# Do we know what happened to man? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 6, 2017, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131 "2017-10-06T19:19:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/21 "2017-10-08T00:57:34Z")
How many older folks do you know? Because my mom is from 1940, and she’s never gotten into texting and Facebooking, nor have many of her contemporaries. And she’s lived through all of the intervening years. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/22 "2017-10-08T01:17:10Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I think that’s too strong a statement: there are certainly some evolutionary changes in humans over the last 10,000 years, let alone the past 100,000. We’re healthier, taller, prettier, and, yes, a little smarter. > > One amusing thing is that our skulls have thinner bones than in times past: we kill enough of each other with guns and swords, and fewer of each other with clubs, so as to have made thick skulls less of a benefit. > > I wonder if the invention of writing has had a similar effect on our memories? Well, sort of. According to all that I’ve read, Cro magnon humans were anatomically the same as we are. And they were around for at least the last 40,000 years. It’s a bit dicey to be sure, because it’s only a very tiny minority of bodies that remain sufficiently intact through the ages for us to find and study them now. There is ESPECIALLY no evidence to support a claim that we are “smarter.” As for the thickness of skulls, all that MIGHT be, is that the only skulls that we find to STUDY now, are the extra thick ones. Plus, evolution does’t work fast enough for changes in weapons to affect things, and more to the point, that’s not how evolution even takes place. We don’t “lose” characteristics, simply because we aren’t “using” them. They have to be driven out of us, by a combination of mutation and death-at-an-early-age. Goodness knows, if all there were to evolution was “use it or lose it,” we’d have been done with most of our hair a long time ago, among other things. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/23 "2017-10-08T01:51:41Z")
What gets me is the sheer volume of technological advancement you don’t even consider. Clean water, economic models, cultural mores, it goes far beyond the number of radios in your cellphone (more than a dozen, last I thought about it). And things are progressing on different fronts at such a pace that it’s hard to fathom. You look at the technologies that cloud computing enables and completely miss how far we’re advancing in internal combustion engines, which also misses the improvements in textiles and fabrics and social engineering. Bang two rocks together and end up with law being created due to Uber and Lyft upsetting a city’s transportation-for hire economy. The other effect is that, due to really effective communications, a relatively small percentage of people discovering things can end up benefiting billions of people NOT discovering things. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/24 "2017-10-08T01:55:35Z")
> [@igor\_frankensteen](#): > > . . . Plus, evolution does’t work fast enough for changes in weapons to affect things, and more to the point, that’s not how evolution even takes place. We don’t “lose” characteristics, simply because we aren’t “using” them. They have to be driven out of us, by a combination of mutation and death-at-an-early-age. Goodness knows, if all there were to evolution was “use it or lose it,” we’d have been done with most of our hair a long time ago, among other things. I was always taught that if a useless trait is biologically expensive, then it will (likely) be lost by competition with other individuals who use that energy for something more conducive to survival. Hair isn’t all that expensive. (Of course, a thick skull isn’t really either…) ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/25 "2017-10-08T02:05:44Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > My understanding is that an agricultural lifestyle left LESS free time than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. > > The needs of agriculture may themselves have led to greater knowledge–I feel sure that the people who turned teosinte into corn must have learned a great deal about plant breeding, and implicitly, about genetics. I wonder if the grinding wheel came first, and then someone had the inspiration to attach two of them to an axle… Bam… Free time! no more walking everywhere! > [@Chronos](#): > > How many older folks do you know? Because my mom is from 1940, and she’s never gotten into texting and Facebooking, nor have many of her contemporaries. And she’s lived through all of the intervening years. My mother came along slowly, but she had a computer with XPpro & Office 7 that I built her in 2005, although no internet at home, but she would go to the library and use the computers there for internet. She was just somehow opposed to paying for it. She had an iPhone, and was big on texting and Facetime. She wouldn’t do Facebook, but that was a question of privacy. Personally, I don’t blame her. I keep my Facebook profile low. My mother was still working at the university when email became necessary, so she learned it, but didn’t like it. She still kept up long corresponces with her friends overseas. She passed away just about six weeks ago at 77. She was pretty plugged in for 77. She was in control. She tried it all: she tried Facebook, Skype, home email, and various other ways of using he phone, her laptop, and her computer, and decided what she wanted. She wanted text, email, Facetime, and word processing in several alphabets, which she managed to figure out how to use. And she wanted a laser printed that would print images and any alphabet she typed. She had all that, and was happy. Just a datapoint. ---
