Behavioural modernity (by -40,000) means those behaviours that are universal among present-day humans (Homo sapiens) yet are rare among other species. Things like:
- language
- art
- music
- religion
- ritual
- caring for the sick and old
- burying the dead
- stories
- imagination
- beauty
- jewellery
- fishing
- knives
- bone tools
- long-distance trade
This is often shortened to the Behavioural B’s: blades, beads, burials, bone toolmaking, and beauty.
At the heart of most of these behaviours is symbolic thinking: one thing stands for something else. Like with pictures, words and imagination.
This shows up even in tools: tools are made better than they have to be for their use, they look better and take more steps to make. They are made not just for some particular use but to match the picture in the mind of the maker.
The Neanderthals, who might belong to our species, were probably able to do some of these things but maybe not all of them: behavioural modernity was appearing in Europe big time just when the Neanderthals were disappearing – as if they could not keep up.
Now here is the strange thing: According to the fossil record behavioural modernity burst into flower between 80,000 and 40,000 years ago – yet there were people who looked just like us, who were anatomically modern (understood to be Homo sapiens sapiens), at least 195,000 years ago, probably as far back as 250,000 years ago!
The gap between anatomical and behavioural modernity has become one of the mysteries of early man. In the rest of the fossil record archaeologically visible changes in brain, hand and technology go together. Not so, it seems, with Homo sapiens!
There are two main schools of thought:
- The Great Leap Forward: About 80,000 years ago a brain mutation made language at modern levels possible, which in turn made behavioural modernity possible. All this without changing the way people look since it was a mere brain change, one that did not even affect brain size.
- The continuity hypothesis: Anatomically modern humans have always been behaviourally modern, but it has taken time for it to show up in the fossil record. Things like beads and blades do not appear overnight even if people have the brains to think them up and make them. Forks, for example, did not appear till a thousand years ago.
Some argue the Great Leap Forward was merely a technological boom. After all, mankind has seen other such booms, like the pyramids and moon shots, without any apparent brain change. The boom may have been caused by climate change during the ice age or a sudden increase in population and trade.
I argue that the Great Leap Forward is a Eurocentric illusion. Europe has far more scientists than Africa and so it has a far more complete fossil record. The Great Leap Forward is based mainly on European fossils and come from a time when anatomically modern humans arrive on the scene in Europe. So no wonder. In time African fossils will wipe out the apparent gap, as they have been doing for the past ten years.
See also:
It’s also theorized that it was due to an anatomical change which gave us the capacity for speech. Both chimps and gorillas have demonstrated that they can use language to communicate (sign language and using pictures) but they don’t have the ability to speek.
In addition, early AMH dig sites (dating back to as early as 164,000 BP) have been found in South Africa’s Blombos Cave & Pinnacle Point, and Congo’s Katanda region. These discoveries have been found in the last 30 years, and many anthropologists believe this is pretty conclusive evidence that a slow process of culture accumulation began in Africa.
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I would suggest a more logical reason for this discrepancy would be the Toba super eruption which took place approx 77K years ago. (In geological terms this is on difference at all) many scientists have reason to believe (genetic analysis) that the origins of modern man are in SE Asia. The eruption may have destroyed many of the original fossil records.
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Interesting. One comment: fork was used well before than it is usually said. It was relative unknown in western europe, though, and hence many historians and researchers claim it appeared some 1000 years ago.
Another comment: tools and such made out of bones and wood usually dissappear quickly so there is no way of tellin how long they have been used by humans before present day argeological finds. Even some iron tools, left on the open, rust and dissappear in few decades without a trace (specially the ones made out in the old style).
Also, drawing too straight conclusions on finds alone is not wise. Just think of this: if all the texts would dissappear and future generations would draw they conclusions by artefacts and wares alone about human culture and populations, what they would think? In USA there lived a lot of chinese, because of all the chinese stuff found there. Also lots of germans and japanese, since the remains of cars are japanese and german. Americans populated most the world since there were McDonaldses all over the place etc.
