Read the information below to get a basic idea of cultural evolution - with especially attention to the domestication of plants and animals. The link is the source of the information
Human Cultural Evolution http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/evolution/HumanEvolution.shtml
| Tools and Tool Use | Fire | Domestication of Plants and Animals |
There are many examples of human cultural evolution. They include: tool making, the controlled use of fire, manufacture of shelters and clothing, appearance of art and other non-utilitarian products, development of cooperative hunting behaviour, and domestication of plant and animal species (leading to settled agricultural societies). All of these features allowed humans to have greater control of their environment, rather than responsive to it. Thus, the development of these skills would directly contribute to the survival of individuals (& groups) practising these behaviours. (Cultural evolution is also described as non-biological evolution, since what is transmitted to new generations is changes in learned behaviour patterns. However, any genetic underpinnings to these behaviours would also be passed on.)
Some aspects of cultural evolution are easier to trace than others. Examples of stone tools made by hominin species are relatively common and easily recognised. Tools made of other substances, such as wood or bone, do not survive so well in the stratigraphic record. Changes in behaviour, such as the development of cooperative hunting groups or changes in social structure, leave no direct traces at all and their presence must be inferred from other evidence.
Evidence of developing human culture appears far back in time. Homo habilis was named for its association with the crude cobble tools of the Oldowan culture, and it's possible that Australopithecus garhi and one of the robust australopithecines, A. robustus , were also tool users. What differentiates these very simple, ancient tool-making cultures from the tool manufacture and use practised by modern chimpanzees? In fact, how do we define "culture" in the evolutionary sense?
At the time that H. habilis was discovered, manufacture and use of tools was generally viewed as an exclusively human activity. The Oldowan tools marked the earliest hard evidence of culture in our ancestors. We now know that many different animals use tools. Perhaps the best-known example is that of chimpanzees. Jane Goodall first documented this in her studies of wild chimpanzees in Africa's Gombe Reserve. Not only did her animals use rocks, twigs and vegetation as simple tools, but they modified them: for example, stripping a twig of leaves, and breaking it to the right length, so that they could "fish" for termites in the insects' tunnels. Young chimps learn these skills by observing their elders, an example of cultural transmission. And chimpanzees from different areas have distinctly different tool-making cultures.
However, one of the differences between chimp and human culture is that chimps seldom carry tools, or the raw materials for tool making, for any distance. In addition, chimps make tools only immediately before using them. Tools used by early humans were typically worked and reworked at different locations
So is it the complexity of culture that sets humans apart? We think of complex culture as a hallmark of humanity. However, art works, such as jewellery, carving, and cave paintings, do not appear in the record until 30-40,000 years ago. This follows the development of the sophisticated Aurignacian tool kits associated with Cro-Magnon culture. Some authors suggest that the use of highly sophisticated language accompanied this flowering of culture, and marked the appearance of a significant capacity for abstract thought. (This is not to say that earlier humans, and hominins, were not capable of speech.)
Cultural evolution has occurred in different times in different places. This is a reflection both of the time at which different regions of the globe were settled, and also the nature of the biology & geology of an area, which poses constraints on, for example, the domestication of plants & animals. This has had far-reaching consequences on later geopolitical history. (Guns germs & steel)
Tools and tool use
At present the earliest-known evidence of the manufacture and use of tools comes from a 2.5 million-year-old site, possibly associated with Australopithecus garhi. This site contains primitive stone tools, but no hominin remains. Animal bones recovered together with garhi remains, from a nearby site of the same age, appear to show cut marks from stone tools.
These tools predate the better-known Oldowan tool culture associated with Homo habilis. These are often described as "cobble tools", and comprise two main types, core tools and flake tools. Core tools are stones with one or more flakes knocked off one end to give a jagged edge. Flake tools are the flakes removed in producing core tools, and were not modified any further before being used. It's possible that the core "tools" are simply what remained after flake tools had been produced, and that they weren't used to any great extent.
The Oldowan tool culture persisted in Africa for almost a million years. With Homo erectus came the more sophisticated Acheulean toolkit. These tools were more highly modified than the earlier cobble and flake tools, with sharper and straighter edges formed by careful removal of more and smaller flakes. Perhaps the best-known Acheulean tool is the so-called hand axe, a teardrop-shaped implement with a pointed end and sharp sides. We have no way of knowing just how these hand axes were used, but they were probably put to a wide range of uses. Other Acheulean tools included hammers, cleavers, and flake-based tools such as knives (probably held directly in the hand, rather than hafted to a handle).
