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."
When he was named Fido. A more interesting question is where did the household cat come from?
Well gee, you've solved it. What then is all the fuss about?
The only way you could possibly come off as more pathetic is to deny it. Make up facts? Geez, just read the thread.
You know, everybody is laughing at you and talking behind your back. I can hear them, can you?
Better get back on your meds. Also, you might want to try reading instead of listening.
From a very, very, very dark place...
The only way you could possibly come off as more pathetic is to deny it. Make up facts? Geez, just read the thread.
I’ve read the thread. I still don’t know how you concluded I was giggling. I wasn’t until I read your silly response.
Better get back on your meds.
Wow, that’s quite original. You should copyright it.
Hmmm. I wonder what they called a preborn child?
I'm not going to stake out a personal position on creationism/evolution because I've seen how those threads deteriorate into hair splitting and logical gymnastics and I see nothing useful to be gained from it.
But I always find the irony in these articles striking. Here, we can get a majority of scientists and many, many lay people to agree that man evolved and their main question is how many millions of years ago we started being human- but we cannot even agree in this day and age that what's inside a woman's womb when she's pregnant is even human at all.
Those that consider a preborn baby "human" are publicly stigamtized by a significant portion of the population and the scientific community- while those "enlightened" humans that call it "parasite" only argue over when it becomes inappropriate to smash its head with rock. And the irony is magnified by the fact that it doesn't really make one whit of difference if it was 5 or 7 million years ago does it? That's all, quite literally, Ancient History. But if we think of a baby, preborn, as a parasite- an actual human dies.
Please tell me you don't think I was accusing you a physically giggling. That and only that could make my previous post erroneous.
Please tell me you don't think I was accusing you a physically giggling. That and only that could make my previous post erroneous.
Wrong again.
Your post also said I was complaining, when I did not complain a whit.
I merely noted an interesting phenomena.
You need to be more exact in your use of the language.
Oh wait, let me ping the "P v d ping list!"
Notforprophet
Now I just have to think of a snide title. 8-)
How so?
Murder is not morally relative. It's either a human or it's not, full stop. I don't care if all the legal systems in the world call killing an innocent human okey dokey, nor whether it's democratically decided upon or if someone's personal morality gives them carte blanche.
The Big Bang either happened or it didn't. We either evolved or we didn't. These concern truths and science is a method for discovering the truth. Whether a preborn infant is a human or not also has a yes/no- true/false answer and I find it ironic that much time energy and money is thrown into answering truths from long ago concerning the "origins of man" that have little if any bearing on today's human condition yet we don't spend an equal amount of scientific time and public funding to answer this very significant question of "is the thing in a woman's belly a human being or not?"- being as how that is also an "origins of men" issue.
What got me thinking on the irony is I thought I was opening an article related to the abortion issue when I clicked on it because of the title. It turned out to be an interesting article but it just got me thinking on this whole thing and now here we are. I'm not criticizing anyone or anything. The evolutionary roots of man is also something I'm very interested in but if I had a choice to solve that riddle or the "riddle" of "is abortion murder?" I'd have to go for the latter one and save some real here and now lives.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.