The Artificial Ape:
How Technology Changed
the Course of Human Evolution
by Timothy Taylor
Posted on 09/08/2010 8:16:59 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Timothy Taylor is an anthropologist and archaeologist based at Bradford University. In his new book, The Artificial Ape, he argues that the moment our apemen ancestors began chipping at lumps of stone to create their first tools, they released a force -- technology -- that has played a pivotal role in shaping the human species. Such innovations have altered the way we nurture our offspring, prepare our food, use our strength and establish cultures. We did not invent technology, this 50-year-old scientist argues. Technology invented us.
"...There is a perception that technology -- from the industrial revolution to the computer age -- has suddenly put us into a new world, one that is a bit scary. We worry that computers might take us over, for example. But it was ever thus. The genus Homo is a product of the realm of technology. It underpinned our evolution and turned us into a highly intelligent creature. That is why I describe Homo sapiens as an artificial ape... one important development would have been the construction of the first slings for carrying around newborn babies. Without them, women would have expended more biological energy carrying their children in their arms than they would have used on providing them with milk, on lactation. But now, if you had tools to make spears, you could kill animals and remove their skins with the knives you had learned how to make and [from the skins] you could make a sling with which to carry your baby... brain size has decreased slightly over the past 30,000 years and I think that has a lot to do with technology. By that period in our evolution, a caveman no longer needed to remember how many mammoth tusks he was owed by another caveman."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
The Artificial Ape:
How Technology Changed
the Course of Human Evolution
by Timothy Taylor
I would ask from WHERE do these God hating idiots get this stuff.... but I already know that answer....
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kinda sorta. whenever i see a 16 year old girl texting, fixing the makeup, and trying to drive, i don’t lactate, but i do have a cow.
I do find it interesting that brain size has decreased. Not surprising, but interesting. People want to come up with all kinds of theories to explain the rise of early civilzation(s). Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but I don’t see a lot of articles proffering the idea that maybe there were a lot of really smart people running around back then. They were doing studies in an attempt to actually figure sh!+ out. Instead of being pampered papoosed papooses sucking on the government tit..
Hmm, I’m one of those who think that the ancients were absolutely brilliant. And I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people who think the same. Like Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants”.
I haven’t seen much of the world. Traveled Europe. Did that year in Egypt. My dad said if I thought Egypt was great, I ought to check out Baalbek.
Really would like to get to S. America and check some of that.
And I don’t really think the ancients were absolutely brilliant. After what I’ve seen, I know they were.
Baalbek is really something. Never been outside north america, but hopefully will have that chance someday.
Just a little bit of sophistry here, I think.
One would think that, instead of rock hammers, beavers would have discovered cleavers.
“That would have worked if you hadn’t stopped me.” — Egon
Somewhere, off in the distance, I heard a rimshot. : )
Brain size has decreased with allegedly increased sofistikadedness. That’s what’s known as an anomaly.
Baalbek has three very large, squared off columns, the largest of which exceeds 1000 tons, the other two are a mere 800 or so tons. I’m not too sure any certain date has ever been determined for that monument, which is prehistoric. Prehistoric could of course mean just about anything from “prior to the invention of writing” to “the dog ate my homework” to “we haven’t dug in the right place yet”. I suspect that it’s in the area of (or in excess of) 5500 years old, iow, prior to the (known) invention of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Also, at least one of the megalithic structures on Malta is 5600 years old — but of course isn’t as massive.
The largest one-piece quarried object moved in Egypt was more or less in the ballpark, 750 tons (if memory serves), but the largest things in Egypt moved somewhat regularly were the obelisks, the surviving examples of which range from over 100 tons to over 500 tons. Kind of a lot, really. The Romans nabbed a bunch of those, carting them off to Rome, where they remain. The Romans moved them by SEA, which means a civil engineering project that remains a little obscure, and apparently very little studied. Anyone who isn’t amazed by that achievement, well, I’m cutting them out of my will, which means, they’ll never inherit the SunkenCiv EMPIRE...
Oh, sorry...
I don’t get it. Unless the rhyme counts for something.
And Egypt isn’t demanding the obelisks back ?!
How strange.
Probably means they simply haven’t dug in the right place for Baalbek.
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