have survived an American High School

By: GawainLavers

GawainLavers — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:29:00 +0000

Discovered in 2009, he is only one of a collection of prehistoric burials demonstrating that, even while living under harsh conditions, our ancestors went out of their way to care for people who couldn’t care for themselves and make space in the community for people who had to live differently than the norm.

Not directly relevant to the topic at hand, but I’m always a little bothered at the Discovery Channel Cave-man vision of prehistoric human life: nasty brutish and short with dumbfuck hominids bumbling around: falling off of rocks, being hunted by ferrets and constantly living on the brink of starvation.

So far as we can tell (and most modern stone age cultures suggest) prehistoric people lived pretty comfortably. They ate well, and while they probably had to be substantially more active than us, but were not subject to the constant toil of later agrarian living.

You have to remember that this is genus that began a wave of extinctions from pretty much the moment it figured out how to use sticks and sharp rocks, and had the time to figure out things like dentistry about 9000 years ago.

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:23:00 +0000

I don’t think they had enough activists to teach them to be sensitive to the feelings of the differently abled. The activist class doesn’t arise until some time after the domestication of wheat. Also, I think sensitivity training post-dates Lascaux.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:01:00 +0000

Maybe they didn’t think abled and disabled butdifferently abled. No-one is simply a recipient of care.

By: BookGuy

BookGuy — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:53:00 +0000

The Neanderthal’s disgusting socialism was their downfall. SCIENCE FACT.

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:18:00 +0000

236 years after the official start of our nation, and the US as a society is still not as civilized as Neanderthals were?

By: tré

tré — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:58:00 +0000

Not to mention if we agreed in a nonbinding treaty to meet our own standards of care for them, we’d lose our sovereignty to the New World Order.

By: oasisob1

oasisob1 — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:35:00 +0000

But it would be too expensive to take care of them. We just can’t do it.

By: Jeremy Sweeney

Jeremy Sweeney — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:27:00 +0000

Occipitocervical fusion is no joke, especially when it’s congenital.