Text 25053, 156 rader
Skriven 2006-11-13 14:44:21 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 25043 av Mimi Gallandt (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Good Book
=================
Mimi Gallandt -> John Hull wrote:
 MG> John Hull -> Mimi Gallandt wrote:
 JH>> Mimi Gallandt -> John Hull wrote:
 MG>>> John Hull -> Mimi Gallandt wrote:
 JH>>>> Mimi Gallandt -> John Hull wrote:
 MG>>>>> John Hull -> Mimi Gallandt wrote:
 JH>>>>>> Mimi Gallandt -> VERN HUMPHREY wrote:
 MG>>>>>>> I'm reading a book I think you would like. It's called Where G-d
 MG>>> was
 MG>>>>>>> Born (there's no hyphen in the title, some habits die hard or
 MG>>> not at
 MG>>>>>>> all) by Bruce Feiler. He wrote about his traveling the paths of
 JH>> the
 MG>>>>>>> bible(s). I'm learning things about the Middle East that I never
 JH>>>> knew
 MG>>>>>>> before, it's really interesting. It has caused me to ponder a
 MG>>>>> question
 MG>>>>>>> that Google isn't answering for me, but I bet you could; which
 JH>>>>>> fossil is
 MG>>>>>>> older Lucy or Peking Man?


 JH>>>>>> Lucy is one of three major fossil examples of Australopithicus
 MG>>>>> Aferensis
 JH>>>>>> which have come of the Great Rift Valley in the horn of Africa.
 MG>>> Lucy
 JH>>>>>> was found first, then a male dubbed AL 444-2 was found; and the
 MG>>>>> last is
 JH>>>>>> called the Dikika Baby, also a female.  The baby is oldest at 3.3
 JH>>>>>> million years, with Lucy and the male slightly younger.  The baby
 JH>>>> is a
 JH>>>>>> nearly complete skeleton, about 3 years old at time of death.
 MG> They
 MG>>>>> are
 JH>>>>>> distinctly gorilla-like in appearance, though many human features
 MG>>> are
 JH>>>>>> evident in the bone structure.  The November 2006 issue of
 MG> National
 JH>>>>>> Geographic has an excellent article on the Dikika baby.

 JH>>>>>> "Peking Man" is an example of Homo Erectus, and are between
 MG> 500,000
 MG>>>>> and
 JH>>>>>> 300,000 years old.  Go to www.chineseprehistory.org/index for more
 JH>>>>>> information and pictures of the fossils.  Homo Erectus is the
 MG>>> last of
 JH>>>>>> the so-called proto-human species of hominid.

 JH>>>>>> You may also be interested to know that the skull of a baby was
 MG>>>>> found in
 JH>>>>>> Chad (central Africa at the southern end of the Sahara) that
 MG> pushes
 MG>>>>> the
 JH>>>>>> date for proto-humans back to about 7.2 million years.

 MG>>>>> Wow, thanks. So it's a pretty good bet that Mesopotamia really was
 MG>>> the
 MG>>>>> cradle of civilization.

 JH>>>> Well, no, it isn't.  There was a DNA study a couple years ago (a
 JH>> major
 JH>>>> US university and one of the European centers of study of early man)
 JH>>>> that traced mitochandrial DNA from all over the world to determine
 JH>> not
 JH>>>> only the geographical origins of mankind, but to trace ancestry and
 MG>>> how
 JH>>>> humanity spread across the world.

 MG>>> My thinking was that it would have been more likely that humans
 JH>> migrated
 MG>>> to Mesopotamia and founded civilization than for them to migrate from
 MG>>> China. Maybe my perception of civilization requiring the presence of
 MG>>> laws and learning is different than yours?


