Earliest humans not so different from us, research suggests

University of Chicago Press Journals ^ | February 14, 2011 | Unknown

[decimon]

That human evolution follows a progressive trajectory is one of the most deeply-entrenched assumptions about our species. This assumption is often expressed in popular media by showing cavemen speaking in grunts and monosyllables (the GEICO Cavemen being a notable exception). But is this assumption correct? Were the earliest humans significantly different from us?

In a paper published in the latest issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologist John Shea (Stony Brook University) shows they were not.

The problem, Shea argues, is that archaeologists have been focusing on the wrong measurement of early human behavior. Archaeologists have been searching for evidence of "behavioral modernity", a quality supposedly unique to Homo sapiens, when they ought to have been investigating "behavioral variability," a quantitative dimension to the behavior of all living things.

Human origins research began in Europe, and the European Upper Paleolithic archaeological record has long been the standard against which the behavior of earlier and non-European humans is compared. During the Upper Paleolithic (45,000-12,000 years ago), Homo sapiens fossils first appear in Europe together with complex stone tool technology, carved bone tools, complex projectile weapons, advanced techniques for using fire, cave art, beads and other personal adornments. Similar behaviors are either universal or very nearly so among recent humans, and thus, archaeologists cite evidence for these behaviors as proof of human behavioral modernity.

Yet, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils occur between 100,000-200,000 years ago in Africa and southern Asia and in contexts lacking clear and consistent evidence for such behavioral modernity. For decades anthropologists contrasted these earlier "archaic" African and Asian humans with their "behaviorally-modern" Upper Paleolithic counterparts, explaining the differences between them in terms of a single "Human Revolution" that fundamentally changed human biology and behavior. Archaeologists disagree about the causes, timing, pace, and characteristics of this revolution, but there is a consensus that the behavior of the earliest Homo sapiens was significantly that that of more-recent "modern" humans.

Shea tested the hypothesis that there were differences in behavioral variability between earlier and later Homo sapiens using stone tool evidence dating to between 250,000- 6000 years ago in eastern Africa. This region features the longest continuous archaeological record of Homo sapiens behavior. A systematic comparison of variability in stone tool making strategies over the last quarter-million years shows no single behavioral revolution in our species' evolutionary history. Instead, the evidence shows wide variability in Homo sapiens toolmaking strategies from the earliest times onwards. Particular changes in stone tool technology can be explained in terms of the varying costs and benefits of different toolmaking strategies, such as greater needs for cutting edge or more efficiently-transportable and functionally-versatile tools. One does not need to invoke a "human revolution" to account for these changes, they are explicable in terms of well-understood principles of behavioral ecology.

This study has important implications for archaeological research on human origins. Shea argues that comparing the behavior of our most ancient ancestors to Upper Paleolithic Europeans holistically and ranking them in terms of their "behavioral modernity" is a waste of time. There are no such things as modern humans, Shea argues, just Homo sapiens populations with a wide range of behavioral variability. Whether this range is significantly different from that of earlier and other hominin species remains to be discovered. However, the best way to advance our understanding of human behavior is by researching the sources of behavioral variability in particular adaptive strategies.

###

John Shea, "Homo sapiens is as Homo sapiens was: Behavioral variability vs. 'behavioral modernity' in Paleolithic archaeology." Current Anthropology 54:1 (February 2011).

[decimon]

As you were ping.

[DaxtonBrown]

Now if this archaeologist would just compare 250,000 years of Television use instead of stone tool use she’d be onto something.

[JimSEA]

Anthropologists have long speculated that language originated 60,000 to 80,000 years ago. That is totally counterintuitive to me. It makes no sense to me that the brain and other physiological changes necessary for language preceeded language by some 100,000 to 200,000 years. To me proto language must have come before physical changes. Otherwise we have to explain the evolution of complex physical changes for which there was no need. Selection of mutations that facilitated existing speech makes more sense.

I rather suspect that early Homo Sapiens were not too different than us. Minus the iPhone that is.

[muawiyah]

A quarter million years of laying on the couch drinking beer and eating potato chips is going to tell you what?

They've got gorillas who can do that with ease:

[decimon]

Now if this archaeologist would just compare 250,000 years of Television...

Modern stone age family.

[knarf]

How about;

God was playing in the dirt one day, and ...

[BitWielder1]

They has iPhones. Just looked like stone slabs that's all.
(I concede they may have had a black-and-white display.)

[Natural Law]

"They has iPhones."

They were just called iStones.

[bunkerhill7]

Earliest humans not so different from us, research suggests;

They were Egyptians

[Kenny Bunk]

Go to ANY Mediterranean port city in ANY country and you will see the Neanderthal type working the docks and fishing boats. Short, bow-legged, long arms, powerful heavy, muscles, covered with thick tawny hair, heavy brow ridges, like GEICO guys on steroids.

Neandertals (gotta remember to drop the "h") R us! They didn't disappear, they crossed with Cro-Magnons and the short guys are working the docks.

[smokingfrog]

[TheLawyerFormerlyKnownAsAl]

Research has already shown that they wore their head pelts backward and sported earrings.

[AGreatPer]

At least the Pirates were winning back then. (If they had boats???)

Wonder if they had brains enough to make boats.

We sure have a lot of questions to ask God when we get there.

[SunkenCiv]

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve
in local libraries

Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

[Kenny Bunk]

Look, we owe a lot to those Cro-Magnons. It would have taken several more millenia to discover that a spear can be thrown as well as used as a stabbing weapon. And frankly, I don't know if Neandertals could have ever come up with the thrower-gizmo.

But that is no reason for those bastards to cop a tude on Neandertals. It is also very unfair that their women can run faster than Neandertal men, whereas, their guys can always jump OUR women. Either that or those broads are just pretending to be slow?

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
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[null and void]

God was playing in the dirt one day, and ...

[decimon]

"Evidence of clan-based societies in Megalithic period"

McGregaliths?

Don't know if that's posted but I didn't post it.

[TheOldLady]

ping