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I find it hard to believe that 500.000 years ago humans were intelligent enough to craft a weapon and only about 6000 years ago things really took off for our c

I find it hard to believe that 500.000 years ago humans were intelligent enough to craft a weapon and only about 6000 years ago things really took off for our civilization. What happened to humans recently that changed things?

Pkeod 14y ago
Many animals use and make tools. Modern humans (people like you and me) are biologically only 20,000 years old or so. What happened? Enough technology and development compounded to make more modern civilization possible. Various technologies may have been developed/invented in the far distant past, but were lost for various reasons.
tokenadult 14y ago
What happened to humans recently that changed things? The submitted article was interesting to me for showing the inventive capacity of an ancestral hominin lineage, which was unknown until the studies reported in the article. Species Homo sapiens, according to the current view reported in the article, goes back the better part of 100,000 years. Most of your genes and mine have been fixed in the human lineage for at least that long. With "recently" defined as about 6,000 years ago, by then there were several regions of the world with agriculture (different crops in different places) and there was about to be a place (Mesopotamia, specifically Sumer) with actual writing rather than just proto-writing. Both of those innovations made "civilization" (living in cities) much more feasible than before. And it does appear that living in cities prompts many other kinds of social changes. Human beings over the last several thousand years have progressed by acculturation and by writing down knowledge acquired by other individuals much more rapidly than any human lineage has ever progressed by shuffling genes.
- cristianpascu 14y ago
  I still get the sense that this explanation goes backwards. It's like saying we got more intelligent because we were intelligent enough to develop writing, or proto-writing. Sounds like something that grows out of itself. Neuro-electrical reaction to light, thermic or mechanical stimuli is not intelligence. Writing, sending messages, interpreting messages is intelligence. Heck, walking in random directions is intelligence. Obviously, since we haven't yet explained consciousness in "the brain is the mind" fashion, we're still in reverse engineering mode. Thus the explanations will sound 'just so'-ish. Nevertheless, the questions is still there: why the sudden jump in progress. Disclaimer: I'm a creationist, but always happy to hear alternative views.
  - criley 14y ago
    Similar behavior is witnessed in animals often. An animal will learn a novel behavior -- generally some basic tool use, and then its relatives or packmates will quickly adopt the technique. It spreads like wildfire. They clearly already contained the capacity to perform that behavior, they just needed to be shown that they could do it in the right context. Once they were shown once, they adopted the behavior quickly -- and even pass it on to their young. I believe early humans developing new skills and learning was similar. It was not that humans began speaking or writing as soon as it was biologically feasible -- rather some (long) time after feasibility was evolved, the skill was developed and then had to "go viral" and infect other humans. How many times did it start and stop before it hit critical mass? How many tribes of humans were available for this kind of development to even take place? Fascinating stuff, there's an enormous amount out there on this subject, and I only have a BS in Biology, so I'm no expert! EDIT: "Why the sudden jump in progress" You may mean, "Why did human brains rapidly get larger over an evolutionarily short amount of time" -- and the answer is that there was no sudden jump, only slow increase over time (as measured in fossils).
Jun8 14y ago
Writing? The transient intelligence of human communities is negligible compared with the cumulative one enabled by this invention.
jlgreco 14y ago
The way I wrap my head around it (and I may be wildly wrong), is that they were basically in the very long and shallow part of exponential growth in technology, similar to population growth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg Not that population size and technological achievement are related.
- nandemo 14y ago
  Hmm, I think the question is why such growth was exponential.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Ah, well presumably because progress stands on the shoulders of those who came before. Though I think the language and writing things that others have pointed out probably have more to do with it.
nandemo 14y ago
Besides what others pointed out, there's evidence that the proto-humans of 500 thousand years ago hadn't developed spoken language yet [1]. So it was hard to teach what you knew to people living next to you, let alone pass on knowledge to other generations. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech#When_did_speech_evolve.3F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech#When_did_speec...
brian_cloutier 14y ago
The processes of evolution and modern science aren't especially different. In one a bunch of random changes are made, in another a bunch of intelligent changes. But both just build on the shoulders of giants and add to a body of knowledge piece by piece . Progress happens step-wise, and once you've made some progress it becomes easier to make more. It kind of makes sense that both would experience accelerating returns.
Nick_C 14y ago
Nothing happened. Prior to that we were mobile hunter-gatherers in very small groups. Hard to get an archeological reading from that. It is not that something happened 6,000 years (actually more like 10,000 years) ago, it is that we left no easily-found trace before then. If you're interested, Guns, Germs & Steel goes into a lot more detail.

