Given how long ago modern humans developed should we be more advanced?

[Malone]

Fully modern homo-sapiens in mind and body emerged at least 50,000 years ago. However civilization only developed some ~6,000 years ago and industrialization not even 200 years ago.

From an outside context should we not be much more advanced then we are right now given the "head-start" modern humans have had?

 

[The Tai-Pan]

A sample size of one makes it impossible to really know. For all we know, maybe we advanced extremely quickly?

 

[Byzantion]

Fully modern homo-sapiens in mind and body emerged at least 50,000 years ago. However civilization only developed some ~6,000 years ago and industrialization not even 200 years ago.

From an outside context should we not be much more advanced then we are right now given the "head-start" modern humans have had?

We had a cultural evolution that took its time

 

[SenatorErnesto]

A sample size of one makes it impossible to really know. For all we know, maybe we advanced extremely quickly?

I completely agree, there’s nothing to compare too.

I think certain events definitely regressed “Us”, but then again what if those regressions needed to happen to get here?

 

[FillyofDelphi]

From an outside context

That's the rub. We have no idea what an outside context would look like, given we've never meet an outsider who could explain it to us. Unless the whole Ancient Aliens meme is true, but in that case we hairless apes are apparently too dumb to come up with anything ourselves so the question is moot

 

[Optical_Illusion]

The usual counterargument (we should not be more advanced and everything is right on schedule) is that all AMH were *ready* to being the last 16kya of accelerated development and ready since the time of our last common ancestor (300kya), it just took very specific conditions to catalyze productive agriculture and the "Broad Spectrum Revolution", which met slightly different thresholds around the world.

The other counterargument is that humans simply weren't culturally or genetic-psychologically ready to invent agriculture either from the last AMH common ancestor that probably coincided with AMH cranial form (about 300kya, Khoi-San, possibly deeper taking into account recent population mixtures) or even from Out of Africa (60-70kya). The idea that AMH was cognitively the same at the birth of modern human form as we are today, is after all just a hypothesis, with no direct evidence possible.

There's no reason why our culture and genes wouldn't have continued to evolve, and we may not have had any actual cognitive over Neanderthal / Denisovans cousins (and partial contributors to our ancestry today) for most of the time that there is a recognisable modern human form preserved in the fossil record. It may be that the AMH were no smarter or better at innovation than "archaic Homo" until relatively recently when lots of groups of AMH independently pushed past the required cultural/genetic thresholds then expanded fairly massively.

 

[Lalli]

Impossible to say when we have not any knowledge about civilisations outside of ours planet. All of that development probably just last while. And might be that Ice Age slowered development of agriculture which was vital thing that we could had create cities. Perhaps it would had been possible advance more on some areas as in OTL with right POD but I am not sure would even then we much advanced than in OTL.

 

[Jared]

Aside from the "sample of one" issue which has already been raised, the Ice Age is indeed the clincher.

Agriculture was independently invented several times soon after the end of the Ice Age. The key factor seems to have been climatic stability. During the Ice Age, the climate changed rapidly and frequently. The invention of agriculture requires (among other things), climatic stability so that the process of unconscious domestication can work on the same plants in the same locations. Climatic change nixes that, as either the plants or the people will move (often both), and unlikely to be to the same place.

From memory, I think that there were a couple of occasions of what looks like aborted proto-agriculture during the later part of the Ice Age (Egypt for one?), but they were abandoned around the time of another climate change in the respective areas.

Post-Ice Age [1], the climate became relatively stable, and agriculture blossomed rapidly (both literally and metaphorically).

[1] Strictly speaking, since we entered the latest interglacial period in the Ice Age.

 

[Richard V]

Julian Jaynes argued that as late as 3,000 years ago humans had not achieved consciousness like we have today. We had problem solving skills, but interpreted the voice in our heads as coming from someone else, a god or an ancesteral spirit, which he defined as the bicameral mind. Thus we had modern brains but not modern psyche which limited our ability to think for ourselves.

 

[Jared]

Julian Jaynes argued that as late as 3,000 years ago humans had not achieved consciousness like we have today. We had problem solving skills, but interpreted the voice in our heads as coming from someone else, a god or an ancesteral spirit, which he defined as the bicameral mind. Thus we had modern brains but not modern psyche which limited our ability to think for ourselves.

Jaynes' hypothesis could be politely described as ludicrous.

We have surviving writings from earlier than his proposed date which contain the qualities he suggested people didn't yet have (eg Gilgamesh's epic). He also never addressed how this change could have happened worldwide with cultures who were completely separated both in terms of gene flow and cultural contact (eg Tasmanian Aborigines).

 

[Lalli]

Julian Jaynes argued that as late as 3,000 years ago humans had not achieved consciousness like we have today. We had problem solving skills, but interpreted the voice in our heads as coming from someone else, a god or an ancesteral spirit, which he defined as the bicameral mind. Thus we had modern brains but not modern psyche which limited our ability to think for ourselves.

That not make any sense. Humans were spread almost everywhere where just was possible to go. So hard to believe that all people would have magically developed such psychological change simultaneously. And there was already highly developed cultures which hardly would be possible without ours conciousness. Cultures were different but humans were able to think same way asthey currently think. If you take time machine and capture baby/small child who has born over 3000 years ago he/she is surely capable to think same way as us. Brain was already similar and surely psychology was same too.

 

[Richard V]

Jaynes' hypothesis could be politely described as ludicrous.

We have surviving writings from earlier than his proposed date which contain the qualities he suggested people didn't yet have (eg Gilgamesh's epic). He also never addressed how this change could have happened worldwide with cultures who were completely separated both in terms of gene flow and cultural contact (eg Tasmanian Aborigines).