**Author:** ![dstarfire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dstarfire/32/5762_2.png) [@dstarfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dstarfire)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/26 "2017-10-08T02:40:37Z")
Don’t forget to account for perspective. We only have the very broad strokes of what happened hundreds and thousands of years ago, so we only see very large changes (which are uncommon, by definition) in a vague time period. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/27 "2017-10-08T04:00:52Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > My understanding is that an agricultural lifestyle left LESS free time than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle . . . . I’ve heard a few people speculate that beer may have been a motivating factor for the beginning of agriculture. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/28 "2017-10-08T12:14:41Z")
Oh, certainly, there are also older folks who do keep up: Not everyone is like my mother. But those are still people who lived through the intervening years, and who weren’t just plucked out of time. > [@](#): > > Quoth **Unintentionally Blank** : > > Clean water, economic models, cultural mores, it goes far beyond the number of radios in your cellphone (more than a dozen, last I thought about it). I can think of five: Cell, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and FM. What are the others? ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/29 "2017-10-08T13:11:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > How many older folks do you know? Because my mom is from 1940, and she’s never gotten into texting and Facebooking, nor have many of her contemporaries. And she’s lived through all of the intervening years. My mother is 72, her and all of her friends are very active on Facebook and text like there is no tomorrow. That said, I think age changes the dynamic a bit. If you took a 20-something year old from the 1800’s and placed her in today’s times, she gonna want to do what other people her age are doing. So there’s a strong impetus for her to learn how to FB and text. ETA: Looking at my FB friends: Lots of old geezers on there. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/30 "2017-10-08T14:11:15Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Oh, certainly, there are also older folks who do keep up: Not everyone is like my mother. But those are still people who lived through the intervening years, and who weren’t just plucked out of time. > I can think of five: Cell, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and FM. What are the others? No FM, but WiFi is 2.5 GHz and 5, there’s NFC, and Cellphones cover a dozen or so frequencies over at least two standards, plus 2g,3g, 4g and LTE ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/31 "2017-10-08T14:12:52Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Oh, certainly, there are also older folks who do keep up: Not everyone is like my mother. But those are still people who lived through the intervening years, and who weren’t just plucked out of time. > I can think of five: Cell, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and FM. What are the others? No FM, but WiFi is 2.5 GHz and 5 (b, g, ac, and MIMO), there’s NFC, and Cellphones cover a dozen or so frequencies over at least two standards, plus 2g,3g, 4g and LTE So, lots of radios with lots of standards supported) ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/32 "2017-10-08T15:23:05Z")
Imagine any sentient species that develops anywhere in the Universe. _All_ of them could look back and wonder if anything “magical” happened to suddenly advance their progress after a long time of little progress. It’ll probably be some combination of language, agriculture, advanced tool making, etc. And of course someone checking out the big brain on Brad. Nothing magical about it at all. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/33 "2017-10-08T22:51:45Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Imagine any sentient species that develops anywhere in the Universe. > > _All_ of them could look back and wonder if anything “magical” happened to suddenly advance their progress after a long time of little progress. > > It’ll probably be some combination of language, agriculture, advanced tool making, etc. And of course someone checking out the big brain on Brad. > > Nothing magical about it at all. That’s it. Rapid changes occur for entirely non-magic reasons. Looking back, steam engine principles were discovered during the time of the Greek Empire. But the many other industries and resources required to translate that into railroad systems didn’t show up until many centuries later. Hence the long lead up to the Industrial Revolution. Mechanical computers were also created back in the pre-industrial age, but the Computer Age had to wait until enough people could afford them, for all the resulting uses for computers could bring other accomplishments to fruition. There have been a few educational shows that almost told the story of the history of technological advance in the way that’s needed to grasp all this, but none have really gotten all the way yet. One that came closer a while back, explored the long series of inventions and discoveries that were required by a given modern invention that everyone uses. It fell short, because it started in the present and worked it’s way back, looking at connections (which is what I think the show was called, actually). Anyway, there’s no indication that humans as critters, suddenly became smarter. Instead, the rate of brilliance in individuals remained constant, but the number of brilliant people who were able (due to a ton of other factors) to bring their inventiveness to bear on the problems of the day, and the ability of OTHER brilliant people to find out and build on their fellow smart guy stuff, expanded tremendously. