Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago'

falkor · 2012-11-13 13:53:44

Is the human species doomed to intellectual decline? Will our intelligence ebb away in centuries to come leaving our descendants incapable of using the technology their ancestors invented? In short: will Homo be left without his sapiens?
This is the controversial hypothesis of a leading geneticist who believes that the immense capacity of the human brain to learn new tricks is under attack from an array of genetic mutations that have accumulated since people started living in cities a few thousand years ago

yes living in cities you Neanderthals READ MORE AND WEEP

I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues!!

RobertDyck · 2012-11-14 08:04:00

I disagree. The philosophers, mathematicians, and thinkers recorded in history are the unusual and exceptional. If they weren't, they wouldn't have been recorded. I saw one documentary on TV of archaeologists in a Greek city. They found a burial ground, apparently some important persons. They dug up the skeletons and reconstructed faces from skulls. One scientist looked at the line of faces and said "what a bunch of thugs". These were the kings of ancient Greece. They weren't philosophers, they were thugs who ruled by brute force. Until the industrial revolution, the vast majority of people were illiterate, uneducated, incapable of basic arithmetic, and never went farther than walking distance from their birth place in their entire lives. Democritus was an ancient Greek philosopher who first proposed democracy. He was a rich nobleman, well educated. But even Athens had to send soldiers through the city to punish any citizens who failed to vote in the election. Their first attempts at democracy failed miserably, they fell back into dictatorship many times. Medieval nobles devised "heraldic devices", a symbol that could be painted on a shield or sewn into a flag. These were not a "family crest"; each symbol uniquely identified one person. The reason was even the knights were illiterate, much less peasants and "men at arms" who were recruited from peasants as servants for knights.

We live in a golden age. Eveyone lives like a king. Even 100 years ago there was no plumbing in the area of the city I now live. The northern half of Winnipeg had outhouses. The bathroom in my house looks like a retrofit. One day when gardening I discovered a line of bricks in the ground near my garage. I chose not to dig deeper, you know what's down there. The Winnipeg aqueduct was first proposed in 1913, and water started to flow in 1919. People complain of conditions for the poor, but today many of those things were what children in normal working class families like me lived with. We've come a long way since the 1960s. Politicians, especially American ones, appear to be morons. We've got some bad ones up here in Canada too. But average people are becoming more knowledgable and aware of important issues.

GW Johnson · 2012-11-26 12:50:30

The evidence would suggest that we have had essentially-constant cognitive abilities for a very long time now. They found some human-worked stone tools on Crete that were in sediments significantly older than 100,000 years. That predates homo sapiens in Europe by 50,000 years, and may be (or even predate) neanderthals or denisovans. Could even have been homo erectus, no one knows. Erectus dates back over a million years.

Point is, Crete, even then, is 100 miles sailing distance out of sight of land. These guys could build boats and cross significant chunks of ocean, navigating without seeing land. It takes more than poles or paddles on a log to do that. It takes real boat hulls and sails. That's the same as our abilities today. Only the technologies have changed. And we used sails until about a century ago.

GW

bobunf · 2012-11-26 13:09:02

I'd question the dating.

And Crete may be 100 miles out of sight of land now, but what about when sea levels were 100 meters lower, say 15,000 years ago?

Last edited by bobunf (2012-11-26 13:10:36)

bobunf · 2012-11-26 14:19:24

Would the survival value of intelligence decrease with the invention of agriculture around 10,000 years ago? Doesn't seem likely to me. People living in cities didn't happen until modern times. In 1900 the urban population of the US was around 40%, in 1850 15% in 1800 6%.

Even in Britain, the most industrialized country in the world, over half the population lived in rural areas as late as 1831.

Also:
> There are relationships today between schooling, financial achievement, and reproductive success which could favor intelligence
> The domestication of animals required a range of skills mostly aided by intelligence; machinery, of course, does the same to a higher degree. Unintelligent handling of machinery causes large reductions in reproductive success due to deaths and disabilities. Intelligent handling of automobiles has been shown to increase reproductive success.
> Formal schooling, a more stimulating environment, better nutrition, control of infectious diseases, and more out-breeding should all enhance intellectual skills.

Where's the evidence for a decline in intelligence? The Flynn effect says the opposite.

GW Johnson · 2012-12-02 14:13:46

OK, my post 11-26-12 above was based on a science news story I saw on the internet. Since then, I have run across the source for it: a “perspective” article by Alan Simmons of U. Nevada, published in the 16 November 2012 issue of AAAS’s peer-reviewed journal “Science”. That would be volume 338, page 895.

The article indicates geologic dates for paleolithic-technology stone artifacts based on soil context of around 170,000 years on Crete, and around 110,000 years on the southern Ionian islands, in the Aegean Sea. At those times, neither location was connected to the mainland, and both were well out of sight of land, as viewed from the mainland. (This is well before the peak glaciation of the last ice age, which started around 100,000 years ago, and peaked around 20,000 years ago.)

