Pre 10,000 Years Ago - What happened?

I have just been thinking about evolution recently, and the concept of man evolving from apes over millions of years vs the biblical account of the Bible.

Obviously they are both completly different, one is based on 'science' while the other is a collection of stories that require faith. I'm not here to argue the validity of either one.

What I am curious about is what went on before recorded history (say 6-10k years) The egyptians are a great civilization that built massive buildings, impressive in todays standards even. I find it hard to believe, if humans evolved over millions of years, why other civilizations before the egyptians have not built similar buildings, or something that dates back to 100,000 years or 500,000 years or whatever. All we have are some 'bones' to look at.

Look at what man has achieved in the last 200 - 300 hundred years. I bet, if you transported a baby from ancient egypt today, and it grew up in this environment, it would be just as bright as any other person today. So mentally we have the same capacity as 10,000 years ago.

Why then have we only started using it now? Has anyone else thought about this? Curious...

Man had to slowly "discover" over thousands of years the "science" that we have now.
Millions of discoveries linked together from "how to make fire" on up to how to harness the power of electricity and beyond.
Yes, that Egyptian baby would learn about all of our technology and probably be as bright as anyone else is now but turn it around...what if you were transported back in time as a baby and grew up with the idea that the earth is flat (a "fact" to earlier man.)
You could only work with what is given you until another theory is proven more "correct" right?
I see it as a "chain-reaction" of sorts that gets faster and faster as more "new" things are discovered.

[edit on 10-11-2004 by elaine]

Heard of Atlantis?

It is supposed to be this advanced civilization that somehow got lost.

To answer you question: It is because something we take for granted is not as granted for our previous generations.

Take for example relativity, it took Einstein, let us assume the maximum, his life time to come up with it, and our history is at least 10 folds higher than that.

You getting my drift here?

Surf

Hey Schmick:

Why do you automatically jump from "evolutionary theory" to "the 2 creation myths of the Jews" in the "bible" (Gen 1:1 to 2:4a and 2:4b to 4:34) as the ONLY alternative?

You are aware, aren't you, that there are more than 15,000 ancient creation myths from around the world to choose from (that is if you like stories of creation involving talking snakes and magical trees with fruit that can get you to live forever etc.) ???

It is not a simple alternative of either : "evolution" verses "the Jewish Creation Stories"---there's a much larger world out there, and I cannot see why people automatically assume that the biblical genesis two contradictory creation accounts would even be a major part of a "mythological" discussion when we have far longer and older/more sophisticated Creation Myths out there (especially Israel's more sophistricated neighbours from whom they adapted so much of their culture and literature, e.g. Egypt, Assyria, Persia and Babylon).

Tennis anyone?

ok. What you beleive has nothing to do with answering the question that I pose. You can believe we got zapped in from outer space by Alf for all I care. I just think there are amazing gaps in the earths history that are not very well accounted for.

Atlantis? Give me proof as to where it is. Another myth. I want some ideas people! ;-)

15,000 years ago was the end of the last Ice age, 12,000 years ago there was a polar shift, these events would have caused mass devastation. Noahs flood appears to have occurred 6000 years ago.

And the Sphynx is at least 8000 years old and is to date the oldest manmade structure on earth.

Although this might not be a romantic or exciting response, I don't see any gaps in our development.

Let's assume that Homo sapiens sapiens (that is, us as opposed to our Neanderthaler cousins) have had the same cranial capacity and basic set of smarts since we evolved, we haven't become innately smarter (or dumber) in the past, say, 50 thousand years...

And what we have learned has not been a sudden jump from nothing to the (relatively) advanced civilization of the pyramids by any means.

One of the most important inventions we came up with (pre-recorded history) is, of course, agriculture. This gave us (as a race) spare time, which allowed us to specialize past the basic everybody's-gotta-be-a-hunter-gather phase and allowed us to come up with writing (which probably predated the Egyptians), basic astronomy and calendar-making, additional materia medica, and tons of other inventions. So that's certainly not a "gap" in our intellectual/technological evolution!

As a matter of fact, the only really thing that the Egyptians and their peers/cohorts came up with is building with stone, which gives us a physical record of their accomplishments. For all we know, there could've been a bunch of Middle Holocene cultures that made incredibly complex dwellings -- except they were made of thatch or wood, and thus we have no record of them!

What is obvious (but kind of hard for us to accept) is that techno-advancements follow what's called an asymptotic curve, where as the corpus of knowledge increases, so does the acquisition rate. In other words, if you were to graph our technological achievements with the x-axis as time and the y-axis as "stuff we know", the resulting curve would be a second-order, or "asymtotic" curve.

So there isn't really any need to invent any of the "Atlantis" or "Mu" stuff to explain any "gaps" in our advancement over the past 50k years, which is a good thing, because there really isn't a shred of evidence with which I am familiar that "Atlantis" or "Mu" or -- anyplace else like that -- ever existed.

