Abstract Based on the most current information available on the Late Pleistocene palaeoanthropology of Europe, this paper presents a revolutionary reassessment of the dominant models. The notions of an introduction of African technologies and the full replacement of resident robust hominins are rejected. It is demonstrated that there exists no evidence that any of the Early Upper Palaeolithic tool traditions, including the Aurignacian, were by ‘anatomically modern humans’. The introduction of hominin gracility, in Europe and in three other continents, occurred gradually, over a period of several tens of millennia. What were replaced were not entire continental populations, but robust genes in humans, through genetic drift, introgression and cultural selection of gracile traits, initially in the females. Therefore ‘anatomically modern humans’, which were preceded by cognitive modernity, are the result primarily of incidental selective breeding.
I'll try to get my hands on this new study by Bednarik. If available yet, there is plenty of supportive evidence in his older writings.
Someone else has just jumped to the top of the Club's Shit List.
The counterattack should be swift and brutal.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
"Therefore ‘anatomically modern humans’, which were preceded by cognitive modernity, are the result primarily of incidental selective breeding."
My emphasis. This is huge.
Trivia of the day: Hippopotami mark territory by rapidly rotating their tails while shitting, in order to fling their shit across the largest area possible.
I do believe Das Klub will be soon engaged in a similar transaction, forgetting, however, that they have spent all their intellectual resources erecting the analytical equivalent of a Maginot Line.
This is gonna be fun.
hoka hey
john
"Man is a marvellous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is sort of a low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Be that as it may, the numerous physiological features of human neoteny should suffice to demonstrate that the
several human species are best defined as foetalized forms of ape. This concept brings us back to an idea I raised
already at the end of Lecture 2, concerning the rapid reduction of robust features in man during the most recent 50,000
years of human evolution. While the process of selecting in favour of infantile physiology appears to mark all of human
history, extending over several million years, during the last of the great Ice Ages it suddenly accelerated to an
unprecedented rate. Worldwide, wherever humans existed 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, possessing as they did an
essentially “Middle Paleolithic” technological tradition, they shed all of their robust features in just a few tens of
millennia. Their brain size decreased, despite the still growing demands made on their brains. Their muscle bulk waned
until their physical strength was perhaps halved, in tandem with reductions in bone strength and thickness. The
decrease in skull thickness is particularly prominent, as well as rapid reduction in cranial robusticity. This process
occurred so fast that it can be tracked through the millennia. At about 35,000 years BP, we encounter gracile specimens
in Australia and Africa, and the first evidence of gracilization is also found in Europe. By 30,000 BP, the skeletal
evidence from central Europe presents a distinctive sexual dimorphism: the female crania, though still much more
robust than male crania were towards the end of the Pleistocene, show distinctive gracilization: the development
globular crania, reduction or absence of supraorbital tori and occipital projection, significant loss in bone thickness, and
several other features. The males, however, remain almost as robust as typical “Neanderthals”. Five thousand years
later, the females have become markedly more gracile, and the robust features of the males also begin to fade. By
20,000 BP, the males begin to catch up with the females, and from there on the loss of robusticity continues right to the
present time. Males are still more robust today, but a contemporary male is on average less robust than a female of
10,000 years ago. Gracilization is an ongoing process, and no serious attempt has been made to explain it. Instead, we
have been given a tale of replacement, of which no credible evidence exists. Yet it is obvious that this infantilization
process is essentially what has made us what we are today, more so than any other factor in hominin evolution
This is a 9 page PDF that is well worth reading, but this quote pertains to this immediate thread.
