Page 116 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

paleoanthropology 1417

The sequence of events just summarized strongly sug- in the context of very low population sizes, by patterns
gests that, with the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa, of demographic expansion and restless local invention in
an unanticipated ability for symbolic cognition was born. both the social and technological realms—even as the
This new cognitive potential was evidently acquired in an inherent limitations of human experience, together with
emergent event, in which a chance coincidence of bio- an apparent reluctance to learn from such experience,
logical acquisitions resulted in something entirely new. guaranteed that similar patterns would tend to recur over
Made possible by a long evolutionary history, but not an and again. Further, the prehistory of sedentary societies
inevitable result of it, the expression of this almost everywhere shows that technological overinten-
unprecedented potential (the biological underpinnings sification has repeatedly combined with climatic vagaries
of which were presumably acquired in the reorganization to ensure eventual economic collapse—for reasons that
that led to modern anatomy) had to await behavioral dis- are often due as much to innate human proclivities as to
covery, much as ancestral birds had feathers for millions the external proximate causes. Despite its extraordinary
of years before discovering they could use them to fly. ratiocinative abilities, Homo sapiens is not an entirely
Most plausibly, the behavioral releasing agent concerned rational creature, and its history worldwide reflects that
was the invention of language, an activity that is inti- fact. Evolutionary psychology and other reductionist
mately tied up with symbolic thought. approaches to the contrary, we cannot understand our
Once the transition to symbolic thought had been own history as that of a creature that is biologically per-
made, Homo sapiens was positioned to eliminate its hom- fected for—or even broadly adapted to—any particular
inid competitors such as the Neanderthals and to em- way of behaving.
bark on an aggressive demographic expansion. At this
Ian Tattersall
initial stage all human societies were economically based
on hunting and gathering; rapidly, however, sedentary life- See also Dating Methods; Human Evolution—Overview;
styles relying on the domestication of plants and animals Universe, Origins of
were independently adopted in various parts of the world.
Sedentarism then led to further population expansion,
urbanization, economic specialization, and the develop- Further Reading
ment of complex societies. And it also led to a redefini- Bahn, P., & Vertut, J. (1997). Journey through the ice age. London: Wei-
tion of the relationship of Homo sapiens to the rest of the denfeld & Nicholson.
Deacon, H. J., & Deacon, J. (1999). Human beginnings in South Africa:
world: to what Niles Eldredge (1995, 101) has charac- Uncovering the secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town, South Africa:
terized as a “declaration of independence” from our sur- David Philip.
Delson, E.,Tattersall, I.,Van Couvering, J.A., & Brooks,A. (2000). Ency-
rounding ecosystems.
clopedia of human evolution and prehistory (2nd ed.). New York: Gar-
land Press.
Implications of Eldredge, N. (1995). Dominion: Can nature and culture co-exist? New
York: Henry Holt.
Paleoanthropology Gould, S. J. (2001). The structure of evolutionary theory. Cambridge, MA:
The study of paleoanthropology teaches us above all that Belknap/Harvard University Press.
Johanson, D., & Edgar, B. (1996). From Lucy to language. New York:
the process leading to the arrival on Earth of Homo sapi-
Simon & Schuster.
ens was not one of constant fine-tuning over the eons. Kingdon, J. (2003). Lowly origin: Where, when, and why our ancestors
Rather, our cognitively unique species appeared in a first stood up. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Klein, R. (1999). The human career (2d ed.). Chicago: University of
short-term event that was emergent in nature, rather than Chicago Press.
representing the culmination of any preexisting trend. Klein, R., & Edgar, B. (2002). The dawn of human culture. New York:
Wiley.
This entirely unprecedented event witnessed the replace-
Schwartz, J. H. (1999). Sudden origins: Fossils, genes, and the emergence
ment of a history of highly sporadic hominid innovation, of species. Wiley.