Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

bobunf · 2012-12-12 14:19:19

Evidence for the domestication of any species of animal, except dog, before the invention of agriculture is pretty sketchy. You have to feed the animals something. Dogs will eat human feces, which may be part of the reason they adopted us.

I know of no evidence of domestication of any species, except dog, before about 11,000 years ago.

Last edited by bobunf (2012-12-12 14:22:20)

bobunf · 2012-12-12 23:20:00

Terraformer worte, “I still don't get how human society could be in stasis for nearly two hundred millennia, before developing agriculture...”

I’ll suggest four reasons:

1. It is not known when the cognitive abilities of Homo Sapiens emerged. The earliest evidence of symbolic behavior dates to around 80,000 years ago, but there had to be much that went before.

2. It was hardly a time of stasis. There was the whole matter of developing language, a rather major project when there’s no one to teach you. The tool kits gradually changed through the Mousterian and Acheulean into the Solutrean and Magdalenian with a massive increase in the number of tool variants with innovation galore: heat treated stone, fluted projectile points, bow and arrow technology, bi-facial and micro blades, bone needles; including bone, antler, obsidean, quartz, and shell in the materials inventory. The arts of engraving, painting and sculpture were developed to very high levels. Artificial light in the form of oil lamps with wicks made their appearance as much as 35,000 years ago. And on and on; there was a lot to invent.

3. When anatomically modern humans emerged around 200,000 years ago, they were greeted with 70,000 years of the Illinoian glaciation. After about 30,000 years of inter-glacial, it was back to the Wisconsin glaciation which lasted till only about 10,000 years ago. During this time, very major volcanism occurred, killing all about a few tens of thousands of our species.

4. There were never more than a million humans on the whole planet until after the invention of agriculture, all existing in groups numbering a few hundred at most, frequently on the move, with very short life expectancies, and limited ability to defuse and preserve knowledge.

louis · 2012-12-13 14:21:07

It's pretty clear that there is no fixed boundary between agricultural and pre-agricultural societies.

The two forms of lifestyle merge...humans begin following herds of animals, then they begin protecting the herds from predators. Then before you night they are being corralled at night - you have have a farm.

Hominids feed on wild grass seeds...later they maybe keep areas clear of saplings and weeds as they like these seeds...before you know it there's a patch of land where something like arable farming is taking place.

But in terms of evolution,it was a pretty quick change over from hunting and gathering dominating to agriculture.

GW Johnson · 2012-12-16 10:18:14

I guess my point is that we typically leave out too much when we assign "cognitive abilities" only to folks who leave cave paintings or sophisticated stone tools.

Hunter gatherers who build boats and voyage out of sight of a solid surface have "cognitive abilities". The Eskimos today, the Polynesians about 4000 years ago, whoever made it across an ice-covered Beringia around 12,000 years ago, and whoever made it to Australia about 40,000 years ago all did this. None left cave paintings, some but not all used sophisticated stone tools. The Aboriginees left rock art, yes, but used crude stone tools.

I know all were homo sapiens, yes, but none left the "standard indicators" for "cognitive abilities". Our lens is too narrow.

And whoever made it to Flores Island used only crude tools and left no art. Yet they built boats and sailed out of sight of land to get there. You do not found populations with a survivor-or-three clinging to a log, the genetic bottleneck is too tight. Those who made it to Flores may not have been homo sapiens. There is reason to suspect homo erectus, according to what I read in the professional journals. I don't know when whoever it was reached Flores, but from what I read, h. erectus dates back a very long time indeed: 1-2 million years. At least half a million years ago he was in China.

Again, our lens for "cognitive abilities" is too narrow. Much of the "evidence" is going to be indirect for stuff older than around a quarter million years, precisely because very little in the way of artifacts survives that long.

