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200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

gizmodo.com

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Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#61

Post by spullara »

tshaddox wrote: post #57
bspammer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. We're in an insane inflection point of human development. For millions of years things stayed roughly the same. It's really only in the last 10,000 years that stuff has really kicked off, and the last 300 where human development has gone absolutely crazy. There's several existential threats that might destroy civilization over the next few hundred year…

Could it be that in the distant future if you at human history (or even the history of life on Earth) from far enough away to smooth out the little bumps, it turns out that we 20th and 21st century humans are in fact in a pretty unremarkable point along an exponential curve?

Only if we populate the galaxy. Which isn't that hard if we try. But even then we lived at the origin of the galactic species. Pretty special.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#62

Post by radicaldreamer »

bspammer wrote: post #55
willcipriano wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. Your ancestors all felt the same way. So will your children.

It doesn't really matter what my ancestors felt, it's blatently obvious that there's more going on right now, and faster than 10,000 years ago. Back then, you'd be lucky to see a single revolutionary invention in a lifetime. Now we're seeing them every decade, if not annually. I don't disagree that my descendents will be justified in feeling the same way, as long as the exponential curve keeps on going and civilizati…

Is this really true? If someone from 1950s America time-travelled to the present day, is there anything at all that they conceptually couldn't fathom?

Maybe if you transported someone from 1950s China to present-day China, they would be more shocked, but a present day suburban home in 2021 is not all that markedly different than a 1950s home -- and neither is the workplace, the commute, the cars. Mostly replaced paper with screens and tvs with bigger, flatter tvs.

The most conceptually difficult thing would be understanding that wireless telegraphs with cameras are pocket-sized and everywhere.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#63

Post by mytailorisrich »

mc32 wrote: post #19
therealdrag0 wrote: post #17

In case anyone else forgot the timeline, I just googled, and there’s evidence going back to ~2 million years ago of huminoids in Eurasia.

Wouldn’t that upend most theories about when the people who left Africa left Africa? Never mind, new estimates go as far back as 300,000ya.

No, it's known that Homo Erectus left Africa and colonised Eurasia up to East Asia a bit more than 2 million years ago.

The estimate on when "we" left Africa often means modern humans, Homo Sapiens.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#64

Post by mysecretaccount »

unknownOrigin wrote: post #58
mysecretaccount wrote: post #35

This is covered in the article, but: the term art is quite generous here. These may not even have been imprinted intentionally. Fascinating nonetheless.

It doesn't dispute that they were made intentionally - in fact, it says the opposite. (These are carefully made so they don't overlap and they were not produced by locomotion.) If this is "art" art... is up to everyone to interpret for themselves. But then again, today you can give yourself a paint enema, squirt it from your asshole all over a canvas and some people will call it art.

> It doesn't dispute that they were made intentionally - in fact, it says the opposite.

> The fossil impressions, which date to between 169,000 and 226,000 years ago and seem to have been created intentionally, could represent the earliest known art of its kind.

> According to Matthew Bennett, a geologist at Bournemouth University who specializes in ancient footprints and trackways, it’s likely that these ancient imprints were intentional.

Emphasis mine.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#65

Post by bspammer »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #62
bspammer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really matter what my ancestors felt, it's blatently obvious that there's more going on right now, and faster than 10,000 years ago. Back then, you'd be lucky to see a single revolutionary invention in a lifetime. Now we're seeing them every decade, if not annually. I don't disagree that my descendents will be justified in feeling the same way, as long as the exponential curve keeps on going and civilizati…

Is this really true? If someone from 1950s America time-travelled to the present day, is there anything at all that they conceptually couldn't fathom? Maybe if you transported someone from 1950s China to present-day China, they would be more shocked, but a present day suburban home in 2021 is not all that markedly different than a 1950s home -- and neither is the workplace, the commute, the cars. Mostly replaced pape…

On the scales we're talking about, I would include the 1950s as "present-day". I would include the last 300 years as "particularly special"

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#66

Post by tshaddox »

spullara wrote: post #61
tshaddox wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that in the distant future if you at human history (or even the history of life on Earth) from far enough away to smooth out the little bumps, it turns out that we 20th and 21st century humans are in fact in a pretty unremarkable point along an exponential curve?

