Archaeologica.org

seems like global climatic change has been more of a significant shaping force with the various species of hominids than previously estimated. literally, old cultures disappear and new cultures appear in response to global weather conditions.

so, the road i'm headed down is culture as opportunistic response to environmental change.

any iconic works on this thesis?


john

http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnellyr/summary.html

I cetainly agree with your premise John. As any discussion develops I'll try to join in.

This url is one I've posted before, which is a pretty good reference for the paleoclimatic events that have been part of mankinds history.

so, the road i'm headed down is culture as opportunistic response to environmental change.

I have to ask you to define your terms. Even a small hunter/gatherer group can be said to have a 'culture' which it attempts to pass down to its young. Is that what you mean or do you mean something a bit more structured?

old cultures disappear and new cultures appear in response to global weather conditions.

can you give examples of actual cultures that have done so without referring to the generalization terms of 'pre-historic man', 'hunter-gatherers' or 'nomads' etc.

it would help to have an actuall civilization to discuss instead of just hypothesis.

archaeologist wrote:

old cultures disappear and new cultures appear in response to global weather conditions.

can you give examples of actual cultures that have done so without referring to the generalization terms of 'pre-historic man', 'hunter-gatherers' or 'nomads' etc.

it would help to have an actuall civilization to discuss instead of just hypothesis.

well just for openers you could start with the hokoham and mound builders in north america and latterly in europe the icelandic colony, christians, by the way.

john

the icelandic colony

what do you have on this one?

Minimalist wrote:

so, the road i'm headed down is culture as opportunistic response to environmental change.

I have to ask you to define your terms. Even a small hunter/gatherer group can be said to have a 'culture' which it attempts to pass down to its young. Is that what you mean or do you mean something a bit more structured?

minim -

quite a bit more structured. sorry - didn't go nearly far enough.

what i'm talking about is the transition from literal thought to abstract thought.

i present abstract thought as a mutation that greatly improved the ability of the human species to survive. too much, perhaps, given the sorry state of the earth today.

abstract thought, to my mind, resulted directly in representational art, and language, and later written language. the reason? a method of transmitting multi-generational knowledge without the necessity of the original knower being physically alive.

so if your water hole has dried up and all the game has moved away and you're looking at that old map great-grandad pecked into the rocks, or the oral tradition of your clan, or the rand mcnally atlas, or usgs topo maps then you can project yourself into the future, to the waterhole 200 miles away. and survive.

an unintended result of abstract thinking is pure art, aesthetics, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with survival, but a sensation of pleasure.

why humans do this, and animals apparently don't, i can't answer.

what i'm really interested in is the exact moment, the threshold when literal thought turns into abstract thought. and when and how that might have happened in the history of early man.

we think its so simple. i gave a friend directions today, how to go a couple hundred miles to arrive at a specific bend of a specific river, to fish for trout. and i drew a map on a piece of paper. and he did just that. now imagine your life without that ability.

and project that into prehistory.

i've got more question than answers.



john

archaeologist wrote:

the icelandic colony

what do you have on this one?

sorry. braindead here. greenland, not iceland. greenland was colonised somewhere in the nine hundreds by northern europeans, during a warm spell. the colony flourished for awhile, but the weather got colder and colder. the yearly sea trade dwindled and then stopped, due to ice and bad weather. archaeological record includes dwarfism and rickets in successive generations of the dying population, although they were nonetheless impeccably dressed to a style popular several centuries earlier. then they disappeared. although there are anecdotal accounts of the (european) greenlanders mingling with the native inuit peoples. whole thing lasted about 500 years.


john

john wrote:

Minimalist wrote:

so, the road i'm headed down is culture as opportunistic response to environmental change.

I have to ask you to define your terms. Even a small hunter/gatherer group can be said to have a 'culture' which it attempts to pass down to its young. Is that what you mean or do you mean something a bit more structured?

minim -

quite a bit more structured. sorry - didn't go nearly far enough.

what i'm talking about is the transition from literal thought to abstract thought.

i present abstract thought as a mutation that greatly improved the ability of the human species to survive. too much, perhaps, given the sorry state of the earth today.

abstract thought, to my mind, resulted directly in representational art, and language, and later written language. the reason? a method of transmitting multi-generational knowledge without the necessity of the original knower being physically alive.

so if your water hole has dried up and all the game has moved away and you're looking at that old map great-grandad pecked into the rocks, or the oral tradition of your clan, or the rand mcnally atlas, or usgs topo maps then you can project yourself into the future, to the waterhole 200 miles away. and survive.

an unintended result of abstract thinking is pure art, aesthetics, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with survival, but a sensation of pleasure.

why humans do this, and animals apparently don't, i can't answer.

what i'm really interested in is the exact moment, the threshold when literal thought turns into abstract thought. and when and how that might have happened in the history of early man.

we think its so simple. i gave a friend directions today, how to go a couple hundred miles to arrive at a specific bend of a specific river, to fish for trout. and i drew a map on a piece of paper. and he did just that. now imagine your life without that ability.

and project that into prehistory.

i've got more question than answers.



john

dang. i'm slow tonight. ultimate point is that the ability/mutation which enabled abstract, projected thought allowed humans to survive environmental changes which, otherwise, would have driven them to extinction. neandertals a case in point here?

john

I'm not sure that I follow exactly where you are going. I do recall reading a theory that religion (the most abstract of thought) was stimulated by the act of killing an animal. The idea that the animal "was alive and is now dead" stirring some kind of thinking of a soul or spirit. That idea is further down the evolutionary path than group hunting or making tools. I assume we are speaking of oral communication. The last theory I saw on the development of that had to do with sounds employed by hunters so in order to have the kind of cultural transmission that you are speaking of you already had to have hunter/gatherer groups with some advanced speech concepts.

I don't know that the primary driver for that would be climatic.