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I wonder then if the start of carnivorous diet began around the time humans are thought to have developed language (or more specifically symbolic thinking and/o

by proc0 3y ago

I wonder then if the start of carnivorous diet began around the time humans are thought to have developed language (or more specifically symbolic thinking and/or imagination), I think 20,000 year ago?. Maybe that was the beginning of dominating animals and realizing we can hunt with tools, or maybe there was an abundance of meat and that fueled brain growth which then allowed for symbolic thinking.

CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
20,000 years ago is way too recent. Aboriginals arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago after which they were basically isolated from the rest of the world until the British arrived. Unless you believe humans developed language at least twice it has to have happened before that. Also there are several stories which are believed to be quite a bit older than 20,000 years.
hackerlight 3y ago
I thought it was before that, as soon as we came down from trees and learned to use throwing rocks as a weapon, something like 50k years ago.
- proc0 3y ago
  From reading popular evolutionary science, if I recall, it's the dates of the first cave drawings or other evidence of symbolic thinking like scratch marks on bones to count something. These point to 20-40K years ago.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    We have evidence that humans used symbols for self-expression at least 72,000 years ago: https://www.amnh.org/explore/videos/humans/symbolic-thinking https://www.amnh.org/explore/videos/humans/symbolic-thinking
    - Fricken 3y ago
      Evidence regularly turns up that pushes back the dates for how long our ancestors have been doing the special things that make us human.
Qem 3y ago
Anatomically modern humans existed since ~300.000-200.000 years ago[1], and behavioral modernity[2] arised between ~150.000-50.000 years ago. That begs the interesting question, why did civilization appears to have arised only in the last 10.000 years or so? IIRC, the usual explanation is that the climate back in pleistocene was too unstable for agriculture. But I also wonder, perhaps people just didn't feel the need for anything resembling civilization, at least while there was plenty of megafauna to hunt. So humanity spent about 50.000 years just hanging around and enjoying low-hanging calories from the giant beasts, unsustainably, depleting their numbers slowly with stone-age tech. By the end of the ice age we got them completely eradicated almost everywhere. So people had to survive on small-game and gathering, eventualy resorting to labour-intensive agriculture to make ends meet. Once people were forced by self-made scarcity to develop agriculture, civilization followed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity
- nradov 3y ago
  Another interpretation of the available archaeological data is that there was an earlier civilization which was destroyed around 11,000 years ago by a series of bolide impacts (Younger Dryas impact hypothesis). There's no reliable way to date stone structures; we only have circumstantial evidence. And most remnants of a hypothetical Ice Age civilization would likely now be underwater due to sea level rise. I don't necessarily believe this interpretation myself, it's somewhat of a fringe idea and there are lots of holes in the data. But until there is definitive evidence we should be open to the idea that human civilization is older than 10,000 years. https://grahamhancock.com/ancient-apocalypse/ https://grahamhancock.com/ancient-apocalypse/
- GuB-42 3y ago
  Probably plenty of factors, including chance, mostly chance I suspect. A combination of particular needs, like what you are describing, opportunities, like the right species of plants and animals, the rights ideas, enough success for the agricultural tribes to survive and a willingness to expand and develop the ideas. It can take quite a while before everything goes together.
arp242 3y ago
Eh? Homo Erectus ate meat and almost certainly hunted. There's tons of evidence for this. There's also evidence for this for Neanderthals, homo habilis, homo ergaster and probably other early humans. This behaviour goes back millions of years, and has been a major factor in human evolution. Tool in hunting use goes back much further than 20,000 years – at least 400,000 for spears in a quick check, but that's just what we have conclusive evidence for. I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually much older. We have evidence of stone scrapers and axes from millions of years ago, and do you think people using stone scrapers to butcher animals and axes to chip down trees couldn't figure out how to make a pointy sticks? It's just that stone preserves well and pointy sticks don't.
- proc0 3y ago
  Well then that contradicts the claim of the research in the article, which is fine. I'm just assuming it's correct and then asking questions based on that, mainly how it relates to when humans developed language (not the spoken word necessarily, just the capacity for imagination/language, and that is not that old from what I recall reading).