If I recall he was saying it was still common by 3,000 ya in the Middle East, not that it was typical. It also didn’t disappear worldwide. The AmerIndian vision quest would be such an example.

Clearly this sort of conjecture would be difficult to prove with evidence. To me it’s not important whether Jaynes was right or not but he has a very interesting idea. The mind is a construct and the modern mind is invented. How can we possibly know how people thought and felt about their place in the world thousands or tens of thousands of years ago? Would we even have enough in common with the ancients to understand them if we met them? How different do their minds need to be for us to perceive them as not fully human, but more sentient beings that look like us?

That not make any sense. Humans were spread almost everywhere where just was possible to go. So hard to believe that all people would have magically developed such psychological change simultaneously. And there was already highly developed cultures which hardly would be possible without ours conciousness. Cultures were different but humans were able to think same way asthey currently think. If you take time machine and capture baby/small child who has born over 3000 years ago he/she is surely capable to think same way as us. Brain was already similar and surely psychology was same too.

A baby certainly could be taught to think like us. But we are a product of our environment. Without existing culture to inform us we would think differently. Today most Americans believe they should exercise free will, have an individual identity, pursue happiness, fall in love, give their kids a happy and sheltered childhood. None of this would make sense to a serf in the Middle Ages and that was just centuries ago.

 

[The Professor]

Hang on, was this Julian guy really trying to argue that our sense of self is not only learned but recent?
Clearly he's not spent any time with babies. Nor other primates.

 

[stevej713]

From an outside context should we not be much more advanced then we are right now given the "head-start" modern humans have had?

From an outside context, we should not be advancing at all. The outside universe has only advanced according to the laws of thermodynamics, nothing more. Human advancement is an outlier of an outlier of an outlier.

 

[Theodoric]

'Development' isn't a straight line. Even the idea of 'progress' being this automatic always-forward-moving thing is problematic. Historiographically, it's fallacious and somewhat backwards-projecting.

You might as well ask why it took us so long to develop nuclear weapons, when we have been committing warfare for so long.

 

[Byzantine fanatic]

Fully modern homo-sapiens in mind and body emerged at least 50,000 years ago. However civilization only developed some ~6,000 years ago and industrialization not even 200 years ago.

From an outside context should we not be much more advanced then we are right now given the "head-start" modern humans have had?

No, because the Ice Age did not end until around 10,000BC. Pretty much immediately after that we get the first steps towards development of agriculture over the next few millennia. From around 9500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops – emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas, and flax – were cultivated in the Levant.

Once the Bronze Age arrives around 3,200BC, the tools are there for the development of advanced civilisation and recorded history begins with writing in Sumeria and Egypt both appearing at this time.

 

[Petros >Peter Fergus<]

How long ago?

Let's say the Ice Age ending ,so ~10,000 years?

Major human populations were all within a few thousand years of each other in terms of overall development, as of 1500 AD. That's around a 10% - 20% difference. I'd say we could push it by another 10%, so starting 10,000 years ago, we could have gone to the Moon ~2,000 years ago.

Any populations that were outside that range, 'less developed', 'primitives', were instead developed well for specific marginal environments, or had less time to develop for unstable environments, and were outside of easy contact with other populations.

 

[zoomar]

Several comments. First, as others have pointed out one must ask "advanced compared to what?" Given that we have only one sample to work with, why presume anything about the development of advanced civilizations other than what we can see from the sample provided by human beings on earth. I'd also point out that many anthropologists and archaeologists have argued that the development of agriculture (and by extension urban living, state level societies, and increasingly complex societies) wasn't inevitable in a world of low population densities and an abundance of wild plant and animal resources. In many ways subsisting on agriculture and domestic animals is a much harder and more difficult way of life. Civilizations only arise when population densities reach the point when intensive agriculture and settled life is necessary to support a higher population. This creates a feedback loop in which increasing population requires increasingly intensive agriculture and the increasingly complex society leadership caste and specialists necessary to manage food production and other necessary services. This is arguably why civilization did not arise uniformly over the entire world but in only a few rather limited areas in which the necessary ingredients of a constrained environment, increasing populations, and diminishing resources occurred.

 

[state02]

About 50 years ago when I was just starting college, I took a sociology course. Part of the reading requirement was an article about the function of population. It has been so long ago that I do not remember who the author was (sorry). The conclusion from the article that has stuck to this day was simple. The function of population is to produce the geniuses that discover things and move the entire race forward. This, he suggested, is why things have been moving forward at such a tremendous rate over the last 150-200 years. The population is expanding and the ability of each member to get access to a decent education is also expanding. You do not need to be in the upper class to get out of Maslow's basement. It doesn't do a genius much good if he does not know that he's a genius or get recognized as such. I believe the author of the article was trying to explain why technology advancement was expanding at such a tremendous rate.

 

[The Professor]

About 50 years ago when I was just starting college, I took a sociology course. Part of the reading requirement was an article about the function of population. It has been so long ago that I do not remember who the author was (sorry). The conclusion from the article that has stuck to this day was simple. The function of population is to produce the geniuses that discover things and move the entire race forward. This, he suggested, is why things have been moving forward at such a tremendous rate over the last 150-200 years. The population is expanding and the ability of each member to get access to a decent education is also expanding. You do not need to be in the upper class to get out of Maslow's basement. It doesn't do a genius much good if he does not know that he's a genius or get recognized as such. I believe the author of the article was trying to explain why technology advancement was expanding at such a tremendous rate.

Er?
The function of population is to produce the next population. That's it. Now a greater population does produce greater number of geniuses, so if genius increases population then it will make a feedback loop.