The article does make the point that these conclusions are still not accepted. There is much work to do before the community will accept this result. But those dates do correspond to paleolithic technology stone tools found in those places. There was a second set of “old” stuff found that dated to about 12,000 years ago, which was definitely neolithic stuff (usually associated with species homo sapiens), and a third set neolithic stuff dating to around just before the time of the Mycenaens (about 9000 years ago). That’s 3 different occupations of these sites that are older than what was believed before.

The problem with the paleolithic stone artifacts is that they definitely pre-date homo sapiens in those locations. They may possibly pre-date homo neanderthalensis, since we think Neanderthals got their start around 100,000 years ago in the middle east and Europe. But nothing is proven. Whatever species it was, it does indicate that seafaring was possible then, and this does agree with early non-modern-human seafarers reaching Australia and the Flores Island region of Indonesia. That is truly remarkable.

Other things I have read in these refereed journals indicate the earliest seafarers to reach Australia and Flores Island were homo erectus, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, at least, perhaps far earlier. Who knows?

We are quite literally talking people capable of building sailing boats and navigating well out of sight of land, perhaps as early as a million years ago. They may not have looked so very much like us, but they certainly seemed to have behaved like us, and a very long time ago at that.

That’s why I think basic human cognitive abilities have been relatively unchanged for a very long time.

GW

bobunf · 2012-12-03 00:40:51

GW wrote, "we think Neanderthals got their start around 100,000 years ago in the middle east and Europe."

Neanderthal are undoubtedly much older than 100 kyb.

For instance, from Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 30, Issue 3, March 2003, Pages 275–280, Abstract:

"The Sima de los Huesos site of the Atapuerca complex near Burgos, Spain contains the skeletal remains of at least 28 individuals in a mud breccia underlying an accumulation of the Middle Pleistocene cave bear (U. deningeri). Earlier dating estimates of 200 to 320 kyr were based on U-series and ESR methods applied to bones, made inaccurate by unquantifiable uranium cycling. We report here on a new discovery within the Sima de los Huesos of human bones stratigraphically underlying an in situ speleothem. U-series analyses of the speleothem shows the lower part to be at isotopic U/Th equilibrium, translating to a firm lower limit of 350 kyr for the SH hominids. Finite dates on the upper part suggest a speleothem growth rate of c. 1 cm/32 kyr. This rate, along with paleontological constraints, place the likely age of the hominids in the interval of 400 to 600 kyr."

Also, there was another glacial maximum during the Illinoian (or Wolstonian) glaciation at about 170,000 years ago. What were sea levels then? The dates of glacial maximums, and of short, sharp glaciation episodes (like the Younger Dryas of a much, much later period) are not all that firm, leaving lots of room for maneuver when it comes to sea levels.

What I know about radiometric dating suggests to me that there are usually considerable ranges, especially (as noted above) with contamination and other issues. We have uncertainty piled on uncertainty, and from this we're to draw some conclusions about the evolution of human intelligence. I say pure nonsense.

Even with respect to the anthropology, one needs say, "There is much work to do before the community will accept this result" or refute it.

I know of no evidence that any hominin group reached Australia other then Homo Sapiens - ever. As for Flores, there is evidence of the presence of elephants and Homo Errectus on Flores 840,000 years ago. No one suggests that either elephants or Homo Errectus had sea faring 840,000 years ago, but it is truly remarkable.

Lemurs originated in Africa about 60 million years ago, although today they inhabit Madagascar almost exclusively. But Madagascar separated from the Africa/South America landmass about 135 million years and has been located hundreds of kilometers off the African coast for at least 100 million years, far out of sight of any other land and across deep ocean. How did the lemurs get to Madagascar? It wasn't by sea faring.

Last edited by bobunf (2012-12-03 01:48:32)

GW Johnson · 2012-12-04 09:24:16

OK, the genetics guys claim that the Micronesians and Australian Aboriginies seem to have the highest Neanderthal/Denisovan DNA content of all of us. As for the rest, we all seem to have a tad of Neanderthal DNA in our genes, excepting the San in Africa, who have almost none of it. That all suggests a whole series of migrations out of Africa long before homo sapiens left Africa and interbred/out-populated all of them. We are nowhere near untangling this complicated pattern, but we are now sure there is a pattern to untangle.

The Aboriginies reached Australia "they think" around 40,000-50,000 years ago. Even at the height of the glaciations, that required ocean voyaging. Fossil beaches indicate sea level stands as low as 450 feet below current levels, and as high as 380 feet above. Hundreds, not thousands, of feet. You compare that with current bathymetric depths in the thousands, and you can see where land bridges might or might not have been.

There's a lot of migrations that required ocean crossings, out of sight of land. Such as Australia. Not paddles and a log, but real boats. We have two precedents to look at: the kayak/umiak boats of the Arctic peoples, and the Polynesian's sailing canoes. Not a "tough" technology to master, but it does require cognitive abilities comparable to our own to craft good designs, and to solve challenging navigation problems.

