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Big Chunk of Human History Missing - Why?

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  Quote Afghanan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Big Chunk of Human History Missing - Why?
    Posted: 19-Jan-2009 at 19:11
Originally posted by gcle2003

Originally posted by Sparten

Originally posted by Afghanan

Originally posted by Otto Von Bismarck



Anyway, returning to the topic at hand, I believe there is a section of human history that we know nothing about. I mean, just recently, we found a 9500 year old submerged, big city in India. Who knows, humans might have a whole different history than we think of today.
 
That is where my interest lies also.  If Homo Sapiens have inhabited this Earth for approximately 195,000 years, that means they have survived 2 ice ages, and at least 1 mass extinction.
 
To me it seems they were more intelligent and adaptable than just a hunter/gatherer society.
 
Lots of species have done more than that. Why after about 100,000 years of hunter gather existance should agriculture than civilisation develop is a big question. Need someone smart to answer.
 
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In terms of why history is missing, lack of writing is probably more important than farming vs. hunter/gathering, though agriculture may be a necessary prerequisite of literacy. Certainly writing allows knowledge to accumulate (and spread) drastically faster.
 
Even without written records, you need to leave some kind of durable  traces like, at a minimum, stone tools and ceramics.
 
If you imagine a group of hunter-gatherers dependent on organic materials (skins, wooden tools and weapons, they aren't going to leave many traces, and if they do invent anything there's no easy way of passing it on to following generations.
 
I thought the film Quest For Fire was pretty good in illustrating what things must have been like in those missing millenia.
 
 
Interestingly enough, they have evidence of what could be controlled fire over 1 million years in Swartkrans, South Africa and also in China 400,000 years ago.  If writing was not available, could not knowledge be passed down by stories and speech? 
 
What could hinder the passing of knowledge?  Were we not intelligent enough..was it really our brains that evolved as Sparten suggested?  Was it climactic changes, or bad environment that let Humans barely survive for over 150,000 years?  Or the opposite where the environment was perfect for human habitation, but did not change drastically until the end of the last ice age?
 
 
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  Quote Bernard Woolley Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Jan-2009 at 01:33

Originally posted by Afghanan

Bernard,

You mentioned that accrued knowledge rises exponentially. Why do you think that in 150,000 years, knowledge did not get past hunting and gathering? Favorable environmental (Eden-like) factors?

No, I mean that the rate at which knowledge accumulates gets faster and faster as time goes on, not because people are getting smarter, but because the more you have to build on from previous generations, the easier it is to build.

 

Originally posted by Afghanan

What could hinder the passing of knowledge? Were we not intelligent enough..was it really our brains that evolved as Sparten suggested? Was it climactic changes, or bad environment that let Humans barely survive for over 150,000 years? Or the opposite where the environment was perfect for human habitation, but did not change drastically until the end of the last ice age?

You seem to be working off the assumption that technology was stagnant for 150,000 years, and then exploded with the rise of agriculture, which is not true. Technologies did develop, if relatively slowly. the move to using more non-stone materials (like bone) to fashion tools, the development of the spear-thrower, the bow and arrow, warm clothing, etc. all came about before agriculture, and contributed to humans becoming better and better hunters and gatherers. This continued through the development of agriculture and husbandry, which are after all just more systematized methods of gathering and hunting.

As for reasons why agricultural societies would accumulate information more quickly than hunter-gatherers, the biggest may simply be having larger and more stable populations. The more people there are in a community, the lower the possibility that an accident might rob that community of, say, the elder who has spent his life memorizing all of the tribe's greatest wisdom.

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  Quote Omar al Hashim Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Jan-2009 at 01:34
Originally posted by Count Belisarius

Originally posted by Otto Von Bismarck


We found a 9500 year old submerged, big city in India. Who knows, humans might have a whole different history than we think of today.
Do you have the link?

http://www.allempires.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=16697
Thread from a couple of years ago.
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  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Jan-2009 at 03:40
Originally posted by Afghanan

How can Human beings, if they were actually sentient, free-thinking human beings not be able to create any innovations in 150,000 years other than hunting and gathering?