 JH>> Now we're talking about two different things.  What I've been talking
 JH>> about is the very earliest human species.  They were at the time Lucy
 JH>> was alive nothing more than glorified apes.  Strictly hunter gatherer
 JH>> type small bands that had no more civilization than a group of
 MG> gorillas.
 JH>> The migrations took place as random bands followed the food supply as
 JH>> the ice retreated north.  Where the animals went, they followed.  The
 JH>> glaciers had only retreated enough to expose southern Europe, the
 JH>> Balkans, and southern Asia and China by the time the Neanderthals
 JH>> started to appear.  The earliest species couldn't move north so they
 JH>> spread out east and west.  All of this took place over roughly 7
 MG> million
 JH>> years.  Civilization, ie. cultivation of crops, domestication of
 MG> cattle,
 JH>> sheep, dogs, establishment of abstract religion, codification of laws,
 JH>> etc., only occurred in the last 100,000 years or so.  By that time,
 MG> the
 JH>> continents were more or less where they are today, and the migrations
 JH>> were mostly over.  I think the Bering land bridge was the last
 MG> physical
 JH>> link between continents in that regard.

 JH>> Even Neanderthals, who were millions of years in the future in Lucy's
 JH>> time, were still cave dwellers and moved constantly following their
 MG> food
 JH>> supply.  It wasn't until about 100 thousand years ago that the current
 JH>> species, Homo Sapiens, started living in village groups and
 MG> cultivating
 JH>> wild grains.  That was the beginning of civilization in more or less
 JH>> modern terms. By the way, the notion that Homo Sapiens killed off the
 JH>> Neanderthals is a fallacy.  When the last of the glaciers retreated
 MG> from
 JH>> Europe, the climate changed to one of open steppes and grasslands.
 MG> The
 JH>> Neanderthals, superbly adapted for harsh, cold forested country, were
 JH>> not physically equipped for that type of environment, and died out
 JH>> because they couldn't compete with Homo Sapiens for the food they
 MG> needed
 JH>> as their environment shrank.

 MG> This is fascinating. Since it took millions of years where human life
 MG> started isn't really relevant to where the first civilization was then,
 MG> was it? Back, lo those many years ago in college I took physical
 MG> anthropology (bored the hell out of me so I dropped it) and then
 MG> cultural anthropology which was really interesting.

Yes, it is, and its been a life-long love of mine.  I wanted to be an
archaeologist from when I was a little kid all the way through high school, and
got talked out of it, much to my regret now.

A bit more background might make things a bit more clear to you.  What
differentiates the earliest hominids forms like Lucy from true apes is the
physiological changes (mostly in the pelvic area and lower limbs) that enabled
them to stand upright.  That enabled them to move out into the grassy steppes
in search of food, and to watch for predators.  The ability to stand upright
(and walk and run that way) allowed them to follow food supplies from area to
area, which is what ultimately led to the migrations out of Africa. It also
enabled them to get the one thing in their diets that would prove critical to
the survival of man. Most of the early hominids were all different species as
well, and many of them overlapped on the timeline. Most of these species were
relatively short-lived and died out.  The ones that survived were the ones that
changed in the amount of brain size.  If you compare these various species for
brain size, they are relatively equal in terms of brain power, though they were
gradually getting bigger as time went by.  The other key thing was the hyoid
bone in the throat which enabled speech. That enabled them to coordinate on the
hunt.  That was the critical mass needed:  standing upright, speech, and lots
of high grade protein.  That enabled brain size to increase dramatically, and
set them on the path to dominance of their world.

Of course, all this took several million years to happen.  Civilization didn't
start until man discovered how to plant crops against future need.  Once they
could do that, they were able to stay in one place year round.  That gave them
much more free time, which translated into learning how to make sophisticated
tools, domesticate farm animals, etc.  That led to bartering and trade between
tribes and villages.  That was another key point in our history.  That all took
place roughing 100-200,000 years ago.  Recorded history is about 10,000 years
old, and that is when what most people think of as civilization took off in
ancient Egypt, the Indian subcontinent, and ancient China.

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