Seems to me that a main advantage that early humans had was their SOCIALITY,
especially in terms of language, including "messages" from previous generations. As
Marx says, the main distinction between human labor and that of a spider or bee is
imagination. A spiderweb or beehive is a pretty nice tool. A bigger brain seems
inherently an adaptive advantage, whether helping with tools or organizing the social
dimensions of a hunting party or just conceiving of and remembering the behavior of
predators or prey. weather conditons and all survival factors.
Mate selection is directly social. Furthermore, the lengthening of the period of
infancy/childhood is uniquely human. Women seem the best candidates for
"accomplishing" this long childhood, with its import for sociality. Engels would have
done better to focus on the role of lengthening of childhood in the transition from
ape to human. But there are few fossils of that, unlike stone tools.
In _The German Ideology_, Engels and Marx name the division of labor between women and
men as the original division of labor, and then drop it for the division of labor
between head and hand. This is quite a mysogynist dialectic. At any rate, Engels seems
motivated by his (correct) partisanship for modern laborers of the hand in focusing on
old stone age tools (and afterall the remains of stone tools are much more abundant
than that of ancient social organization). But there was no division of labor between
laborers of head and hand during the transition from apes to humans. The materialist
conception of history does not apply until the rise of class society.
Charles Brown
>>> James Farmelant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/27 11:39 AM
In fairness to Engels though I think his essay on the role of labor in
human origins was an important contribution to anthropology.
Engels took up Haeckel's hypothesis that the adoption of tool-use
by early humans was the key to understanding the relatively rapid
evolution of larger brains in early humans, and reinterpreted it
in light of the materialist conception of history. Engels' argument
was formulated largely in Lamarckian terms (since back then
virtually all evolutionists, even Darwin, were to some degree
Lamarckians). However, Engels' theory, it seems can be reformulated
along strictly Darwinian lines (which gives rise to interesting
questions on how the rise of tool-using cultures among our primate
ancestors created "selection pressures" that favored larger brains.
For example what was the role of mate selection in this evolution?)
Jim Farmelant
>
>
> --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Seems to me that a main advantage that early humans had was their SOCIALITY,
especially in terms of language, including "messages" from previous generations. As
Marx says, the main distinction between human labor and that of a spider or bee is
imagination. A spiderweb or beehive is a pretty nice tool. A bigger brain seems
inherently an adaptive advantage, whether helping with tools or organizing the social
dimensions of a hunting party or just conceiving of and remembering the behavior of
predators or prey. weather conditons and all survival factors.
Mate selection is directly social. Furthermore, the lengthening of the period of
infancy/childhood is uniquely human. Women seem the best candidates for
"accomplishing" this long childhood, with its import for sociality. Engels would have
done better to focus on the role of lengthening of childhood in the transition from
ape to human. But there are few fossils of that, unlike stone tools.
In _The German Ideology_, Engels and Marx name the division of labor between women and
men as the original division of labor, and then drop it for the division of labor
between head and hand. This is quite a mysogynist dialectic. At any rate, Engels seems
motivated by his (correct) partisanship for modern laborers of the hand in focusing on
old stone age tools (and afterall the remains of stone tools are much more abundant
than that of ancient social organization). But there was no division of labor between
laborers of head and hand during the transition from apes to humans. The materialist
conception of history does not apply until the rise of class society.
Charles Brown
>>> James Farmelant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/27 11:39 AM
In fairness to Engels though I think his essay on the role of labor in
human origins was an important contribution to anthropology.
Engels took up Haeckel's hypothesis that the adoption of tool-use
by early humans was the key to understanding the relatively rapid
evolution of larger brains in early humans, and reinterpreted it
in light of the materialist conception of history. Engels' argument
was formulated largely in Lamarckian terms (since back then
virtually all evolutionists, even Darwin, were to some degree
Lamarckians). However, Engels' theory, it seems can be reformulated
along strictly Darwinian lines (which gives rise to interesting
questions on how the rise of tool-using cultures among our primate
ancestors created "selection pressures" that favored larger brains.
For example what was the role of mate selection in this evolution?)
Jim Farmelant
>
>
> --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
>
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