Text 25057, 184 rader
Skriven 2006-11-13 18:49:29 av Mimi Gallandt (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 25053 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Good Book
=================
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 -> 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
 JH> 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
 JH> 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
 JH> 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
 JH> 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
 JH> 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
 JH> 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.

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

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

You're right, that *IS* interesting. Maybe I should have stuck with it. :)

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

This book I'm reading has a lot of stuff about ancient Mesopotamia. That's
redundant isn't it? Mesopotamia is, by definition, ancient. :)
Apparently there's a line of thought that the Garden of Eden was in Mesopotamia
and that was where Avram (Abraham) was from. I'm learning a lot, I just hope I
can hold on to most of it. :)

-- 
L'Chaim

Mimi

In the beginning
the Word already was.

mimigalATcoxDOTnet

--- Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716)
 * Origin:  (1:123/789.0)