My point is less about who went where and when, and a whole lot more about the evident fact that these early folk behaved more like us today than we have wanted to give them credit for. That's a prejudice thing. They did these feats in spite of the fact that some of them didn't look so very much like us (example: homo erectus).

There's some evolutionary reasons to believe that we lost our body hair developing the unique sweat-cooling system we have, running long distances all over the place as homo erectus. We've found their stone tools. Who's to say what else they had, that was made of wood, feathers, grass fiber, etc? Boats? Carts? Teepees? Would anything like that survive for us to find after a million years if they had it? So, how would we know?

Because of that, the evidence for cognitive abilities is inherently indirect. What kind of cognitive abilities were required for homo erectus to spread from Africa through Asia all the way into Indonesia? Same is true for the Neanderthals, who spread into Europe and Asia, during a very harsh ice age?

And then there's us, homo sapiens, who seems to have acquired more advanced technologies quicker than the others, and who seems to have swamped and absorbed the rest simply by out-reproducing them. How is not understood. But we do know we did it, because of the traces in the genes.

Very complicated story. It does raise questions about the definition of "species", too. Were these other humans different species, or not? Apparently, we did interbreed with them.

GW

bobunf · 2012-12-04 15:11:54

About the suggestion that hominins other than Homo Sapiens engaged in sea faring.

First, I’m amused at the certainty with which these DNA numbers are bandied about. Just consider:

 Identifying a partial (in many cases a very partial) skeleton as Neanderthal is not all that much of a sure thing.
 The number of such partial skeletons containing recoverable DNA has been very limited, less than ten.
 The DNA is degraded and contaminated with DNA from bacteria, humans who handled the specimens, and god knows what else.
 The commonly quoted studies (conducted on DNA from the SAME individuals) done in the US and Germany reach the conclusion that Neanderthal divergence from the common ancestor was 370,000 or 516,000 years ago, a rather yawning difference.
 Homo Sapiens, since the diaspora from Africa, have interbreed with each other very extensively. In the case of the Australian Aboriginals, a lot of Polynesians visited even before the Dutch landed near Weipa in Queensland in 1606. The comparisons are from people who lived in the 20th century, many of whom may still be alive. And who knows with whom their ancestors may have mated? Captain Cook? Captain Bligh? Captain Hook? No wonder they have Neanderthal DNA.

In brief, I would not regard statements about the percentage of Neanderthal in Aboriginals, Africans or Irishman as Holy Writ.

There is no evidence whatever – none – of any occupation of any part of Greater Australia (Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and some other islands were all part of an extended continent for much of the Pleistocene) by any hominin other than Homo Sapiens. The supposed greater concentration of Neanderthal DNA in Australian Aborignals is not suggestive of a Neanderthal occupation of Greater Australia; such a concentration, if it exists, has many other possible explanations.

The total lack of any anthropological or archaeological evidence of Neanderthal over the 10 million square kilometers of Greater Australia should gave some pause to enthusiastic assertions that the presence of Neanderthal in Australia proves a steady state in cognitive abilities for hominins over the last million years.

"What kind of cognitive abilities were required for homo erectus to spread from Africa through Asia all the way into Indonesia?"

One could as easily ask: What kind of cognitive abilities were required for ants to spread from Africa through Asia all the way into Indonesia? Or rats. Range is not related to IQ.

By the way, a complete barrier to reproduction is not necessary for speculation – consider dogs, wolves, coyotes. While it is true that if two populations that reproduce sexually can NOT interbreed, they are NOT the same species, there is NO criteria that says that two distinct species CAN'T interbreed, or that if two populations can interbreed they are the SAME species. Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups. The "reproductive isolation" can be genetic (non-fertility), geographic, or behavioral.

Last edited by bobunf (2012-12-04 20:51:07)

bobunf · 2012-12-04 21:00:12

It is my assertion that there is a very distinct difference between the cognitive abilities of Homo Sapiens and that of all other hominins.

Start with Neanderthal. Homo Sapiens arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago; after hundreds of thousands of years, Neanderthal were edged out into extinction in the next 13,000 years. The same thing had happened to all other hominins in Africa, and had happened, or would happen, to all other hominins in Asia. I think that suggests something about the cognitive abilities of Homo Sapiens compared to other hominins.

Look at the Neanderthal tool kit: More varied and capable than most hominins excepting Homo Sapiens; and what a difference with Homo Sapiens. Neanderthal with less than 80 variants, no use of antler or bone, very rare hafting of stone points (if at all). Homo Sapiens with endless variety, using stone, antler, bone (as much as 80,000 years ago), hafting as a regular matter, and, very remarkably heat treating of stone 70,000 years ago in Southern Africa. Perhaps even the production of arrows more than 60,000 years ago.

