Posted on 02/26/2002 10:50:54 AM PST by dead
On the biggest steps in early human evolution scientists are in agreement. The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk habitually on two legs.
They were flaking crude stone tools by 2.5 million years ago. Then some of them spread from Africa into Asia and Europe after two million years ago.
With somewhat less certainty, most scientists think that people who look like us — anatomically modern Homo sapiens — evolved by at least 130,000 years ago from ancestors who had remained in Africa. Their brain had reached today's size. They, too, moved out of Africa and eventually replaced nonmodern human species, notably the Neanderthals in Europe and parts of Asia, and Homo erectus, typified by Java Man and Peking Man fossils in the Far East.
But agreement breaks down completely on the question of when, where and how these anatomically modern humans began to manifest creative and symbolic thinking. That is, when did they become fully human in behavior as well as body? When, and where, was human culture born?
"It's the hot issue, and we all have different positions," said Dr. John E. Yellen, an archaeologist with the National Science Foundation.
For much of the last century, archaeologists thought that modern behavior flowered relatively recently, 40,000 years ago, and only after Homo sapiens had pushed into Europe. They based their theory of a "creative explosion" on evidence like the magnificent cave paintings in Lascaux and Chauvet.
But some rebellious researchers suspected that this theory was a relic of a time when their discipline was ruled by Eurocentrism. Archaeologists, the rebels contended, were simply not looking for earlier creativity in the right places.
Several recent discoveries in Africa and the Middle East are providing the first physical evidence to support an older, more gradual evolution of modern behavior, one not centered in Europe. But other scientists, beyond acknowledging a few early sparks in Africa, remain unswayed. One prominent researcher is putting forward a new hypothesis of genetic change to explain a more recent and abrupt appearance of creativity.
The debate has never been so intense over what archaeologists see as the dawn of human culture.
"Europe is a little peninsula that happens to have a large amount of spectacular archaeology," said Dr. Clive Gamble, director of the Center for the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of Southampton in England. "But the European grip of having all the evidence is beginning to slip. We're finding wonderful new evidence in Africa and other places. And in the last two or three years, this has changed and widened the debate over modern human behavior."
The uncertainty and confusion over the origin of modern cultural behavior stem from what appears to be a great time lag between the point when the species first looked modern and when it acted modern. Perhaps the first modern Homo sapiens emerged with a capacity for modern creativity, but it remained latent until needed for survival.
"The earliest Homo sapiens probably had the cognitive capability to invent Sputnik," said Dr. Sally McBrearty, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut. "But they didn't yet have the history of invention or a need for those things."
Perhaps the need arose gradually in response to stresses of new social conditions, environmental change or competition from nonmodern human species. Or perhaps the capacity for modern behavior came late, a result of some as yet undetected genetic transformation.
Dr. Mary C. Stiner, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona, said those contrasting views, or variations of them, could be reduced to this single question: "Was there some fundamental shift in brain wiring or some change in conditions of life?"
Sudden Genetic Advance
The foremost proponent of the traditional theory that human creativity appeared suddenly and mainly in Europe is Dr. Richard G. Klein, a Stanford archaeologist. He describes his reasoning in a new book, "The Dawn of Creativity," written with Blake Edgar and being published next month by John Wiley.
"Arguably, the `dawn' was the most significant prehistoric event that archaeologists will ever detect," the authors write. "Before it, human anatomical and behavioral change proceeded very slowly, more or less hand in hand. Afterward, the human form remained remarkably stable, while behavioral change accelerated dramatically. In the space of less than 40,000 years, ever more closely packed cultural `revolutions' have taken humanity from the status of a relatively rare large mammal to something more like a geologic force."
In that view, 40,000 years ago was the turning point in human creativity, when modern Homo sapiens arrived in Europe and left the first unambiguous artifacts of abstract and symbolic thought. They were making more advanced tools, burying their dead with ceremony and expressing a new kind of self-awareness with beads and pendants for body ornamentation and in finely wrought figurines of the female form. As time passed, they projected on cave walls something of their lives and minds in splendid paintings of deer, horses and wild bulls.
As an explanation for this apparently abrupt flowering of creativity, Dr. Klein has proposed a neurological hypothesis. About 50,000 years ago, he contends, a chance genetic mutation in effect rewired the brain in some critical way, possibly allowing for a significant advance in speech. The origin of human speech is another of evolution's mysteries. Improved communications at this time, in his view, could have enabled people "to conceive and model complex natural and social circumstances" and thus give them "the fully modern ability to invent and manipulate culture."
Although this transformation, with the genetic change leading to the behavioral change, occurred in Africa, Dr. Klein writes, it allowed "human populations to colonize new and challenging environments."
