Scientific Research: Evolution
Monday, March 7th, 2011Archaeologists have believed for decades that modern human behavior originated from Homo sapiens tens of thousands of years following the evolvement of our species. These archaeologists have disagreed about whether this process was swift or gradual, but they all assume that the Homo sapiens that once lived were quite different from us. These people didn't behave the same way we do that they didn't use complex technologies and watercraft, projectile weapons, nets and traps were unknown to them. They didn't systematically collect difficult to find foods such as shellfish, small animals, and small animals. They didn't use rituals, symbols and art routinely.
Archaic Homo sapiens, also known as pre modern humans were believed to have lived in vulnerable, small, groups of individuals that were closely related. They were thought to be largely dependent on hunting big game and to have been only equipped with simple tools. These individuals in the small groups would have been considerably less insulated from environmental stresses than modern humans are. In the words of one archaeologist , their lives were short, brutish, nasty and solitary.
If you want a mental image, simply close your eyes and imagine the stereotypical caveman. However, the archaeological evidence is now showing that some of the modern human behavior because our ability to vary in behavioral variability, really did happen among the prehistoric people, especially in Africa. There is also growing conviction among some archaeologists that there wasn't any sweeping transformation into the behavioral modernity in our species in the recent past.
One archaeologist argued almost 25 years ago that the pre scientific traditions of narrative explanation has encouraged scientists to consider the primary changes in human evolution as a type of holistic transformation. The concept that archaic to modern human transition in Homo sapiens came about, in part, from this tradition of the narrative. All this makes for a great story, but it is not a realistic framework for understanding the contingent, complex, and actual course of evolution of humans. Most of the changes to evolution are relatively small things, the consequences of which play out during thousands of generations incrementally.
For a better understanding of the prehistory of humans, there is another approach that focuses on behavioral variability. This characteristic is easily observed among the humans of today and is rapidly becoming more readily apparent in the records of archaeology for early Homo sapiens. People who lived in prehistoric times lived in different ways at different times in different places. We must find explain those differences because in evolution it is only the differences that matter.
Considering the humans in prehistoric time's behavioral variability as the various adaptive strategies can provide an attractive way to explain these differences. However, we first have to discard an outdated and incorrect concept about human evolution which is the belief that Homo sapiens who lived in prehistoric times may be divided into modern and archaic humans.
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