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Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

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Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#91

Post by syllogism »

idiocrat wrote: post #79
akiselev wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, a timeline of culture & technology: Oldowan industry - simple flaked stone tools (~2.9-1.7 million years ago) Acheulean industry - advanced tools like hand axes (~1.7 million - ~160,000 years ago) Archaic humans in Southeast Asian islands like Indonesia (~1.8-1 million years ago, dating is a bit uncertain on this one) First control of fire (~1 million - ~700,000 years ago) First archaic humans living in…

A thought experiment. It has been said that if a modern "average" human were transported back in time, it would be difficult for that person to build anything useful, because of the lack of material manufacturing (c.f. "Toaster from Scratch" and "Primitive Technology" channels) and lack of specific knowledge. So goes my thought experiment. If I were transported 100,000 years back, I would big-scale industrialize the…

Sexual control and restriction is a pretty widespread feature of premodern cultures. I think you should stick to the soap. The porno is probably trouble.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#92

Post by zikduruqe »

stOneskull wrote: post #53
ethanbond wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially but like… that’s very very hard rock, so those would be some very effortful doodles. Maybe they had more boring classes than we do today though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

maybe they're tripping

Stoned Apes?

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

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#93

Post by alganet »

brabel wrote: post #84
alganet wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soap actually increases his chance of survival in this scenario. Clean wound == less chance of infection. Explaining what soap does and why people should value it would be the real challenge. Communication in general would need to be built from scratch. No english, no latin languages, no modern gestures like thumbs up and hand shakes, no common ground. Depending on the era, I would bet on agriculture and fermentation…

It's kind of funny that you think you would be able to produce wine 100,000 years ago. Do you know what grapes used to look like back then? Well, they were absolutely not the giant balls of sweetness we see today :D. They became that after thousands of years of selection by humans. Which first had to "invent" agriculture, which was not easy and it's still quite unclear whether the earliest civilizations that adopted…

It doesn't need to be fine wine from the best grapes. It doesn't even need to be from grapes. The first beers were murky, slurry and not cold and people loved it.

I can convince my first followers by doing the first crops and batches myself, alone.

Usage of animals and metal tools in agriculture came much later. I don't need that to start. I just need fire and ceramics.

Of course it wouldn't be _easy_. Empires are never easy.

Ultimately, what I'm saying is the context of the original comment about soap: food tech would be more succesful than soap tech.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#94

Post by getoffmycase »

syllogism wrote: post #90
lynguist wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Try selling soap blocks and porno comics to an Amazon tribe or Australian native. Do they have "sell"? Do they need soap blocks? Do they need porno comics? It’s very narrow how you paint it. 2. Behavioral modernity in humans including the way we use language is thought to have emerged 70000-55000 years ago. You can’t go further back and expect to be understood. 3. Humans keep changing. The domestication of the dog…

> Behavioral modernity in humans including the way we use language is thought to have emerged 70000-55000 years ago. Citation for that? There's clear evolutionary selection for language capabilities a long time before that isn't here?

I question a lot of the info in comment. Specifically the “humans domesticated themselves 6000years ago.” We had characteristics of “domesticating ourselves” long before 6000 years ago. Non-pronounced canines, reduced sexual dimorphism between males and females, are all hallmarks of a transition from a mating system that was “tournament based” (one male wins all the females) to a more pair-bonded species, although it’s a spectrum and humans have behavior related to both.

This was probably co-evolving with the cost of raising a human child. Which we didn’t just magically start doing 6000 years.

Classic example of the bullshit asymmetry principle, where it took me two paragraphs of text to reasonably dispute a one sentence off hand, inaccurate comment

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#95

Post by dheera »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #77
dheera wrote: post #18

I wonder how society would behave if those homonids were still around today. A lot of society norms are based on our intelligence levels being remarkably approximately equal across all of our species. What if there existed a bunch of beings on Earth that were somewhere in-between a human and a monkey in intelligence, cognitive, and language abilities? Would they go to school and be a part of the economy and job marke…

This whole idea of classifying by intellectual ability, or even thinking we can measure it along some single axis... is going to look mighty quaint once our machines truly and fully surpass us on that axis. Wouldn't it be nice if Neanderthal, Erectus, Denisovan and Naledi was with us today but we didn't see them as "stupider forms of us" but "intelligent in different way"? My two border collies are clearly less "inte…

> but we didn't see them as "stupider forms of us" but "intelligent in different way"

> My two border collies are clearly less "intelligent" than me on something like the axis I refer to above

I very much agree with intelligence being multidimensional and that humans are largely similar in general intelligence level, just that everyone has different intelligences.

