Where did people come from?
When, in the record of the past, would we expect to see
upright posture and bipedal locomotion? When did our ancestors first start
using language? When did they start using Tools? Fire? Shelter? Clothing?
Baskets? Boats? Wheels? Jewelry? Music? Religion? Art? Cities?
Agriculture? Domestication of dog? Writing?
We do not know the answers to these things for
certain. But we have theories. Some of those theories are based on science,
some on religion and some are just made up. Every culture's stories about their origins are
bound up with their Origin Myths.
Where do we Modern, post Enlightenment people go
to answer these questions? We have to look for evidence. Historical evidence,
archaeological evidence, tangible data. Once we have all the evidence we can
find, we analyze it and tie it together with a theory - the most plausible
theory that explains the evidence and best handles the contradictions in the
evidence. Comments on the
Scientific Method
Rational theories that strive to be complete and coherent
and are based on real data, on hard evidence, not fantasy and not faith, are
scientific theories. In this sense History is a science in that it strives for
knowledge based on interpreting the evidence of the past. This historian is
like a detective, looking for clues, analyzing data, and coming up with a
story that provides a plausible account of that data. See Doing
History
When we ask questions about the very oldest
humans, the oldest cultures, societies and civilizations we start in the realm
of prehistoric and end up in the realm of history. What is the dividing line?
When does prehistory turn into history?
For many scholars the key is writing. Once there
is writing in a culture, once stories are written down, then history begins.
Prior to that a culture, no matter how advanced, no matter how complex, is
prehistoric. Archaeology can study both historic and prehistoric cultures but
history needs writing as the central core of the evidence that it analyzes for
its theories and for its stories.
The answer to
Where did people come from? When, in the record of the past, would we expect to see
upright posture and bipedal locomotion? When did our ancestors first start
using language? When did they start using Tools? Fire? Shelter? Clothing?
Baskets? Boats? Wheels? Jewelry? Music? Religion? Art? Cities?
Agriculture? Domestication of dog?
are all prehistoric in the sense that these
things all occur before the invention of writing.
But since 99% of our time here on earth was
prehistoric answering them, as best we can, helps provide a good baseline from
which to evaluate the rise of Civilization.
Upright posture was around 6 Million years ago.
Tools, 2.5 million years ago.
Brain cases expand, 2.4 million years ago. Yes, our ancestors used tools before
their brains got big.
Evidence of first use of fire 1.4 million years ago
Regular use of fire around 400,000-500,000 years ago
Stone scrapers in abundance (implies clothing), 150,000
First use of speech is very controversial. The most vital tool for the transmission of culture in
the anthropological sense is language. We know next to nothing about language
origins. Some researchers like to stress biology here. This leads to speculation
that language developed with the human hand, its elegant coordination, and
the brainpower that directs it. Others talk about the lowering of the voice
box, which facilitates production of a wide variety of sounds (at the expense
of leaving us the only mammal that can't drink and breathe simultaneously).
Others point to the hypoglossal canal, a hole in the base of the skull
through which nerve fibers lead to the tongue: the enlargement of that canal
in Homo erectus suggests that delicate control of tongue movement goes
back a long way. speech ?
Such anatomically based discussion leads to
speculations about human beings and their ancestors having had language for say
300,000 years. Other students tend to
shorten that period to about 40,000 years and look to the appearance of
religion and art as suggestive of the materials that language handles. Or they
take all the languages alive today and speculate that at the current rates at
which they change that all human languages had a common origin in a single
language family around 40,000 years ago. Between these choices there is as yet no clear winner.