You are even a weak liar.
Which fails.
Thanks for clarifying where you're coming from.
I laugh in your general direction. You probably have a bumper sticker displaying your profound argument. The poor quality of your arguments and the hateful tenor of your communication speaks at a volume your pitiful yelps cannot disguise. Grow up. Feed your mind it is malnourished. I understand I speak harshly but you deserve such.
Strange Earth!
cause Pronunciation Key (kôz)
n.
You displayed the quality of your thinking with cause and effect. You are now proving you are delusional. If you design our defensive weapons, I have no doubt you were the mental force behind the Sergeant York, and we need God's help if you design anymore.
< sarcasm>No, I didn't read this--I come from Earth, where cause follows effect. Where do you come from? -- (What a maroon you are)...NO, I just reasoned that one such as you would make such an idiotic error and try to talk your way out of it like a petty crook.< /sarcasm> You're the liar.
It was you that answered a post I made to someone else about a possibility. You verified that you "resembled" the remark by answering me when I did not post to you. The post I made was to suggest that you just did not admit to certain things instead of being hateful. But you are hateful. "Might" is a word denoting some leeway, you verified the application to you by your response.
| To: My2Cents if you have a profound hatred of anything spiritual. Remember you might be communicating with someone who does not accept the existence of concepts. Blue to that type person is not a concept it is a certain frequency of light. It does not exist in dreams for their dreams are colorless.
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| Guess what: you are wrong. Your entire world view is built on a fraud, for not only is blue a frequncy of light, it also shows up in my dreams. 64 posted on 2/26/02 7:30 PM Central by lexcorp |
Interesting. A lot of truth in that too. Reminds me of the Man-Kzinti Wars from the Ringworld novels (except the Puppeteers were trying to create a more docile Kzinti by pitting them in war against men- killing off the more aggressive ones).
The world is strewn with remnants of civilizations destroyed by their inferiors. That is, unless winning itself defines superiority.
Yeah, but with that analogy we aren't progressing at all, we're simply getting ever more unadvanced. The way I look at it, whatever happened in the more advanced society that led to them being defeated by a "lesser" one would be the darwinian blunder on their part. The Germanic tribes did defeat the Roman legions but these same tribes later civilized themselves and carried right on in the footsteps of the Roman Empire- in fact, if I'm not mistaken, the actual title of (or at least a part of) the German Kaisers was "emperor of the Romans".
In short, the greater civilization didn't fall to a lesser one but they rather led themselves down a path that made them vulnerable to attack from the lesser one. This is not to say that the lesser society was greater- they profited not from their own merit but through the folly of the greater.
But think about how technological advancement spelled the end to civilizations who were slow on the uptake. The American Indian for example. Their warriors were very fierce but they couldn't compete against the weapons of the white man and they were too slow to acknowledge that the European people's way was superior and assimilate themselves. This led to their gene pool not being the dominant one on this continent when it had been so before.
I think the Man-Kzinti war analogy works very well when applied to the present day German society. Historically, a very warlike people- today, a very pacific, docile people. Also, the obvious example is the Soviet Union. They Darwined themselves into ruin by choosing an economic model that couldn't compete with capitalism. Rational thought should have dictated to them not to do that- but there it is. Now, communism is not highly looked upon in the world and I would suppose that after China finally gives it up it will pass into the Darwinian scrap heap of "tried and failed" methods.
The dominant civilization on the Earth today is of course- us. But it could've been any other people that adopted the same course. We have a superior ideology- the recognition of human freedoms; a superior economic vehicle- capitalism; and these two factors along with threats to our security allow our industrial/research complex to empower us to become ever more dominant. In this sense, Darwinism is becoming less a thing of actual genetic programming and more the evolution of ideology itself. The weaker, less fit for survival ideology/philosophy will die out against the superior one.
The radical Islamic world is flirting with being darwined out with their actions. If they don't take this "up front" method to their own demise, they will meet it anyway when demand for our culture and ideals "corrupts" their culture to the point where it is no longer viable. The French right now have made quite a name for themselves for constantly complaining about this very thing- the collapse of French culture in favor of Anglo/Americanism. But they are exacerbating their demise by joining a system that will further discourage national individuality in favor of continental unity- the EU.
I'm aware of that. I lived in Germany for 8 years and am fluent. It's pronounced Kizer- with the long "i" (like the "i" in "size").
I was speaking more of the official title- a "Elizabeth- Grand Pooh Pah of Windsor, Head of the Church of England...Sovereign of the Commonwealth, the United Kingdoms and Queen of England" sort of thing. Royal titles can be pretty long but I believe somewhere in the German Emperor's description is a "Emperor of the Romans" phrase.
Both ears and the tail!
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