Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Modern civilization, inevitable, or contingent?

How inevitable was modern human civilization – data:

To me it looks like life, animals with nervous systems, Upper Paleolithic-style Homo, language, and behavioral modernity were all extremely unlikely events (notice how far ago they are – vaguely ~3.5bln, ~600mln, ~3mln, ~200k or ~600k, ~50k years ago) – except perhaps language and behavioral modernity might have been linked with each other, if language was relatively late (Homo sapiens only) and behavioral modernity more gradual (and its apparent suddenness is an artifact). Once we have behavioral modernity, modern civilization seems almost inevitable. Your interpretation might vary of course, but at least now you have a lot of data to argue for your position, in convenient format.

I agree with bolded part; see After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC and The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. After the last Ice Age post-hunter-gatherer lifestyles sprouted up independently several times. Homo were around during previous Interglacials, but there is no evidence of that before. During the Ice Age between the Eemian Interglacial ~100,000 years ago and Holocene ~10,000 years ago humanity changed in some fundamental way, so that once the ice retreated the scene was set for an unparalleled cultural explosion.

Posted in Uncategorized

Comments are closed.