- his is extracted from an article in the January 2000
Scientific American entitled,
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- Once We Were Not Alone
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- Ian Tattersall
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- and Jay Matternes
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- Homo sapiens is the only hominid that still walks the
earth. Yet over the past four million years, 20 or more types of creatures
similar to us and our ancestors may have existed, and often they shared
their territory with one another. Perhaps the reason we are all that remains
is on the tip of our tongues.
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- Comment: There are those who believe in the Bible version
of Creation: And, there are those who believe human life was seeded from
space or that "Aliens" somehow intervened in human evolution
to create what we see today. For myself I'll accept the existing bone and
DNA evidence. This evidence to date seems to support the so called "Eve"
hypothesis proposed over ten years ago that states that modern humans arouse
out of Africa between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago from an initial tribe
of approximately 6000 males and 6000 females. This "initial tribe"
of Homo sapiens then swept over the planet replacing all other existing
hominids. Perhaps the "real" Bible version of Adam and Eve ?
Regardless, on just an Earth time scale "we" are very new and
that's an under statement as we all know. On another note please reference
theory, opinions and ideas: They are just that in my mind or an "empty
set" as they say in Modern Algebra unless there is evidence to support
such theories, opinions or ideas.
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- I start this quoted extract from page 61, paragraph 3
under "The Roots of Our Solitude" because I believe this highlights
the uniqueness of human
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- origins.
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- Please see Speculative Human Family Tree for a graphical
depiction of what the authors are referring to.
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- "Among the most accomplished practitioners of prepared
core technology (tool making) were the large-brained, big faced and low-skulled
Neanderthals, who occupied Europe and western Asia until about 30,000 years
ago. Because they left an excellent record of themselves and were abruptly
replaced by modern humans who did the same, the Neanderthals furnish us
with a particularly instructive yardstick by which to judge our own uniqueness.
The stone working skills of the Neanderthals were impressive, if somewhat
stereotyped, but they rarely if ever made tools from other preservable
materials. And many archaeologist question the sophistication of their
hunting skills.
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- Further, despite misleading early accounts of bizarre
Neanderthal "bear cults" and other rituals, no substantial evidence
has been found for symbolic behaviors among these hominids or for the production
of symbolic objects--certainly not before contact had been made with modern
humans. Even the occasional Neanderthal practice of burying the dead may
have been simply a way of discouraging hyena incursions into their living
space, or have a similar mundane explanation, for Neanderthals burials
lack the "grave goods" that would attest to ritual and belief
in an afterlife. The Neanderthals, in other words, though admirable in
many ways and for a long time successful in the difficult circumstances
of the late Ice Ages, lacked the spark of creativity that, in the end,
distinguished H. sapiens.
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- Although the source of H. sapiens as a physical entity
is obscure, most evidence points to an African origin perhaps between 150,000
and 200,000 years ago. Modern behavior patterns did not emerge until much
later. The best evidence comes from Israel and environs, where Neanderthals
lived about 200,000 years ago or perhaps even earlier. By about 100,000
years ago, they had been joined by anatomically modern H. sapiens, and
the remarkable thing is that the tools and sites the two hominids species
left behind are essentially identical. As far as can be told, these two
hominids behaved in a similar ways despite their anatomical differences.
And as long as they did so, they somehow contrived to share the Levantine
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- environment.
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- The situation in Europe could hardly be more different.
The earliest H. sapiens sites there date from only 40,000 years ago, and
just 10,000 or so years later the formerly ubiquitous Neanderthals were
gone. Significantly, the H. sapiens who invaded Europe brought with them
abundant evidence of a fully formed and unprecedented modern sensibility.
Not only did they possess a new "Upper Paleolithic" stoneworking
technology based on production of multiple long, thin blades from cylindrical
cores, but they made tools from bone and antler, with an exquisite sensitivity
to the properties
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- of these materials.
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- Even more significantly, they brought with them art,
in the form of carvings, engravings and spectacular cave painting; they
kept records on bone and stone plaques; they made music on wind instruments;
they crafted elaborate personal adornments; they afforded some of their
dead elaborate burials with grave goods (hinting at social stratification
in addition to belief in an afterlife, for not all burials were equally
fancy); their living sites were highly organized, with evidence of sophisticated
hunting and fishing. The pattern of intermittent technological innovation
was gone, replaced by constant refinement. Clearly, these people were US.
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- In all ways, early Upper Paleolithic people contrasted
dramatically with the Neanderthals. Some Neanderthals in Europe seem to
have picked up new ways of doing things from the arriving H. sapiens, but
we have no direct clues as to the nature of the interaction between the
two species. In light of the Neanderthals' rapid disappearance, though,
and of the appalling subsequent record of H. sapiens, we can reasonably
surmise that such interactions were rarely happy for the former. Certainly
the repeated pattern at archaeological sites is one of short-term replacement,
and there is no convincing biological evidence of any intermixing in Europe."
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- *Please see the January 2000 Scientific American for
the complete text of this article.
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- ©Robert Collins, 2000
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