And then there’s art and other symbolic behavior. Within the documented Neanderthal span, we very occasionally find a bone bearing incision marks, a tooth or bone with a hole, or a piece of stone with hollows, some deposits of ochre which might or might not have been used for body painting. Much of it may or may not have been intentional. The very scarcity of occurrence indicates that these possible examples of symbolic behavior were not a part of the cultural existence of Neanderthal.

Contrast that with Homo Sapiens with flutes, cave paintings, endless decorative arts, ubiquitous Venus and other figurines, engraved ochre, some dating to over 70,000 years ago,

The cave paintings demonstrate to me that the Homo Sapiens of more than 30,000 years ago were us. These paintings from the Aurignacian and Magdalenian periods are not one-off or rare affairs, but exist in hundreds, if not thousands, of places in Spain, France and Italy. Many of the caves complexes contain thousands of paintings Other cave paintings are known from Australia dating more than 40,000 years ago. I’m one of the last non-professionals to observe in awe some of the 2,000 cave paintings at Lascaux in 1983. I was amazed at the size, technique and sophistication of the paintings, but mostly at the realization these were not done by alien, or child-like people, or amateurs: This is great art that speaks directly to us. It is in the same line as the Egyptians, Romans, Michelangelo and Picasso. Excuse my unintentional Euro-centric biases.

It seems quite clear that something very distinctive in cognitive abilities emerged with the appearance of Homo Sapiens, a very distinct species with a very different set of cognitive abilities. The archaeological record clearly shows a sharp upward break in cognitive ability that occurred within Homo Sapiens; a break evidenced to 80,000 years ago, and which probably occurred much earlier, perhaps as early as with the advent of anatomically modern humans around 200,000 years ago in Africa.

But another question would be what has happened to those abilities within Homo Sapiens in the last 200,000 years or so. Or maybe just since:

 the distinctive character of the cognitive abilities of Homo Sapiens became apparent in the archaeological record around 80,000 years ago?
 Or the invention of agriculture around 10,000 years ago?
 Or the industrial revolution?

After my experiences in Lascaux, I would opine that those abilities have not changed much in more than 30,000 years.

Last edited by bobunf (2012-12-08 08:46:51)

GW Johnson · 2012-12-09 10:47:15

The only problem with all of this is that we are looking at inherently cherry-picked data, the further back we look. The actual implements for living that would give you some sense of actual abilities, are not likely to survive for us to find. Most of these are going to be wood and fiber, not even bone or antler. Not everybody will use stone, or if they do, see the need to expand and extend a working stone technology.

Who's to say that Neanderthals didn't spent more time improving a tool kit of wood and fiber, than on the stone tools that we might find? Not all arrows need stone points. Fire-hardened sharpened wood is almost as lethal, depending upon what you're killing. There's been some reports they might have clothed or cloaked themselves in feathers. Yet it appears from the trash middens they did not eat birds.

The arctic peoples of today have almost exactly the boats needed to make their way over the ice from Siberia to Alaska, exposed land bridge or not, during the ice age. We know of these wood and hide boats because they have been seen in modern times. Who's to say that people 100,000 years ago (or much further back, why restrict this?) couldn't do exactly the same thing? Because no such traces have ever been found? Why would such ephemeral traces ever be found? The lack does not disprove possession. You cannot prove a negative.

Somebody reached Australia around 40,000 years ago. Yep, they were homo sapiens. They met and interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans on the way there, because we can find traces of that in their DNA. How many migrations, why they migrated, how they lived along the way, all that may never be known. But they did go there. That took boats. There's too much deep water for there ever to have been a land bridge.

From what I read, there's some reason to believe homo erectus reached Flores Island. But that's not certain. Whoever reached that island did it a very long time ago, and would have needed boats to do it. That's across several miles of water too deep for a land bridge to have ever existed. We're talking real boats here, and some sort of navigation abilities. Survivors rafting on a log do not found viable populations.

What I see in this is indirect evidence of cognitive abilities more or less comparable to our own, going back a very long time, perhaps a million years. Evolution seems to operate in short bursts punctuating long periods of stasis. I suggest the burst that made us "smart" happened a very long time ago, and most likely long before we ever became what we today call homo sapiens.

GW

bobunf · 2012-12-09 16:34:56

GW, you’re pushing the wishful thinking pretty far. There is no significant evidence that non-Homo Sapiens hominins had anything approaching the cognitive abilities of Home Sapiens.

The suggestion that the reason for this lack of evidence is because pre-Homo Sapiens used perishable materials is really not credible. Stone, bone and antler are superior materials for cutting, hammering, scraping, chopping, drilling, fire making, as projective points for spears and a host of other uses. You postulate that pre-Homo Sapiens used wood and fiber instead? And this indicates they were as smart as Homo Sapiens? I don’t think so.

There is no evidence for bow and arrow technology before about 64,000 years ago in Africa and clearly associated with Homo Sapiens. There is no evidence in Europe until about 16,000 years ago of bow and arrow technology. By then Neanderthal had been extinct for about 11,000 years.