They did, all kinds of innovations. Watercraft, weaving, bow and arrow, all sorts of stuff. They made statues and monuments and jewellry, conducted trade over very long distances, colonized entirely new continents. Eventually, they even domesticated plants and animals and began to use copper and other malleable metals like gold, all before the first cities appeared.

Civilization didn't just jump out of the ground fully-formed from primitive cave-dwellers. There was alot of development and change that had to take place before towns and cities could appear, a long, slow evolution towards urban life. To see how rich and varied pre-urban societies could be you only need to look at the Americas at the time of contact, and you can see everything from tiny groups with little social hierarchy or art or technology, to complex tribal confederacies with agriculture and advanced political structures and religious beliefs, to proto-civilizations like the Chimu chiefdoms, to actual civilizations like the Maya and Inca. 

We as humans living off the collective knowledge of only a few thousand years seemed to be going leaps and bounds...what would cause early Homo Sapiens to not be able to innovate their lives or advance their technology?

The pace of development was much slower, but for this you have to consider a few things. We have incredible advantages relative to these people in terms of collective knowledge, and not just because we can write down information. Any agricultural or pastoral group, even one that had an entirely oral tradition, was way ahead of the challenges these early groups faced.

These societies couldn't really afford to support too many elders - most people would not live to middle age, the majority of the population would be children and youths. They barely had time to learn what they needed in order to provide for their own children, the next generation, let alone advancing knowledge. Probably any particular group was in a constant struggle simply to retain the body of knowledge it possessed so far, without slipping back and losing some of it. There was a huge challenge for these people to transmit information from generation to generation, when there was really only a brief window where a parent and his offspring would both be mature adults (or adult and adolescent, at least) at the same time. Imagine if your parents - who were also your teachers - passed away when you were 12 or 13, and you had to learn everything yourself the hard way after that. Under these conditions, preserving the collective knowledge would be an incredible challenge, never mind advancing it. That they managed to advance it at all is absolutely incredible.

When you think about the difficulties they faced, the things they did achieve - technological developments like the bow and arrow, the domestication of plants and animals, the colonization of remote continents like Australia or the Americas - it's really amazing. These weren't stupid or unambitious people at all.

Ever seen that old star trek episode where they come across a planet where a disease killed off all the adults and the society was comprised entirely of children and young adolescents? Things were something like that, although not quite so extreme. And even under those conditions, they achieved progress, they moved forward - slowly but surely. Obviously these people could not have been dull simpletons, they must have been very clever and innovative to get us to the point where civilization was even possible.



Edited by edgewaters - 20-Jan-2009 at 04:09
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  Quote Jallaludin Akbar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Jan-2009 at 04:26
Originally posted by Sparten

Farmland in the British Isles is pretty much the best in the world. By far. The Tigris and the Euphrates are rivers which run through arid country.


Landscapes change throughout time; during the age of early mesopotamian civilization, the river valley near the Euphrates and Tigris was actually incredibly fertile grassland. This is what allowed the creation of large farming based societies. That did not exists, however, in the British isles as it was largely uninhabited. 
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  Quote Omar al Hashim Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Jan-2009 at 23:19
Originally posted by edgewaters

The pace of development was much slower, but for this you have to consider a few things. We have incredible advantages relative to these people in terms of collective knowledge, and not just because we can write down information. Any agricultural or pastoral group, even one that had an entirely oral tradition, was way ahead of the challenges these early groups faced.

These societies couldn't really afford to support too many elders - most people would not live to middle age, the majority of the population would be children and youths. They barely had time to learn what they needed in order to provide for their own children, the next generation, let alone advancing knowledge. Probably any particular group was in a constant struggle simply to retain the body of knowledge it possessed so far, without slipping back and losing some of it. There was a huge challenge for these people to transmit information from generation to generation, when there was really only a brief window where a parent and his offspring would both be mature adults (or adult and adolescent, at least) at the same time. Imagine if your parents - who were also your teachers - passed away when you were 12 or 13, and you had to learn everything yourself the hard way after that. Under these conditions, preserving the collective knowledge would be an incredible challenge, never mind advancing it. That they managed to advance it at all is absolutely incredible.

