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Becoming Human: the Archaeological Challenge: British Academy Lecture

COLIN RENFREW

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 139, 2005 Lectures

This chapter discusses the attempts of pinpointing the origins of humans, i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens. Due to the recent advances in archaeology, specifically in archaeogenetics, it has been determined ... More

This chapter discusses the attempts of pinpointing the origins of humans, i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens. Due to the recent advances in archaeology, specifically in archaeogenetics, it has been determined that the Homo sapiens sapiens originated in Africa 200,000 years ago, and that the speciation phase of human development occurred before that time. The chapter shows that cognitive archaeology would need to analyse more carefully the nature of mind, as well as seek further insight into the processes that underlie the achievements that characterise those different trajectories of development and change.Less

Woman the Gatherer

Erika Lorraine Milam

in Creatures of Cain

This chapter considers the research of women anthropologists during this period. It shows how many anthropologists had fought to refute the picture of universal male authority implied by common ... More

This chapter considers the research of women anthropologists during this period. It shows how many anthropologists had fought to refute the picture of universal male authority implied by common narratives of human evolution were women, often at the very beginning of what turned out to be long, notable careers. Their research gave fuller form to a rhetorically powerful alternative to Man the Hunter in reconstructions of human origins—Woman the Gatherer. Like her partner, Woman the Gatherer found intellectual support in research on long-extinct human ancestors, studies of human cultures today, and animal behavior, with a new emphasis on field research among primates.Less

“Have We Dug at Our Ancestral Shrine?” Post-Máo Ethnic Nationalism and Its Limits

Sigrid Schmalzer

in The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China

This chapter, which examines the significance of Chinese discourse on human origins as a whole, including but not limited to issues of ethnic nationalism, asks: Is ethnic nationalism a sufficient ... More

This chapter, which examines the significance of Chinese discourse on human origins as a whole, including but not limited to issues of ethnic nationalism, asks: Is ethnic nationalism a sufficient explanation of Chinese preferences for theories that place human evolution on a Chinese stage? The answer is no. First, nationalism alone does not account for the ongoing debates in China and elsewhere. Second, where nationalism does play a role, it is not only or even primarily an issue of race or ethnicity. Third, while the Chinese state does frequently mine theories of human origins to construct a concept of the Chinese nation rooted in a biological concept of race, this construction is simultaneously destabilized by other meanings produced by scientists, laypeople, and the state itself. There is also the question of how people on the receiving end of science dissemination view fossils. The chapter suggests that many people have embraced Peking Man, Yuánmóu Man, and other human fossils not simply as early representatives of their nation or race, but in much more personal ways.Less

New Worlds

Justin E. H. Smith

in Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy

This chapter turns to the history of the race concept. It considers the early development of thinking about human diversity and human origins in the context of the Renaissance. In important respects, ... More

This chapter turns to the history of the race concept. It considers the early development of thinking about human diversity and human origins in the context of the Renaissance. In important respects, later reflections in European philosophy echo debates that played out a century earlier within the Ibero-American world, largely as a result of the fact that the Iberians were the earliest Europeans to have significant encounters with non-European peoples in the modern era. The chapter focuses on those sixteenth-century engagements with the novissima americana, the latest news from the Americas, that dealt with the question of the origins and nature of biological kinds in the New World, and particularly with the origins and nature of New World peoples.Less

How Culture and Brain Mechanisms Interact in Decision Making

Merlin Donald

in Better Than Conscious?: Decision Making, the Human Mind, and Implications For Institutions

Decision making is a very private thing, individualized and personal. Yet it has a cultural dimension. The human brain does not acquire language, symbolic skills, or any form of symbolic cognition ... More