Just my opinion, of course. But "cognitive abilities" is hard to define, harder to recognize. One should be very careful saying this group has them and that group does not, based only on cave paintings and certain kinds of stone tools. My best guess is there is no "light switch" sudden change from ape to man, other than the punctuated-equilibrium effects that we know operate in evolution, on under-million-year timescales.

GW

louis · 2012-12-16 19:53:29

I agree GW, cognitive abilities are variable, both in relation to environment and independent of environment.

Human culture is v. fluid. I remember being amazed by Greek pottery in the British Museum. The ones dating from about 600-700 BC are really very crude. But by 400 BC the pottery is of incredible sophistication. You might say the same about English literature. Up until the era of Shakespeare not much of note had been produced. And then in a sudden explosion of artistic expression, we have the wonders of the plays of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Johnson and others.

GW Johnson wrote:

I guess my point is that we typically leave out too much when we assign "cognitive abilities" only to folks who leave cave paintings or sophisticated stone tools.
Hunter gatherers who build boats and voyage out of sight of a solid surface have "cognitive abilities". The Eskimos today, the Polynesians about 4000 years ago, whoever made it across an ice-covered Beringia around 12,000 years ago, and whoever made it to Australia about 40,000 years ago all did this. None left cave paintings, some but not all used sophisticated stone tools. The Aboriginees left rock art, yes, but used crude stone tools.
I know all were homo sapiens, yes, but none left the "standard indicators" for "cognitive abilities". Our lens is too narrow.
And whoever made it to Flores Island used only crude tools and left no art. Yet they built boats and sailed out of sight of land to get there. You do not found populations with a survivor-or-three clinging to a log, the genetic bottleneck is too tight. Those who made it to Flores may not have been homo sapiens. There is reason to suspect homo erectus, according to what I read in the professional journals. I don't know when whoever it was reached Flores, but from what I read, h. erectus dates back a very long time indeed: 1-2 million years. At least half a million years ago he was in China.
Again, our lens for "cognitive abilities" is too narrow. Much of the "evidence" is going to be indirect for stuff older than around a quarter million years, precisely because very little in the way of artifacts survives that long.
Just my opinion, of course. But "cognitive abilities" is hard to define, harder to recognize. One should be very careful saying this group has them and that group does not, based only on cave paintings and certain kinds of stone tools. My best guess is there is no "light switch" sudden change from ape to man, other than the punctuated-equilibrium effects that we know operate in evolution, on under-million-year timescales.
GW

JoshNH4H · 2012-12-18 18:17:22

louis wrote:

I agree GW, cognitive abilities are variable, both in relation to environment and independent of environment.

I don't think this is what he was arguing at all... In fact, if you look back at his post, he said:

GW Johnson wrote:

...my point is that we typically leave out too much when we assign "cognitive abilities" only to folks who leave cave paintings or sophisticated stone tools.

I notice that you do that fairly often...

GW, is it possible that rather than a concerted effort of settlement, Flores island was settled as groups of fishermen were dragged out to sea on some kind of small raft? Flores may be in open water, but in the case of a typhoon or some storm with severe winds it is certainly not unthinkable that several people at a time could have been dragged off to the island.

GW Johnson · 2012-12-19 11:24:21

Hi Josh:

Sure, the settling could have been accidental. But such incidents must be fairly frequent and numerous to emplant a population large enough to be genetically viable. I'd hazard the guess that the initial landing was accidental, but that he went home by hand-made boat and told what he found. Then more came deliberately, because it sounded like a good place to live.

I think these folks (who seem likely to be h. erectus on Flores) could work wood and fiber as well as the stone and fire we know about for that species. I think they talked to each other. Their presence on Flores suggests boat-building and navigation skills, at one level or another.

Did anyone see the forensic reconstruction of the "hobbit's" face? This one looks more recognizably human than some others I have seen before. It was in the science-section news on NBC news website recently. The 3-foot tall stature is unsurprising. Larger species tend to shrink when isolated on an island, while the little ones get larger. We've seen it before. Flore had little elephants and little people, but giant rats. Weird place.

