Sunday, January 4, 2015

What Were Humans Doing All That Time

Modern Man first appeared about 120,000 years ago and, ostensibly, he was us as we are all Homo sapiens.  The first archaeological evidence of human activity was about 40,000 years ago in Indonesia, cave paintings at Altamira about 30,000 years ago, etc.

Something that has truly bugged me all my life is what was Homo sapiens doing for 80,000 years before we started painting animals in caves.  There's no evidence of anything but there is always evidence as it's the nature of humans.  Wherever we are, we will move stuff, build stuff, etc, etc.

Something I recently learned from my friend, Patrick, on Facebook is that the current theory is there was a mutation of some kind that resulted in behavioral changes and this happened about 40,000 years ago.  This was the advent of self-awareness and consequently came all the expressions of it that have taken place ever since.

The change is that Modern Man was not all that modern.  It wasn't until the change to bring awareness that we become self-actualizing creatures.  So, in answer to whether we evolved from monkeys, yah.  They aren't just relatives, they are our parents.  The original Homo sapiens was parent to the current Homo sapiens and, thus, we are, in fact, evolved from monkeys as Homo sapiens wasn't that clever.  He went wandering around the world but so did Homo erectus.  It was the change at 40,000 years that blew it all open.

The precise mechanism and specification of the change that made Homo sapiens 'abstractus' does not seem well-identified as yet but the posit elegantly addresses a gaping hole in our history.  The appearance is that we sat about for 80,000 years with nothing better to do than eating all the mammoths.  Given this new information, we didn't do anything in all that time because we did not yet have the capability.


Note:  I am not trying to present myself as an expert on genetics as I'm specifically not.  However, I have run into people who are and that's the knowledge I attempt to integrate into my view of things.  In ignoring political discussions in favor of this, lights have illuminated all around me.

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