That is entirely supposition. And if we can use groups like the Aboriginies to estimate early people* then it's bullshit too. Hunter gatherer societies have no problem passing knowledge on from generation to generation or from group to group. You are talking about most people dieing around 30, which when you include infant deaths is probably something like a life expectancy of 15. Regardless of how hard life is people aren't going to be dropping off from old age at 30, in the middle of their prime.

Not to mention we have nothing to suggest that they were hunter-gatherers. Some probably were (because some still are) but you could very easily have agriculture and civilisation. You can do alot without leaving any archelogical evidence. Also just because we haven't found any archelogical evidence doesn't mean it isn't there.


*I'm not entirely sure that we can. I don't believe that aboriginal culture stood still for thousands of years, no-one elses has, but their culture is a good indicator of what a different hunter gather society could be like. In the same way that modern America is an indicator of ancient Iraq perhaps, but there are still many similarities.
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  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Jan-2009 at 16:23
Originally posted by Afghanan

If writing was not available, could not knowledge be passed down by stories and speech? 
The question was why is there no historical record of those times, not would one generation teach another, which they obviously could once speech was sufficiently developed (and even before that by example). Simple oral tradition is never going to be enough to describe many thousands of generations. And historical/archaeological records depend on leaving traces that will last for a very long time. For most of the period under consideration that means stone and ceramics.
 
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  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Jan-2009 at 16:29

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim

And if we can use groups like the Aboriginies to estimate early people* then it's bullshit too. Hunter gatherer societies have no problem passing knowledge on from generation to generation or from group to group.

You can't use modern or recent hunter-gatherer societies to talk about these groups - they are probably far more advanced, with much better pharmacological knowledge, hunting techniques, definately much more advanced knapping techniques (which I don't think is even practivced anymore) and so forth. In fact, many modern hunter-gatherer societies were once agricultural, and in most cases still practice horticulture on a limited scale.

What you can use is remains of these people to see what sort of life expectancies we're talking about. We're not talking about people dropping dead of "old age" at 30, but of people dying from disease, violence, and starvation and rarely getting the chance to drop dead of old age. Annual adult mortality rates are estimated to be about 6 percent during the Paleolithic, so it isn't a case of people aging faster or even necessarily of conditions being so demanding that only twentysomethings were physically capable of surviving, it's more a question of a dangerous environment with many potentially lethal situation - a person can only defy the odds for so long. Thus, the average of death that's indicated by the remains we have show that most adults died between the ages of 16 and 45. Not to say that a small number didn't defy the odds and live to a ripe old age, but most didn't. We know this because the proportion of octogenarians among the skeletal remains is very, very low for the Lower and Middle Paleolithic (things change drastically in the Upper Paleolithic, though).

Not to mention we have nothing to suggest that they were hunter-gatherers.

Yes we do! We have their art, which depicts hunting scenes. We have their remains, which show a different diet from agricultural groups. We have their tools and weapons, and agricultural implements are absent. We even have midden heaps full of the seeds and bones of the plants and animals that they ate - and domesticated varieties are, again, totally absent. Nobody's ever found a domesticated grain or cattle or anything of the sort earlier than the tail end of the Upper Paleolithic or the start of the Neolithic. With agricultural groups we can always find those things, even at Catal Hayuk we have seeds that show the early beginnings of plant domestication.

I suppose there is always room for doubt, but "nothing to suggest" they were hunter gatherers is absurd. We have truckloads of artifacts and remains that suggest exactly that. More than suggest, actually.



Edited by edgewaters - 21-Jan-2009 at 17:03
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  Quote Omar al Hashim Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jan-2009 at 07:25
Originally posted by edgewaters

You can't use modern or recent hunter-gatherer societies to talk about these groups - they are probably far more advanced, with much better pharmacological knowledge, hunting techniques, definately much more advanced knapping techniques (which I don't think is even practivced anymore) and so forth. In fact, many modern hunter-gatherer societies were once agricultural, and in most cases still practice horticulture on a limited scale.