Erectus was probably the first hominin to leave Africa. Acheulean tools are found in both Europe and Asia. Until recently it was believed that Chinese erectus populations continued to use Oldowan tools, but Acheulean tools dating back 1.3 million years were found in China in 2001.
Along with more sophisticated tools came a change in the foods eaten, and how these foods were obtained. While the australopithecines, and perhaps H. habilis , were essentially vegetarian, meat was a regular part of the erectus diet. Remains from many sites, including Zhoukoudian in China, show that erectus was eating meat on a large scale and from a range of animal species, in addition to a wide variety of plant foods. These animals may have been both scavenged (from other predators) and hunted.
The year-round available of calories from meat would have made it possible for erectus to move from its tropical homeland into temperate regions. Parts of China, for example, experience cold winters, when fresh plant foods are not readily available and meat would be the primary source of calories.
There is also a possible causal link between the marked increase in cranial capacity of Homo erectus - especially the rapid rate of growth of the brain after birth - compared to its predecessors, and the regular presence of meat in erectus diets. The brain is a very fatty organ, and meat is a much better source of the necessary fats than plant foods. The high calorie content of meat is also important, as the brain is a very energy-hungry organ. (And of course, breastfeeding an infant with a rapidly growing brain is energetically very expensive.)
Another leap in tool development came with the Mousterian tool culture, associated with both Neandertals and archaic Homo sapiens . In a significant advance over the Acheulean culture, a stone core was carefully shaped before flakes were struck off it: different core shapes gave different flakes. These flakes could then be further modified for a range of different tasks, and some have a tang at the end that suggested that they were hafted to a wooden or bone handle.
The appearance of modern Homo sapiens saw further innovation with a new group of tool-making styles, collectively known as the Upper Palaeolithic industry. The earliest such tools date from Africa, around 90,000 years ago. The Upper Palaeolithic industry spanned the period 40,000 to 12,000years ago and included the Aurignacian (associated with Neandertals and modern humans), Chatelperronian (used largely by declining European Neandertal groups), Gravettian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian industries. These tools are far more complex than those of the earlier Mousterian culture, and are made of a wider range of materials. They show both regional variation and adaptation to particular needs: fishhooks & harpoon points were first manufactured by Upper Palaeolithic toolmakers, as were needles of ivory and bone.
Other cultural artefacts are associated with the later Gravettian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian tool industries. Ivory beads and "Venus" figurines are associated with Gravettian sites, while necklaces, animal figurines, and symbolic art (you need to click on the title after opening the front page) appeared during the Magdalenian, 18,000 to 12,000 years ago.
This hard evidence of human cultural evolution can be used to infer something about the nature of the human societies producing these artefacts. Needles suggest the manufacture of relatively sophisticated clothing, as does the use of huge quantities of beads to decorate these clothes (found in some grave sites). Palaeoanthropologists have linked the nature of many cave paintings and carvings to the development of various rituals - and also to the development of fluent abstract language. They argue that the complex and often abstract nature of much cave art could not have been developed without an equal ability to communicate. Similarly, the appearance of complex burials at some Upper Palaeolithic sites may imply concerns or beliefs about an afterlife.
Fire
Bones found in the Swartkrans Cave in South Africa, and dating back perhaps 1.5 million years ago, provide some of the earliest evidence for the use of fire. Analysis of the bones showed that they had been heated to the high temperatures normally associated with hearths. (Bush fires reach lower temperatures and do not generate the same changes to the bone.) Two hominins were present in Swartkrans at this time: Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus , and it's not known which species burnt the bones. However, later sites where fire was used are definitely associated with erectus . Hearth sites 790,000 years old, found in Israel, also contain the Acheulean tools produced by erectus.
Prior to these discoveries in Africa and Israel, the earliest site with evidence of regular use of fire was Zhoukoudian (Choukoudian), or "Dragon Bone Hill", near Beijing. Here researchers studying "Peking Man" ( Homo erectus ) found charcoal, charred bones, and rocks cracked by exposure to fire. Many of the bones belonged to large game animals, which may mean that the local erectus population was engaging in organised hunts.
