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Pretty clear the ice age wiped away people that were in some ways sophisticated. Took a few thousand years to recover. This idea of humans being primitive but a

Pretty clear the ice age wiped away people that were in some ways sophisticated. Took a few thousand years to recover. This idea of humans being primitive but also nearly genetically identical to modern man is absurd

wolverine876 3y ago
I've seen similar claims on HN and I'm puzzled: 1) Are you saying people weren't primitive (and how is that defined) in the early Neolithic or, implied by your claim, the late Paleolithic; or that they weren't genetically identical; or both? 2) How does the OP support that claim? I don't see anything that addresses either issue, unless by 'primitive' you mean something on the level of Acheulean tools - handaxes, essentially stone axeheads held in the hand sans hafts or handles, used for ~1.5 million years until a few hundred thousand years ago. In that case, by the early Neolithic our ancestors had exceeded that for at least a couple hundred thousand years (conservatively, and depending on geography). 3) Most of all, why do people care? Why is there a minor movement to push the capabilities of prehistoric humans? What is the emotional investment here? Why bother to come up with mis/disinformation and spread it about these people (unless such behavior is so ingrained that people do it for any reason)?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Re: 3 - because there's an interest in the idea that human history (all of it) is not actually some generally linear, forward-moving story but instead contains (a) parallel, diverse evolution, sometimes with independent discovery of the same thing (b) retrograde motion.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Thank you for explaining it. Whose theory is that? Is there a name for it? A prominent author? I also wonder how that claim is made to fit the evidence: It seems very hard to claim that our lives and abilities haven't improved generally and significantly over the 7 million years since we divorced the chimpanzee taxa, though certainly there have been many years and millenia where we went backward for a short time (short relative to 7 million years - of course it's not always linear improvement, but that's a strawperson). Also, is the theory part of the modern political attempt to reject the Enlightenment and anything associated with it? (Edit: I'm not trying to discuss that movement, just understand the context of these claims.) > parallel, diverse evolution, sometimes with independent discovery of the same thing Does anyone say otherwise? It seems unavoidable that, without modern global communication, many/all discoveries would be too isolated to be known globally. > retrograde motion Temporarily? Again, who says otherwise?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      Most recently, Graeber and Wengrow would likely the poster children of this approach to long history. When I was a child (say, 50+ years ago), we were taught that agriculture was discovered once, in the Levant. This is no longer accepted: it was discovered at least three times (Levant, China, Meso-America), and it would not be surprising if future archeologists find more. The traditional, still widely accepted view of human long history is that we went from hunter-gathers in small tribes to agriculture to larger communities to heirarchies of control to modernity. There are now (c.f. Graeber & Wengrow) some dissenting voices about this.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        > Most recently, Graeber and Wengrow would likely the poster children of this approach to long history. Thanks. I'll look them up. > When I was a child (say, 50+ years ago), we were taught that ... It's unfair, especially after you volunteered to inform me, to make you the spokesperson. However, to go on a tangent I am always a bit skeptical about my and others' memories of childhood education: First, it was long ago, and details and nuance tend to fade. Also, there's the question of not what was taught, but what was understood at that age. I may have understood a very simplified story, and lacking intellectual tools, one biased by pre-existing drives and beliefs. Think of the last time you tried to communicate something, especially with any detail or depth or nuance, to a 9 year old. Could you teach one about long history, in a way they'd understand and retain the details we're discussing? Just think of all the general contextual knowledge they'd need. Years ago I did come across a childhood textbook (late elementary school, I'd guess) , and it was pretty good. I don't mean it represents all textbooks, but that it was good from my adult perspective - no surprise because it was written by adults, evaluated by adults, taught by adults, and no doubt they thought it was pretty good. But what I understood as a child is an very different matter.
        jghn 3y ago
        Well, I was taught the same thing 40ish years ago, if that helps. In retrospect when I was in grade school I was being taught things that were about 10-30 years behind the times in terms of state of the art knowledge in their field. Which makes sense. I wouldn't expect an elementary school teacher to be up to date with the most recent knowledge coming out of academia on these topics. As another example I remember being scoffed at by my teacher in 2nd grade by pointing out how it looked like the continents could fit together. Plate tectonics was known by that point but hadn't become ubiquitous knowledge. I don't remember when I was formally taught the concept of Pangea but it was later on.
  - a_gnostic 3y ago
    I suggest Thomas Sowell's books on Facts about Geography Not Taught in School https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOpJiy5R9WMWL7-8d0JpCp5g9ZDX2Gl8r https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOpJiy5R9WMWL7-8d0JpCp5...
- nradov 3y ago