GW

JoshNH4H · 2012-12-25 01:12:57

I think that the most important thing to recognize here is that it's very hard to say; As modern humans we would expect them to have certain basic technologies, but then it is important to remember that writing was not invented until 5,000 years ago and is something that we take absolutely for granted today.

bobunf · 2012-12-27 13:20:24

The situation with Homo Floresiensis is not understood and is evidence of nothing at this point. None of the hypotheses explaining these fossils seems very likely, which is probably why no hypothesis has received scientific consensus – to put it mildly.

Speculating about what these creatures mean in terms of human evolution is kind of silly when it will all be based on quicksand. As always, more study is needed.

tahanson43206 · 2021-06-09 14:20:59

For SpaceNut ... there were (are) only two topics with "intelligence" in the title ...

This one from 2012 seems worth bringing back with a somewhat "out of the box" news item ...

National Geographic

Windows into the brain: Size matters when it comes to pupils, a new study described in Scientific American suggests. Writing for the magazine, researchers say they found a direct correlation between the baseline size of a person’s pupil and intelligence. Smarter people had larger pupils in tests of attention, reasoning, and memory, the study authors say.

I can imagine this becoming a new cult interest.

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-12-17 11:26:40

At first I thought the thread title was nonsense

...but then I read

‘Anti-5G’ necklaces are radioactive and dangerous, Dutch nuclear experts say
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ … m-pendants

SpaceNut · 2021-12-17 20:05:30

The claims of electromagnetic waves being emitted in close proximity to cells will cause cancer has been suggested before just like living under or very near to high power lines. I am sure if you amp up the levels it could be but the levels we need are well into the 1000 kilowatt and above

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-06-30 10:22:30

I take Gerald Crabtree writings with a pinch of salt, while he is an expert in his field I feel he is like a frog in a well, unable to view the wider world around him.

if one more advanced high tech society approached an ancient civilization and showed to them a Boston Dynamics dog I'm sure they would have thought it a demon made from metal or some kind of 'magic'? Knowing and studying all these types of chants and symbols and magic superstition things would have packed up people's brains with magic voodoo hoodoo metaphysical astronomy 'intelligence'. Perhaps while searching what might have made these older forgotten people's intelligent we over estimate their ability for critical thinking

intelligence and wisdom? Older people slower but smarter than young’uns
https://oversixty.com.au/lifestyle/reti … -young-uns

Rather than focus on the speculative rights of sentient AI, we need to address human rights
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-06-foc … nt-ai.html

However I have seen modern human people gibberish write using text message speak so perhaps the human race is becoming dumber.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-06-30 10:30:59)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-06 09:48:45

Neanderthals died out 40,000 years ago, but there has never been more of their DNA on Earth

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-neanderth … earth.html

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-05-18 06:51:12

Where did they go Denisovan and Neanderthals and Australopithecus Afarensis?

Human Lineages Partially Split Before The Migration Out Of Africa

A new explanation of our species’ family tree could help interpret the fossil record, but contributes only a small amount to the genetic diversity of human populations today.

https://www.iflscience.com/human-lineag … rica-68976

Population genetics indicates that ancestors of modern humans were split into three populations, that only occasionally interbred, for hundreds of thousands of years. These groups then partially recombined to create the humanity that lives today. This places the division and reuniting long before Homo Sapiens' great migration out of Africa.

The human family tree is often said to more closely resemble a bramble bush, with branches diverging and reuniting, than the straight-trunked descent like the biblical line of begats. The saying usually refers to our relationship with extinct human species such as the Denisovans, but may also be true of Homo Sapiens’ own deep history.

Various models have been presented to explain the genetic similarities and differences seen between human populations. Using the recent sequencing of the entire genomes of 44 Nama (Khoe-San) from southern Africa, a new paper offers a model that suggests even while they shared a continent humanity consisted of distinct lineages.

