Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Mon Apr 06, 2015 5:13 pm**

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:
More findings like this and we will have to seriously reconsider all our ideas about early humans and early art. Our lack of knowledge about our distant ancestors is almost shocking but it really isn't our fault they didn't leave written records.

Yea...I think I mentioned needing a time-machine [at least a time-peeper] to really find things out.
I've thought for a while art/symbol were likely claimed/placed too recently on the timeline in most of the material I've read.
[[and perhaps their relevance/importance significantly underrated in early days]]
Because it seems to me that even the most rudimentary communications and simplest of tool/weapon use and making have symbolic, abstract, and aesthetic content...or, perhaps analogically better, those things are inherent in the ground state of consciousness that permits communications and tool creation.

Posted: **Tue Apr 07, 2015 3:37 pm**

Clearly these people were highly advanced in respect of their thinking; aesthetics, as noted, does seem to be a highly 'human' trait [perhaps not exclusively, but pretty much so] as opposed to brute utilitarianism which is seen fairly widely in higher mammals and birds. Why, given this, did it take so frikkin' long to get on the road to scientific advancement. Hell - why did the Greeks even falter, once having made the first tentative steps down this road. As Deutsch said, "If this doesn't bother you then it should, for if they [one of the earlier possibilities for enlightenment] had suceeded then by now we would be travelling to the stars and you and I would live forever."

Posted: **Tue Apr 07, 2015 4:48 pm**

peter (USSM) wrote: As Deutsch said, "If this doesn't bother you then it should, for if they [one of the earlier possibilities for enlightenment] had suceeded then by now we would be travelling to the stars and you and I would live forever."

And Deutsch is correct, I think. I believe I said somewhere here [before I read Deutsch] something like "if things were a bit different, we would have been on the moon at least a thousand years ago"
...and I, by no means, invented the idea---the possibility/alternative was being used in fairly "hard" SF back in the 60's at least...and I'd bet it is really much older than that.
[[there is a short story, I think it's pretty old---my fuzzy memory of the end---something like a man is raising an obsidian knife over another man laid out on a slab, and people are observing. An assistant says "what will happen if this doesn't work?" and the man replies "then we'll be remembered forever for practicing human sacrifice," then proceeds to attempt a heart transplant.
So much for the Mayans.
I THINK that's the tale?? I don't know, maybe I'm completely mismembering.]]

I don't think there was any single cause.
People have said it is partly due to both size and density of populations, and I think that is probably the largest factor. Because it impacts so many other things---communication, transportation, labor needs, support/existence of a educational systems and cultural/economic foundations to support an intellectual/experimental class.

Part of it, I think, is that strange as it might seem, risk-taking, experimentation, change, innovation on both individual and group scales, are very often grounded in, and acceptable socially/culturally because of a basic sense of safety. [and that safety is connected to populations size and density and all that other stuff.]
There is a need for a balance of circumstances/environment that are challenging, but not too many common/large scale ones that are lethal.
Probably many, many other factors [some of which Deutsch mentioned IIRC].

Posted: **Wed Apr 08, 2015 4:58 pm**

Vraith wrote:And Deutsch is correct, I think. I believe I said somewhere here [before I read Deutsch] something like "if things were a bit different, we would have been on the moon at least a thousand years ago"

If our previous civilizations hadn't collapsed so completely and catastrophically then we would be farther along than we are now. Some Sumerian clay tablets depict what we know as the Pythagorean Theorem centuries before Pythagoras rediscovered it and make the knowledge widely available. Omar Khayyam solved some cubic equations centuries before Cardano found the general solution to the cubic equation. The Antikythera Device proves that we were using precision milling to craft interlocking cogwheels centuries (millennia?) before the Industrial Revolution. The Aeliopile is a rudimentary steam engine--if Ancient Greeks had linked it to a pulley system or used it to power a small axle then the Industrial Revolution would have taken place at that time. The Chinese had a bellows pump which was powered by two people but gave a constant, steady stream of air. So on and so forth with dozens of other examples.

The idea that we don't have to slaughter each other to the last person is relatively new and is what has allowed us to make steady and significant progress over the last 300 years. That sounds like a long time but we have been settled into city-states for more than 12,000 years and 5,000 BC wasn't significantly different than 6,000 BC--you would think that more progress could have been made during that 1,000 years.

Posted: **Wed Apr 08, 2015 5:55 pm**

Hashi Lebwohl wrote: So on and so forth with dozens of other examples.

settled into city-states for more than 12,000 years and 5,000 BC wasn't significantly different than 6,000 BC

The first...yea, there really is a lot of stuff like that.