Decision making is a very private thing, individualized and personal. Yet it has a cultural dimension. The human brain does not acquire language, symbolic skills, or any form of symbolic cognition without the pedagogical guidance of culture and, as a result, most decisions made in modern society engage learned algorithms of thought that are imported from culture. Mathematical thought is a good example of this: it is cultural in origin, and highly dependent on notations and habits invented over many generations. Its algorithms were created culturally, by means of a slow, deliberate process of creation and refinement. Thus, the algorithms that determine many mathematically based decisions reside, over the long run, in culture. The brains of the individuals making the decisions are, in most particular instances, temporary “carriers” of cultural algorithms, vehicles for applying them in a particular time and place. In principle, this conclusion applies to many examples, such as chess-playing, social judgment, business decisions, the composition of poetry, and so on. Culturally transmitted algorithms can be learned and made so automatic that they can be executed by the brain without much conscious supervision. Unconscious or “intuitive” decisions are often the best, and many successful decisions occur in an automatized manner, in highly over-practiced situations. This does not diminish the larger role of consciousness in cognition, because, when necessary, decision makers retain the option of intervening consciously and deliberately to modify or fix their specific performances. Conscious supervision is thus the ultimate tribunal in cognition, a cutting-edge adaptation that is particularly important in the creative role of generating and changing the existing algorithms of culture that underlie most decisions.Less

Considering Conflict: Human Origins and Stem Cell Research

Michael S. Evans

in Seeking Good Debate: "Religion, Science, and Conflict in American Public Life"

This chapter looks at debates over human origins and stem cell research, in which conflict is claimed to occur. While few would say that religion and science are always in conflict, there is general ... More

This chapter looks at debates over human origins and stem cell research, in which conflict is claimed to occur. While few would say that religion and science are always in conflict, there is general agreement that on some issues, substantive conflict occurs between some versions of religion and science. The human origins debate is often cited as an example of epistemological conflict in which exclusive knowledge claims from some religious and scientific sources compete for support. Meanwhile, stem cell research debate is often cited as an example of moral conflict in which contested definitions of life, death, and personhood are incompatible with some religious beliefs. Whether epistemological or moral, such conflict is an especially likely candidate for preventing deliberative debate.Less

The Travels and Travails of Matriarchal Myth

Eller Cynthia

in Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900

This chapter takes a look at the matriarchal myth, which considers the possibility that male dominance can end, first examining Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, a novel which imagines a sex-positive, ... More

This chapter takes a look at the matriarchal myth, which considers the possibility that male dominance can end, first examining Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, a novel which imagines a sex-positive, harmonious ancient world that is balanced between the genders. It then examines the narrative of matriarchal human origins and ends with an analysis of the meaning of the term myth.Less

Three Roots of Human Recency: Molecular Anthropology, the Refigured Acheulean, and the UNESCO Response to Auschwitz

Robert N. Proctor

in The Moral Authority of Nature

This chapter explores some of the lines of evidence leading to the idea that humanness in the cultural sense is a relatively recent phenomenon—no more than 100,000 years old, and perhaps even more ... More

This chapter explores some of the lines of evidence leading to the idea that humanness in the cultural sense is a relatively recent phenomenon—no more than 100,000 years old, and perhaps even more recent than this, since that is when you get the first clear signs of representational art, kindled fire, deliberate ritual, compound tools, and other things perceived as signs of human intelligence. Reporting on current research on human origins, it detects the lingering influence of the 1952 UNESCO Statement on Race in the reluctance of paleoanthropologists to admit the existence of multiple coexisting species of humans. On this view, the unity of human nature, tragically shattered by a now discredited racism, must be preserved at all costs—although the definition of humanness flits from criterion to criterion: upright posture, language, tool use. Each quiddity of the human becomes a standard to uphold, not only with respect to other species, but also within our own: that which is essentially human becomes the trait to promote, be it crafty intelligence or a handy thumb.Less

How Intelligent Design Demeans Religion

in Bleached Faith: The Tragic Cost When Religion Is Forced into the Public Square

This chapter begins by looking at the intelligent design movement in the context of earlier attacks on Darwin and the fate of those attacks in the courts. It then shows why intelligent design has had ... More