The genus Homo evolved in Africa, but spread into Asia and Europe some 2 million years ago, spawning many breakaway species. Despite evidence of occasional incursions into the Middle East, Homo sapiens (modern humans) stayed in Africa until an estimated 50-80,000 years ago. The picture of H. sapiens’ evolution prior to that is murky, however.

It’s easiest to imagine a specific region of origin, followed by expansion across the continent. However, the presence of fossils with apparently modern features dating to similar times in Morocco, Ethiopia, and South Africa undermines this. Instead of a single cradle of humanity, alternative models propose we evolved in parallel across the continent, with enough interbreeding to keep us all on the same path.

Complicating matters, a “ghost lineage” has been proposed based on genetic studies. This proposes interbreeding with an archaic human African species, but unlike in the case of Neanderthals and Denisovans genes in Eurasia, we have no clear fossil record of these people.

Dr Aaron Ragsdale of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-authors argue the ghost lineage models make an assumption of a single origin H. sapiens and neglect much of Africa’s modern genetic diversity. They instead considered both single and multi-origin models, while studying the genomes of 290 people from Africa and Eurasia, including the previously overlooked Nama.

All four models indicated the Nama largely diverged from other African populations 110-135,000 years ago. This does not mean complete isolation – improbable when our ancestors were interbreeding so often with Neanderthals. Nevertheless, gene flow between lineages was limited after the split.

Prior to the Nama’s isolation, the paper proposes the existence of at least three stem lineages, likely located in southern, eastern, and west/central Africa. Each stem was largely, but not completely, isolated from the others from at least 400,000 years ago. Around 120,000 years ago the southern and eastern stems met to form the ancestors of the Khoe-San population, now mostly inhabiting the deserts of southern Africa.

Then, around 100,000 years ago, the eastern and west/central stems had their own recombination, becoming the ancestors of most of the world’s population today, including most Africans and those whose ancestry lies on other continents.

The authors acknowledge the possibility human evolution was even more complex over the period they are studying than the model they present. However, they argue a “weakly structured stem” like this removes the need for ghost lineages from lost species.

Void · 2023-11-04 21:12:33

Archaeology:

Well, maybe this can go here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bu … a60d7&ei=9
Quote:

Buried pyramid in Indonesia may be older than civilization itself
Story by Chris Knight •
13h

A pyramid buried in Indonesia could be the oldest such structure in the world — by many thousands of years.
To get a sense of the timeline, new radiocarbon dating suggests that the structure at Gunung Padang in West Java, Indonesia, was built during the last ice age, sometime between 25,000 and 14,000 BC. It was then abandoned for thousands of years, before being deliberately buried around 7000 BC.

Quote:

The biggest unanswered questions about Gunung Padang are who built it, and how. Even at the young end of Hilman’s estimated age range, the pyramid would have been built before the development of agriculture, and thousands of years before the earliest known civilization.

My opinion that agricultural societies spawned idiot cultures, should not be attached to the above, it is only a suspicion.

Time may tell if Cornelius of the planet of the apes does not deface and obscure any evidence found that something before us did exist.

Done

Last edited by Void (2023-11-04 21:19:53)

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#26 2012-12-12 14:19:19

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#27 2012-12-12 23:20:00

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#28 2012-12-13 14:21:07

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#29 2012-12-16 10:18:14

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#30 2012-12-16 19:53:29

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#31 2012-12-18 18:17:22

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#32 2012-12-19 11:24:21

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#33 2012-12-25 01:12:57

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#34 2012-12-27 13:20:24

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#35 2021-06-09 14:20:59

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#36 2021-12-17 11:26:40

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#37 2021-12-17 20:05:30

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#38 2022-06-30 10:22:30

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#39 2022-09-06 09:48:45

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#40 2023-05-18 06:51:12

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

#41 2023-11-04 21:12:33

Re: Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

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