The second...this place I go to for funny-but-slightly geeky stuff, he did a "change is changing faster" thing, illustrating it by "if you brought a guy forward in time, how many years would he have to cover to immediately die from shock"
Like, you could bring a human from 50,000BCE to 5000BCE, and he'd be fine. [45k years difference, with practically no difference] from 5000 BCE to Rome in 1 AD, he'd probably die. from 1 AD to1500, no problem...but to 1750, death-shock. 1750 to 1900--no biggie, really. 1750 to 2000, instant death. Those aren't the exact numbers he did, and he had more detail---but notice how it used to take millennia to make the world unrecognizable, and now a mere couple centuries will do it. [and keep in mind, the effectiveness of shock is lessening---people are much more used to change now than they used to be, they expect change.]
It was just an amusing way to talk about it [though I doubt most people would die from surprise...though they might wish they had, or believe they'd gone insane.]

Posted: **Wed Apr 08, 2015 6:52 pm**

Try that thought experiment in reverse: send someone from now back to 1920 and see how they would react. Now imagine sending them back to 1850, then 1200, then 350 BC, etc. Most people couldn't handle going backwards even 150 years--no electricity (except maybe in some parts of major cities), no phones, no radio, no indoor hot/cold running water, no cars, no central heat/air conditioning, etc.

Posted: **Wed Apr 08, 2015 7:54 pm**

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:Try that thought experiment in reverse: send someone from now back to 1920 and see how they would react. Now imagine sending them back to 1850, then 1200, then 350 BC, etc. Most people couldn't handle going backwards even 150 years--no electricity (except maybe in some parts of major cities), no phones, no radio, no indoor hot/cold running water, no cars, no central heat/air conditioning, etc.

Heh...yea. A whole lot of peeps would need a really patient/kind/helpful native to get them through the first few months.

Posted: **Thu Apr 09, 2015 4:35 pm**

Mmmmm........

I don't know; I think that we are getting so used to compressed change that we could now deal with it fairly well. I mean, say I woke up 1000 years in the future, what is going to shock me to the point of death. Humans might not look like humans any more. Damn - the kids that come into my shop barely look like humans to me sometimes, but I can live with it. I think that change is only a problem if i) you aren't expecting it and ii) it threatens the things you need to maintain being alive [food, warmth, air etc]. No - I'd give it a whirl tomorrow!

Posted: **Thu Apr 09, 2015 4:58 pm**

peter (USSM) wrote:Mmmmm........

I don't know; I think that we are getting so used to compressed change that we could now deal with it fairly well.

I think so [I meant to say something like that, if I didn't...apparently I'm too lazy to scroll up and look. Happens regularly].
The oldest peeps alive right now saw more change in their single lives than happened in all of human history before that. Peeps born [at least in the developed and semi-developed world] in or after the 50's, and pretty much everywhere in the world except a few isolated pockets since the 70's/80's have change baked into almost every daily slice of life.
So it would take a much larger kind of change to shock them to death...but that size of change happens in many fewer years all the time. [and I suspect a helluva lot of people---me, sounds like you, almost surely Hashi just in this thread---would be ecstatic about it, want to dive right in.

Posted: **Thu Apr 09, 2015 5:34 pm**

I look forward to many future changes that are set to occur in the remainder of my natural life: computers with no monitors, computers where the boot and the OS are on the stick you carry around with you, implantable smart devices to keep you connected via wireless (if you want to be connected), wireless power (seriously, Tesla had this worked out a century ago so why aren't we using it already?), 3D houses printed from concrete (only 2 or 3 weeks to construct and significantly less costly than traditional build, plus it saves trees and prevents termite infestations), etc.

Posted: **Mon Apr 13, 2015 10:22 am**

I've just learned that The British Museum is to hold an exhibition of classical Greek and Roman sculpture from now until the end of July. They have managed to borrow many famous sculptures to add to their own already extensive collection and the reviewer I read said it is unlikely that we would ever look upon it's like again. Included in the exhibition are Myron's Discobolus and the Belvedere Torso along with the museums own Demeter statue. Although it's not the earliest art that mankind produced, in terms of it's celebration of the beauty of the human form it is undoubtedly the finest and I can't wait to get up there to feast my eyes on it!

Posted: **Mon Feb 26, 2018 9:17 pm**

Ran across a thing a couple days ago...didn't mark it, too lazy to look for it...
APPARENTLY, a better dating test makes it likely [needs more for confirmation] that European cave art---at least the earliest ones in Spain---were done by Neandertals, not us. If the dating is accurate, there weren't any modern humans living there at the time, but N's definitely were.

