About early man

[Stu Pidasso]

Its accepted that humans have been around for 200,000 years. The vast majority of our advancement occurred in the last 10,000 years with barely any coming during that first 190,000 years.

I've heard it said that early man was so busy hunting and gathering that he did not have any time to do the necessary thought required to develope things. I think thats a bunch of bunk.

Early humans had plenty of time to think. The task of hunting and gathering has long moments of time that can best be described as "mundane". It doesn't take a lot of "creative brain power" to do munadane tasks. In my experience it seems the brain finds ways to ultilize its "creative brain power" during these mundane task. If you've ever daydreamed its in your experience too.

The other night I was watching a show about how a couple of scientist were using viruses collected from a hotspring to produce hydrogen. They were stripping out all the RNA from the viral protien shell and then they used that empty protien shell to encapsulated little bits of metal. The next day while driving home from Costco, I didn't think much about driving. I didn't think much about installing the car battery I just bought. What I was thinking about is what other uses little bits of metal encapsulated in protein might have.

If I can use my creative brain power while doing a complex, but mundane task such as driving a car, surely a human who lived 150,000 years ago would be having equally creative thoughts while trekking accross the country following a herd of mamoths.

There must be some other reasons why early humans didn't advance much. It certainly wasn't because they didn't have time to "think things up"

Stu

[GoodCallYouWin]

It's about the complexity of machines; the reason we advance so quickly now is because we use inventions that have millions of machines (software for example). Until 200 years ago basically all inventions used a few simple machines in tandem.

[ApeAttack]

Read Jared Diamond's book. "Guns, Germs and Steel"

I think it will give you some insight as to the development of man since the last ice age.

[Justin A]

I think a lot of it has to do with a lack of language and written language. Human progress generally comes from people building upon each other's thoughts. Communication makes this possible. The better our communication, the faster we develop technology.

[Piers]

Early humans might have had the same hardware, but not the same software.

[MidGe]

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Early humans might have had the same hardware, but not the same software.

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Great metaphor! /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[btmagnetw]

can you link or quote a source that says our early development was limited due to a lack of time? seems like a pretty ridiculous to debunk in the first place.

[andyfox]

"I've heard it said that early man was so busy hunting and gathering that he did not have any time to do the necessary thought required to develope things. I think thats a bunch of bunk. Early humans had plenty of time to think."

A copy of Stone Age Economics will go a long way towards convincing those who are doubtful of the correctness of your assertions.

[luckyme]

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Early humans had plenty of time to think. The task of hunting and gathering has long moments of time that can best be described as "mundane".

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In general, things change because of pressure. If you are correct that "early humans had plenty of time ..." that aren't focused on food, warmth, safety of person, then they'll spend that 'free' time the same way we do ... hanging out with friends and family. That's one reason we're called social animals :-)

Now, when food and safety are hard to achieve and take a lot of time, that's when ingenuity kicks in. Pressure, the same thing that cases most biological evolutionary changes.

Unfortunately, for the most part "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is how animals approach life ( humans included). In the absence of pressure, at any given time the current system is working, it's not broken.

The scarcity of early humans would put little pressure on them. Need to get to larger groups bumping into each other and the advantage of specialization of tasks to emerge to see an increase in the speed of 'progress'.

luckyme

[tolbiny]

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Its accepted that humans have been around for 200,000 years.

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This is based upon a few hundred bones and reconstructions. Other than areas where ligaments and muscles made impressions on these bones there are few or no clues about the composition and structure of organs, enzymes, and tissue.

[Leaky Eye]

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

[yukoncpa]

Early humans of 200,000 years ago, had brains of less than half the size of modern humans. The great leap forward didn’t begin until approximately 50,000 years ago when Cro-Magnon appeared on the scene with a much larger brain. These people took tool making to an entirely different level than earlier man, allowing them to sew clothes, make fish hooks, construct houses, etc. They also produced cave paintings, musical instruments, and statues. Also, they began to travel, occupying areas like Australia, using watercraft that was unheard of with older humans.

Two things happened 100,000 to 50,000 years ago to allow a momentous leap forward. Brain size increased and the voice box was perfected, allowing for better communication.

[yukoncpa]

Correction - above I said, “Early humans of 200,000 years ago, had brains of less than half the size of modern humans”

It should say 2 million years ago. Nevertheless, modern brain sizes weren’t reached until Cro-Magnon appeared on the scene some 50,000 years ago, then, even though he didn’t immediately invent modern writing, he did invent modern, multi-piece tools, such as harpoons, spear throwers, and eventually bows and arrows, among the other things that I listed.

[Silent A]

Writing has already been mentioned, but I'll add that it's interesting how much we take this wondrous of inventions for granted, even as we type away and communicate with others with whom we'd otherwise never have any kind of contact with.

But more importantly, I find it fascinating that writing is actually a very difficult/rare thing to invent. I can't recall the exact number, but writing was only independently developed a handful of times. For all the variation in writing around the world and throughout history, the vast majority of it was based on borrowing the ideas of others.