I've already said I'm not sure about how accurate the model would be, but we are always going to need a model. We can choose either one based on pure imagination, or one based on experience.
100,000 years is a long time. Alot can happen in that time and a lot can be discovered and lost.
What you can use is remains of these people to see what sort of life expectancies we're talking about. We're not talking about people dropping dead of "old age" at 30, but of people dying from disease, violence, and starvation and rarely getting the chance to drop dead of old age. Annual adult mortality rates are estimated to be about 6 percent during the Paleolithic, so it isn't a case of people aging faster or even necessarily of conditions being so demanding that only twentysomethings were physically capable of surviving, it's more a question of a dangerous environment with many potentially lethal situation - a person can only defy the odds for so long. Thus, the average of death that's indicated by the remains we have show that most adults died between the ages of 16 and 45. Not to say that a small number didn't defy the odds and live to a ripe old age, but most didn't. We know this because the proportion of octogenarians among the skeletal remains is very, very low for the Lower and Middle Paleolithic (things change drastically in the Upper Paleolithic, though).

I find it very difficult to imagine this situation.
Our archeological record is very limited. What we can learn from what we have found is applicable to that person, with a few records we can say that applies to that group, but it doesn't say anything about everybody at that time.
What I'm trying to say is don't pidgeon hole 100,000 years of people over the whole world based upon just a very few archological finds. Suppose all the rich people in society x, who had wooden houses, and farms, cremated themselves. With only the really poor and outcast being buried, and then only a very few of those being found later. We would have no record whatsoever of that society.
I suppose there is always room for doubt, but "nothing to suggest" they were hunter gatherers is absurd. We have truckloads of artifacts and remains that suggest exactly that. More than suggest, actually.

Ok, we have nothing to suggest they were all hunter gatherers.
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  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Jan-2009 at 15:40
Suppose all the rich people in society x, who had wooden houses, and farms, cremated themselves. With only the really poor and outcast being buried, and then only a very few of those being found later. We would have no record whatsoever of that society.


They'd still have midden heaps, containing the bones of domesticated animals and the seeds of domesticated plants.

Even if somewhere such a society did exist and we haven't found it yet, it's certainly not characteristic of the period.


Ok, we have nothing to suggest they were all hunter gatherers.


All the evidence conforms to the theory that agriculture didn't appear until the Neolithic.

Edited by edgewaters - 23-Jan-2009 at 15:47
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  Quote Boreasi Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Jan-2009 at 06:59
Originally posted by Afghanan

Interestingly enough, they have evidence of what could be controlled fire over 1 million years in Swartkrans, South Africa and also in China 400,000 years ago.  If writing was not available, could not knowledge be passed down by stories and speech? 
 
What could hinder the passing of knowledge?  Were we not intelligent enough..was it really our brains that evolved as Sparten suggested?


For all we KNOW the human beings that populated the various continents 150.000 yrs BP would keep oral traditions about their origin and past - much like the known mythlogies reflect.

Consequently the major incidents thoughout their history were kept as "legends" within an overall overview of their origin and growth as a culture.

We still have various mythologies in the respective continents and corners of the world - eventhough they all see to have had a "new start" after the end of last ice-time. The major myths that still exist all seems to reflect very smilar incidents - as they were all receving the same impulses (agriculture, spirals, pyramids, metals, etc.) - as it spread to all continents after ice-time.

One example of the collective memory found in all these myths are the incidents connected to the commonly known legend of A flood that affected all the earth and destroyed cities.
Today we seem to have proof that the old ice-cap of the northern hemisphere disapeared rather eruptively - as enormous masses of ice and meltwater slided into the worlds oceans - some 8-10.000 years ago. Recently the investigations have shown a geneal rise of the worlds oceans of about 120 metres - occring in less than a millenia.

Over the last decade the flooded "cultural structures" have - told about in both the Vedas, the Popul Vuh AND the Bible - been discovered in the Black Sea, the Atlantic, the Arabian Ocean and the Pacific...
 
Which seems to prove that the story of the Great Flood actually did happen - on a planetary scale - some 9.000 years ago. In that case the tories found about the flood must neccesarily have been told - "from father to sons"  - for MORE than 6.000 years, in ALL of these cultures.

Consequently we have to admit that both Mayas and Sumerians, as well as the "Indo-Aryans" have shared the same kind of perception, reflection and understanding of this extraordinary event - relatively unchanged and hstorically correct - for some 200 generations. 

