Transdisciplinary Research and Educational Outreach
Transdisciplinary Research and Educational Outreach
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The OTS Foundation for Neolithic Studies is developing a Public Service resource for parents, teachers and caregivers who want to raise effective managers and leaders of tomorrow.
• For the teacher: an introduction to content for continued classroom instruction that is not yet available in textbooks.
• For the youngster: reassurance that each has all he or she needs to be fine in an uncertain future, and he or she can feel good about himself or herself right now.
Thanks to modern science, we can look into the ancient world with unprecedented clarity and gain perspective that is central to understanding some of the issues we are having today and is crucial for making healthy decisions for moving forward. It's been a real trip trying to sort them out for different age groups! Thanks to an experimental installation at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry, and some valuable input from Mr. John Graydon Smith, who is its President and CEO, we were able to spread out a vast assortment of materials and assess what worked for whom. More will be revealed as our team moves forward armed with this important feedback information.
We will utilize principles of Evolutionary Anthropology and Archaeoacoustics to engage youngsters and help them feel better about themselves. In contrast to futuristic Virtual Reality in outer space and the artificial constructs of the internet and television, we will create environments that represent a time and place where everything was real, live folks were always around to help, younger ones learned a lot from the older ones and people were everything to each other. Soundtracks with recordings made inside a real 6,000 year-old mortuary shrine provide a slightly weird atmospheric background. Mood and creative inspiration may be elevated by the environment in ways the visitor doesn’t even need to think about.
BACKGROUND
For hundreds of thousands of years of human development, we lived in tribal hunter/gatherer communities. The ancient methods of childrearing are said to be far healthier than our youngsters know today. Things have changed enormously in the last 12,000 years and it’s not all for the better. Ask any child therapist. And it isn't just the kids. Mental health is an issue for many of the adults who are raising them. We believe that what we have learned about Archaeoacoustics can be applied to help.
A study led by an Environmental Anthropologist from the University of Cambridge, England in association with a Child Psychologist suggests that instructive teaching is rare in hunter-gather societies; youngsters primarily learn via observation and imitation. Classroom schooling is often at odds with the modes of learning that are typical of human evolutionary history. Experimental interventions may be the answer to helping our children thrive. (N Chaudhary and A Swanepoel, “What Can We Learn from Hunter-Gatherers about Children’s Mental Health? An Evolutionary Perspective”, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (2023). DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.13773)