Sapient Paradox

[The Hammer]

The sapient paradox: With brains like ours, why did prehistoric humans wait millennia to start civilization?

Anatomically modern humans have been on the scene for a long time, yet civilization only began to flourish in the last 10k years with the start of agriculture.

Why was there such a long delay, when we know that our capacities for speech, intelligence, tool making, etc were just as good then as at the advent of the agricultural revolution.

Preconceptions bout prehistory? Dormant intelligence mechanisms? Or maybe we just gossiped too much.

 

[Gargovic Malkav]

The sapient paradox: With brains like ours, why did prehistoric humans wait millennia to start civilization?

Anatomically modern humans have been on the scene for a long time, yet civilization only began to flourish in the last 10k years with the start of agriculture.

Why was there such a long delay, when we know that our capacities for speech, intelligence, tool making, etc were just as good then as at the advent of the agricultural revolution.

Preconceptions bout prehistory? Dormant intelligence mechanisms? Or maybe we just gossiped too much.

A lack of needs or wants?

 

[Heyo]

The sapient paradox: With brains like ours, why did prehistoric humans wait millennia to start civilization?

Anatomically modern humans have been on the scene for a long time, yet civilization only began to flourish in the last 10k years with the start of agriculture.

Why was there such a long delay, when we know that our capacities for speech, intelligence, tool making, etc were just as good then as at the advent of the agricultural revolution.

Preconceptions bout prehistory? Dormant intelligence mechanisms? Or maybe we just gossiped too much.

Possibly the environment. During the Ice Age there wasn't that much land that allowed for agriculture and a stationary life.

 

[The Hammer]

Possibly the environment. During the Ice Age there wasn't that much land that allowed for agriculture and a stationary life.

Possibly true. I've heard that reasoning.

And maybe not in northern environments.

But it's not like Africa was a popsicle? I don't think.

 

[MikeF]

I think the old adadge of necessity being the mother of invention, changes depend on changing circumstances. It is easy to imagine how hunter/gatherer bands, if population remains small and resouces plentiful, can remain in the same developmental state indefinitely. And we can see examples of this in aboriginal and native cultures that remained isolated from larger groups even up to relatively recent history. When population size grows and or resources change or become scarce, there is a necessity for change.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I think the old adadge of necessity being the mother of invention, changes depend on changing circumstances. It is easy to imagine how hunter/gatherer bands, if population remains small and resouces plentiful, can remain in the same developmental state indefinitely. And we can see examples of this in aboriginal and native cultures that remained isolated from larger groups even up to relatively recent history. When population size grows and or resources change or become scarce, there is a necessity for change.

A similar case can be found in linguistics for the Baltic languages. The culture and technology was stable for a long time and rural, so the language didn't change as much.

 

[Yerda]

The sapient paradox: With brains like ours, why did prehistoric humans wait millennia to start civilization?

Anatomically modern humans have been on the scene for a long time, yet civilization only began to flourish in the last 10k years with the start of agriculture.

Why was there such a long delay, when we know that our capacities for speech, intelligence, tool making, etc were just as good then as at the advent of the agricultural revolution.

Preconceptions bout prehistory? Dormant intelligence mechanisms? Or maybe we just gossiped too much.

I remember watching Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man and he suggested that the mutation that made civilisation possible occured in wheat. This made domestication possible, allowed us to build large stores of energy and the creation of stratified society based on abundance.

 

[The Hammer]

I remember watching Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man and he suggested that the mutation that made civilisation possible occured in wheat. This made domestication possible, allowed us to build large stores of energy and the creation of stratified society based on abundance.

I'm not sure I fully understand. The domestication of wheat caused a small mutation in humans, or the mutation that allowed us to domesticate wheat produced flourishing?

 

[MikeF]

I remember watching Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man and he suggested that the mutation that made civilisation possible occured in wheat. This made domestication possible, allowed us to build large stores of energy and the creation of stratified society based on abundance.

Interesting. Kind of a chicken or the egg thing. I could see a scenario where some enterprising hunter/gathers got tired of walking far and wide for the kernals and had the idea of clearing a space of all the plants they couldn't or didn't want to eat and concentrating the growth of the wheat plant which they wanted. The plant changed because of man's active cultivation as opposed to the sudden emergence of a cultival plant that man just happened upon.