  There is some circumstantial evidence in the form of stone structures and carvings of relatively advanced civilizations before or during the last ice age which were later wiped out thus setting back human technological progress. By "advanced" I don't mean rockets and microchips, just some higher levels of stone and metal working possibly with wooden sailing vessels. It's hard to conclusively prove or disprove this hypothesis given the difficulties in reliably dating stone artifacts. And if such civilizations did exist, much of the evidence has probably been inundated by rising sea levels making it extremely difficult for archaeologists to find. The reason some people care (beyond purely academic interest) is that if those ancient civilizations did exist then one of the ways they might have been wiped out is by multiple bolide impacts around 12000 years ago. This is commonly known as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. If it happened to them then it could happen to us. I don't necessarily believe the hypothesis is correct but there is at least some data in geological formations and core samples to support it. https://doi.org/10.1177/00368504211064272 https://doi.org/10.1177/00368504211064272
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > It's hard to conclusively prove or disprove this hypothesis given the difficulties in reliably dating stone artifacts. And if such civilizations did exist, much of the evidence has probably been inundated by rising sea levels making it extremely difficult for archaeologists to find. Why is evidence for that theory more difficult to find and date than evidence for the prevailing theories (which has been found, of course)?
fasterik 3y ago
>This idea of humans being primitive but also nearly genetically identical to modern man is absurd Why is that absurd? It seems reasonable to me that after a certain point in evolutionary history, technological sophistication has little to do with genetics and is a lot more about culture and intergenerational transfer of knowledge. >Pretty clear the ice age wiped away people that were in some ways sophisticated. The article is talking about humans living ~7000 years ago, which was a few thousand years after the end of the last ice age.
- owlstuffing 3y ago
  All good points. But the notion that our intelligence potential has remained static for at least 50k years and we hadn’t figured out how to cooperate and plant seeds until relatively recently is difficult to swallow.
  - luma 3y ago
    You're working with the assumption that settling in large groups, creating a "state", and tending to agriculture represents progress for the people involved. I'd recommend checking out Scott's "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" for an alternative look at those assumptions. https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States...
    - owlstuffing 3y ago
      Right. “The earliest states” is the issue, thanks for the reference, I’ll check it out.
  - thechao 3y ago
    Undomesticated precursors of grain crops are literally no better than foraging. The domestication of grain crops is probably a necessary precondition to our type of civilization. And, more importantly, we don't see hominid densities — especially with widespread, state-level populations — until the post grain domestication events. That doesn't mean large scale hominid concentrations couldn't exist without domesticated grains (there's at least a few grainfree riverine cities), but they are exceptional.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
A more accurate way to say it would be, as the last ice age ended societies that were built on participatory economies were completely destroyed by organizations that behaved based on domination patterns. This is well documented in Rianne Eisler’s seminal 1987 book “the chalice and the blade” and is also well described by the Strauss-Howe theory of the four turnings, etc. there’s plenty of documentation on this. I think what frustrates people is when they’re confronted with this type of data because it’s so conflicts with Neoliberal historical views. This is why Howard Zinn had to write “a peoples history” and other such books. These demonstrably show that the contemporary, modern explanation of growth and prosperity is only written from the perspective of those who did the dominating. This is a trope at this point, We know “this the Victors write the history” yet even if we know this, we still completely ignore it.
- dannyobrien 3y ago
  You seem very confident of this position and its coherence, but it seems to be a minority stance, with plenty of other coherent minority stances competing with it. What's the best way to tell your idea from other competing models -- not so much the neoliberal one, but other alternative claims of the nature of human history?
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    I wanna make sure I understand your question. Are you asking why I believe that narratives about history are more accurate than the most popular “Neo liberal history?” If so, then, that’s not really my claim. My claim is that history as it is taught to children in America in both public education, and in the majority of private education does not teach the philosophies of indigenous populations or frankly, any other population that were dominated or are otherwise different than the culture for which it is being taught. I think this is exceptionally common worldwide, so it’s not unique to America. British pupils are not taught about all of their atrocities that they committed worldwide had an equal measure, as they are taught about all of the benefits that the British brought to the world. So it’s less of a function of malice or anything like this, as it is that people really don’t want to own their own history and deal with the implications of taking full responsibility for it.
mc32 3y ago
Why wouldn't they be able to migrate to lower altitudes or latitudes? It's totally possible to have similar genetics to modern humans and live primitively, we have extant population in the Amazon basin, Indian jungles, Africa, maybe other places as well. It almost, but not quite, feels like an echo of the Ancient Civilization trope. Apropos, we find more indications of migration patterns through the ages, this one about Austronesian migration patterns and where their population originated from: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/7000-year-old-civilization-found-on-chinese-coast-illuminating-great-maritime-migration-mystery-1234691311/ https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/7000-year-old-civiliza...
timeon 3y ago
> ice age How is this relevant to posted article? There were almost modern houses in Neolithic but that is long after ice age.