“There's been some reports they might have clothed or cloaked themselves in feathers. Yet it appears from the trash middens they did not eat birds.” Does that really seem likely? These people frequently lived on or past the edge of starvation. They knew how to butcher many different kinds of animals. Yet they didn’t eat birds even though they had enough feathers around to show up in the archaeological record? Not likely.

Then, there’s the leap that these hints of possible feather use indicate decorative and symbolic behavior. All based on a correlation between Neanderthal occupation and the presence of certain bird species, and some butchery marks on some bird bones. I’d tempted to call this whole line of reasoning bird brained.

Homo Sapiens probably reached Australia by boat. Whether they interbred with anybody on the way is kind of irrelevant and hardly based on a mountain of evidence. The Denisovan genome was constructed from a grand total of ONE bone fragment. In any case, So what? This was Homo Sapiens, the species that has been demonstrating symbolic behavior for at least 80,000 years.

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.

How is any of this evidence of “cognitive abilities more or less comparable to our own” going back a million years? All other hominin species likely exterminated in one way or another, a grossly inferior tool kit, no musical instruments, no cave paintings, no decorative arts, no statuettes and figurines, no engraved ochre, etc. All accomplishments of Homo Sapiens going back more than 80,000 years in some cases. All of it contemporary with hominins that were not Homo Sapiens; thus calling into question the preservation argument.

The evidence shows that there was some kind of evolutionary development that made us smart, and that it happened sometime more than 80,000 years ago in, or coincident with, the evolution of Homo Sapiens, i.e, less than 200,000 years ago.

The supposition that non-Homo Sapiens had cognitive abilities approaching those of Homo Sapiens is put very much in doubt by:

 the extinction of all the other non-Homo Sapiens hominins
 and the utter lack of significant archaeological evidence for symbolic behavior anywhere near the scale seen in Homo Sapiens

One can equally easily assert that extraterrestrial aliens walk among us in perfect disguise, or walked the Earth long ago but left no trace. As John Maynard Keynes put it, “That all things are possible is no excuse for talking foolishly.” About extraterrestrial aliens or smart Neanderthals.

RobertDyck · 2012-12-10 02:11:19

I saw a documentary that points out genetic studies indicate exactly 5 distinct migrations of native people to the Americas. The first occurred during the ice age, when Alaska, Yukon, and northern British Columbia were covered in glaciation. There's no way anyone could walk that distance and survive, there's just no food, and you couldn't carry enough food for the crossing. But there was ocean coast. Further studies found human remains along that coast. The coast was too hazardous to walk, but you could easily take a boat from landing to landing.

RobertDyck · 2012-12-10 02:44:31

A cave in Siberia has bones of homosapien, Neanderthal, and a third hominid that hasn't been identified. The bone fragment has DNA, but not a skull or full skeleton. Polynesian and Australian Aborigines have DNA that matches. So this cave may have been a cross-species mating place. Yes, I am asserting that leaders of the time did know what they were doing, and arranged these matings on purpose. It could be that crossbreeds were more resistant to disease. The more species interbred, the greater the resistance to disease.

Furthermore, Asiatic people (the scientific term is Mongoloid) were not distinct until after the last ice age. For anyone who has lived in a cold environment, we know there's a distinct advantage to a flat nose with a small tip. A narrow protruding nose gets frozen. And during the ice age, people living in Siberia developed an item of clothing called a "Parka". This was fur from caribou, or the Siberian variety called reindeer. The fur was cut and sewn to be worn close to the body, with no opening, no buttons or laces or any other opening. It was pulled on like a T-shirt, but it had a hood. This parka was worn with pants, boots, and mitts. The only exposed flesh was the face. With a close fitting hood, the flatter the face the less flesh is exposed to cold. I live in Winnipeg Canada, just 60 miles north of North Dakota. On the coldest night of the year, once every few years, it gets down to -40°. That's the one temperature where Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same. And that isn't wind chill, that's absolute temperature; wind chill is colder. One night when I was a kid, in 1966, it got down to -45°C. I'm told in Siberia and Alaska it gets colder. I can tell you from first hand experience that that is cold. When it's -36°C or colder, exposed flesh freezes in 2 minutes. That's cold. That hurts. That is an evolutionary stress that will drive the human body, through survival as well as culture, to develop features that minimize damage due to exposure. At a time before natural gas heat or fuel oil, before electricity, where there weren't any trees for fire wood, when humans could only burn caribou fat, this would drive features to adapt to cold. The result was flat faces, to reduce flesh exposed from the hood of a parka. And eyelids that have fat to protect eyes from cold. Archaeological evidence is that China was settled from Siberia after the ice age. So it's my assertion that humans had adapted to extreme cold before settling China. That's why they look the way they do.