This chapter begins by looking at the intelligent design movement in the context of earlier attacks on Darwin and the fate of those attacks in the courts. It then shows why intelligent design has had problems in litigation, and why it is so destructive of actual religious faith. Next it attempts to understand the remarkable durability of the disputes over Darwin's work by looking at evolution's ties to the question of human origins and to the unhappy history of social Darwinism and eugenics. The discussion then turns to the original argument from design, a much more serious and enduring notion than so-called intelligent design. The argument from design is a religious argument that continues to inspire millions. Many modern scientists, from Einstein to superstring theorists, profess a sense of faith and wonder in the order of the universe that is notably absent from the disfigured teachings that result when religion is forced into the public school curriculum. The faith of scientists does not belong in a public school biology class any more than Genesis does, but it is beautifully expressed in other settings, a lesson from which many religious leaders could learn.Less

Stone Age people in a changing South African Greater Cape Floristic Region

Curtis W. Marean, Hayley C. Cawthra, Richard M. Cowling, Karen J. Esler, Erich Fisher, Antoni Milewski, Alastair J. Potts, Elzanne Singels, and Jan De Vynck

in Fynbos: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation of a Megadiverse Region

The human origins story (palaeoanthropology) is often set in the African Palaeotropics, yet the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) plays an internationally prominent role that surpasses its small ... More

The human origins story (palaeoanthropology) is often set in the African Palaeotropics, yet the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) plays an internationally prominent role that surpasses its small size. Some of the earliest evidence for the complex behaviours associated with fully modern humans is found here, with prehistoric stone age hunter-gatherers adapting to a unique and changing environment from about 1 million years ago to near-present. The GCFR has an astonishing variety of vegetation types, an unparalleled diversity and abundance of geophytic plants, and a resource-rich coastline. These features had a dominating influence on the adaptations and demography of past hunter-gatherer societies. The GCFR had a relatively stable palaeoclimate through the Pleistocene, but the landscape changed dramatically as the now-submerged Palaeo-Agulhas Plain expanded and contracted. The palaeontology of the region shows it provided grasslands supporting the large ungulates that dominate the Pleistocene faunal assemblages, and a habitat to hunter-gatherers that is absent through the Holocene. Late in the Pleistocene early modern humans figured out how to exploit coastal resources, and shortly after this there is a florescence in complexity in material culture. But the rapidly changing sea levels of the Pleistocene may have held in check the tendency of coastal hunter-gatherer economies to rise in population and complexity. With the Holocene, world climate enters a peculiar phase of stability, and like many areas of the world, populations rise and coastal adaptations ratchet up in complexity, only to be overcome by a militarily superior pastoral economy around 1,800 years ago.Less

The Origins of Stone Tool Technology in Africa: A Historical Perspective

Ignacio de la Torre

in Culture Evolves

The search for the earliest stone tools is a topic that has received much attention in studies on the archaeology of human origins. New evidence could position the oldest traces of stone tool-use ... More

The search for the earliest stone tools is a topic that has received much attention in studies on the archaeology of human origins. New evidence could position the oldest traces of stone tool-use before 3.39 Myr, substantially earlier than previously documented. Nonetheless, the first unmistakable evidence of tool-making dates to 2.6 Ma, the period in which Oldowan assemblages first appear in the East African record. However, this is not an unchangeable time boundary, and considerations about the tempo and modo of tool-making emergence have varied through time. This chapter summarizes the history of research on the origins of stone knapping in Africa and places the current evidence in a historical perspective.Less

Neanderthal Humanities

John Hawks

in Darwin's Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences

The problem of Neanderthal intentional markings is considered. This is a rich area of inquiry in archaeology, with more and more evidence of Neandertal “symbolic” behavior emerging every year. Some ... More

The problem of Neanderthal intentional markings is considered. This is a rich area of inquiry in archaeology, with more and more evidence of Neandertal “symbolic” behavior emerging every year. Some past efforts to explain such markings cannot be distinguished from fiction. Yet, if the subjective lives of ancient people must remain forever unknown to us, then surely our attempts to interpret the lives of our contemporaries must be equally fictional. Consilience, as a general attitude about the ability of scientific knowledge to cross into humanistic realms, holds out the promise that we might study and come to an understanding of the humanity of ancient people, not only as social primates, but also as subjects of experience.Less