I'm not sure that's true of a different species though. Intelligence is the evolved trait of homo sapiens. I wouldn't call a baboon, rattlesnake, or jellyfish "intelligent but in a different way". Those creatures have other evolutionary reasons for success, but not intelligence.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#96

Post by NikkiA »

alganet wrote: post #93
brabel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of funny that you think you would be able to produce wine 100,000 years ago. Do you know what grapes used to look like back then? Well, they were absolutely not the giant balls of sweetness we see today :D. They became that after thousands of years of selection by humans. Which first had to "invent" agriculture, which was not easy and it's still quite unclear whether the earliest civilizations that adopted…

It doesn't need to be fine wine from the best grapes. It doesn't even need to be from grapes. The first beers were murky, slurry and not cold and people loved it. I can convince my first followers by doing the first crops and batches myself, alone. Usage of animals and metal tools in agriculture came much later. I don't need that to start. I just need fire and ceramics. Of course it wouldn't be _easy_. Empires are ne…

Elderberry would be my choice - it has medicinal properties as well as being an enjoyable flavour, it's essentially unchanged in the history that we've known of it (5000 years), so wine production techniques won't have to change much, and it's a fairly fast growing tree/shrub so building up a large orchard won't be a big deal.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#97

Post by mcguire »

mkl wrote: post #49
mcguire wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Homoninid family tree has gotten fairly confusing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape#Changes_in_taxonomy_and_te... You will often see mention of Hominin (Homo and Pan (chimpanzees), I think) as well, where you would have once heard Hominid.

Hominin doesn't include chimpanzees, but all members of the human tree after the split from chimpanzees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae

Thanks! I couldn't remember the details and was trying to reconstruct it from the bio-Latin. :-)

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#98

Post by agmand »

getoffmycase wrote: post #94
syllogism wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Behavioral modernity in humans including the way we use language is thought to have emerged 70000-55000 years ago. Citation for that? There's clear evolutionary selection for language capabilities a long time before that isn't here?

I question a lot of the info in comment. Specifically the “humans domesticated themselves 6000years ago.” We had characteristics of “domesticating ourselves” long before 6000 years ago. Non-pronounced canines, reduced sexual dimorphism between males and females, are all hallmarks of a transition from a mating system that was “tournament based” (one male wins all the females) to a more pair-bonded species, although it…

Two notes on language and self-domestication: - 77kya is very late for the emergence of language (though how far it can be traced is still object of heavy debate and nuance). The tenuous consensus nowadays is that the last common ancestor with the Neanderthal/Denisovan branch had at the very least a partial capability of language. 'Behavioral modernity' is also a bit of a red herring on its own, in light of discoveries like this and how similar Neanderthals were to us in terms of archaeological record. - Re self-domestication... The concept is very messy and disputed (I've largely given up on its usefulness, in fact). But in any case 6kya is too late, simply because all modern humans are prosocial, as parent comment said.

Source: human evolution PhD, I have worked in faculty of language evolution, prosociality, genetic basis for self-domestication.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#99

Post by fuzzfactor »

akiselev wrote: post #78
betocmn wrote: post #67

A Hominins timeline to help put things in perspective: 7-6 million years ago: Possible divergence of the lineage leading to humans from the lineage leading to chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest living relatives). Ardipithecus kadabba (~5.8-5.2 million years ago) Ardipithecus ramidus (~4.4 million years ago) Australopithecus anamensis (~4.2-3.9 million years ago) Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) (~3.9-2.9 million y…

In addition, a timeline of culture & technology: Oldowan industry - simple flaked stone tools (~2.9-1.7 million years ago) Acheulean industry - advanced tools like hand axes (~1.7 million - ~160,000 years ago) Archaic humans in Southeast Asian islands like Indonesia (~1.8-1 million years ago, dating is a bit uncertain on this one) First control of fire (~1 million - ~700,000 years ago) First archaic humans living in…

>A Hominins timeline to help put things in perspective:

>In addition, a timeline of culture & technology:

A lot can be accomplished in a few million years that can just not be done in a few hundred thousand.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#100

Post by lynguist »

agmand wrote: post #98
getoffmycase wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I question a lot of the info in comment. Specifically the “humans domesticated themselves 6000years ago.” We had characteristics of “domesticating ourselves” long before 6000 years ago. Non-pronounced canines, reduced sexual dimorphism between males and females, are all hallmarks of a transition from a mating system that was “tournament based” (one male wins all the females) to a more pair-bonded species, although it…

Two notes on language and self-domestication: - 77kya is very late for the emergence of language (though how far it can be traced is still object of heavy debate and nuance). The tenuous consensus nowadays is that the last common ancestor with the Neanderthal/Denisovan branch had at the very least a partial capability of language. 'Behavioral modernity' is also a bit of a red herring on its own, in light of discoveri…

Am I right that the common ancestor of sapiens and Neanderthals and Denisovans is -800kya?

And what about the following strong differences between sapiens and Neanderthals/Denisovans: musical instruments, cave paintings, projectile weapons?

I found that the basis has to be there from a long time ago, and one branch makes use of it. The lungfish has limbs, but only some branches of it went terrestrial. An old human ancestor had language capabilities but only some branches used it. Dinosaurs had feathers but only some used it for gliding and flight.

Can you comment on the shrinking brain size that’s observed among humans in the past few thousand years?

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