Only if we populate the galaxy. Which isn't that hard if we try. But even then we lived at the origin of the galactic species. Pretty special. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

The Universe is a lot bigger than our galaxy though. Why is it more special to live near the beginning of humans populating the galaxy than, say, living near the beginning of humans populating that new subdivision they're developing out at the edge of my town?

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#67

Post by mrspeaker »

adriand wrote: post #20
themgt wrote: post #5

Found at 14,000ft on the Tibetan Plateau. Very likely altitude adapted denisovans, whose genetic adaptations to living in such low oxygen are still present in modern day Tibetans. Really incredible.

Really amazing. I find this sort of thing absolutely haunting. It's a vivid reminder that there is nothing particularly special about this moment in time: it's only special to us because we're living it. But their present moment was no less vital and immediate and real to them as this moment is to us. And yet, it happened so incredibly long ago! I had the same feeling when I encountered a beautiful statue of a woman…

I got the same feeling reading the "Pompeii wall graffiti". It's not beautiful, but it hit me hard: 2000+ years, and people are the same people! (https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-p...)

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#68

Post by gumby »

willcipriano wrote: post #52
bspammer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. We're in an insane inflection point of human development. For millions of years things stayed roughly the same. It's really only in the last 10,000 years that stuff has really kicked off, and the last 300 where human development has gone absolutely crazy. There's several existential threats that might destroy civilization over the next few hundred year…

> I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. Your ancestors all felt the same way. So will your children.

Well, that is unclear. Writing from Europe 100-1500 years ago suggests that most people felt quite different about time and did not have the impression the GP espoused. The overwhelming impression seems to be that things had fallen since the end of the (western) Roman Empire; there was a contrast in millenarian movements in the 10th century as the turn of the millennium approached.

However people are not uniformly distributed and such belief does not seem to have been the case in, say, the contemporaneous Arab world.

All that being said: I agree with you that claims that our era is somehow amazingly unique are way overblown.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#69

Post by gumby »

bspammer wrote: post #55
willcipriano wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. Your ancestors all felt the same way. So will your children.

It doesn't really matter what my ancestors felt, it's blatently obvious that there's more going on right now, and faster than 10,000 years ago. Back then, you'd be lucky to see a single revolutionary invention in a lifetime. Now we're seeing them every decade, if not annually. I don't disagree that my descendents will be justified in feeling the same way, as long as the exponential curve keeps on going and civilizati…

> it's blatently obvious that there's more going on right now...

Blatantly obvious? Not to me. I'm a technologist (e.g. wrote a bunch of code the results of which you use every day) with a degree in history and in many ways ancient Greece seems more vital than today.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#70

Post by tshaddox »

bspammer wrote: post #60
tshaddox wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that in the distant future if you at human history (or even the history of life on Earth) from far enough away to smooth out the little bumps, it turns out that we 20th and 21st century humans are in fact in a pretty unremarkable point along an exponential curve?

If that's true (and I hope it is, because it means things go very well for humanity), we're still one of the first generations to see major change _within_ our short lives. For millions of years, technology and tools stayed roughly the same from generation to generation. I'm 25, and the technological progress since I was born is mind-blowing.

> we're still one of the first generations to see major change _within_ our short lives.

One could argue that people were seeing major technological/scientific/philosophical/cultural changes within their lives at least as far back as the Enlightenment (and I'd argue much further back than that), and what has actually changed is just that the number of people affected by those changes has grown (perhaps exponentially). Likewise in the future the rate of change we're so impressed by now may look laughable, and that's even ignoring the possibility of significant lifespan extension in the future!

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