Archaeologica.org

Is there not a difference between 10's of thousands of years of a relatively static hunting and gathering lifestyle to Mozart?

Yes, but that also ignores the fact that Mozart had a whole superstructure of music available, not the least being his musical parents who both recognized and exploited his talent from the outset.

I just saw a performance of The Magic Flute tonight so I'm really into Mozart...and it sure as hell is not so easy a caveman can do it.

There doesn't seem to be any sort of transitional steps between hunting and gatherering to a "civilization". Civilizations happened abruptly and spread globablly like wildfire, in relative terms.

Something had to have changed in man for this to have happened the way it did.

Beagle - you asked for a specific trait. I don't know of the name hence my problem explaining myself. I do know of the qualities produced from this trait would help expain why we have the ability to write poetry, or create art for aesthetic purposes, or build a stone structure for worship.

Since I've suggested that a change has happened to man within the past ~10K years, then I'm also suggesting that there would be a difference in mental ability between a person today and a person from 20K years ago.

Did I step further out on the limb?

There doesn't seem to be any sort of transitional steps between hunting and gatherering to a "civilization". Civilizations happened abruptly and spread globablly like wildfire, in relative terms.

There had to be. Most likely HG gave way to pastoralism which would still entail moving the herds from place to place and might otherwise be indistinguishable from HG activity. It's the jump from pastoralism to agriculture that seems most dramatic but I wonder if it really was?

Take Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. They are suggesting it went from HG directly to the building the foundations of a civilization around 10K years ago. Amazing stone structures considering the age.

Interested Onlooker wrote:I do know of the qualities produced from this trait would help expain why we have the ability to write poetry, or create art for aesthetic purposes, or build a stone structure for worship.

The emergence of self-awareness. It leads to awareness of mortality and the desire to understand if life has purpose. This is the natural course to religious thought, art, music and need for meaning and legacy.

Soon afterward there is the emergence of esotericism and mysticism and the rise of social order based on knowledge as well as strength and/or wealth. Tribalism gives way to nationalism, and soon your electing leaders and conducting a world war all the while dreaming of utopia. A pretty rapid development in about 10K years, imo.

In the UK Min the most recent evidence is that animal husbandry preceded agriculture by a good margin.
Till the 18C most animals were killed in the Fall due to shortages of suitable feed, nowadays in many areas cattle are still 'shedded' through out the winter months. What more natural progression than growing crops to over winter your breeding stock to growing for yourself?
This would also suggest that meat preservation was well understood by that time.

There are places in the world which still have not abandoned pastoralism for agriculture. Not to mention that there are still isolated HG groups in remote areas.

But if 'art' is an expression of self awareness Monk, as I think it must be, then it goes back before 10k.
I would point out that dogs, for example, are said to be unable to recognise themselves on TVs but that Chimps can and that this is promoted as Chimps being self aware.
That being so the time scale receeds in to the very distant past.

Forum Monk wrote:

Interested Onlooker wrote:I do know of the qualities produced from this trait would help expain why we have the ability to write poetry, or create art for aesthetic purposes, or build a stone structure for worship.

The emergence of self-awareness. It leads to awareness of mortality and the desire to understand if life has purpose. This is the natural course to religious thought, art, music and need for meaning and legacy.

Soon afterward there is the emergence of esotericism and mysticism and the rise of social order based on knowledge as well as strength and/or wealth. Tribalism gives way to nationalism, and soon your electing leaders and conducting a world war all the while dreaming of utopia. A pretty rapid development in about 10K years, imo.

Forum Monk - when you said soon afterward, there was an emergence of esotericism and mysticism, can you identify when this emergence occurred? Are you saying that HSS were self-aware but then later brought on qualities that allowed them to explore esoterical and mystical ideas?

What is the earliest representation of esotericism and/or mysticism in human history? I don't know and am asking for insight.

Check out some of the cave art IO. Why stick like human figures when they could draw a Bison with near 3D accuracy?

An accurate depiction of a bison would not be esoteric, correct?

That's right Digit.
Date the cave art and you are dating the roots of self-awareness. In some art one sees shamanistic elements; esotericism and religion. Certainly early HS seemed to possess self awareness as evidenced by art. Beagle would probably argue that HN did as well. I am not as confident.

According to my dictionary IO esoteric is defined as 'private, taught to a few'.
Whether that would have been so in relation to cave art I wouldn't know.
Have you any evidence for that?
When you consider that 'art' was practiced on such items as harpoons I some how doubt that esoteric is a suitable definition.

Wiki has a good summary of the Gobekli Tepe, site in Turkey:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe

"The site, currently undergoing excavation by German and Turkish archaeologists was erected by hunter-gatherers in the 9th millennium BC (ca 11,500 years ago), before the advent of sedentism."

"Thus, the complexes originated before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, ie the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry, which is assumed to begin after 9,000 BC. But the construction of the Göbekli Tepe complex implies complex organisation of a degree of complexity not hitherto associated with pre-Neolithic societies. The archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the 10-20 ton pillars (in fact, some weigh up to 50 tons) from local quarries and move them 100 to 500m to the site."

This is part of the abrupt transition I was referring to, from HG to the building blocks of a civilization.

Perhaps what I'm seeing (and maybe the only one here and am seeing illusions) is that there was an influential effect that allowed us to think the abstract. A magnitude above what had been achieved...the ability to really see "outside the box."

Self-awareness may have been the wrong trait characteristic I was looking for.