Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone • Hacker News Board

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#41

Post by azundo » Sun, May 09, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

redis_mlc wrote: post #17

nfg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no other animal out there who […] developed some kind of societal system to expands its own resources beyond what's available in the wild. The trouble with this sort of quasi-dualistic general statement in my experience is it doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny by domain experts. Another way of looking at this is that humans have shaped their “wild” environment to their advantage which is something many anima…

I was going to say that. We can see the Great Wall of China from space. And we can also see beaver dams from space. (Note the Great Wall was built for a mundane reason - the Han people couldn't defeat the Mongols on horseback, but they could keep building walls until the horses could no longer enter. Byzantium/Constantinople also adopted that strategy, which worked for over 1,000 years until the Ottomans built the wo…

That said, no beaver has seen either from space.

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#42

Post by smhost » Sun, May 09, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

logicchop wrote: post #37

stareatgoats wrote: post #5

Interesting 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…

"an old misconception (with roots both in religion and classical philosophy)" There is also a new misconception (with no real roots except egalitarianism taken too far) that everything is the same as everything else "to varying degrees." That isn't very interesting though. I live in the US. To "some varying degree" I live on the east coast; but that degree is nil because I live far west of the mississippi. Human lang…

> with no real roots except egalitarianism taken too far

This is a strange way of saying that it has roots in ancient philosophy. Every major ideology I can think of has forms of anti-anthropocentrism spanning from classical animal rights to silicon valley's post-humanist techno-utopian ideology.

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#43

Post by wombatmobile » Sun, May 09, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

logicchop wrote: post #37

stareatgoats wrote: post #5

Interesting 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…

"an old misconception (with roots both in religion and classical philosophy)" There is also a new misconception (with no real roots except egalitarianism taken too far) that everything is the same as everything else "to varying degrees." That isn't very interesting though. I live in the US. To "some varying degree" I live on the east coast; but that degree is nil because I live far west of the mississippi. Human lang…

> Human language, use of tools, artistry etc. are so massively remote from the animal cases

What do you mean by the term "massively remote"?

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#44

Post by wombatmobile » Sun, May 09, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

redis_mlc wrote: post #17

nfg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no other animal out there who […] developed some kind of societal system to expands its own resources beyond what's available in the wild. The trouble with this sort of quasi-dualistic general statement in my experience is it doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny by domain experts. Another way of looking at this is that humans have shaped their “wild” environment to their advantage which is something many anima…

I was going to say that. We can see the Great Wall of China from space. And we can also see beaver dams from space. (Note the Great Wall was built for a mundane reason - the Han people couldn't defeat the Mongols on horseback, but they could keep building walls until the horses could no longer enter. Byzantium/Constantinople also adopted that strategy, which worked for over 1,000 years until the Ottomans built the wo…

We can see water coloration from algae in space.

If you weren't impressed when you read the above sentence, imagine how algae feel when they read your sentence about the Great Wall of China.

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#45

Post by 1123581321 » Sun, May 09, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

f6v wrote: post #26

nnamtr wrote: post #22

I 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?"

Evidence of humans quantifying is roughly as old as this burial. The communication difficulty here would come from translating 78,000 into their mathematical system.

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#46

Post by Others » Sun, May 09, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

redis_mlc wrote: post #17

nfg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no other animal out there who […] developed some kind of societal system to expands its own resources beyond what's available in the wild. The trouble with this sort of quasi-dualistic general statement in my experience is it doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny by domain experts. Another way of looking at this is that humans have shaped their “wild” environment to their advantage which is something many anima…

I was going to say that. We can see the Great Wall of China from space. And we can also see beaver dams from space. (Note the Great Wall was built for a mundane reason - the Han people couldn't defeat the Mongols on horseback, but they could keep building walls until the horses could no longer enter. Byzantium/Constantinople also adopted that strategy, which worked for over 1,000 years until the Ottomans built the wo…

Nit: you cannot see the Great Wall from space unaided: https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall....

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#47

Post by wombatmobile » Sun, May 09, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #35

bolzano wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to leave a similar comment, you've done much better at expressing my own objections to the OP. I've tried to upvote you but I don't have very much karma (not sure that that matters?). Sorry to see this sort of thing happen on HN too :( It would be great if the people who are downvoting you would tackle any of your bullet points. We are certainly descended from animals, but we are also wildly unique from a…

The great trend of the day is abject materialism, a philosophy that sees humans as just clever bipeds. I'm not too keen on it. There is clearly something different about humans.

> There is clearly something different about humans.

That's not what this debate is really about. The proponents of "humans are different" are actually thinking "humans are superior". They can make a case for that, but only in terms that confer advantages and entitlement to humans.

Take this example:

> Are aware of the existence of good and evil and have the capacity for moral reasoning

and apply it to an encounter in the forest between a human and a venomous snake.

Imagine one kills the other without provocation.

Which animal was good, and which one was evil?

Let's try that exercise again three more times. I'll give you more information for each case:

1. The human was your pregnant wife.

2. The human was the mass murderer, Adolf X.

3. The snake was hungry and scared, and had a family to care for.

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#48

Post by MomoXenosaga » Sun, May 09, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

stareatgoats wrote: post #5

Interesting 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…

Amusingly the hip trend in my country is putting dead people next to a tree and let nature deal with it.

But the lousy coffee and cake (one slice per person!) thing will never disappear.

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#49

Post by simonh » Sun, May 09, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

shagie wrote: post #27

simonh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting, thanks. I think the fact that some of these advances are very spread out doesn't necessarily mean they are unrelated. It would have been very slow going in terms of change and iteration back then.

Prefrontal Synthesis is a lot more recent and generates a lot of material evidence (in comparison) so I think it's easier to see that there was a common cause behind the subsequent developments in material culture, which fall under the umbrella of Behavioural Modernity.

Re: Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone

#50

Post by zaat » Sun, May 09, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

wombatmobile wrote: post #43

logicchop wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"an old misconception (with roots both in religion and classical philosophy)" There is also a new misconception (with no real roots except egalitarianism taken too far) that everything is the same as everything else "to varying degrees." That isn't very interesting though. I live in the US. To "some varying degree" I live on the east coast; but that degree is nil because I live far west of the mississippi. Human lang…

> Human language, use of tools, artistry etc. are so massively remote from the animal cases What do you mean by the term "massively remote"?

I'm unaware of any other animal with writing abilities. The differences between human and animal languages are widely discussed and the accuracy of the distinctions are contested, but in general the properties of being generative and recursive are considered to be unique to human language.