4 ms·

There's a ton of people that, for some reason, just can't grok that humans have been largely behaviorally and biologically identical for the past 200k years. T

There's a ton of people that, for some reason, just can't grok that humans have been largely behaviorally and biologically identical for the past 200k years. The average ancient roman plebeian's life would not look dramatically different from ours today, minus technology of course. They worked a day job, ate at thermopoliums (basically fast food), lived in crowded apartment complexes with various forms of slum lords, deal with high rent prices, and roman graffiti is littered with complaints about politicians, sports teams, and the rising cost of living. With the pyramids, we have the Wadi al-Jarf papyri, a detailed logistics logbook documenting the teams moving the stones for the great pyramids, along side payroll records much like any other spreadsheet you'll find on someone's corporate computer today. We are not so different from our ancient ancestors at all.

comrade1234 4mo ago
There are ideas that ancient human thinking was very different and primitive compared to modern. For example (and others): The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)
- applfanboysbgon 4mo ago
  In much the same way there are 'ideas' that aliens built pyramids.
- crooked-v 4mo ago
  That one is an interesting scifi premise, but deeply unpersuasive when it comes to actual humans.
  - Hikikomori 4mo ago
    It was one of the main influences for the cyberpunk Snow Crash novel.
    - shawn_w 4mo ago
      And an even bigger influence in Stephenson's first book, The Big U.
- seanclayton 4mo ago
  In the half century that has passed since the publishing of that book, plenty of work has been done to say that ancient human thinking wasn't primitive, especially the ones that made the pyramids 4,600 years ago, such as the Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids by Mark Lehner and Pierre Tallet (2022) which alludes to the minds of competent and intelligent humans
- jleyank 4mo ago
  Comparing Plato to various current-day companies and governments, this is true. Assuming "primitive" means "clear or unobscured".
- effed3 4mo ago
  probably this is an effect of a much more simple environment and tasks in the past: Sleep, hunt and not been hunted, eat, reproduce. the minds seems simpler, but is apparent. We live in a more complex world, this produce someting more complex, culture, ideas, knowledge, tasks, technology, craps.. but basic intelligence i think is the same (if not better in the past, less "pollution")
  - kbelder 4mo ago
    If I was to sum up Jaynes' most relevant idea, I'd say it is that language is a technological advancement that evolved to handle more abstract and powerful concepts over time. Ten thousand years ago, humans were biologically the same as today, but their tool of language wasn't advanced enough to effectively communicate or contemplate some concepts, and it led to a reduced inner monologue and explicit self-awareness. When I first read it, I remember thinking that this was the most interesting book I've read that is probably wrong.
    - effed3 4mo ago
      I don't have read jaines. To me the language was different yes, but the mind is another thing, but the two are cleary related. I think humans need (and create) more concepts, more complex/different idea, to grasp/describe a more complex world around, but the mind is equally capable now as 50k-years ago. Probably in the past minds can contemplate things we are not more aware today, who know? is not all about rational and scientific thinking, is not more or less advanced, is simply different, and in the past humans needed a quite different set of ideas and tools than today. Just travel to Papua-NewGuinea and check with some tribe in a lost valley, straigh from Neolythic, some does not have a concept of "3", but children can learn arithmetic as everyone else, they can contemplate every concept we have, given the right path.
card_zero 4mo ago
Romans, huh? Many of them were slaves, they believed they could learn the future by looking at the patterns of birds in flight, a Roman's bloodline was very important to the Roman's importance. You can take "behaviorally identical" too far, ideas got better over time, people in the past had bad ideas.
- thewebguyd 4mo ago
  Still sounds a lot like humans today. Many are still slaves, many believe they can learn the future by reading cards with funny pictures on them, for some bloodline is very important, as is race. I don't think we are meaningfully different at all. The same types and groups of people and social structures all still exist today. I suppose the big difference is those of us who are well adjusted know that racism is not good, and tarot cards are meaningless woo woo. But there were also such skeptics back then too.
  - card_zero 4mo ago
    I don't understand the downvote, it's like "nooo, their ideas were exactly as good as the ones we have today, humans don't learn over time, how dare you imply we used to be stupider, it's sacrilege". So I object to this weird article of faith every time it comes up, we can't have been exactly as sensible and exactly as clever in the past as we are today, it doesn't make any sense to say that. But it's somehow become right-on to say that it's so, as if denying it is a prejudice like timeism or something. It obviously matters to some world view, equality maybe?
    - thewebguyd 4mo ago
      I didn't downvote you. But, I'm not saying that humans haven't learned anything, but that cognitively we haven't changed. A roman citizen has the exact same brain capacity to reason and adapt as we do today. There is zero separation from ancient human vs. modern human in that aspect. You are conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence. That roman looking at bird entrails to predict the future was using the exact same pattern-recognition ability we use today to look at data visualizations, or trend graphs. You could go back in time, steal an ancient roman baby, and raise them in today's year and they would be no different from you or I.
aqfamnzc 4mo ago
A couple years ago I realized that I had somewhat subconsciously made the same assumption. The thing that snapped me out of it was my awe in watching Clickspring (YT) try to recreate the Antikythera Mechanism. That device's complexity and craftsmanship is proof to me that despite the lack of technology, there were some astonishingly smart and resourceful people living thousands of years ago.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4mo ago
  Maybe they learned from the aliens?
- Gibbon1 4mo ago
  The Obelisk at the Vatican weighs in at 360 tons. And was moved from Egypt to Rome by the Romans around 40AD. And then moved to it's present location in the 1586. The Romans moved at least 8 Egyptian Obelisks to Rome and also commissioned a couple. The only thing really amazing about the pyramids is how many couple of ton blocks they carved out and transported. It's around 250 blocks a day for 25 years.
  - cassepipe 4mo ago
    A thing of note, the Nile banks have been one the most fertile arable land around the whole mediterranean, that's why it was invaluable to the roman empire. Why it matters is that only in a place where you have very fertile land can you afford to have sooooo many people not working in agriculture and feed them to work for your tyrannical pet project
  - pyuser583 4mo ago
    There’s one in London too.
ManuelKiessling 4mo ago
It has always been my understanding that if talking about homo sapiens sapiens: then if you could „snatch“ a newborn from 200k years ago and raise it just like any other human baby today, there is nothing in terms of biology etc. that would stop said baby from becoming an engineer, astronaut, formula one race driver, lawyer, programmer, or CEO (or any other modern profession for that matter). Never read up if that pet theory of mine has any merit, though.
- SequoiaHope 4mo ago
  There’s some adaptations to disease etc but basically my understanding is that this is true.
- limbicsystem 4mo ago
  I used to think that as well. This book recently made me think again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_10,000_Year_Explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_10,000_Year_Explosion
pseudohadamard 4mo ago
> With the pyramids, we have the Wadi al-Jarf papyri Yeah but that was planted by the aliens, who got the idea from God when she was planting all the dinosaur fossils in 4,004 BC.
consumer451 4mo ago
There is even a controversial theory that individual human intelligence peaked around 3000 years ago. > Crabtree bases his argument on the fact that, for more than 99 percent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities, which has led to big-brained humans. Since the development of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effectively stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical intelligence genes. https://wcuquad.com/101393/news/humans-are-no-longer-as-intelligent-as-in-1000-bc/ https://wcuquad.com/101393/news/humans-are-no-longer-as-inte...
lqstuart 4mo ago
I think the gap here variation. Yes, people living 50,000 years ago were likely quite similar to _some_ people alive today, just probably not very similar to the types of people who are able to peacefully sit around on the internet and read history books for pleasure, who would most likely ask that question.