by proc0 3y ago

CorrectHorseBat 3y ago

20,000 years ago is way too recent. Aboriginals arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago after which they were basically isolated from the rest of the world until the British arrived. Unless you believe humans developed language at least twice it has to have happened before that. Also there are several stories which are believed to be quite a bit older than 20,000 years.

hackerlight 3y ago

I thought it was before that, as soon as we came down from trees and learned to use throwing rocks as a weapon, something like 50k years ago.

proc0 3y ago
From reading popular evolutionary science, if I recall, it's the dates of the first cave drawings or other evidence of symbolic thinking like scratch marks on bones to count something. These point to 20-40K years ago.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  We have evidence that humans used symbols for self-expression at least 72,000 years ago: https://www.amnh.org/explore/videos/humans/symbolic-thinking https://www.amnh.org/explore/videos/humans/symbolic-thinking
  - Fricken 3y ago
    Evidence regularly turns up that pushes back the dates for how long our ancestors have been doing the special things that make us human.

Qem 3y ago

Anatomically modern humans existed since ~300.000-200.000 years ago[1], and behavioral modernity[2] arised between ~150.000-50.000 years ago. That begs the interesting question, why did civilization appears to have arised only in the last 10.000 years or so? IIRC, the usual explanation is that the climate back in pleistocene was too unstable for agriculture. But I also wonder, perhaps people just didn't feel the need for anything resembling civilization, at least while there was plenty of megafauna to hunt. So humanity spent about 50.000 years just hanging around and enjoying low-hanging calories from the giant beasts, unsustainably, depleting their numbers slowly with stone-age tech. By the end of the ice age we got them completely eradicated almost everywhere. So people had to survive on small-game and gathering, eventualy resorting to labour-intensive agriculture to make ends meet. Once people were forced by self-made scarcity to develop agriculture, civilization followed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity

nradov 3y ago
Another interpretation of the available archaeological data is that there was an earlier civilization which was destroyed around 11,000 years ago by a series of bolide impacts (Younger Dryas impact hypothesis). There's no reliable way to date stone structures; we only have circumstantial evidence. And most remnants of a hypothetical Ice Age civilization would likely now be underwater due to sea level rise. I don't necessarily believe this interpretation myself, it's somewhat of a fringe idea and there are lots of holes in the data. But until there is definitive evidence we should be open to the idea that human civilization is older than 10,000 years. https://grahamhancock.com/ancient-apocalypse/ https://grahamhancock.com/ancient-apocalypse/
GuB-42 3y ago
Probably plenty of factors, including chance, mostly chance I suspect. A combination of particular needs, like what you are describing, opportunities, like the right species of plants and animals, the rights ideas, enough success for the agricultural tribes to survive and a willingness to expand and develop the ideas. It can take quite a while before everything goes together.

arp242 3y ago

Eh? Homo Erectus ate meat and almost certainly hunted. There's tons of evidence for this. There's also evidence for this for Neanderthals, homo habilis, homo ergaster and probably other early humans. This behaviour goes back millions of years, and has been a major factor in human evolution. Tool in hunting use goes back much further than 20,000 years – at least 400,000 for spears in a quick check, but that's just what we have conclusive evidence for. I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually much older. We have evidence of stone scrapers and axes from millions of years ago, and do you think people using stone scrapers to butcher animals and axes to chip down trees couldn't figure out how to make a pointy sticks? It's just that stone preserves well and pointy sticks don't.

proc0 3y ago
Well then that contradicts the claim of the research in the article, which is fine. I'm just assuming it's correct and then asking questions based on that, mainly how it relates to when humans developed language (not the spoken word necessarily, just the capacity for imagination/language, and that is not that old from what I recall reading).