Bad News: We're Not So Different From Earliest Humans

Early man huddles up to discuss the next play in their game
against their hated rival, the Mastodons.
 
For anyone who longs for the mythical, mystical "good old days", bad news. 

People were people even then, one hundred thousand years ago.

In scientific terms: according to research out of Stony Brook University,  "'behavioral modernity' is a flawed concept. In truth, early humans were not much different from us."

Oh, the humanity.  104 thousand years and we're still pretty much the way we were back then.  We've put men on the moon but still club each other over the heads with whatever is at hand. Sure, our toys and tools are somewhat more advanced, but men still scratch, rub, belch and fart much as we did in pre-history.  Women are just as disgusted, still exhibiting the eye roll now as they did then.

Think; in that period we've domesticated the wolf, ibex and horse, we've domesticated plants, domesticated fire, cats have domesticated us, and yet, we're only marginally domesticated ourselves.  

So much for the good old days.

Here's the story:


Credit: John Shea, Stony Brook University
 
Stone points dating to at least 104,000 years ago from Omo Kibish,
Ethiopia. These points, shaped by pressure-flaking and likely used
as projectile points are more than 65,000 years older than the oldest
similar artifacts from the European Upper Paleolithic Period.
The Omo Kibish toolmakers showed equal skill at making similar
points out of very different kinds of stone.
 

"There are no such things as modern humans."

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 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.

Understanding
Emotional Development:
Providing Insight
Into Human Lives

 by Robert Lewis Wilson

Click on image to order
Powell's Books
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 tool making 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 tool making 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."

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.

Related stories:
Story Source: Materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals.  John J. Shea.  Homo sapiens is as Homo sapiens was: Behavioral variability vs. 'behavioral modernity' in Paleolithic archaeology. Current Anthropology, 2011

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Workout supplements: An emerging eating disorder in men?

Image
therewontbeanydoves.wordpress.com When developing a fictional character, you may not think about the character using large amounts of over-the-counter dietary supplements.  Especially a man who uses large amounts of workout supplements. While there has been widespread publicity on the dangers of the non-prescribed use of anabolic steroids, not much is said about legal, over-the-counter supplements.  Are there risks?  And if so, what are they?  There are several things the writer should consider. Supplement use is becoming an eating disorder with many men who use them to prepare for and recover from a workout. There is growing evidence of a link between muscle-building supplements and testicular cancer. There is evidence that over-the counter medications and supplements are the most common causes of drug-induced liver failure (a rare event, but still a risk.)  There is even evidence that, “certain popular herbal and dietary supplements can also cause liver damage,"
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f
Read more

Neolithic Scandinavians Rejected Farming

Image
Credit: Copyright Solange Rigaud Examples of personal ornaments used by the last European foraging societies during the Early Neolithic period 8,000-5,000 BCE.   Recent DNA studies show that an isolated "mystery" population developed farming, and, that agriculture was spread from the middle East throughout the Mediterranean basin not overland but by boat in a pattern leap-frogging along the coasts of Europe. This report suggests what happened as farming settlements appeared further from its origination point.  In short, hunter - gatherer bands rejected farming practices, preferring to remain in their traditional way of life. The expansion of a new and radically different economic model against the resistance of an older, established social order is gist for the writer's mill.  I can easily imagine all sorts of conflict occurring.  For one thing, hunter-gatherer society is based on the extended family, with the oldest members of the clan making decisi
Read more

On Being Humble: E.B. White was Right in Charlotte's Web

Image
It seems the best authors have a knack for accurately describing the personality traits of their characters.  For example, the character change experienced by Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens A Christmas Carol is considered by research psychologists to be spot on for how the process of change works. How true to life was Scrooge's change? Is this ability to describe a character strictly from watching others?  Business writer Peter Drucker says in his semi-autobiographical book, Adventures of a Bystander that he and many of the other writers he knows are essentially bystanders, observing what is going on around them. Another example of a writer getting it right is E.B. White's popular children's book, Charlotte's Web.  Research psychologist Peter Samuelson and his team are researching the deeper meaning of humility.  Among their conclusions?  E.B. White displayed insight into humility and its underlying attributes. Here's the story : *  *  *  *  * The Two
Read more

Why some people hear color, taste sounds

Image
Source: ucsdnews.ucsd.edu Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of the undersides of a synesthete's and a control subject's brains, while viewing a black- and-white letter or number. The color-selective hVR region of the cortex is shown in pink. Brain "activation" is shown in shades of red, orange and yellow, with brighter colors meaning more activity. The brain of the synesthete shows activity in the color-selective region, while the brain of the non-synesthete does not.  It's called synesthesia, and it effects one out of every 100 people. A synesthete is a person with the ability to hear colors or to see a sound.  No, they're not deaf with highly developed other senses.  These are folks much like you and me, only where you and I might see a color, red, they also hear and / or taste the color red as they see it. Fascinating, to quote Spock. To paraphrase another well-known sci-fi guru, "Imagine, if you will, a det
Read more