One false conclusion was also that ancient egyptians did not have wheel so they dragged the stones to the pyramid building sites. Well, they had war carriages and coaches BUT their wheels were narrow so they were useless in sand and soft terrain, Sledges were much more practical.
That being said, I very much respect argeoligists and scientists.
So my take on this is this: our ancestors used tools for milennias before so called Big Leap but made them out of materials which did dissappear. They developed them and methods, and just as in present days high technology, the development was cumulative and ever faster, the boom came. Just think about this: your mobile phone has now more calculating power than Apollo 11 space programme combined. And that was few years ago historically.
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I read a hypothesis which says that early humans were endurance runners who would chase their prey to exhaustion. All of that running on the African savanna generates a lot of heat, and heat kills brain cells. The extra brain matter originally evolved just to create redundancy in case of cell death. It was only later (maybe when they figured out easier ways to hunt?) that the brain came to be used for cultural development. I read this in a book about the evolution of the mind, but unfortunately I don’t remember the title.
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@ sam:
Right, lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. Yet because of that lack it is hard to prove the contrary.
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@ nitou
I saw a film once of some men hunting a giraffe with nothing but spears (or something like that – they did not have guns). The trick was to keep following it till, about two or three days later, it collapsed from exhaustion.
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@ BadWolf
The timing of Toba is pretty interesting. I will probably do a post on it, probably sooner now rather than later.
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@abagond: true. One thing comes to mind. For decades the idea of populating Brittish Isles was the traditional one: new immigrants wiped out the previous ones with higher technology etc. (example North America etc.). This was considered to be the gospel untill early 2000’s. Then they found a cave man skeleton in south England and were able to extract DNA out of it. The skeleton was prx 8 000 years old.
Find caused great exitement and in order to promote science and histpry, the brittish schools started a DNA collection campaign in order to find out if the cave man had any relatives alive today. Most historians and scientists naturally said no way.
There was one match, dircet line from the cave man to a man living todays England. The funniest thing was that the relative was the history teatcher from the village school nearest the cave mans finding place.
Little confused, the village teatcher told the media that he knew his family had lived in the area at least from 1500’s but to find out that his relatives had been living there for 8 000 years meant certainly one thing: I guess I can say in all honesty that I am a local man.
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@ sam: Wow, cool story.
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Just to be clear, is the “Eurocentric illusion” here due at all to racism, or is it merely logistical?
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I believe there’s racism in most Eurocentric views, but then most groups, regardless of race, are pretty ethnocentric. However European colonists have really been at the forefront of spreading racist ideology all over the world, which started first by separating the Christians from the heathens, but as the heathens converted they needed a new justification for keeping these ‘others’ under subjugation, and voila! racism.
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@BadWolf
I like the theory of the Toba super-eruption as a catalyst for major change. It fits nicely with the ‘mitochondrial eve’ findings. Only the brightest would have been able to survive it and that would certainly account for a sudden jump in ‘cleverness’.
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Nice post. You have a very different, profound, but easy to digest take on whites.
Maybe too much of white culture you put in opposition to non-white cultures. At first look, but then you force people to realize whites don’t live in a vacuum and never have lived in a vacuum. White creativity has almost always meant in equal portion destruction. That should always be kept in the forefront. Because that’s just the way it is.
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That picture reminds me of the Bayeaux tapestry. Each time I see pictures like the cave painting above, I think of it.
@ Abagond,
Have you been to the V&A museum? They have lots of pictures and art like that there. Also, pottery and lots of other featured art. I managed to get a few pictures, although not enough. Unfortunately, you can’t see everything there in one day, there is just so much to see and in some parts you’re not allowed to take pictures.
They also have lots of jewellery there as well, although personally I don’t really wear much jewellery, but for those who love jewellery, there is a lot to be seen there…..Also, ancient art…..Statues, there are lots of those, although I had to cover my face as I walked past those….I have a statue phobia.
I imagine that you have probably been there at some point seeing that you appear to love art and history.
Did you have a bereavement in your family?
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