Learning to use fire in a controlled manner was a major step for our ancestors, because it gave them greater control over their environment and also had the potential to make available a far greater range of foods. Fire would not only offer protection from predators, but would also allow its users to survive in much colder environments. In addition, the controlled use of fire is evidence of the ability to plan ahead, and would also have aided social interactions as people gathered round the hearth.
Domestication of Plants and Animals
Both plants and animals were first domesticated by humans in Europe and western Asia. Dogs may have been domesticated as early as 13000 years ago, followed by goats, sheep, pigs and cows (8-10,000 years ago), and horses around 6,000 years ago). Animals suitable for domestication had to be easy to fed, grow fast and breed easily in captivity, have a tractable nature, be unlikely to panic, and have the sort of social hierarchy where humans could slot in as the leaders of the group. A lack of large animals meeting these criteria helps to explain why widespread use of animals for food, fibres, or beasts of burden did not occur in Africa, Australia, or the Americas. (In fact, donkeys are the only domesticated mammal to come from Africa.) This in turn gave European cultures an advantage when they began to move into the other major landmasses and, ultimately, the Pacific.
Domestication of plants appears to have begun in the Fertile Crescent (the region lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now Iraq and Iran), about 10,000 years ago. This saw the beginnings of agriculture, and also of settled civilisations. A hunter-gatherer lifestyle can support only a small number of people in a given area. However, the surpluses of food offered by agriculture can support a larger, settled population, and also allow a division of labour whereby individuals are freed for tasks other than food gathering. Paradoxically, while agriculture allowed more people to settle in one place, this was accompanied by a reduction in their overall health. Skeletons recovered from early cemeteries show that townsfolk were often smaller, and less-well nourished, than hunter-gatherers. This is because, while agriculture certainly provided more calories, the overall quality of the diet was less.
The Middle East was particularly conducive to the development of agriculture because of the large number of plant species with the potential for domestication. The first plants to be domesticated would have been annual plants which bore large seeds or fruits (and so were more attractive to humans), including peas and other legumes, and cereals (derived from wild grasses). Fruits such as apples and olives came later. Rice was domesticated in Asia, while squash, maize and beans were key crops in the Americas. No plants were domesticated in Australia, despite humans having lived there for perhaps 60,000 years (and the only domesticated mammal, the dingo, was brought from Asia).
| Tools and Tool Use | Fire | Domestication of Plants and Animals |
There are many examples of human cultural evolution. They include: tool making, the controlled use of fire, manufacture of shelters and clothing, appearance of art and other non-utilitarian products, development of cooperative hunting behaviour, and domestication of plant and animal species (leading to settled agricultural societies). All of these features allowed humans to have greater control of their environment, rather than responsive to it. Thus, the development of these skills would directly contribute to the survival of individuals (& groups) practising these behaviours. (Cultural evolution is also described as non-biological evolution, since what is transmitted to new generations is changes in learned behaviour patterns. However, any genetic underpinnings to these behaviours would also be passed on.)
Some aspects of cultural evolution are easier to trace than others. Examples of stone tools made by hominin species are relatively common and easily recognised. Tools made of other substances, such as wood or bone, do not survive so well in the stratigraphic record. Changes in behaviour, such as the development of cooperative hunting groups or changes in social structure, leave no direct traces at all and their presence must be inferred from other evidence.
Evidence of developing human culture appears far back in time. Homo habilis was named for its association with the crude cobble tools of the Oldowan culture, and it's possible that Australopithecus garhi and one of the robust australopithecines, A. robustus , were also tool users. What differentiates these very simple, ancient tool-making cultures from the tool manufacture and use practised by modern chimpanzees? In fact, how do we define "culture" in the evolutionary sense?
At the time that H. habilis was discovered, manufacture and use of tools was generally viewed as an exclusively human activity. The Oldowan tools marked the earliest hard evidence of culture in our ancestors. We now know that many different animals use tools. Perhaps the best-known example is that of chimpanzees. Jane Goodall first documented this in her studies of wild chimpanzees in Africa's Gombe Reserve. Not only did her animals use rocks, twigs and vegetation as simple tools, but they modified them: for example, stripping a twig of leaves, and breaking it to the right length, so that they could "fish" for termites in the insects' tunnels. Young chimps learn these skills by observing their elders, an example of cultural transmission. And chimpanzees from different areas have distinctly different tool-making cultures.