All this demonstrates quite a high level of intelligence. Humans able to adapt in this way knew what they were doing.

louis · 2012-12-10 11:51:27

RobertDyck wrote:

A cave in Siberia has bones of homosapien, Neanderthal, and a third hominid that hasn't been identified. The bone fragment has DNA, but not a skull or full skeleton. Polynesian and Australian Aborigines have DNA that matches. So this cave may have been a cross-species mating place. Yes, I am asserting that leaders of the time did know what they were doing, and arranged these matings on purpose. It could be that crossbreeds were more resistant to disease. The more species interbred, the greater the resistance to disease.
Furthermore, Asiatic people (the scientific term is Mongoloid) were not distinct until after the last ice age. For anyone who has lived in a cold environment, we know there's a distinct advantage to a flat nose with a small tip. A narrow protruding nose gets frozen. And during the ice age, people living in Siberia developed an item of clothing called a "Parka". This was fur from caribou, or the Siberian variety called reindeer. The fur was cut and sewn to be worn close to the body, with no opening, no buttons or laces or any other opening. It was pulled on like a T-shirt, but it had a hood. This parka was worn with pants, boots, and mitts. The only exposed flesh was the face. With a close fitting hood, the flatter the face the less flesh is exposed to cold. I live in Winnipeg Canada, just 60 miles north of North Dakota. On the coldest night of the year, once every few years, it gets down to -40°. That's the one temperature where Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same. And that isn't wind chill, that's absolute temperature; wind chill is colder. One night when I was a kid, in 1966, it got down to -45°C. I'm told in Siberia and Alaska it gets colder. I can tell you from first hand experience that that is cold. When it's -36°C or colder, exposed flesh freezes in 2 minutes. That's cold. That hurts. That is an evolutionary stress that will drive the human body, through survival as well as culture, to develop features that minimize damage due to exposure. At a time before natural gas heat or fuel oil, before electricity, where there weren't any trees for fire wood, when humans could only burn caribou fat, this would drive features to adapt to cold. The result was flat faces, to reduce flesh exposed from the hood of a parka. And eyelids that have fat to protect eyes from cold. Archaeological evidence is that China was settled from Siberia after the ice age. So it's my assertion that humans had adapted to extreme cold before settling China. That's why they look the way they do.
All this demonstrates quite a high level of intelligence. Humans able to adapt in this way knew what they were doing.

Isn't the "slit eye" as well a cold adaptation - a double fat fold in the eyelid? Presumably to stop the eye from freezing over.

RobertDyck · 2012-12-10 20:56:50

louis wrote:

Isn't the "slit eye" as well a cold adaptation - a double fat fold in the eyelid? Presumably to stop the eye from freezing over.

Yup

bobunf · 2012-12-11 02:05:52

Robert wrote: “I saw a documentary...”
TV shows are not the greatest place to obtain scientific information.

And, “genetic studies indicate exactly 5 distinct migrations of native people to the Americas.”
I think you will find that scientific opinion on this subject is not filled with the certainty these words suggest. I’m amused at the certainty with which these DNA numbers are bandied about. Just consider:
 Identifying a partial (in many cases a very partial) skeleton as Neanderthal, Homo Sapiens or other hominins is not all that much of a sure thing.
 The number of such partial skeletons containing recoverable DNA has been very limited.
 The DNA is degraded and contaminated with DNA from bacteria, humans who handled the specimens, and god knows what else.
 The commonly quoted studies (conducted on DNA from the SAME individuals) done in the US and Germany reach the conclusion that Neanderthal divergence from the common ancestor was 370,000 or 516,000 years ago, a rather yawning difference.
 Homo Sapiens, since the diaspora from Africa, have interbreed with each other very extensively. In the case of the Australian Aboriginals, a lot of Polynesians visited even before the Dutch landed near Weipa in Queensland in 1606. In the case of North America, there was never complete isolation with Asia, and there is very considerable evidence for Polynesian contact at some points on the West Coast of the Americas as long ago as 1500 years, and, of course, the Viking contact more than a thousand years ago.

DNA comparisons are with people who lived in the 20th century, many of whom may still be alive.

So we have a few degraded, contaminated samples with somewhat uncertain species and sub-species identifications that are compared to populations with a very long and largely unknown quantity of cross breeding. Good luck with that. Or, to be more formal: I would not regard as very authoritative statements based on DNA analysis about the timing, origin and especially the exact number of migrations into the Americas.

Boats are not the only possibility as a means to reach North America. There was probably a route that opened about 14,000 years ago across Beringa (a truly huge six million square kilometer area), through what is now Alberta and eastern British Columbia in an ice free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets, and into lower North America.

Thomas Jefferson, more than 200 years ago, opined that American Indians came from somewhere in Asia a long time ago. The greatest mystery in archaeology is still very mysterious. It is a lesson in humility that 200 years of great scientific advances in this area have not moved our understanding too far from that of Jefferson.

Robert also wrote, “Asiatic people (the scientific term is Mongoloid) were not distinct until after the last ice age.”
The last glacial maximum did not occur until 15 to 20 thousand years ago. The retreat of the glaciers was mostly completed by about 10,000 years ago. I think the scientific consensus is that the Mongoloid subspecies had emerged by about 30,000 years ago – during the Wisconsin glaciation.

