Learn about why ants are better farmers than we'll ever be; how female big-game hunters were likely common in the early Americas; and why presenting too much evidence could actually make you lose an argument, thanks to the overkill backfire effect.
Learn about why ants are better farmers than we'll ever be; how female big-game hunters were likely common in the early Americas; and why presenting too much evidence could actually make you lose an argument, thanks to the overkill backfire effect.
Ants Are Better Farmers Than We'll Ever Be by Steffie Drucker
Female big-game hunters were likely common in the early Americas by Grant Currin
Presenting Too Much Evidence Could Make You Lose an Argument by Cody Gough
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/early-female-hunters-were-more-common-than-we-thought
CODY GOUGH: Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn about why ants are better farmers than we'll ever be what the quote, unquote, "discovery" of female big game hunters can teach us about human knowledge and why presenting too much evidence could make you lose an argument.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Humans started farming about 10,000 years ago, but another creature was way ahead of us. That's right. The world's first farmers were ants, fungus-farming ants to be specific. There are 240 species of them, and they've been at it for more than 60 million years. My goodness.
And scientists say that we could learn a thing or two from how they do it.
CODY GOUGH: You know how they were able to farm that far back, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: How?
CODY GOUGH: Because there was an alien ant farm.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, that's pretty good.
CODY GOUGH: Thanks.
ASHLEY HAMER: The only alien ant farm song I know is a cover of Michael Jackson.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, they were smooth criminals.
ASHLEY HAMER: They were. All right. Well, we humans have learned to domesticate plants in the same way we did with animals through selective breeding. While that can result in crops with better taste, texture or yield, it also reduces genetic diversity. And that can make the plants more vulnerable to weather and to pests.
But the ants have this problem figured out. They dig out complex systems of underground chambers to protect their bounty from the elements. Keeping the domesticated fungi isolated prevents it from cross-breeding with other wild species. So it's entirely dependent on the ants.
And the ants are just as dependent on the fungi. Some fungus-growing ants are known as leaf cutters, because they forage for pieces of leaves. But they're actually unable to eat those leaves. Instead, they use them as fertilizer to help the fungus grow. The ants need the fungus to break down those leaf pieces into nutrients that they can digest.
A recent study found that the specific leaves, fruits, and flowers that the ants collect contain a rich blend of nutrients that scientists think is specifically targeting the requirements of the ants' crops. Since this fungus is all the ants can eat, they have to keep it healthy.
Every colony specializes in one type of fungus. They keep those underground growth chambers tidy to prevent disease, not to mention the fact that their bodies have evolved to produce an antibiotic pesticide. Scientists believe that the ancestors of these ants lived in lush rain forests, with leaves they were able to eat. But a global cooling event dried things up 35 million years ago, and the ants were forced to adapt. This is probably what inspired their agricultural innovation and allowed them to fan out across multiple continents, including both Americas and the Caribbean.
Organic farming of a single crop in multiple environments and changes in climate, it's the kind of thing human farmers can only dream of. But applying the ants agricultural lessons isn't all that simple. Our crops require sunlight. So they have to be grown above ground. But who knows, with the pressures of climate change, we may need to learn to farm underground just like the ants.
CODY GOUGH: Hunter-gatherer societies are supposedly pretty straightforward. Strong, brave men hunt, while patient dutiful women gather berries and roots and other necessities. But a new find in Peru shows that the Man the Hunter hypothesis is way off the mark. Researchers have gathered new information about female big game hunters.
And this story starts in 2013, when a member of the indigenous Aymara people told researchers about some artifacts he had found nearby. The site was high in the Andes mountains at a place called Wilamaya Patjxa.
Archaeologists partnered with him and other local people to excavate the site. And in 2018, five years later, they uncovered the big find, the 9,000-year-old grave of a female hunter. The grave contains tools of the prehistoric hunting trade, like arrowheads designed to bring down big game and sharp flakes of rock for cutting up carcasses and processing animal hides.