"It is at that
time that hominins apparently began to discriminate between “exotic” articles and “ordinary” ones (Bednarik 1990a). It
is also then that they left the very first evidence of one of the most important indicators of symboling, the use of
pigment (Bednarik 1990b, 1992, 1994). This coincides roughly with the expansion of humans into Europe, presumably
via the Strait of Gibraltar (Bednarik 1999a); it probably coincides with the domestication of fire, and certainly with the
introduction of seafaring in Wallacea, Indonesia (Bednarik 1999b, 2003b). The last-mentioned, in particular, tells us a
great deal about the developing symboling ability of humans, and in more ways than one. One of the most sophisticated
symbol systems developed by our species is of course language, and it is widely agreed that maritime navigation and
colonization of lands by seagoing vessels presupposes relatively complex communication forms, almost certainly of the
verbal kind. Since Pleistocene seafaring necessarily involved forward planning and coordinated community efforts, it is
almost impossible to account for it in the absence of “reflective” language. But there are even more relevant incidental
effects. Seafaring is the earliest example we have in hominin history of the domestication of multiple natural systems of
energy. It uses the combined effects of wave movement, current, wind and buoyancy, and it remains the most complex
utilization of energy systems throughout the Pleistocene period. Until the inventions of wheel and sledge, it also
remained the only mode of assisted locomotion used on this planet (“assisted” in contrast to autonomous locomotion, as
in walking, running, crawling or swimming). It would have promoted the formation of new neural structures on a scale
not seen hitherto, such as those supporting “conscious” awareness of cause-and-effect relationships. This, too, has
neurobiological implications for symboling abilities. "
Boats.
Hematite.
hoka hey
john
"Man is a marvellous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is sort of a low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."
Hopefully, when Manystones comes by he'll have more to add here. It was he who got me looking at gracilization yesterday. I'm still not totally sure what I think of it.
But I've always liked Bednarik. This is the man who gave us "Erectus Ahoy", which we posted in here about 2 yrs. ago.
Since we are almost talking about the cognitive ability of robust hominins:
from Neuro-visual theory, the visuo-motor system and Pleistocence palaeoart. Derek Hodgson.
"An early expansion of the temporal lobe suggests that Australopithecus may well have been capable of a passive appreciationof naturally occurring objects and corroborates the authenticity of the 3 million year old Makapansgat manuport and Mary Leakey's 1.8 million year old baboon-like object. It also indicates that such objects may be more widespread than is implied by the the archaeological record."
(my emboldening)
"The question arises, what were the decisive factors that allowed hominins to proceed from the rudimentary marks of chimps to the first intentionally made motifs of Homo heidelbergensis - that is, from an immediate response to prevailing contingencies to what Ingold (1999) refers to as "self conscious modification." The tendency towards more regularly shaped stone tools before 500,000 BP may be significant in this regard in relation to an expansion of the superior parietal area in Homo erectus... .... Crucially, the posterior parietal area, particularly the inferoparietal cortex, seems to have undergone significant expansion in archaic humans (Roland, 1993). In this respect, the brain of Homo heidelbergensis also appears to have increased to around 1206 cc beyond the 937 cc average of Homo erectus (Rightmire 2003).
The inferoparietal area is thought, in modern humans, to be involved in planning for action as part of a third stream (Glover 2004)...the integration of these various streams at a higher level of functioning will have provided the essentials that can help explain the appearance of artefacts attributed to Homo heidelbergensis........The increased processing capacity of these areas occurred about the same time that the symmetries of Acheulean tools were becoming more complex, including three-dimensional symmetries (Wynn 2002) - the two phenomena may therefore be linked. The skill required to craft such tools is quite sophisticated and would have easily been transferable to the production of geometric marks as well as to the enhancement of naturally occurring iconic-like objects so as to accentuate the resemblance to a human figure, face or animal feature."
It was a society that stored symbolic information outside the
brain, in a range of objects and markings: it had circumvented the need for
continued brain growth by holding information in a more reliably stable and
relatively permanent form. It was therefore cognitively modern. But this is still
long before Homo sapiens sapiens emerged, it is still during the reign of the
archaic sapiens hominins, whose perhaps most extreme form are the
Neanderthals. By the advent of the Upper Paleolithic, a mere 40,000 years ago, it
was all over. The complexity of symboling, social systems and cognitive faculties
was then essentially identical to what is available to us today. By that time,
people wove textiles and created master paintings we stand in awe of. The most
impressive of their art works were apparently not created by what we call
anatomically modern humans, but by Neanderthaloid artists (Bednarik 2007).
This finding alone would render the ‘African Eve’ model refuted.
Here is Bednarik again. This is a long PDF. It's worth the read, especially the "Discussion" beginning on page 19.