 

[The Hammer]

Interesting. Kind of a chicken or the egg thing. I could see a scenario where some enterprising hunter/gathers got tired of walking far and wide for the kernals and had the idea of clearing a space of all the plants they couldn't or didn't want to eat and concentrating the growth of the wheat plant which they wanted. The plant changed because of man's active cultivation as opposed to the sudden emergence of a cultival plant that man just happened upon.

The biggest issue with this idea that I've seen is, for the first several hundred/thousand years, the domestication process did not yield much in the way of edible food stuff. So what were we doing with it? We still don't really know.

We find the same problem between teosinte and edible corn. There were hundreds of generations of breeding to finally make it palatable.

"Between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, Native Americans living in what is now Mexico began domesticating teosinte, or the "grain of the gods," as the name has been interpreted to mean. Scientists cannot yet say how long this domestication process took, but they do know that around 4,500 years ago, a plant recognizable as today's corn was present across the Americas."

Scientists Trace Corn Ancestry from Ancient Grass to Modern Crop

Indigenous farmers bred the plant for hardiness and better food quality

www.nsf.gov

 

[Yerda]

I'm not sure I fully understand. The domestication of wheat caused a small mutation in humans, or the mutation that allowed us to domesticate wheat produced flourishing?

Sorry, a mutation in a wheat species meant that the seeds grew larger but didn't fall from the plant as readily and then didn't fly in the wind like the old wild wheat species. This made them perfect for people to gather. They were probably already cultivating wheat but this new wheat gave people large energy stores and allowed the development of "modern" agriculture and the first cities.

Another way of looking at this is that a mutant species of grass domesticated a species of wandering ape. Either way it was the grass that was the key and not the smart people brains.

I'm not sure if this scientific cannon, but it is a right good story. If you get time give The Ascent of Man a bash. It's the best documentary series I've ever seen.

 

[Jainarayan]

It's probably a crackpot idea but I think that civilization is older, far older than we think. Someone mentioned the ice age but that may have been an interruption and abandonment of more ancient civilizations. The moving glaciers may have plowed over and under anything that existed. Heck, if the Great Lakes region was depressed so much that it is still rebounding, that's some pretty awesome glaciation. In just the past 6,000 years the Sphinx was almost completely buried. What else is buried elsewhere from 50,000 or even 100,000 years ago? The Sahara was a wetlands 8,000 years go; whales fossils have been found there. So, y'know ...

 

[ChristineM]

The sapient paradox: With brains like ours, why did prehistoric humans wait millennia to start civilization?

Anatomically modern humans have been on the scene for a long time, yet civilization only began to flourish in the last 10k years with the start of agriculture.

Why was there such a long delay, when we know that our capacities for speech, intelligence, tool making, etc were just as good then as at the advent of the agricultural revolution.

Preconceptions bout prehistory? Dormant intelligence mechanisms? Or maybe we just gossiped too much.

A combination of factors, numbers, need, skill factors, ice age.

Anatomically modern humans of 20 or 30 thousand years ago had a brain about 13% larger than humans today. Maybe their larger brain wasn't wired for civilization but for hunting and gathering

 

[The Hammer]

A combination of factors, numbers, need, skill factors, ice age.

Anatomically modern humans of 20 or 30 thousand years ago had a brain about 13% larger than humans today. Maybe their larger brain wasn't wired for civilization but for hunting and gathering

It's a possibility. One of the theories is that interbreeding with Neanderthals in the levant area and near east, increased our cognitive capabilities.

 

[The Hammer]

It's probably a crackpot idea but I think that civilization is older, far older than we think. Someone mentioned the ice age but that may have been an interruption and abandonment of more ancient civilizations. The moving glaciers may have plowed over and under anything that existed. Heck, if the Great Lakes region was depressed so much that it is still rebounding, that's some pretty awesome glaciation. In just the past 6,000 years the Sphinx was almost completely buried. What else is buried elsewhere from 50,000 or even 100,000 years ago? The Sahara was a wetlands 8,000 years go; whales fossils have been found there. So, y'know ...

