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Earliest humans not so different from us, research suggests
University of Chicago Press Journals ^ | February 14, 2011 | Unknown

Posted on 02/14/2011 2:33:19 PM PST by 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).


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: evolution; godsgravesglyphs; neandertal; neandertals; neanderthal; neanderthals
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1 posted on 02/14/2011 2:33:19 PM PST by decimon
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To: SunkenCiv

As you were ping.


2 posted on 02/14/2011 2:34:37 PM PST by decimon
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To: decimon

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


3 posted on 02/14/2011 2:45:07 PM PST by DaxtonBrown (HARRY: Money Mob & Influence (See my Expose on Reid on amazon.com written by me!))
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To: decimon
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.

4 posted on 02/14/2011 2:50:18 PM PST by JimSEA
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To: DaxtonBrown
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:

5 posted on 02/14/2011 2:51:57 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: DaxtonBrown
Now if this archaeologist would just compare 250,000 years of Television...

Modern stone age family.

6 posted on 02/14/2011 2:52:07 PM PST by decimon
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To: JimSEA
How about;

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

7 posted on 02/14/2011 2:52:15 PM PST by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true.)
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To: JimSEA
They has iPhones. Just looked like stone slabs that's all.
(I concede they may have had a black-and-white display.)

8 posted on 02/14/2011 2:54:44 PM PST by BitWielder1 (Corporate Profits are better than Government Waste)
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To: BitWielder1
"They has iPhones."

They were just called iStones.

9 posted on 02/14/2011 3:15:38 PM PST by Natural Law (As a Catholic I know I am held to a higher standard (but it's worth it).)
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To: decimon
Earliest humans not so different from us, research suggests;

They were Egyptians

10 posted on 02/14/2011 3:34:26 PM PST by bunkerhill7
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To: bunkerhill7
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.

11 posted on 02/14/2011 3:45:09 PM PST by Kenny Bunk (Man up, Mubarak ... you're Air Force and you done OK!)
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To: decimon

12 posted on 02/14/2011 3:57:03 PM PST by smokingfrog ( BORN free - taxed to DEATH (and beyond) ...)
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To: Kenny Bunk

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


13 posted on 02/14/2011 4:00:53 PM PST by TheLawyerFormerlyKnownAsAl
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To: TheLawyerFormerlyKnownAsAl
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.

14 posted on 02/14/2011 4:09:01 PM PST by AGreatPer (Voting for the crazy conservative gave us Ronald Reagan....Ann Coulter)
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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]

15 posted on 02/14/2011 4:10:37 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: TheLawyerFormerlyKnownAsAl
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?

16 posted on 02/14/2011 4:11:39 PM PST by Kenny Bunk (Man up, Mubarak ... you're Air Force and you done OK!)
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To: decimon; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...

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Thanks decimon. There's another one I'd planned to post, "Evidence of clan-based societies in Megalithic period" may be a nice one-two punch. Of course, maybe you or someone else has posted it already, I've not finished my screen.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
 

· History topic · history keyword · archaeology keyword · paleontology keyword ·
· Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword ·


17 posted on 02/14/2011 4:12:30 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: knarf
God was playing in the dirt one day, and ...

God Plays with Dinosaurs

18 posted on 02/14/2011 4:25:39 PM PST by null and void (We are now in day 755 of our national holiday from reality. - 0bama really isn't one of US.)
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To: SunkenCiv
"Evidence of clan-based societies in Megalithic period"

McGregaliths?

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

19 posted on 02/14/2011 4:30:58 PM PST by decimon
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To: wendy1946

ping


20 posted on 02/14/2011 4:44:37 PM PST by TheOldLady ("20 Years Ago Desert Storm began...where were you...?" "I believe I was hitting it." - Lazamataz)
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