Posted: **Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:49 am**

Cool.

--A

Posted: **Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:41 am**

Am I not right in thinking that Neanderthals buried their dead in ceremonial fashion - flowers spread into the graves etc. Could it be possible that the 'cognitive revolution' (ie the rewiring of the brain to allow higher level thinking) that is postulated by some anthropologists could in fact have occurred first in the Neanderthals and been carried into H. sapiens sapiens by 'cross breeding' assimilation. Never heard that one before - do I get credit if it turned out to be credible?

Posted: **Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:51 pm**

peter wrote:Am I not right in thinking that Neanderthals buried their dead in ceremonial fashion -

occurred first in the Neanderthals and been carried into H. sapiens sapiens by 'cross breeding' assimilation. Never heard that one before - do I get credit if it turned out to be credible?

On the first, I believe that is right.

On the second...could have occurred first in them and Denisovans, yes. [[though we don't know the relative ability similarity/difference. They were certainly far higher than apes and such...but were they more like an 10 year old? Early teen? Or equal? We know we out-competed them, but we don't know that intelligence is why. Probably a/the key factor---But not definitely/only one.]]
But we didn't inherit/assimilate it from them, because we already had it when we started screwing them.
BTW, I took one of those DNA tests, and I have a HUGE Neanderthal contribution, compared to average.

Posted: **Wed Feb 28, 2018 4:34 am**

I think (but am by no means sure) we'd have to assume that something as complex as a brain rewiring (.....or is that just an analogy that makes it sound different than it really was..... could it just have been a simple difference in what some person actually did with what was already there, that just spread like a meme and had 'cascading reach' as it progressed....) would have to have developed only once? (ie. to one of the fistfull of human types around at the time of it's occurence.)

Posted: **Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:07 pm**

peter wrote:I think (but am by no means sure) we'd have to assume that something as complex as a brain rewiring (.....or is that just an analogy that makes it sound different than it really was..... could it just have been a simple difference in what some person actually did with what was already there, that just spread like a meme and had 'cascading reach' as it progressed....) would have to have developed only once? (ie. to one of the fistfull of human types around at the time of it's occurence.)

I'm not sure what you're saying...
If you're saying it's likely, given complications, that it only happened once, I'm not sure that follows. Useful/successful things re-evolve independently all the damn time.
If you're saying that happening once was sufficient, because it was such an advantage, that I can go for.
I think there is very little doubt that any real intelligence/ability to think is a result of brain matter evolves that is useful for one thing, but then is ALSO functional for something else. That's the point, I think were culture/memes start spreading quickly...and the "secondary" function begins being selected for.

Things I ran across not too long ago:
Genetic diversity seems to indicate that there were at least a couple, maybe many, archaics within Africa itself---not just the non-African Neanderthal and Denisovans---that interbred with both our true-modern and near-modern ancestors.
Interbreeding didn't happen just in the recent replacement wave---it happened in at least two [and perhaps more] periods separated by 10's of thousands of years---when the most recent Nean/Deni interbreeding happened, most of us were ALREADY partly Nean/Deni, and ALL of them were partly us due to at least one previous trip of "us" out of Africa, and one trip by "them" back into the Mid-east, Northern, and Eastern Africa.

[[at least that's what it looks like now, with fairly limited info---it will probably change, but it definitely is NOT so that we came rushing out of Africa, a few perverts screwed some of the natives, but mostly we killed them off]].

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2018 4:39 am**

Well, do we necessarily have to assume a gross structural change in the brain in order to explain the 'cognitive revolution' - or could it be explained by just using the existing structure differently. As a weak analogy imagine some ancient cave dweller suddenly uses the rock they've all been using to open walnuts for millennia to fix two pieces of timer together with a spike of iron and the next thing you have is the building of houses by everybody and his mother.

We secondly, did the cognitive revolution actually occur (as a definitive advance in brain function that is) at all? From a distance of time it may appear so, but we know from the spread of memes today just how fast they travel: .............

Just re-read your post V. and think this is pretty much what you were saying anyway

- well, it is 4.30 in the morning anyway fer f's sake!

Posted: **Mon Apr 02, 2018 6:56 pm**

Was not positive if this belonged to this thread so moderator please feel free to move if needed.

I stumbled across this article about a paleo-artist John Gurche. Some of it really good probable renderings of ancient human development.

www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm

Posted: **Tue Apr 03, 2018 4:23 am**

Good link Sam!

A very talented guy!

Kevin's Watch

Early Art History