Not as crazy as you might think. But I'm not sure we've seen any evidence.

Could an Industrial Prehuman Civilization Have Existed on Earth before Ours?

A provocative new paper suggests some ways to find out

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[Jainarayan]

Not as crazy as you might think. But I'm not sure we've seen any evidence.

Could an Industrial Prehuman Civilization Have Existed on Earth before Ours?

A provocative new paper suggests some ways to find out

www.scientificamerican.com

You are right, no evidence to speak of. Gobekli tepe is a tease, dated to about 11,000 years, 9,000 BCE. Still pretty old relative to our knowledge. I hope archaeologists find something astounding. Unfortunately I think mainstream archaeology would quash it.

 

[The Hammer]

Unfortunately I think mainstream archaeology would quash it.

Depends on how it matches up with what we know already.

We have a lot of archaeological, DNA and morphological specimens for human history. But we don't really look for anything "other than human", as it is a bit beside our wheelhouse.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

It's probably a crackpot idea but I think that civilization is older, far older than we think. Someone mentioned the ice age but that may have been an interruption and abandonment of more ancient civilizations. The moving glaciers may have plowed over and under anything that existed. Heck, if the Great Lakes region was depressed so much that it is still rebounding, that's some pretty awesome glaciation. In just the past 6,000 years the Sphinx was almost completely buried. What else is buried elsewhere from 50,000 or even 100,000 years ago? The Sahara was a wetlands 8,000 years go; whales fossils have been found there. So, y'know ...

Yeah, I also believe there were civilizations before the stone age and something happened to them.

 

[Jainarayan]

But we don't really look for anything "other than human"

I still wrestle with that. But I have an open mind. "Human" could very well become a more expanded grouping. We only recently discovered Denisovans, another relatively recent branch of humans. We know so little of the world and what it may hide. Nature is very good at hiding things and reclamation.

I watched over a few summers how the Army Corps of Engineers, or whoever it was, built up the beaches at Long Branch, NJ. Years ago when I was a kid we took trips "down the shore" (we lived in Newark, or Nork as we say ). The beaches had eroded by storms, and the damage the jetties did to the natural currents. The jetties (thousands of tons of granite and basalt boulders heaped up and jutting into the water were supposed to eliminate erosion, but what they did was stopped the conveyor belt-like flow of sand up and down the coast. That conveyor kept the beaches intact.

So it was decided to build up the beaches again. Tons and tons of sand were pumped onto the beaches, extending them and pushing the shoreline further out. The jetties are still there, I wonder how long it will be before Poseidon reclaims the beaches into the sea. But my point is that if in 50-60 years the beaches can disappear over and over again (a true example of shoveling **** against the tide), what can be hidden by the Earth in 50,000 years?

 

[The Hammer]

I still wrestle with that. But I have an open mind. "Human" could very well become a more expanded grouping. We only recently discovered Denisovans, another relatively recent branch of humans. We know so little of the world and what it may hide. Nature is very good at hiding things and reclamation.

I watched over a few summers how the Army Corps of Engineers, or whoever it was, built up the beaches at Long Branch, NJ. Years ago when I was a kid we took trips "down the shore" (we lived in Newark, or Nork as we say ). The beaches had eroded by storms, and the damage the jetties did to the natural currents. The jetties (thousands of tons of granite and basalt boulders heaped up and jutting into the water were supposed to eliminate erosion, but what they did was stopped the conveyor belt-like flow of sand up and down the coast. That conveyor kept the beaches intact.

So it was decided to build up the beaches again. Tons and tons of sand were pumped onto the beaches, extending them and pushing the shoreline further out. The jetties are still there, I wonder how long it will be before Poseidon reclaims the beaches into the sea. But my point is that if in 50-60 years the beaches can disappear over and over again (a true example of shoveling **** against the tide), what can be hidden by the Earth in 50,000 years?

Yup, the article I posted mentions all we really have to look for are the chemical signatures, maybe plastics or compounds that can't be found on earth naturally.

My guess is if there was a society well before humans, it's probably under Antarctica. But LIDAR and GIS is bringing newer and newer things to the surface.