It is uncomfortable to change one's views. At least it is to start with
because a new idea, or a changed viewpoint, often works it way through a
great deal else in one's brain, causing major or minor adjustments which
take some getting used to.
One such change happened to me yesterday as a previous assumption of mine
was kicked into the long grass. My previous idea had linked two
discoveries, one a few decades old by now, the other very recent. The first
involves the apparent "explosion" of innovation that seems to have occurred
at around 40,000 years ago, and seemingly somewhere in Europe rather than
anywhere else. It was then that man's manufacture and use of tools expanded
far beyond the simple quartet of axes, scrapers, pounders and
thrusting-spears that he (and his preceding hominin species) had used for
at least two million years before then. Archeologists have also discovered
that, simultaneously, man apparently suddenly started to make musical
flutes, figurines, clothes (using needles and twine), elegant necklaces and
were drawing and painting superbly on cave walls and ceilings.
This evidence didn't sit quite well with one or two other archeological
findings of sea-shell necklaces in north and south Africa from a period at
least 40,000 years before the "explosion" era. But these were so sparse,
and the European findings were so profuse, that it didn't disturb the
picture much.
The second very recent discovery (published in 2005) was by Bruce Lahn's
genetics research team at Chicago University. They were dating the origins
of important mutations that had taken place in the Y-chromosome. One of
these mutations -- within the Microcephalin gene -- had taken place at
about the same time as the "innovation explosion". Furthermore, the
Microcephalin gene has much to do with brain development. Also, it is a
dominant mutation -- that is, it always comes out on top in an individual
when matched against the other unmutated Microcephalin gene contributed by
the other parent.
Quite what the new mutation does for its owner is still as yet unknown but
it must be quite beneficial because, through intermarriage, it has already
swept through most of the world's population. And for that to happen within
about 40,000 years -- and across ethnic groups that are often antagonistic
-- is quite exceptional.
Some geneticists suggested that there was thus a link between the
"innovation explosion" of 40,000 years ago and the mutation of the
Microcephalin gene. While they were cautious, I accepted this link more
readily because, from my own reading in history, it also seemed to explain
the rapidity with which innovation continued to grow exponentially from
40,000 years ago onwards. Today the number of patents is well over half a
million a year and the number continues to grow.
But recently, more evidence has come from the tip of South Africa that, at
around 120,000 years ago, man was already doing quite sophisticated things
with his stone tools. The evidence suggests that he was heat-treating the
local rock before making his tools. Unlike the rocks and flint that were
available to European man 80,000 years later, the local rock, silcrete, was
pretty poor quality and couldn't be flaked in its raw state to produce
sharp blades. However, if it was "cooked" in the ashes of a fire at a
carefully maintained temperature then the silcrete became tractable -- and
also acquires a fine lustre.
There is also the suggestion that South African man was also heat-treating
various natural rock ochres to produce a range of colours from yellow to
bright red. This would have been used for face and body painting, the
first "consumer good" if you like. Perhaps the different colours denoted
different status levels of their wearers within their group -- such status
levels being universal in all case of hunter-gatherer man -- but this is
only my own speculation.
Thus the latest evidence of the technology of very early man suggests that
the "innovation explosion" of 40,000 years ago was not as dramatic as it
seemed. Man has been inventive almost from, and probably exactly from, the
dawn of mankind, which was only about 50,000 years before "South African"
man. The article which has finally persuaded me of this is "When the Sea
Saved Humanity" by Curtis W. Marean in this month's Scientific American.
The article is actually making a different case from the one I've made
here. It is known from genetic studies that man has a much narrower genetic
repertoire than most mammalian species (but a much larger epigenetic
capability -- which makes us special!). The conclusion from this is that,
almost certainly, man had been reduced at one stage from a population of
about 20,000 individuals to being no more than a few hundred individuals.
It is also known that an exceptionally savage Ice Age descended on the
northern hemisphere between about 195,000 and 123,000 years ago, making
almost all Africa too arid, and cold to be inhabitable by man. But a few
survived at the very tip of South Africa where some varied root crops and
also marine food would have still been available. After a lifetime's search
for sites where a few hundred men could possibly have survived, Curtis W.
Marean finally found this very small region on the coast near what is now
Capetown. Thus the reason for the title of his article.
But for me the article threw a spanner into my particular works. It may
well have been one particular brain gene mutation which deflected our
species along an inevitable innovation path but, if so, then it probably
would have occurred nearer 200,000 years ago than 40,000. Arthur Koestler
used to say that there was a big evolutionary mistake in our brain. Maybe
this hyper-curiosity and creativity was it. But if so we seem to be totally
addicted to this constant urge to invent whatever it may bring us in the
future.
Keith.
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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