---

Before books and letters became common the culture of a people would depend upon their memory. Thus we must alledge that "story-telling" was an essential part of both family and public life. In a culture were gifted persons were educated to professional story-tellers (as with the bards and druis) the respective regions and lands would develop a common "mainstory" - to which all the bards attested, generation afer generation. Explain the history and presence of every genereations they could succeeded to integrate the major events their past into a stringent chronology, and thus "History" rather than "stories".

This have been the case also with the paleolithic AND megalithic cultures of the various continents - of course.  The Vedic information about "the time before the flood" does obviously strecth more than 10.000 years back in time. 

---

Another side of this question is that we still do not know whenthe very first collections of written history was started.  As with agriculture, metalurgy and monumental constructions it started to spread only - on a larger scale - only after the last ice-age.

The causes, roots and origin of these technologies are still NOT known.
What we do know today is that the evoltion of speech, pictograms, signs and phonetic letters goes way back.

To assume that our ancient ancestors were LESS intelligent than us is nothing but arrogant. There is obviusly not sufficent information existing to regard such a view as scientificly true. Moreover, the indications are rather that man have grown less intelligent than he was during ancient antiquity - if masured by social and emotional intelligence.

The major change from the last 1000 years are based on our mental intelligence - were the principle of maths, mass and mass-production. Luckily, that brougth us back to a world were philosophical comprehension and classic sciences, based on the laws and principles of nature, are back as the mainframe of public life, philosophy and education. Just as it used to be before the wars and religions started to tear down the old civilisations of China, India, Sumer, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe and Meso-America...

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  Quote Afghanan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-May-2009 at 15:50
Originally posted by Boreasi

Originally posted by Afghanan

Interestingly enough, they have evidence of what could be controlled fire over 1 million years in Swartkrans, South Africa and also in China 400,000 years ago.  If writing was not available, could not knowledge be passed down by stories and speech? 
 
What could hinder the passing of knowledge?  Were we not intelligent enough..was it really our brains that evolved as Sparten suggested?


For all we KNOW the human beings that populated the various continents 150.000 yrs BP would keep oral traditions about their origin and past - much like the known mythlogies reflect.

Consequently the major incidents thoughout their history were kept as "legends" within an overall overview of their origin and growth as a culture.

We still have various mythologies in the respective continents and corners of the world - eventhough they all see to have had a "new start" after the end of last ice-time. The major myths that still exist all seems to reflect very smilar incidents - as they were all receving the same impulses (agriculture, spirals, pyramids, metals, etc.) - as it spread to all continents after ice-time.

One example of the collective memory found in all these myths are the incidents connected to the commonly known legend of A flood that affected all the earth and destroyed cities.
Today we seem to have proof that the old ice-cap of the northern hemisphere disapeared rather eruptively - as enormous masses of ice and meltwater slided into the worlds oceans - some 8-10.000 years ago. Recently the investigations have shown a geneal rise of the worlds oceans of about 120 metres - occring in less than a millenia.

Over the last decade the flooded "cultural structures" have - told about in both the Vedas, the Popul Vuh AND the Bible - been discovered in the Black Sea, the Atlantic, the Arabian Ocean and the Pacific...
 
Which seems to prove that the story of the Great Flood actually did happen - on a planetary scale - some 9.000 years ago. In that case the tories found about the flood must neccesarily have been told - "from father to sons"  - for MORE than 6.000 years, in ALL of these cultures.

Consequently we have to admit that both Mayas and Sumerians, as well as the "Indo-Aryans" have shared the same kind of perception, reflection and understanding of this extraordinary event - relatively unchanged and hstorically correct - for some 200 generations. 

---

Before books and letters became common the culture of a people would depend upon their memory. Thus we must alledge that "story-telling" was an essential part of both family and public life. In a culture were gifted persons were educated to professional story-tellers (as with the bards and druis) the respective regions and lands would develop a common "mainstory" - to which all the bards attested, generation afer generation. Explain the history and presence of every genereations they could succeeded to integrate the major events their past into a stringent chronology, and thus "History" rather than "stories".

This have been the case also with the paleolithic AND megalithic cultures of the various continents - of course.  The Vedic information about "the time before the flood" does obviously strecth more than 10.000 years back in time. 