Last edited by bobunf (2012-12-11 10:12:06)

bobunf · 2012-12-11 02:13:15

Why did not Europeans, who lived through the worst parts of the Wisconsin glaciation, who hugged the glacier and turned white, develop flat noses with small tips and slited eyes?

RobertDyck · 2012-12-11 09:31:53

bobunf wrote:

There was probably a route that opened about 14,000 years ago across Beringa (a truly huge six million square kilometer area), through what is now Alberta and eastern British Columbia in an ice free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets, and into lower North America.

That is highly contentious. The "ice free corridor" was never long enough, continuous, nor lasted long enough for humans to walk it's length before it closed.

The last glacial maximum did not occur until 15 to 20 thousand years ago. The retreat of the glaciers was mostly completed by about 10,000 years ago. I think the scientific consensus is that the Mongoloid subspecies had emerged by about 30,000 years ago – during the Wisconsin glaciation.

So you're arguing about details. Glaciation expanded and retreated. It definately didn't occur during the ice age before the dionsaurs. I did use the term "age", not a specific glaciation maximum. I'll let you look up those details.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2012-12-11 09:35:19)

bobunf · 2012-12-11 10:09:22

Robert wrote: "The "ice free corridor" was never long enough, continuous, nor lasted long enough for humans to walk it's length before it closed."

That is one opinion. There are others. The ice free corridor has had numerous incarnations.

All of these and many new ideas, hypotheses, data, analysis which will be presented, discussed and debated at the Paleoamerican Odyssey Conference October 17-19,2013 in Santa Fe, New Mexico:
> The oldest sites in Siberia, teh cultural traditions of Beringia, routes taken by the first Americans, and the genetic record.
> Clovis extinction of the megafauna, the Western stemmed tradition, and the archaeological record of South America
> The older-than-Clovis record at sites across the Americas.

This conference is the successor to and the most important event of its kind since the Clovis and Beyond Conference of 1999 (also in Santa Fe), which was the successor to the Clovis First, Clovis Everywhere Conference of 1940 (also in Santa Fe) at which the Clovis First, Clovis Everywhere paradigm gained a decades long consensus in the archaeological community.

While these are professional conferences, anyone has been welcome at all three, and the first two were more than spectacular. Register at www.paleoamericanodysey.com.

This is not a settled field, but one in great flux with new ideas, techniques and data emerging daily. Ex cathedra pronouncements are pretty silly.

Last edited by bobunf (2012-12-11 10:22:13)

RobertDyck · 2012-12-11 10:24:16

The point was achievements of the magnitude of everything discussed demonstrates intelligence. Humans have been very resourceful for many millennia. Yet humans continue, we aren't declining.

Terraformer · 2012-12-11 15:20:10

I still don't get how human society could be in stasis for nearly two hundred millennia, before developing agriculture; cities; the wheel; gunpowder - bit of a game changer that one -; eureka, the lightbulb...

Though, if an agricultural society had been present in 100,000BC, would we still be able to detect it in the record? I'm doubtful on that one. Carts? Given that they'd be made of wood - rock isn't a good material for making wheels with - and the parts could be cut out using flint tools and lashed together with rope, then they're not likely to be preserved very well. Boats with sails? Why not - again, they'd be made out of stuff which doesn't preserve well. Very early Neolithic (Mesolithic?). I can't see any reason why a complex civilisation with cities, farms, and sea trade couldn't have existed 150,000 years ago, with us being unable to detect its presence in the archaeological record.

I think in terms of conceptual leaps when it comes to technological and social development, not necessarily in a particular order, though obviously a lot have to have previous ones in place before they can happen. The taming of fire is one of them. Agriculture and domestication is another; animal domestication probably happened long before plant domestication. The development of the wheel, and with it, vehicles, is yet another one. Then there's metal working; obviously, this requires fire, and it's hard to do when you're hunter gatherers. Then there's alloying metal to create steel, though I'd say that's quite a small leap compared to others. Once you've got that, you're as advanced in basic technology as humanity was before a few centuries ago.The next great leap forward humans had was the development of the scientific method - once you've got that...

Anyway... I think that it's quite possible that complex civilisations existed long before the other humans went extinct.