wolverine876 3y ago

I've seen similar claims on HN and I'm puzzled: 1) Are you saying people weren't primitive (and how is that defined) in the early Neolithic or, implied by your claim, the late Paleolithic; or that they weren't genetically identical; or both? 2) How does the OP support that claim? I don't see anything that addresses either issue, unless by 'primitive' you mean something on the level of Acheulean tools - handaxes, essentially stone axeheads held in the hand sans hafts or handles, used for ~1.5 million years until a few hundred thousand years ago. In that case, by the early Neolithic our ancestors had exceeded that for at least a couple hundred thousand years (conservatively, and depending on geography). 3) Most of all, why do people care? Why is there a minor movement to push the capabilities of prehistoric humans? What is the emotional investment here? Why bother to come up with mis/disinformation and spread it about these people (unless such behavior is so ingrained that people do it for any reason)?

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Re: 3 - because there's an interest in the idea that human history (all of it) is not actually some generally linear, forward-moving story but instead contains (a) parallel, diverse evolution, sometimes with independent discovery of the same thing (b) retrograde motion.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Thank you for explaining it. Whose theory is that? Is there a name for it? A prominent author? I also wonder how that claim is made to fit the evidence: It seems very hard to claim that our lives and abilities haven't improved generally and significantly over the 7 million years since we divorced the chimpanzee taxa, though certainly there have been many years and millenia where we went backward for a short time (short relative to 7 million years - of course it's not always linear improvement, but that's a strawperson). Also, is the theory part of the modern political attempt to reject the Enlightenment and anything associated with it? (Edit: I'm not trying to discuss that movement, just understand the context of these claims.) > parallel, diverse evolution, sometimes with independent discovery of the same thing Does anyone say otherwise? It seems unavoidable that, without modern global communication, many/all discoveries would be too isolated to be known globally. > retrograde motion Temporarily? Again, who says otherwise?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Most recently, Graeber and Wengrow would likely the poster children of this approach to long history. When I was a child (say, 50+ years ago), we were taught that agriculture was discovered once, in the Levant. This is no longer accepted: it was discovered at least three times (Levant, China, Meso-America), and it would not be surprising if future archeologists find more. The traditional, still widely accepted view of human long history is that we went from hunter-gathers in small tribes to agriculture to larger communities to heirarchies of control to modernity. There are now (c.f. Graeber & Wengrow) some dissenting voices about this.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      > Most recently, Graeber and Wengrow would likely the poster children of this approach to long history. Thanks. I'll look them up. > When I was a child (say, 50+ years ago), we were taught that ... It's unfair, especially after you volunteered to inform me, to make you the spokesperson. However, to go on a tangent I am always a bit skeptical about my and others' memories of childhood education: First, it was long ago, and details and nuance tend to fade. Also, there's the question of not what was taught, but what was understood at that age. I may have understood a very simplified story, and lacking intellectual tools, one biased by pre-existing drives and beliefs. Think of the last time you tried to communicate something, especially with any detail or depth or nuance, to a 9 year old. Could you teach one about long history, in a way they'd understand and retain the details we're discussing? Just think of all the general contextual knowledge they'd need. Years ago I did come across a childhood textbook (late elementary school, I'd guess) , and it was pretty good. I don't mean it represents all textbooks, but that it was good from my adult perspective - no surprise because it was written by adults, evaluated by adults, taught by adults, and no doubt they thought it was pretty good. But what I understood as a child is an very different matter.
      - jghn 3y ago
        Well, I was taught the same thing 40ish years ago, if that helps. In retrospect when I was in grade school I was being taught things that were about 10-30 years behind the times in terms of state of the art knowledge in their field. Which makes sense. I wouldn't expect an elementary school teacher to be up to date with the most recent knowledge coming out of academia on these topics. As another example I remember being scoffed at by my teacher in 2nd grade by pointing out how it looked like the continents could fit together. Plate tectonics was known by that point but hadn't become ubiquitous knowledge. I don't remember when I was formally taught the concept of Pangea but it was later on.
- a_gnostic 3y ago
  I suggest Thomas Sowell's books on Facts about Geography Not Taught in School https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOpJiy5R9WMWL7-8d0JpCp5g9ZDX2Gl8r https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOpJiy5R9WMWL7-8d0JpCp5...
nradov 3y ago
There is some circumstantial evidence in the form of stone structures and carvings of relatively advanced civilizations before or during the last ice age which were later wiped out thus setting back human technological progress. By "advanced" I don't mean rockets and microchips, just some higher levels of stone and metal working possibly with wooden sailing vessels. It's hard to conclusively prove or disprove this hypothesis given the difficulties in reliably dating stone artifacts. And if such civilizations did exist, much of the evidence has probably been inundated by rising sea levels making it extremely difficult for archaeologists to find. The reason some people care (beyond purely academic interest) is that if those ancient civilizations did exist then one of the ways they might have been wiped out is by multiple bolide impacts around 12000 years ago. This is commonly known as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. If it happened to them then it could happen to us. I don't necessarily believe the hypothesis is correct but there is at least some data in geological formations and core samples to support it. https://doi.org/10.1177/00368504211064272 https://doi.org/10.1177/00368504211064272
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > It's hard to conclusively prove or disprove this hypothesis given the difficulties in reliably dating stone artifacts. And if such civilizations did exist, much of the evidence has probably been inundated by rising sea levels making it extremely difficult for archaeologists to find. Why is evidence for that theory more difficult to find and date than evidence for the prevailing theories (which has been found, of course)?

