Saturday 25 June 2005

Pic of the day: Sometimes it is hard to say exactly when dawn begins. (This picture, however, is from the anime Boys Be, portraying the breathtaking nature of the Japanese island of Hokkaido.)

Dawn of humanity

By sheer synchronicity, the June issue of Scientific American is now coming to Norway, and contains a long article on the origin of the modern human mind ... the very topic that I repeatedly referred to for almost a week, when I predicted that a similar change could well happen again, taking humankind into a new era of advanced thought, knowledge and creativity.

The article (The Morning of the Modern Mind) challenges the view that modern thought suddenly arose in Europe 40 000 years ago. Rather, it says, there are scattered proof of modern human capabilities in various African sites for tens of thousands of years before that time. 60 000 years ago, advanced harpoons were being crafted. 75 000 years ago, necklaces of perforated snail shells were being made, and evidently worn together with body paint. In other areas, stone ideal for toolmaking was being found far from its origin, implying trade routes.

This is not exactly a blow to my worldview. I already mentioned that some form of jewelry had been made in Africa prior to the perceived Great Leap. I also supported the idea that the advances were spreading from Africa into Europe, whereas some people evidently have believed that the Great Leap was a European thing. Europe is certainly a more challenging place in terms of climate, at least during the ice ages, but for years now Africa has stood out as the mother continent of humankind.

The new discoveries hardly disprove my view of the Great Leap. I have expected that there were outbreaks of partial human behavior earlier, but without a language as we know it they were doomed to either fade or spread very slowly. And after all, concepts belonging to the proposed post-human mind have been known since the dawn of writing, and are part of all major religions.

Intriguingly, the article theorizes that population density was the crucial factor. As long as humans were rare and lived in small scattered societies, the new mode of thinking was not important to survival and could be lost. Also it did not spread since each group had little contact with others. As populations boomed, cooperation became crucial to avoid conflicts or form alliances to win them. This is fine by me: I believe that the current high population density is important to the dawn of the next level of consciousness, too.

But most importantly, the findings in South Africa cuts the throat of the theory that language and advanced culture was due to a tiny genetic mutation that happened 50-60 000 years ago. Instead it supports the idea that early Homo Sapiens were genetically the same as we, at most as different from us as some of the current human races. Which is to say, not enough to influence their mental abilities noticeably. It is just that for most of the time, humans simply did not use their abilities. And I think we still don't, for the most part. Some people less than others.