However, one of the differences between chimp and human culture is that chimps seldom carry tools, or the raw materials for tool making, for any distance. In addition, chimps make tools only immediately before using them. Tools used by early humans were typically worked and reworked at different locations
So is it the complexity of culture that sets humans apart? We think of complex culture as a hallmark of humanity. However, art works, such as jewellery, carving, and cave paintings, do not appear in the record until 30-40,000 years ago. This follows the development of the sophisticated Aurignacian tool kits associated with Cro-Magnon culture. Some authors suggest that the use of highly sophisticated language accompanied this flowering of culture, and marked the appearance of a significant capacity for abstract thought. (This is not to say that earlier humans, and hominins, were not capable of speech.)
Cultural evolution has occurred in different times in different places. This is a reflection both of the time at which different regions of the globe were settled, and also the nature of the biology & geology of an area, which poses constraints on, for example, the domestication of plants & animals. This has had far-reaching consequences on later geopolitical history. (Guns germs & steel)
Tools and tool use
At present the earliest-known evidence of the manufacture and use of tools comes from a 2.5 million-year-old site, possibly associated with Australopithecus garhi. This site contains primitive stone tools, but no hominin remains. Animal bones recovered together with garhi remains, from a nearby site of the same age, appear to show cut marks from stone tools.
These tools predate the better-known Oldowan tool culture associated with Homo habilis. These are often described as "cobble tools", and comprise two main types, core tools and flake tools. Core tools are stones with one or more flakes knocked off one end to give a jagged edge. Flake tools are the flakes removed in producing core tools, and were not modified any further before being used. It's possible that the core "tools" are simply what remained after flake tools had been produced, and that they weren't used to any great extent.
The Oldowan tool culture persisted in Africa for almost a million years. With Homo erectus came the more sophisticated Acheulean toolkit. These tools were more highly modified than the earlier cobble and flake tools, with sharper and straighter edges formed by careful removal of more and smaller flakes. Perhaps the best-known Acheulean tool is the so-called hand axe, a teardrop-shaped implement with a pointed end and sharp sides. We have no way of knowing just how these hand axes were used, but they were probably put to a wide range of uses. Other Acheulean tools included hammers, cleavers, and flake-based tools such as knives (probably held directly in the hand, rather than hafted to a handle).
Erectus was probably the first hominin to leave Africa. Acheulean tools are found in both Europe and Asia. Until recently it was believed that Chinese erectus populations continued to use Oldowan tools, but Acheulean tools dating back 1.3 million years were found in China in 2001.
Along with more sophisticated tools came a change in the foods eaten, and how these foods were obtained. While the australopithecines, and perhaps H. habilis , were essentially vegetarian, meat was a regular part of the erectus diet. Remains from many sites, including Zhoukoudian in China, show that erectus was eating meat on a large scale and from a range of animal species, in addition to a wide variety of plant foods. These animals may have been both scavenged (from other predators) and hunted.
The year-round available of calories from meat would have made it possible for erectus to move from its tropical homeland into temperate regions. Parts of China, for example, experience cold winters, when fresh plant foods are not readily available and meat would be the primary source of calories.
There is also a possible causal link between the marked increase in cranial capacity of Homo erectus - especially the rapid rate of growth of the brain after birth - compared to its predecessors, and the regular presence of meat in erectus diets. The brain is a very fatty organ, and meat is a much better source of the necessary fats than plant foods. The high calorie content of meat is also important, as the brain is a very energy-hungry organ. (And of course, breastfeeding an infant with a rapidly growing brain is energetically very expensive.)
Another leap in tool development came with the Mousterian tool culture, associated with both Neandertals and archaic Homo sapiens . In a significant advance over the Acheulean culture, a stone core was carefully shaped before flakes were struck off it: different core shapes gave different flakes. These flakes could then be further modified for a range of different tasks, and some have a tang at the end that suggested that they were hafted to a wooden or bone handle.
The appearance of modern Homo sapiens saw further innovation with a new group of tool-making styles, collectively known as the Upper Palaeolithic industry. The earliest such tools date from Africa, around 90,000 years ago. The Upper Palaeolithic industry spanned the period 40,000 to 12,000years ago and included the Aurignacian (associated with Neandertals and modern humans), Chatelperronian (used largely by declining European Neandertal groups), Gravettian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian industries. These tools are far more complex than those of the earlier Mousterian culture, and are made of a wider range of materials. They show both regional variation and adaptation to particular needs: fishhooks & harpoon points were first manufactured by Upper Palaeolithic toolmakers, as were needles of ivory and bone.
