Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - What has man been doing for the past 195,000 years?

Ambient1 · 05-17-2005, 11:37 AM

I got thinking the other day, how apparently Homo Sapiens emerged 195,000 years ago (see here) but we only have about 10,000 years of "Known History". I'm not an anthropologist, but since these were Homo Sapiens does that not mean that they were physically identical to us today?

So what happened?

Obviously, it took time for things like languages to emerge. But there still must have been some sort of rudimentary communication before that. And I can't see this "rudimentary communication" taking very long before it emerged into a simple language.

But for around 150,000 years, we used nothing more complicated than a sharp stone as a tool.

Only starting 50,000 years ago, did we start manufacturing more complex items: Harpoons, flutes for music etc. Obviously there was some sort of culture.

But still, for another 40,000 years, no records or histories exist.

Only within the last 10,000 years is there any form of recorded history.

The only thing I can think of, is that somehow our brains changed around 10,000 years ago. And changed in a big way (emergence of symbolic thought perhaps?). But would that not mean that we are a new species?

If we aren't a new species, what happened? What took us so long to get to where we are today?

05-17-2005, 11:37 AM	#1 (permalink)
Ambient1 Tilted Location: The Hammer	What has man been doing for the past 195,000 years? I got thinking the other day, how apparently Homo Sapiens emerged 195,000 years ago (see here) but we only have about 10,000 years of "Known History". I'm not an anthropologist, but since these were Homo Sapiens does that not mean that they were physically identical to us today? So what happened? Obviously, it took time for things like languages to emerge. But there still must have been some sort of rudimentary communication before that. And I can't see this "rudimentary communication" taking very long before it emerged into a simple language. But for around 150,000 years, we used nothing more complicated than a sharp stone as a tool. Only starting 50,000 years ago, did we start manufacturing more complex items: Harpoons, flutes for music etc. Obviously there was some sort of culture. But still, for another 40,000 years, no records or histories exist. Only within the last 10,000 years is there any form of recorded history. The only thing I can think of, is that somehow our brains changed around 10,000 years ago. And changed in a big way (emergence of symbolic thought perhaps?). But would that not mean that we are a new species? If we aren't a new species, what happened? What took us so long to get to where we are today?