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Signs of symbolic behavior emerged at the dawn of our species in Africa
More than 320,000 years ago in the Rift Valley of Africa, some early innovators adopted a new technology: They eschewed the clunky, palm-size stone hand axes that their ancestors had used for more than a million years in favor of a sleek new toolkit. Like new generations of cellphones today, their Middle Stone Age (MSA) blades and points were smaller and more precise than the old so-called Acheulean hand axes and scrapers.
These toolmakers in the Olorgesailie Basin in Kenya chose as raw materials shiny black obsidian and white and green chert, rocks they had to get from distant sources or through trade networks. In another first, they chiseled red and black rocks, probably to use as crayons to color their bodies or spears—an early sign of symbolic behavior. "This is indicative of a gear change in behavior, toolmaking, and material culture," says evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who studies social networks.
A trio of papers released online in Science today documents this remarkable technological transition. Although other sites have yielded MSA tools, the new, securely dated chronology nudges the transition back by at least 20,000 years, matching when our species, Homo sapiens, is now thought to have emerged. By analyzing artifacts over time at one site, the papers also show that these behaviors developed as climate swings intensified, supporting the idea that environmental variability drove innovation.
Related:
Environmental dynamics during the onset of the Middle Stone Age in eastern Africa (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2200) (DX)
Chronology of the Acheulean to Middle Stone Age transition in eastern Africa (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2216) (DX)
Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2646) (DX)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday March 17 2018, @01:06AM (1 child)
Have you ever tried to knap sandstone? It can't be done. Glass, OTOH, works well (so obsidian was prized. Flint occurs in lots of places, but not everywhere.
And, yes, if you don't have and can't get a decent stone, you use something else. But if you can trade for something better, you will. And not just for tools. We know the amber route reached from Northern Europe to the Middle East during the stone age. Possibly even during the Old Stone Age. We call it the stone age because stone was durable and left tracks, where wood, twine, cloth, etc. decayed rapidly, and left few tracks. This doesn't prove that stone was the dominant tool, I suspect that wood was, it proves that it's the most durable tool.
You are right that pastoralist isn't the same social structure as hunter-gatherer. Pastoralists, e.g., tend to be male dominated due to wealth being measured in herds. But the early pastoralists are essentially tribal, and that's a lot more similar to hunter-gatherer than anything modern.
What I meant by less male dominated wasn't that the different sexes didn't have different roles, but rather that the appraisal of the value of the roles was less lop-sided. And this is, of course, only a general rule, I'm certain that there were exceptions. What we know of hunter-gatherers today is based on groups surviving in marginal territories, and probably doesn't reflect the original groups. The original groups would have been in more danger from animal predators and less from human predators. And would be on technological par with other groups they encountered. But the myth structures we build about what life was like at that time seem to be quite at odds with what is known of surviving groups. You could extrapolate from the baboon troops, but that wouldn't seem very likely either.
According to the anthropologists among the Kalahari bushmen women frequently beat up their husbands. (Not, of course, as frequently as the other way around. Size makes a difference.) This would seem to imply a rough level of social equality.
OTOH, traditionalist societies are, if anything, less tolerant of exceptional behavior than authoritarian societies. In authoritarian societies you need to show that it's to the benefit of the authority. In traditionalist societies you need to show that it's the way of the ancestors.
FWIW, it's important to remember that the tertiary were a secondary culture. First was the hunter-gatherers, then the agriculturalists, and only then the pastoralists. You've got to domesticate animals before you can be a pastoralist. That happened (except for dogs) during the agricultural period. (Don't think only of the large agricultural civilizations. Think of isolated villages that formed when a tribe of hunter-gatherers found a good place to settle. Which they did occasionally. The oldest ones seem to be near beds of shellfish, but those don't seem to be where agriculturalists originated.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday March 17 2018, @02:52AM
You can't. Which is why you don't make points or scrapers from sandstone. I said that.
"What I meant by less male dominated wasn't that the different sexes didn't have different roles, but rather that the appraisal of the value of the roles was less lop-sided."
Which means you think they are lop-sided towards males in general, so as I suspected, very loaded wording, reflecting prejudice.
"According to the anthropologists among the Kalahari bushmen women frequently beat up their husbands. (Not, of course, as frequently as the other way around. Size makes a difference.) This would seem to imply a rough level of social equality."
That's an interesting yardstick, which leads to the opposite conclusion from where you took it. In modern western countries in recent years, women beat up their husbands *more* often than the other way around, so by your standards is this a female dominated society? Is that a problem?
"OTOH, traditionalist societies are, if anything, less tolerant of exceptional behavior than authoritarian societies. In authoritarian societies you need to show that it's to the benefit of the authority. In traditionalist societies you need to show that it's the way of the ancestors."
Nonsense. In an authoritarian society there are, as the name implies, authorities. Armed men that will come and get you for violating the rules.
In a traditional society there is no one in that role. If you offend tradition, then people may be offended, but no one has any special role or rights of enforcement to kidnap you or kill you over that. If you convince the people you need to deal with you're alright, then you're alright, and the traditions that the next generation inherit are a little different as a result.
"FWIW, it's important to remember that the tertiary were a secondary culture. First was the hunter-gatherers, then the agriculturalists, and only then the pastoralists. "
"You've got to domesticate animals before you can be a pastoralist. That happened (except for dogs) during the agricultural period. "
Domesticating animals was something that happened over a very long period of time, not in a flash. As you pre-emptively admit, dogs were certainly domesticated long before there was any farming. Since we don't know (and wouldn't expect to know, given the methods we have to use) exactly when each one was first practiced, so we can't say for certain which one was practiced first, your implication of going from one to another is clearly wrong. Pastoralists didn't go through an agriculturalist stage then progress to pastoralism, I can't think of a single example of that happening, while pastoralists do settle down and become agriculturalists frequently. Historically, in the ME and elsewhere, the agriculturalists densely occupy arable land around the rivers while the pastoralists occupy a much larger surrounding area, much less densely. Some years the herds outgrow the food available in these peripheral areas and then the herdsmen show up raiding, stealing, feeding their crops in the fields before they could be harvested and so on. Later still, the most powerful of the pastoralists will begin overthrowing settled lands and settling as rulers - for instance in Babylon. But there's nothing I'm aware of that indicates either group predates the other. They seem to have developed over the same time period, in neighboring but distinct areas.
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