The archaeologists suspected the deceased was a woman from the shape of the bones. And when other researchers analyzed proteins from the teeth, their suspicions were confirmed. Finding a woman hunter was so unexpected that the researchers decided to cast a wide net and see if there might be evidence of other female hunters in graves that had already been excavated and cataloged.
So they'd turned to records of burials in North and South America from the late Pleistocene through the early Holocene. That was basically any grave that's more than 7,000 years old. They found records for 429 people, who were buried at just over 100 distinct sites. Only 27 were found with artifacts to suggest they were hunters.
And guess what? Out of those 27, 11 of them were female. That's more than 40%. Is that a huge surprise? Well, it depends on who you are. A ton of indigenous communities already knew this.
Now that isn't to say that the findings aren't important to them, but the bigger story there might center around what counts as knowledge or whose knowledge counts as real knowledge. These findings are a big deal to the Western scientists and archaeologists, who have been wrong about this for centuries.
The researchers points to a couple of reasons for this big mistake. One might be that men seem to do most of the hunting in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, which may have led archaeologists to assume this was always the case. They also point out that many researchers' interpretations have been colored by their own preconceived notions about males and females and the division of labor.
We should thank the Aymara people and the other archaeologists for helping reject the old-fashioned Man the Hunter hypothesis. But real credit should go to the hunter of Wilamaya Patjxa herself. She held up a mirror that lets us see ourselves and the biases that get in the way of the truth.
ASHLEY HAMER: Everybody argues, especially these days, it seems like. If you're getting together with family for the holidays, then you know what I'm talking about. And while there may not be a perfect way to win every argument, there is definitely one way you should not argue. Here's a classic clip to help you get through your next quarrel.
CODY GOUGH: All right. Ashley, what's your strategy for winning arguments?
ASHLEY HAMER: Like I know what you're about to tell me is-- says that I'm wrong. But I will present every piece of evidence.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, do you, really?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, yeah. I'm a link queen.
CODY GOUGH: Yikes. I've definitely been guilty of that in the past. But after writing this article, I am definitely going to stop doing that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Hah.
CODY GOUGH: So science says that presenting too much evidence could make you lose an argument. And I'm going to tell you why with a list of 75 reasons. LOL JK.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's funny.
CODY GOUGH: No, but really this is the thing. If you've ever been arguing on Facebook or Reddit, and most of the comments are like, well, here's a point, or here's an idea or here's my one point of view, and then you get that one comment that is just a wall of text. You know what I'm talking about. I know you've seen these.
ASHLEY HAMER: I've totally written these.
CODY GOUGH: Like 15 bullet points, links to articles, scientific studies, national news stories, all this evidence that you've collected over the last nine years. Well, if that's how you always argue online, then stop, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: OK.
CODY GOUGH: It's because you'll trigger the overkill backfire effect. We've talked about the backfire effect, which is, when your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger. Well, in this case, you're rejecting an argument for a specific cognitive reason. It's harder to process a more complicated argument.
Lots of studies have shown that people are more confident in their judgments when the information backing it up is easy to recall. And it's easier to remember info that was easy to process in the first place. And I mean, really easy.
One study showed that when reading a printed statement, people were more likely to accept it as true when the researchers increased the color contrast of the font it was printed on to make it easier to read.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: That easy, literally, if it's visually easier to process. So keep it simple. And you've got some benefits with this. First, it'll save you time coming up with one idea instead of like 40 to back up your case. And you'll also be less likely to get hit with an argumentum ad logicam, or argument from fallacy.
This is the thing I see more than probably anything else online these days. That's when someone says your entire point is moot because you get one detail wrong. So keep it simple. And hey, you can always add more evidence later.
And when someone overargues with you, by the way, ask them to simplify the point they're trying to make. That'll save you some time. So you don't have to dig through 45 articles. And it'll give them a second chance to maybe change your mind about something. After all, it's good to have an open mind and be curious.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right. Well, what did we learn today?
CODY GOUGH: Well, we learned that while we thought humans were at the top of the food chain, it turns out ants are the king of the farmers. If you've ever seen ants carrying big chunks of leaves, it's not because they're eating them. They're actually using them as fertilizer to keep their fungus harvest fed and healthy, so they can then eat that fungus. And lots of ant species grow specific types of fungus. I wonder if any of them grow magic mushrooms.