Other cultural artefacts are associated with the later Gravettian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian tool industries. Ivory beads and "Venus" figurines are associated with Gravettian sites, while necklaces, animal figurines, and symbolic art (you need to click on the title after opening the front page) appeared during the Magdalenian, 18,000 to 12,000 years ago.
This hard evidence of human cultural evolution can be used to infer something about the nature of the human societies producing these artefacts. Needles suggest the manufacture of relatively sophisticated clothing, as does the use of huge quantities of beads to decorate these clothes (found in some grave sites). Palaeoanthropologists have linked the nature of many cave paintings and carvings to the development of various rituals - and also to the development of fluent abstract language. They argue that the complex and often abstract nature of much cave art could not have been developed without an equal ability to communicate. Similarly, the appearance of complex burials at some Upper Palaeolithic sites may imply concerns or beliefs about an afterlife.
Fire
Bones found in the Swartkrans Cave in South Africa, and dating back perhaps 1.5 million years ago, provide some of the earliest evidence for the use of fire. Analysis of the bones showed that they had been heated to the high temperatures normally associated with hearths. (Bush fires reach lower temperatures and do not generate the same changes to the bone.) Two hominins were present in Swartkrans at this time: Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus , and it's not known which species burnt the bones. However, later sites where fire was used are definitely associated with erectus . Hearth sites 790,000 years old, found in Israel, also contain the Acheulean tools produced by erectus.
Prior to these discoveries in Africa and Israel, the earliest site with evidence of regular use of fire was Zhoukoudian (Choukoudian), or "Dragon Bone Hill", near Beijing. Here researchers studying "Peking Man" ( Homo erectus ) found charcoal, charred bones, and rocks cracked by exposure to fire. Many of the bones belonged to large game animals, which may mean that the local erectus population was engaging in organised hunts.
Learning to use fire in a controlled manner was a major step for our ancestors, because it gave them greater control over their environment and also had the potential to make available a far greater range of foods. Fire would not only offer protection from predators, but would also allow its users to survive in much colder environments. In addition, the controlled use of fire is evidence of the ability to plan ahead, and would also have aided social interactions as people gathered round the hearth.
Domestication of Plants and Animals
Both plants and animals were first domesticated by humans in Europe and western Asia. Dogs may have been domesticated as early as 13000 years ago, followed by goats, sheep, pigs and cows (8-10,000 years ago), and horses around 6,000 years ago). Animals suitable for domestication had to be easy to fed, grow fast and breed easily in captivity, have a tractable nature, be unlikely to panic, and have the sort of social hierarchy where humans could slot in as the leaders of the group. A lack of large animals meeting these criteria helps to explain why widespread use of animals for food, fibres, or beasts of burden did not occur in Africa, Australia, or the Americas. (In fact, donkeys are the only domesticated mammal to come from Africa.) This in turn gave European cultures an advantage when they began to move into the other major landmasses and, ultimately, the Pacific.
Domestication of plants appears to have begun in the Fertile Crescent (the region lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now Iraq and Iran), about 10,000 years ago. This saw the beginnings of agriculture, and also of settled civilisations. A hunter-gatherer lifestyle can support only a small number of people in a given area. However, the surpluses of food offered by agriculture can support a larger, settled population, and also allow a division of labour whereby individuals are freed for tasks other than food gathering. Paradoxically, while agriculture allowed more people to settle in one place, this was accompanied by a reduction in their overall health. Skeletons recovered from early cemeteries show that townsfolk were often smaller, and less-well nourished, than hunter-gatherers. This is because, while agriculture certainly provided more calories, the overall quality of the diet was less.
The Middle East was particularly conducive to the development of agriculture because of the large number of plant species with the potential for domestication. The first plants to be domesticated would have been annual plants which bore large seeds or fruits (and so were more attractive to humans), including peas and other legumes, and cereals (derived from wild grasses). Fruits such as apples and olives came later. Rice was domesticated in Asia, while squash, maize and beans were key crops in the Americas. No plants were domesticated in Australia, despite humans having lived there for perhaps 60,000 years (and the only domesticated mammal, the dingo, was brought from Asia).