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>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 c

>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.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > 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. I wonder the same things, but we can see the fact that development varies greatly among humans with the same intelligence potential. Today there are isolated societies with neolithic technology, and they have the same brains that people commenting on HN have. Also, there are other examples. The alphabet was invented once, in Greece around 700 years ago. How could nobody else think of it? (One explanation comes from experiencing contemporary technological development - many things are obvious in hindsight.)
  - CogitoCogito 3y ago
    > Also, there are other examples. The alphabet was invented once, in Greece around 700 years ago. How could nobody else think of it? The Greeks did not invent the alphabet.
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      Yeah according to wikipedia there was a phonetic alphabet invented in Egypt which was used by workers and slaves who didn't understand the complexities of hieroglyphics. The Greeks would later borrow this alphabet, using the same letters and placing them in the same order, adding vowels to better suit their own language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        The definition of an alphabet is that it includes vowels. Sans vowels it's an abjad - named for the first four letters of the Arabic abjad, alif, bā', jīm, dāl, just like 'alphabet' is named for the first two letters of the Greek one. Arabic and Hebrew are modern abjads. There is also another form, an abugida, where each character typically represents a paired consonent and vowel sounds; Devanagari, which I believe is used to write Hindi, is an abudiga. And of course there are yet more forms.
- fasterik 3y ago
  I don't think it's that surprising if you consider culture as just another process of evolution. It took billions of years of single cells swimming around before the transition to multicellular organisms. It took millions of years of hominids living in tribes and making stone tools before the transition to building rockets and semiconductors.

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.
wolverine876 3y ago
> 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. I wonder the same things, but we can see the fact that development varies greatly among humans with the same intelligence potential. Today there are isolated societies with neolithic technology, and they have the same brains that people commenting on HN have. Also, there are other examples. The alphabet was invented once, in Greece around 700 years ago. How could nobody else think of it? (One explanation comes from experiencing contemporary technological development - many things are obvious in hindsight.)
- CogitoCogito 3y ago
  > Also, there are other examples. The alphabet was invented once, in Greece around 700 years ago. How could nobody else think of it? The Greeks did not invent the alphabet.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Yeah according to wikipedia there was a phonetic alphabet invented in Egypt which was used by workers and slaves who didn't understand the complexities of hieroglyphics. The Greeks would later borrow this alphabet, using the same letters and placing them in the same order, adding vowels to better suit their own language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      The definition of an alphabet is that it includes vowels. Sans vowels it's an abjad - named for the first four letters of the Arabic abjad, alif, bā', jīm, dāl, just like 'alphabet' is named for the first two letters of the Greek one. Arabic and Hebrew are modern abjads. There is also another form, an abugida, where each character typically represents a paired consonent and vowel sounds; Devanagari, which I believe is used to write Hindi, is an abudiga. And of course there are yet more forms.
fasterik 3y ago
I don't think it's that surprising if you consider culture as just another process of evolution. It took billions of years of single cells swimming around before the transition to multicellular organisms. It took millions of years of hominids living in tribes and making stone tools before the transition to building rockets and semiconductors.