Epilogue

Elizabeth V. Spelman

in Trash Talks: Revelations in the Rubbish

The brief Epilogue notes that the promised portrait of people’s intimate connections with the world of rejectamenta turns out to be more like a sestych or six-panel installation. Or, to shift ... More

The brief Epilogue notes that the promised portrait of people’s intimate connections with the world of rejectamenta turns out to be more like a sestych or six-panel installation. Or, to shift metaphors, trash and waste here take a curtain call, having had starring roles in projects near and dear to the hearts of human beings: to gain power or advantage over others by being in possession of knowledge about them; to establish superior social and economic rank; to raise doubts about people’s character and thereby marginalize them or exclude them from full citizenship; to come up with authoritative accounts of humanity’s origins; to warn of the perils associated with that insistent and hard-to-resist element in people’s makeup known as dissatisfaction; and to distinguish the brighter from the dimmer bulbs burning in the hall of human judgment.Less

Large Newspapers

Robert Lee Hotz

in A Field Guide for Science Writers

It was a nice rock, as rocks go—a substantial chip of rose-colored quartz gleaming with flecks of crystal—but not the sort of stone that might grace a ... More

It was a nice rock, as rocks go—a substantial chip of rose-colored quartz gleaming with flecks of crystal—but not the sort of stone that might grace a starlet's ring finger. Even so, curators at the American Museum of Natural History in New York had given it the kind of showroom treatment Tiffany's might lavish on its rarest diamond solitaire: a special exhibit case, dramatic spot lighting, and even a name designed to stir the imaginations of onlookers. The rock was a 350,000-year-old hand ax. The Spanish archaeologists who discovered it called it Excalibur. And they claimed it was the earliest known evidence of the dawn of the modern human mind. Found among the skeletal remains of 27 primitive men, women, and children, the ax might be the earliest known funeral offering, its discoverers contended. If so, it was 250,000 years older than any other evidence that such early human species honored their dead. As a reporter, I was in a bind. Discovery of the rock offered an opportunity—the potential news hook—for a fascinating story. But it posed a series of thorny questions that I had to resolve before I could, in good conscience, publish a story about the find. They are the questions that arise with every newsworthy scientific development. They center on the validity of the work, its importance to the general public, and whether independent scientists can vouch for it. There also are practical considerations. How much of a reporter's time is it worth? How quickly can the story be turned around? Is there enough material for a graphic? Can we get a photograph? How much space does it deserve? Does it have a chance of getting on page one? The claim being made by the Spanish archaeologists was certainly provocative and, no doubt, sincere. But how reliable was it? The study of human origins is a field defined by the paucity of evidence and conflicting scientific claims. As one distinguished paleo-anthropologist told me wryly, “The dividing line between reality and paleo-fantasy is very narrow.” Acting as a gatekeeper to sort the sense from scientific nonsense, a science writer ordinarily can spend almost as much time chasing down a misleading claim as publicizing valid work. Less

The Garden of Eden Moment

Roger Wagner and Andrew Briggs

in The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims in the Slipstream of Ultimate Questions

This chapter considers when, where, and how the ‘Garden of Eden moment’ occurred, i.e., human beings’ creation of symbolic representations of others through various forms of image-making such as cave ... More

This chapter considers when, where, and how the ‘Garden of Eden moment’ occurred, i.e., human beings’ creation of symbolic representations of others through various forms of image-making such as cave paintings and rock art. It first considers evidence indicating that anatomically modern humans originated in Africa. It then describes two reports from Indonesia, published in 2014, that strengthen the growing impression that symbolic activity goes back deep into the past of Homo sapiens (and even beyond it). These reports suggest that we can expect future discoveries of depictions of human hands, figurative art, and other forms of image-making dating to the earliest period of the global dispersion of our species.Less