comrade1234 4mo ago

There are ideas that ancient human thinking was very different and primitive compared to modern. For example (and others): The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)

applfanboysbgon 4mo ago
In much the same way there are 'ideas' that aliens built pyramids.
crooked-v 4mo ago
That one is an interesting scifi premise, but deeply unpersuasive when it comes to actual humans.
- Hikikomori 4mo ago
  It was one of the main influences for the cyberpunk Snow Crash novel.
  - shawn_w 4mo ago
    And an even bigger influence in Stephenson's first book, The Big U.
seanclayton 4mo ago
In the half century that has passed since the publishing of that book, plenty of work has been done to say that ancient human thinking wasn't primitive, especially the ones that made the pyramids 4,600 years ago, such as the Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids by Mark Lehner and Pierre Tallet (2022) which alludes to the minds of competent and intelligent humans
jleyank 4mo ago
Comparing Plato to various current-day companies and governments, this is true. Assuming "primitive" means "clear or unobscured".
effed3 4mo ago
probably this is an effect of a much more simple environment and tasks in the past: Sleep, hunt and not been hunted, eat, reproduce. the minds seems simpler, but is apparent. We live in a more complex world, this produce someting more complex, culture, ideas, knowledge, tasks, technology, craps.. but basic intelligence i think is the same (if not better in the past, less "pollution")
- kbelder 4mo ago
  If I was to sum up Jaynes' most relevant idea, I'd say it is that language is a technological advancement that evolved to handle more abstract and powerful concepts over time. Ten thousand years ago, humans were biologically the same as today, but their tool of language wasn't advanced enough to effectively communicate or contemplate some concepts, and it led to a reduced inner monologue and explicit self-awareness. When I first read it, I remember thinking that this was the most interesting book I've read that is probably wrong.
  - effed3 4mo ago
    I don't have read jaines. To me the language was different yes, but the mind is another thing, but the two are cleary related. I think humans need (and create) more concepts, more complex/different idea, to grasp/describe a more complex world around, but the mind is equally capable now as 50k-years ago. Probably in the past minds can contemplate things we are not more aware today, who know? is not all about rational and scientific thinking, is not more or less advanced, is simply different, and in the past humans needed a quite different set of ideas and tools than today. Just travel to Papua-NewGuinea and check with some tribe in a lost valley, straigh from Neolythic, some does not have a concept of "3", but children can learn arithmetic as everyone else, they can contemplate every concept we have, given the right path.

