Why people desperately need to set themselves apart from other animals? Seems like the mass killings of Chickens, Cows, Pigs and so on make some uncomfortable.
Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
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Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#22I always wonder when I read articles like this, what people would think if they were told that 78000 summers later many people will be thinking about this specific burial.
Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't an inevitable product though. E.g.[1]: > Mongolian culture is famous, along with Tibetans, for "sky burial," which leaves the body of the deceased on a high unprotected place to be exposed to the elements and devoured by wildlife. It's part of a Vajrayana Buddhist outlook about the needlessness of "respecting" the body after death. Personally, I'd prefer if this was what would happen to my body than any West…
It's not Buddhism per se, The Zoroastrians (religion of pre-islamic Persia) also practice this by leaving the bodies in "towers of silence" for birds of prey to devour them.
Yes. I think the author of the paragraph wrote about Buddhism in the context of Tibetans. It isn't applicable to Mongols as well.
Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#24Here we go again this nonsense often from anthropology that people use to justify our mistreatment of animals "Only humans treat the dead with the same respect, consideration and even tenderness they treat the living. Even when we die, we continue to be someone for our group". This is simply not true, elephants, whales and others have been seen to do this.
Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#25Interesting as this is, the article nurtures an old misconception (with roots both in religion and classical philosophy) that there are some traits that distinctly separates humans from other animals, and by extension, finding the time when humans developed that trait is when we became truly humans. In reality the evidence reveals that all such traits, be it burial, toolmaking, artistry, abstract thinking etc, is som…
>the article nurtures an old misconception .. that there are some traits that distinctly separates humans from other animal
There are a number of traits that make humans a unique animal, it's not a misconception.
Humans:
- Are aware of the existence of good and evil and have the capacity for moral reasoning
- Have language
- Are aware of the existence of the distant future, and can plan for it beyond the instinctual cycle of a single season like a hibernating squirrel
- Are aware of their own mortality and vulnerability
- Have art
There might be more but that's a good start. We are animals, of course, nothing "separates us from the animals," in a clean way, but boy we're weird animals.
> Immediately downvoted
WTF HN, is this not polite, curious discourse? Why do I even try here? Never mind, I hate this website. Bye
Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#26I always wonder when I read articles like this, what people would think if they were told that 78000 summers later many people will be thinking about this specific burial.
They'd ask: "What is 78000?"
Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re right in a sense that traits are continuous. But I think the notion of bifurcation point can be useful here. At some point there’s a dramatic change in how system behaves.
That’s true and I think there were two inflection points in human evolution. One is the development of modified tools and fire. Yes I know that’s two things, but they’re both very ancient and probably were enabled by the adaptation that gave us language. It’s possible there were several adaptations there but I suspect they all came from one fundamental advance in cognition. This drove a series of major evolutionary c…
> One is the development of modified tools and fire. Yes I know that’s two things, but they’re both very ancient and probably were enabled by the adaptation that gave us language. It’s possible there were several adaptations there but I suspect they all came from one fundamental advance in cognition. This drove a series of major evolutionary changes that adapted us to a tool and fire using mode of living.
There was a bit going around a number of years ago (not sure where it stands in current scientific thought)... https://www.wired.com/2004/03/docs-drop-jaws-over-gene-mutat...
The theory is that there is a mutation which caused the jaw muscle of the line of hominids that gave rise to humans. If you look at chimpanzees, gorillas, and other hominids you'll find a skull with a crest with the anchor point for the muscle that enables a very powerful jaw. However, that muscle also constricts the size of the cranium which likewise constricts the size of the brain.
The theory goes that by weakening this muscle it allowed for other mutations to increases the size of the cranium and at the same time necessitated the use of fire and tools to help overcome the "we can't kill it by biting it."
That mutation traces back to about 2.4 Mya. Earliest hints of control of fire was about 2.0 Mya. The Oldowan tools date to 2.6 - 1.7 Mya.
Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#28We should stop digging up graves.
Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#29>Only humans treat the dead with the same respect, consideration and even tenderness they treat the living. Even when we die, we continue to be someone for our group,"
Is this true? Elephants walk very far, as a group, to mourn years later the loss of a member from their family, by returning to where it died. Why would we think humans are so special in this regard?
Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
#30Interesting as this is, the article nurtures an old misconception (with roots both in religion and classical philosophy) that there are some traits that distinctly separates humans from other animals, and by extension, finding the time when humans developed that trait is when we became truly humans. In reality the evidence reveals that all such traits, be it burial, toolmaking, artistry, abstract thinking etc, is som…
writing.