Human Evolutionary History Gap Discussion

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Why did the switch flip ~10,000 years ago?

Was it God? Ancient Aliens? Radiation from some event in space triggering subtle genetic mutations that caused greater intelligence? Do you believe the Ice Age answer?

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Top scientist from the planet Nibiru combined their own Anunnaki DNA with that of Homo Erectus in order to create a race of workers to work in the gold mines for them during periods when they were on earth (gold was important to them because monoatomic gold particles help protect their atmosphere while they're far away from the sun in their elongated orbit)

10,000 years ago there were less than 1 million people on earth. That was up from the 2,000-10,000 after Mt. Toba erupted 74,000 years ago. Homo sapiens sapiens nearly went extinct.

So, while modern Homo sapiens sapiens evolved some 55,000 years ago, all of his brain power was dedicated to survival. There was very little time available for creativity and innovation. The cave art at Lascaux in France are only 34,000 years old, when the population had grown to a few million.

Of course, Homo sapiens neandertalensis was still around at that time and had also evolved to the creative stage. Cave art in Spain by Neanderthals is estimated to be 64,000 years old. Other sapiens were probably around at that time, particularly the Denisovans in Siberia.

In my opinion, the human population had to reach several million before humans could be safe enough from their environment and have enough food to allow them the time needed to flex the powers of the greatest evolutionary gift to any species, the human brain.

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Are we really to believe that our ancestors from 300,000 years ago, who were our anatomical equals, couldn't figure out what seeds did and how to plant them? That they just stumbled around for 100,000s of years hunting and gathering?

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However... we aren't their equals. Nope, we have smaller brains then they did back in the day. We've rebounded in recent generations but for most of recorded human history we were dumber then our ancestors.

Why?

Let's follow this white rabbit down it's hole shall we?

Agriculture allowed humanity to develop writing, specialized skills, and form large societies. And until recently you can call it a disaster for the members of the species.

Hunter gatherers work very few hours each day and until the invention of modern medicine outlived agricultural based societies by a couple of decades. Since they subsist on a wide variety of foods a crop famine would not doom them. They had a much higher percentage of protein in their diet. Widespread populations meant a particular nasty illness didn't make the rounds of the entire species. They had it made.

Those tens of thousands of years of technological development were, for the most part, survived by generations who weren't nearly as well fed as they used to be.

We won the pony. We are the end result of thousands of years of bad decisions that turned out to be good at the end. We are the finished product of the greatest investment plan in human history. The guy that buys the same lotto ticket number twice a week? We are him after a few thousands years and we finally hit the jackpot.

Question then...why did the discovery or widespread cultivation of cereals begin at roughly the same time in multiple locations. Yes in some places they were millennia apart but given the imprecision of archaeology, scale of human history, and the geography involved it was essentially simultaneous.



It's almost like Humans were seeded with this knowledge.

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That's a really cool way of looking at it. So you subscribe to the Original Affluent Society theory?

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The problem with the Original Affluent Society, which is solid mind you, is that there is not incremental growth of prosperity. Agriculture sucks donkey wang at first, but every generation does a little bit better, and a little bit better.

Hunter/Gatherers live on a nice steady plateau. Some dips for major environmental disasters, some upticks for really good times.

HG is the guy who gets a job out of college for 40 grand a year. And never gets a raise. Agriculture is a the guy who starts at 18k a year. But he gets raises. Maybe he never gets up to 40k a year, but maybe he keeps getting raises until he's making 120k a year and he passes that wealth down to his descendants.

Hunter gatherer is an easier life but stagnant in the long run. Agriculture works because it sucks when you start, but it slowly builds up.

So its not that we are smarter then our ancestors, in fact we might be a bit dumber, but we are reaping the rewards of their labor. "Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature."

To use a pro wrestling analogy... we are Lord Littlebrook perched on Andre the Giant's shoulders now. We are not better then our ancestors, we might be deficient to them in some ways actually, though not in disease resistance, but we are starting of in a position so much better then them.

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So you subscribe to the Original Affluent Society theory?

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Affluent? Not by any stretch of the imagination. In tune with their environment? Most definitely.

The lifestyle of hunter/gathers put a definite crimp on their numbers. Because they moved around, they encountered better chances of finding game and wild plants but were coincidently exposing themselves to their own predators more frequently.

The hunter/gathers of today, such as the !Kung, are much more successful than their ancestors because of better weapons and generations of ancestral memories of hunting experience.

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Richard B. Lee's work on the !Kung of southern Africa, was challenging popular notions that hunter-gatherer societies were always near the brink of starvation and continuously engaged in a struggle for survival. Sahlins gathered the data from these studies and used it to support a comprehensive argument that states that hunter-gatherers did not suffer from deprivation, but instead lived in a society in which "all the people's wants are easily satisfied."

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Wouldn't this data disprove our God?

I am thankful for my time and place on Earth, but when looking at things like this, it completely blows up religion and faith.

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Why can't a god work through nature at the speed of nature? Atheists arguments against a god always tend to revolve around the concept of a god that works at the snap of a finger creating things out if thin air.

If there is a god then it certainly exists outside of time. A process that takes thousands, or millions, or trillions of years would seemingly be taking place all at once, hence religious texts like Genesis in the bible describing "7 days" of creation.

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Agriculture takes place in one locale and a large population can be successful. It's the reason societies began. Food was predictable, safety from predators was enhanced because of the greater numbers of people and more children could be accommodated and raised to adulthood.

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It also raised the levels of disease though. Just shitting in the woods and going elsewhere isn’t really a possibility when you’re living in a town with 10,000 people. Life expectancy was actually lowered due to civilization for quite some time.

That's what I figured you meant, but was unsure.

I seent that lol