card_zero 4mo ago

Romans, huh? Many of them were slaves, they believed they could learn the future by looking at the patterns of birds in flight, a Roman's bloodline was very important to the Roman's importance. You can take "behaviorally identical" too far, ideas got better over time, people in the past had bad ideas.

thewebguyd 4mo ago
Still sounds a lot like humans today. Many are still slaves, many believe they can learn the future by reading cards with funny pictures on them, for some bloodline is very important, as is race. I don't think we are meaningfully different at all. The same types and groups of people and social structures all still exist today. I suppose the big difference is those of us who are well adjusted know that racism is not good, and tarot cards are meaningless woo woo. But there were also such skeptics back then too.
- card_zero 4mo ago
  I don't understand the downvote, it's like "nooo, their ideas were exactly as good as the ones we have today, humans don't learn over time, how dare you imply we used to be stupider, it's sacrilege". So I object to this weird article of faith every time it comes up, we can't have been exactly as sensible and exactly as clever in the past as we are today, it doesn't make any sense to say that. But it's somehow become right-on to say that it's so, as if denying it is a prejudice like timeism or something. It obviously matters to some world view, equality maybe?
  - thewebguyd 4mo ago
    I didn't downvote you. But, I'm not saying that humans haven't learned anything, but that cognitively we haven't changed. A roman citizen has the exact same brain capacity to reason and adapt as we do today. There is zero separation from ancient human vs. modern human in that aspect. You are conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence. That roman looking at bird entrails to predict the future was using the exact same pattern-recognition ability we use today to look at data visualizations, or trend graphs. You could go back in time, steal an ancient roman baby, and raise them in today's year and they would be no different from you or I.

aqfamnzc 4mo ago

A couple years ago I realized that I had somewhat subconsciously made the same assumption. The thing that snapped me out of it was my awe in watching Clickspring (YT) try to recreate the Antikythera Mechanism. That device's complexity and craftsmanship is proof to me that despite the lack of technology, there were some astonishingly smart and resourceful people living thousands of years ago.

HeyLaughingBoy 4mo ago
Maybe they learned from the aliens?
Gibbon1 4mo ago
The Obelisk at the Vatican weighs in at 360 tons. And was moved from Egypt to Rome by the Romans around 40AD. And then moved to it's present location in the 1586. The Romans moved at least 8 Egyptian Obelisks to Rome and also commissioned a couple. The only thing really amazing about the pyramids is how many couple of ton blocks they carved out and transported. It's around 250 blocks a day for 25 years.
- cassepipe 4mo ago
  A thing of note, the Nile banks have been one the most fertile arable land around the whole mediterranean, that's why it was invaluable to the roman empire. Why it matters is that only in a place where you have very fertile land can you afford to have sooooo many people not working in agriculture and feed them to work for your tyrannical pet project
- pyuser583 4mo ago
  There’s one in London too.

ManuelKiessling 4mo ago

It has always been my understanding that if talking about homo sapiens sapiens: then if you could „snatch“ a newborn from 200k years ago and raise it just like any other human baby today, there is nothing in terms of biology etc. that would stop said baby from becoming an engineer, astronaut, formula one race driver, lawyer, programmer, or CEO (or any other modern profession for that matter). Never read up if that pet theory of mine has any merit, though.

SequoiaHope 4mo ago
There’s some adaptations to disease etc but basically my understanding is that this is true.
limbicsystem 4mo ago
I used to think that as well. This book recently made me think again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_10,000_Year_Explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_10,000_Year_Explosion

pseudohadamard 4mo ago

> With the pyramids, we have the Wadi al-Jarf papyri Yeah but that was planted by the aliens, who got the idea from God when she was planting all the dinosaur fossils in 4,004 BC.

consumer451 4mo ago

There is even a controversial theory that individual human intelligence peaked around 3000 years ago. > Crabtree bases his argument on the fact that, for more than 99 percent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities, which has led to big-brained humans. Since the development of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effectively stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical intelligence genes. https://wcuquad.com/101393/news/humans-are-no-longer-as-intelligent-as-in-1000-bc/ https://wcuquad.com/101393/news/humans-are-no-longer-as-inte...

lqstuart 4mo ago

I think the gap here variation. Yes, people living 50,000 years ago were likely quite similar to _some_ people alive today, just probably not very similar to the types of people who are able to peacefully sit around on the internet and read history books for pleasure, who would most likely ask that question.