Why Did Ancient Humans Bury a Fortune With the Dead?

Ten thousand beads carved from mammoth ivory. Thousands of hours of skilled labour. And then somebody buried the whole thing with two children, head to head, in the ice age cold outside modern-day Vladimir. This video is about Sungir — one of the richest burials in all of prehistory — and about why a society living on the edge of starvation would destroy a fortune on purpose. The answer connects a 34,000-year-old grave to Göbekli Tepe, the banned potlatch ceremonies of the Pacific Northwest, and the logo on your handbag. Sources and further reading: — Erik Trinkaus and colleagues on the Sungir burials — Randall White on Upper Palaeolithic bead production and labour estimates — Klaus Schmidt on Göbekli Tepe — Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class 0:00 Ten thousand beads 0:23 The excavation at Vladimir 0:55 How one bead was made 1:38 The world they lived in 2:31 Why children were the richest burials 3:38 Costly signalling 4:26 The potlatch and the ban 6:23 Göbekli Tepe 7:17 The same logic today 7:59 Back to Sungir New video every day 1-3 #ancienthistory #anthropology #archaeology #ancienthistory #anthropology #humanevolution