RobertDyck · 2012-12-11 19:01:05

Agriculture began along the shore of a fresh water lake, around 8,500BC. At least wheat and barley. That lake is where the Black Sea is today. Around 5,550BC the bosphorus opened, flooding that lake with salt water. That water never did receed; water level rose to equal the Mediteranean, and stayed there. Many scientists believe this real event is the origin of stories of a "Great Flood". Archaeologists can trace agriculture spreading from the Black Sea to Europe and the Middle East, specifically from this event. Before agriculture, humans were hunter-gatherers.
http://www.robotwisdom.com/science/blacksea.html

Last edited by RobertDyck (2012-12-12 21:42:53)

RobertDyck · 2012-12-11 19:21:24

After the Neolithic age (stone age), humans learned how to smelt copper. That was the peak of tool technology until all deposits of copper ore they could find, within reach with hand tools, were depleted. But they needed to make tools, so they looked for something else. They found another ore could be smelted to produce metal, very similar to copper. This metal had a slightly different colour, but could be worked just like copper. It was stronger, tougher, harder, and would not corrode or tarnish. Great! So they used that. This was the first bronze. This was not the bronze we know today, it was smelted from a single ore. That ore was tennantite: copper, arsenic, with impurities that were burned off during smelting. Today we call that arsenical bronze. They later found another ore often found close to it: tetrahedrite. This was copper antimony ore. Actually tennantite and tetrahedrite form a continuum, each ore normally has a little of the other. Antimony makes any copper based alloy hard, in fact with enough antimony, bronze becomes harder than tempered steel. And arsenic prevents bronze from corroding or tarnishing. At all. There are knives and swords with high concentration of arsenic and antimony on the outer skin of the blade, with low concentration of arsenic and practically no antimony at all in the core. This creates a blade with a hard cutting edge so it doesn't get dull, but a tough core that won't break. The oldest example of this comes from the Caucuses, dating back to the beginning of the early bronze age: 5,800 years ago (3,800BC). It took centuries for this knowledge to spread.

This form of bronze was harder, stronger, tougher than the bronze we know today. With enough alloying metal it could be polished, and would never corrode. The reason ancient people switched to copper-tin alloy for the late bronze age was not any superior quality to the metal. In fact the early bronze was much better in every way. The catch is when it's liquid, or red hot, it spews arsenic vapour. It's safe below 525°F, in fact doesn't produce significant quantity of arsenic vapour until 535°F, so tools and weapons are safe to handle, but the smiths poisoned themselves. In fact the ancient Greek god of the forge, Hephaestus, was said to be lame. Symptoms match arsenic poisoning. Furthermore, you harden bronze not by heat treating, but by beating. The more you use a tool, the harder it gets. This means the best bronze tools are old and well worn. But copper-tin does not require as much beating as copper-arsenic. And copper-tin bronze will tarnish and corrode. So the new bronze was cheap crap. But smiths didn't poison themselves.

Later when steel was developed, the idea of blending metal with high alloy content with low, blending hard/brittle with soft/tough, was transferred. So forge welded blades were just an adaptation of technology previously developed over centuries with bronze.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2012-12-12 21:47:52)

bobunf · 2012-12-12 13:55:18

If an agricultural society had been present in 100,000BC, how would one go about detecting it in the archaeological record? There are a whole lot of ways:

Pollen, spores and spore parts, cysts, egg cases, animal, insect and plant fossils,

Residual chemical effects. A simple and easily identifiable example is the soil discolorations produced by degraded wood, which remain accessible, potentially for millions of years depending on the environment.

One effect of agriculture is to enable a large increase in population, which will be evident in the quantity of dwelling spaces (which can be made of durable materials and are also detectable in a large variety of ways), middens (which will contain durable materials such as bone), and the prevalence of human and other fossils.

Changes in the landscape from terracing, storing and directing water flow, soil movement, and other effects determinable from analysis of organic remains in the soil, etc.

Agricultural effects human teeth in many different ways, and, with all those human remains, there will lots of teeth to examine.

Agriculture requires tools. Stone, bone and antler are better, and more likely, materials, but even wood may leave its traces.

Agriculture requires the storage of harvested food and of seed, which will be evident in various ways. Pottery, which is very durable, and which humans have been using since before the (known) invention of agriculture, would be extremely useful in storing and processing food. Pottery leaves all kinds of traces, can sometimes be fairly inexpensively dated and its manufacturing and materials origins determined. And the quantities of pottery, even in very small stone age communities, are absolutely enormous.

There are many other implements needed for processing agriculture products, and it is really hard to imagine a non-durable mano and metate.

Then there is this dilemma in the archaeological record: we do see many cultures that used stone, bone, and antler extensively in dwelling spaces, hunting, gathering, food storage and preparation, for decoration and other symbolic uses, and for many other purposes. But we do not see these cultures using any of these ubiquitous materials for agriculture. We do not see any transitions in the projectile points, knives, scrapers, etc. as they might be affected by agriculture.

So, we have a speculated agricultural society that left no traces of pollen, spores and spore parts, cysts, egg cases, animal, insect and plant fossils, soil effects, dwelling spaces, population changes, effects on the landscape or human teeth; did not leave traces of any tools, durable or otherwise, for growing, harvesting, storage or processing, and did not affect the existing stone, bone and antler tool kits.

Hmmmm. I wonder if they also had nuclear reactors, space flight and if they colonized Mars.

Of course, all things are possible. But do remember, “That all things are possible is no excuse for talking foolishly.”

Last edited by bobunf (2012-12-12 13:56:31)

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