Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind by Mark Pagel Read Free Book Online Page A

species.
    Homo sapiens was distinguished from other Homo species, including premodern humans, not just by their appearance but also by showing the first glimmerings of symbolic thinking in the form of art and adornment. It was a revolutionary development in our minds because now one object could stand for another or even for a set of ideas, and a symbol’s presence acted to communicate those ideas to other people. Until recently, the earliest evidence for symbolic thinking came from Blombos Cave in Western Cape Province, South Africa where pierced and painted seashells thought perhaps to be early examples of jewelry, and even an engraved stone, have been found and dated to around 75,000 years ago. But excavations not far away at Pinnacle Point in Western Cape Province have now found little beads of red ochre pigment that might be 160,000 years old. Evidence such as this is notoriously difficult to interpret, but these small fragments of ochre are clearly and deliberately scratched as if to make a powder, suggesting that these modern humans were painting something; though whether it was their bodies, caves, or other objects isn’t known.
    Some modern human groups might have moved north through the great continent of Africa around 120,000 years ago in what was the first “out of Africa” migration. Fossil evidence suggests that some of these people turned eastward and crossed the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea and into present-day Saudi Arabia. Others continued northward, eventually making their way into the Levant in an area of what is present-day Israel, where archaeological digs show they might have lived alongside Neanderthals. Opinion is divided, but modern humans apparently didn’t last in the Levant, or if they did, their numbers were so small that no fossil or archaeological traces remain after around 75,000 years ago. But then back in Africa sometime around 80,000 years ago, maybe somewhat later, the flickerings of symbolic thinking and communication that had characterized our species from its origins gave way to a flowering of culture. Abstract and realistic art appeared, jewelry in the form of threaded shell beads, teeth, ivory and ostrich shells, ochre and tattoos; small stone tools appeared in the form of blades and burins; bone, antler, and ivory artifacts were made; there were tools for grinding and pounding; and improved hunting and trapping technology, including spear throwers, and possibly even bows, and nets.
    So imaginative had our species become, archaeologists define the appearance of so-called modern humans—in comparison to the “archaic” modern humans who immediately preceded us—by our artifacts, or the things we made, as much as by any real changes to our appearance. Genetic evidence points to a time around 60,000 years ago, maybe somewhat earlier, maybe somewhat later (the dates cannot be more precise than this), when populations of these modern humans left Africa for a second time. They followed coastal routes across the Arabian Peninsula and into India, thereby acquiring the name “beachcombers.” Modern human populations eventually made their way to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and then by 45,000 to 50,000 years ago into Australia. The speed with which they got there after having left Africa leads some to believe that these first occupiers might have been descendants of the earlier out of Africa migration into the Middle East, but no one knows for sure. Other modern human migrations up through the Middle East eventually took people into Eurasia, where they replaced the resident Homo erectus and X-woman/Denisovanspecies, and into Europe by around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago, where by 28,000 years ago they had replaced the Neanderthals.
    No one can be sure whether modern humans simply outcompeted these other Homo species or whether they moved in and killed them off in direct confrontations. As with so many questions like this, the truth is almost