Edited to add the following:

Anyone interested in further information might want to look at Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, and, to a lesser extent, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, both by Jared Diamond. Although I disagree with some of Diamond's assertions and conclusions, I have to admit he makes some interesting arguments about human evolution.


[edit on 11-11-2004 by Off_The_Street]

shmick25

Just a quick thought off the top of my head. I don�t think this is �the answer�, but maybe a contributing factor. Perhaps population has something to do with it.

I�ve always thought that maybe .01% (1 in 10,000) of Humanity actual contributes to evolution. It�s that 1 individual in 10,000 that has the insight and vision to make significant discoveries which propel our species forward. The rest of us kind of tag along and take advantage of these jewels of wisdom in our daily lives, but never really make significant contributions ourselves. We�re kinda like parasites.

Anyway, as the population on Earth geometrically increases, so do the absolute numbers of these gifted individuals who are capable of making discoveries significant enough to move our species another step up the evolutionary ladder. Assuming there are approximately 6 billion plus people on Earth right now, that would be 600,000 people with the ability to contribute to our advancement. So, as the population grows, it also evolves more quickly.

I wouldn�t know, but perhaps prior to 10,000 years ago evolution went slowly due to the lack of enough gifted individuals in absolute numbers.

Like I said, that�s off the top of my head, and if there�s any truth to it, it may be only a small part of the answer. On the other hand, I may be completely off-base and wrong altogether.



[edit on 11/11/2004 by netbound]

Thanks for your feedback.

I think a large reason why society is where it is today, is because of the advent of mass media and communication. Knowledge is available and in your face all day and everyday. For instance, there are still primitive tribes on the earth now (in Africa and tropical islands) that still live like they have 1000s of years ago. Let them surf the internet or show them some movies of what the world is actually like, and it would blow their mind. They would be transported from being ignorant to 'crap, is this really going on in the world? I cant believe it??!! Bahhh!!!!'

So netbound, you are right when you say that more people = more uniquely gifted individuals (so it is a rapid escalation). Information plays into this theory as well.

If as you say 15,000 was the end of the last ice age, I would have to assume there would be evidence of preserved humans in their environments (similar to the mammoths). This makes logical sense. And in terms of reproduction, I would have thought that over so many years, humans would have bred a lot more than history has shown. I know we have medicine that advances age, but this theory doesn�t hold up in current 3rd world countries that are vastly overpopulated.

I like the point about being able to gather resources and harvest food. This is a major issue as if human spend all their time fishing and hunting, then they have no time to think about enhancing their technologies.

Regarding the Sphinx that is 8000 years old. Would the flood 6000 years ago, wiped this out?

I'm still thinking

~~

the proof, i take it from the flavor of your post, would of necessity
be artifacts, trinkets of sophisticated alloy, or foundation stones, etc ?

perhaps the proofs are not shards or fragments or relics...

Scientific research has revealed thru mitochrondrial DNA, that 'EVE'
the 'biological' mother of mankind, was living at ~200,000 years ago.

that narrows the 'window' from your stated multiple millions of years

Plato & Aristotle & that 'futurist' bunch of the Golden Age of Greece
knew/postulated about 'Atoms' 2000+ years ago
they help mankind leap forward, with the advanced mathematics, etc

the Chaldeans, Sumerians, Aakadians, et al...plotted and calculated
Astronomical events which had to been observed, noted, then verified-
before accurate predictions could be made as to future movements & events...their historical records do not indicate their knowledge base came from (prior to 5 - 6,000 BCE)

the window is narrowing

as the Chaldean/Sumerian Astronomers was 98+% un-aided eye observation...BUT NOT ALL OF IT !!
there is ALSO the uncanny 'knowledge' told in the Vedic Cosmologies (2000 BCE) which predate Galieos' telescope (Rennaissance, Enlightenment )even...saturns moons etc

The 'proofs' of earlier civilizations may? only? be revealed in the DNA/RNA
rates of evolution/mutations, or doing regressive/originating blood typing in the populations...or examining the higher mathematics and the needs which caused these geometries & calculus' to originate,,,
or perhaps investigating how & why was the I-Ching originated...the
8 harmonics, the 64 sets....

elaine summed it up....as knowledge increases, our 'models' change
and as models change---> knowledge increases ~~~~~~waves~~~~~
a Terrence McKenna.. plotted a 'Omega Point'/ 'Time Wave Zero' which
accounts the known-accepted history of mankind,,,and with a little ingenuity one could do a backward time line (similar to the mitochrondrial DNA/RNA project 'EVE' research) to fashion a 'reversed' branching tree of History.

If you seek, the 'golden fleece' the 'Grail', 'Atlantis'....you might not recognize it at first...

enjoy