fasterik 3y ago

>This idea of humans being primitive but also nearly genetically identical to modern man is absurd Why is that absurd? It seems reasonable to me that after a certain point in evolutionary history, technological sophistication has little to do with genetics and is a lot more about culture and intergenerational transfer of knowledge. >Pretty clear the ice age wiped away people that were in some ways sophisticated. The article is talking about humans living ~7000 years ago, which was a few thousand years after the end of the last ice age.

owlstuffing 3y ago
All good points. But the notion that our intelligence potential has remained static for at least 50k years and we hadn’t figured out how to cooperate and plant seeds until relatively recently is difficult to swallow.
- luma 3y ago
  You're working with the assumption that settling in large groups, creating a "state", and tending to agriculture represents progress for the people involved. I'd recommend checking out Scott's "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" for an alternative look at those assumptions. https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States...
  - owlstuffing 3y ago
    Right. “The earliest states” is the issue, thanks for the reference, I’ll check it out.
- thechao 3y ago
  Undomesticated precursors of grain crops are literally no better than foraging. The domestication of grain crops is probably a necessary precondition to our type of civilization. And, more importantly, we don't see hominid densities — especially with widespread, state-level populations — until the post grain domestication events. That doesn't mean large scale hominid concentrations couldn't exist without domesticated grains (there's at least a few grainfree riverine cities), but they are exceptional.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

A more accurate way to say it would be, as the last ice age ended societies that were built on participatory economies were completely destroyed by organizations that behaved based on domination patterns. This is well documented in Rianne Eisler’s seminal 1987 book “the chalice and the blade” and is also well described by the Strauss-Howe theory of the four turnings, etc. there’s plenty of documentation on this. I think what frustrates people is when they’re confronted with this type of data because it’s so conflicts with Neoliberal historical views. This is why Howard Zinn had to write “a peoples history” and other such books. These demonstrably show that the contemporary, modern explanation of growth and prosperity is only written from the perspective of those who did the dominating. This is a trope at this point, We know “this the Victors write the history” yet even if we know this, we still completely ignore it.

dannyobrien 3y ago
You seem very confident of this position and its coherence, but it seems to be a minority stance, with plenty of other coherent minority stances competing with it. What's the best way to tell your idea from other competing models -- not so much the neoliberal one, but other alternative claims of the nature of human history?
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I wanna make sure I understand your question. Are you asking why I believe that narratives about history are more accurate than the most popular “Neo liberal history?” If so, then, that’s not really my claim. My claim is that history as it is taught to children in America in both public education, and in the majority of private education does not teach the philosophies of indigenous populations or frankly, any other population that were dominated or are otherwise different than the culture for which it is being taught. I think this is exceptionally common worldwide, so it’s not unique to America. British pupils are not taught about all of their atrocities that they committed worldwide had an equal measure, as they are taught about all of the benefits that the British brought to the world. So it’s less of a function of malice or anything like this, as it is that people really don’t want to own their own history and deal with the implications of taking full responsibility for it.

mc32 3y ago

Why wouldn't they be able to migrate to lower altitudes or latitudes? It's totally possible to have similar genetics to modern humans and live primitively, we have extant population in the Amazon basin, Indian jungles, Africa, maybe other places as well. It almost, but not quite, feels like an echo of the Ancient Civilization trope. Apropos, we find more indications of migration patterns through the ages, this one about Austronesian migration patterns and where their population originated from: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/7000-year-old-civilization-found-on-chinese-coast-illuminating-great-maritime-migration-mystery-1234691311/ https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/7000-year-old-civiliza...

timeon 3y ago

> ice age How is this relevant to posted article? There were almost modern houses in Neolithic but that is long after ice age.