---

Another side of this question is that we still do not know whenthe very first collections of written history was started.  As with agriculture, metalurgy and monumental constructions it started to spread only - on a larger scale - only after the last ice-age.

The causes, roots and origin of these technologies are still NOT known.
What we do know today is that the evoltion of speech, pictograms, signs and phonetic letters goes way back.

To assume that our ancient ancestors were LESS intelligent than us is nothing but arrogant. There is obviusly not sufficent information existing to regard such a view as scientificly true. Moreover, the indications are rather that man have grown less intelligent than he was during ancient antiquity - if masured by social and emotional intelligence.

The major change from the last 1000 years are based on our mental intelligence - were the principle of maths, mass and mass-production. Luckily, that brougth us back to a world were philosophical comprehension and classic sciences, based on the laws and principles of nature, are back as the mainframe of public life, philosophy and education. Just as it used to be before the wars and religions started to tear down the old civilisations of China, India, Sumer, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe and Meso-America...

 
I have also been curious about the great flood stories.  You mention the end of the last ice age as a pivotal time for human civilization and progression.  Since most civilizations are built around great rivers.  If there was a massive melting of ice during the end of the last ice age 10-15,000 years ago, would it not wipe away or cover what was left of prior settlements?    What and where was the oldest human habitation ever found?
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  Quote Afghanan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-May-2009 at 15:58
Spencer Wells was quoted as saying in this article about Omo I & II:
 
"Spencer Wells is a geneticist and an anthropologist and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. From an analysis of DNA of thousands of men around the world, Wells says he has discovered that all humans alive today can be traced back to a small tribe of hunter-gatherers who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago.

"Many anthropologists, myself included, believe that what makes us truly human is our modern behavior, enabled by a modern brain," Wells said. "Modern behavior starts to show up sporadically around 70,000 to 80,000 years ago but doesn't really take off until around 50,000 years ago—the "Great Leap Forward" and dawn of the Upper Paleolithic [early Stone Age]."

The human population appears to have crashed to around 2,000 individuals around 70,000 years ago, at the same time they were headed into the worst part of the last ice age. The crash was possibly brought on by a massive volcanic eruption, Wells said.

"The hypothesis is that the survivors of this near-extinction event had to be smarter in order to survive, and this allowed them to settle the rest of the world outside of Africa. So, 'human-ness' may not been widespread until around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, and this could be seen as the real origin of our species."

The full article can be read here:
 
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  Quote Seko Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-May-2009 at 17:44
Afghanan, I hope you don't mind. You double posted and I took it upon myself to remove the added baggage.
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  Quote fantasus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-May-2009 at 19:37

A very important factor:environment and changes in it. Agriculture, pasoralism, towns could probably grow in some conditions. especially important is to get rid of big glaciers of ice-ages, but there may have been a lot of other external cirkumstances favoring what we use to see as civilisation. Especially good natural conditions for mobility of humans, plants and animals fit for domestication. Perhaps changes in biodiversity too was important. I think it has as much to do with "external" factors as with changes(biology or other) in humans themselves.

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  Quote bod Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-May-2009 at 21:58
I think population and travel and comunication must be very impotant. There may well of been Genius all those thousands of years ago but if you are confined to a small traditional community it may be hard to find someone to listen to your ideas. 

Development often happens when cultures collide such as with Neolithic , bronze age, iron age. Maybe there just wasn't many cultures to collide.

Also (as mentiond before) it is very hard for people on the move to find time for their creativity to develop, especially if you have a short life span.
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  Quote drgonzaga Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-May-2009 at 22:42
History, after all, is the pretension to a pedigree! As if the bent toward the antiquarian establishes priorities and prominence. In many ways, civilization is little more than recourse to technologies answering to the exigencies of want. We have no history for the Cantabrians that left us the cave art of Northern Spain and Southern France but little else. Perhaps there is a common thread in the prominence of "idyllic gardens" as the world before the world of records.
 
Let's face it, the historical record is more or less a narrative of travail and violence among men...a being in balance with his environment displays the amnesia of the irenic.


Edited by drgonzaga - 13-May-2009 at 22:46
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