ASHLEY HAMER: Whoa, I wonder. I wonder if psilocybin has an effect on ants. I wonder if ants are depressed. You think they're just ants being like, oh I'm just a cog in the machine. I just work all day. There's no meaning.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, yeah, didn't you see that Woody Allen movie, Ants?
ASHLEY HAMER: You call that a Woody Allen movie?
CODY GOUGH: Wasn't he the voice?
ASHLEY HAMER: He was in it, but he makes mov-- that's really funny. No it is. That's--
CODY GOUGH: But Woody Allen was in it.
ASHLEY HAMER: No, you're right. I just-- when I think of Woody Allen, I think of Annie Hall and things like that. So that Woody Allen movie, the cartoon?
CODY GOUGH: I'm kind of right.
ASHLEY HAMER: You're right. Yeah, Woody Allen in that movie was depressed, I think. So case closed. Ants get depressed.
CODY GOUGH: It's a pretty funny movie. Also really good game, SimAnt.
ASHLEY HAMER: I've heard that. I've never done it, but I do love a good Sim.
CODY GOUGH: You've never done it?
ASHLEY HAMER: I've never played it, but I do love a good Sim game.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, SimAnt, SimTower, those got me through my, I don't know, some part of my childhood.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, it's partial to SimTown, and of course, SimCity.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, SimCity and SimCity 2000, more importantly, we had like fusion power.
ASHLEY HAMER: Reticulating splines.
CODY GOUGH: Is anyone listening old enough to get these references? Who knows?
ASHLEY HAMER: Who knows? All right. Well, we also learned that despite the stereotypes of Man the Hunter, it looks like in a lot of hunter-gatherer societies, women were just as involved in hunting as men. Researchers figured this out by looking at the grave goods found in burials at various sites in North and South America that were over 7,000 years old.
Of course, many indigenous people already knew that women were hunters, but this came as a shock to some Western archaeologists. So this discovery reminds us that knowledge is really relative. And it's best to ask the people closest to the source what they think before you make your conclusions.
We also learned that when it comes to arguing, less is more. I need to remember this. Meaning, before you post 867 articles backing up your multiple points, which I totally do, as I said in the clip.
CODY GOUGH: You still do it? We recorded that like two years ago.
ASHLEY HAMER: So I don't-- the thing that I don't do anymore is argue on the internet. I just don't do it anymore. But if I do find myself in an argument, ahhh, see, yeah, I just haven't, I just haven't had a chance to exercise my newfound skills of not using all that evidence. Because I just haven't been debating, which I feel like is OK and healthy.
CODY GOUGH: Uh-hmm.
ASHLEY HAMER: But anyway, if you use all of those links, people are going to be less swayed by your argument. What you need to do is get that one juicy link that is the most persuasive and just leave it at that.
CODY GOUGH: I have also found on Twitter when arguing with somebody, if you need to reply to somebody for any reason, keep your reply to 6 to 10 words tops. Never ever engage with multiple sentences or ideas or thoughts. Because I've just noticed that any time I say more than 6 to 10 words, it just fails miserably. But if you say something so simple and so matter of fact and so like undeniable, then you are making headway, I guess.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's true. And I feel like there's a benefit to you also when you do that, because it forces you to really tailor your message and really think about what you're trying to say, instead of just saying all the words that you have in your head.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Or people can just do what you do, which is the smart thing, and just not argue online.
ASHLEY HAMER: It is much more pleasant that way. It really is. Because, you know what? I've argued with so many people online over the years, and you want to know how many people's minds I've changed? Probably zero. I don't actually know that for a fact, but it's probably zero.
CODY GOUGH: Today's stories were written by Steffie Drucker, Grant Currin and me, Cody Gough, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan, Sonja Hodgen, and Cody Gough. And today's episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY GOUGH: From some mushrooms, I will explain why using the following 700 reasons. Oh wait, we're out of time. Well, fine. Just join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.