Pkeod 14y ago

Many animals use and make tools. Modern humans (people like you and me) are biologically only 20,000 years old or so. What happened? Enough technology and development compounded to make more modern civilization possible. Various technologies may have been developed/invented in the far distant past, but were lost for various reasons.

tokenadult 14y ago

What happened to humans recently that changed things? The submitted article was interesting to me for showing the inventive capacity of an ancestral hominin lineage, which was unknown until the studies reported in the article. Species Homo sapiens, according to the current view reported in the article, goes back the better part of 100,000 years. Most of your genes and mine have been fixed in the human lineage for at least that long. With "recently" defined as about 6,000 years ago, by then there were several regions of the world with agriculture (different crops in different places) and there was about to be a place (Mesopotamia, specifically Sumer) with actual writing rather than just proto-writing. Both of those innovations made "civilization" (living in cities) much more feasible than before. And it does appear that living in cities prompts many other kinds of social changes. Human beings over the last several thousand years have progressed by acculturation and by writing down knowledge acquired by other individuals much more rapidly than any human lineage has ever progressed by shuffling genes.

cristianpascu 14y ago
I still get the sense that this explanation goes backwards. It's like saying we got more intelligent because we were intelligent enough to develop writing, or proto-writing. Sounds like something that grows out of itself. Neuro-electrical reaction to light, thermic or mechanical stimuli is not intelligence. Writing, sending messages, interpreting messages is intelligence. Heck, walking in random directions is intelligence. Obviously, since we haven't yet explained consciousness in "the brain is the mind" fashion, we're still in reverse engineering mode. Thus the explanations will sound 'just so'-ish. Nevertheless, the questions is still there: why the sudden jump in progress. Disclaimer: I'm a creationist, but always happy to hear alternative views.
- criley 14y ago
  Similar behavior is witnessed in animals often. An animal will learn a novel behavior -- generally some basic tool use, and then its relatives or packmates will quickly adopt the technique. It spreads like wildfire. They clearly already contained the capacity to perform that behavior, they just needed to be shown that they could do it in the right context. Once they were shown once, they adopted the behavior quickly -- and even pass it on to their young. I believe early humans developing new skills and learning was similar. It was not that humans began speaking or writing as soon as it was biologically feasible -- rather some (long) time after feasibility was evolved, the skill was developed and then had to "go viral" and infect other humans. How many times did it start and stop before it hit critical mass? How many tribes of humans were available for this kind of development to even take place? Fascinating stuff, there's an enormous amount out there on this subject, and I only have a BS in Biology, so I'm no expert! EDIT: "Why the sudden jump in progress" You may mean, "Why did human brains rapidly get larger over an evolutionarily short amount of time" -- and the answer is that there was no sudden jump, only slow increase over time (as measured in fossils).

Jun8 14y ago

Writing? The transient intelligence of human communities is negligible compared with the cumulative one enabled by this invention.

jlgreco 14y ago

The way I wrap my head around it (and I may be wildly wrong), is that they were basically in the very long and shallow part of exponential growth in technology, similar to population growth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg Not that population size and technological achievement are related.

nandemo 14y ago
Hmm, I think the question is why such growth was exponential.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Ah, well presumably because progress stands on the shoulders of those who came before. Though I think the language and writing things that others have pointed out probably have more to do with it.

nandemo 14y ago

Besides what others pointed out, there's evidence that the proto-humans of 500 thousand years ago hadn't developed spoken language yet [1]. So it was hard to teach what you knew to people living next to you, let alone pass on knowledge to other generations. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech#When_did_speech_evolve.3F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech#When_did_speec...

brian_cloutier 14y ago

The processes of evolution and modern science aren't especially different. In one a bunch of random changes are made, in another a bunch of intelligent changes. But both just build on the shoulders of giants and add to a body of knowledge piece by piece . Progress happens step-wise, and once you've made some progress it becomes easier to make more. It kind of makes sense that both would experience accelerating returns.

Nick_C 14y ago

Nothing happened. Prior to that we were mobile hunter-gatherers in very small groups. Hard to get an archeological reading from that. It is not that something happened 6,000 years (actually more like 10,000 years) ago, it is that we left no easily-found trace before then. If you're interested, Guns, Germs & Steel goes into a lot more detail.