Plant-based knowledge
 

Graeber / Wengrow: "By plant-based knowledge we don't just mean new ways of working with wild flora to produce food, spices, medicines, pigments or poisons. We also mean the development of fibre-based crafts and industries, and the more abstract forms of knowledge these tend to generate about properties of time, space, and structure."
 
Also, "the development of mathematical and geometrical knowledge that is (quite literally) intertwined with the practice of these crafts. Women's association with such knowledge extends back to some of the earliest surviving depictions of the human form" [we have Ice Age figurines depicting women with "woven headgear, string skirts and belts made of cord"]

> from David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021)'s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

> tagged with #prehistory, #women, #math, #geometry, #form, #space, #time, #botany

> created Apr 24, 2025 at 10:48:57 AM


> part of unfinished everything


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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

selection, arrangement, and original text available for creative reuse under this licensing arrangement

authors' quoted words are their own.


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