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/34 "2017-10-08T22:57:37Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I was always taught that if a useless trait is biologically expensive, then it will (likely) be lost by competition with other individuals who use that energy for something more conducive to survival. > > Hair isn’t all that expensive. > > (Of course, a thick skull isn’t really either…) yeah, there’s some truth in that, but if you think it through, you can realize that the amount of “competition energy” or “biological expense” involved with anything has to be VERY VERY high, before it has an effect. Plus, it has to have that effect before the age of procreation, as well as cause the death of the individuals who have the trait by that time. The “breakover point” of procreation is huge in understanding evolution. Anything that only shows up AFTER A CREATURE HAS ALREADY SPAWNED, isn’t going to be selected out of existence. This is no doubt why, though very few women are attracted to lots of hair in an old guy’s ears and nose, that nevertheless it has not faded from the gene pool. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/35 "2017-10-08T23:01:39Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I wonder if the grinding wheel came first, and then someone had the inspiration to attach two of them to an axle… > > Bam… Free time! no more walking everywhere! It might have. The wheel was around before wheeled transport, and many Native Americans knew about the wheel, but had not yet come up with the cart. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2017, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/36 "2017-10-08T23:22:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **igor frankenstein** : > > The “breakover point” of procreation is huge in understanding evolution. Anything that only shows up AFTER A CREATURE HAS ALREADY SPAWNED, isn’t going to be selected out of existence. Well, almost true. In a very few species (most notably humans), the old individuals can still contribute to the success of their descendants even well after they’ve stopped personally reproducing. That’s presumably why we live so much longer than other mammals. **Unintentionally Blank** , I’m not sure I would count the different bands as different radios, any more than I’d say that a car stero has ten radios because it can tune in ten different stations. But my phone, at least, does have an FM radio, and it’s a cheap one, even (you need headphones plugged in to act as an antenna). ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/37 "2017-10-09T01:43:25Z")
> [@igor\_frankensteen](#): > > . . . Anything that only shows up AFTER A CREATURE HAS ALREADY SPAWNED, isn’t going to be selected out of existence. . . . I know this has to be true…it’s almost tautological. But I’ve wondered for years… In mammals, there is a grace we sometimes receive near the point of death, where endorphins (?) flood our brains, easing our passing. When people die from ghastly massive injuries, sometimes (not always) this endorphin drugging lets them die peacefully. How in the dickens could something like that evolve? ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/38 "2017-10-09T04:07:33Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **Unintentionally Blank** , I’m not sure I would count the different bands as different radios, any more than I’d say that a car stero has ten radios because it can tune in ten different stations. But my phone, at least, does have an FM radio, and it’s a cheap one, even (you need headphones plugged in to act as an antenna). [“As of 2008, a feature rich phone could have over 10 radios”](http://www.frost.com/sublib/display-market-insight.do?id=105919989) But that’s incidental to the main point, that additive development is doing fantastic things at such a rapid pace that I wondered if it could be triggered by a watershed event or skill. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/39 "2017-10-09T05:00:15Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > There are some similarities, but so what? They split off from their Asian roots relatively recently. > Who presumes that? There are populations that can be found in South Asia (like the Andaman Islanders) that look superficially like Africans, but an Australian Aboriginal does not look like an African, nor is there any reason to think they look like Africans looked 60k or 100k years ago. They have lived and adapted to life in Australia for tens of thousand of years. > > We don’t know for sure what we looked like when the Out-of-Africa folks first left Africa some 70k years ago, but we almost certainly did not develop the different racial characteristics common today until some time after that. The idea that we haven’t changed as a species in the last 100K years, as put forth by the poster I was responding to is nonsense. Maybe it’s raceist - but I don’t think so - to generalize. The point is, there are very basic similarities between Aborigines and sub-Sahara Africans (assuming you can really generalize about either group, any more than you can generalize about South Asians, Orientals, or Europeans.) Supposedly, the split happened about 45,000 to 65,000 years ago. The genetic studies I’ve read about said the native Americans split off from Siberians about 25,000 years ago. But sometime between 70,000 years ago and the present, melanin-challenged European races evolved. We can generalize about facial features and pigmentation levels - making a wild-ass guess that strong pigmentation was a natural reaction to losing body hair in a tropical sunny climate. But the fact that human racial types have not changed significantly in 70,000 years, and even less so in 25,000 years despite isolation - gives a rough idea how slowly humans evolve. the most significant change appears to have been melanin levels in Siberians/Mongolians and Europeans as they moved away from areas of strong sunlight. (One suggestion I read was this was due to the need to generate vitamin D in the skin - less melanin blocks the sunlight less). Of course, any speculation on, say, melanin levels of 70,000 year old humans is pure speculation, but Occam’s Razor suggests the simplest explanation is they had sufficient pigment to protect themselves from the sun. * * * A characteristic can disappear if it is sufficiently expensive that it impedes survival and reproduction; but also, if a characteristic is irrelevant then alternative characteristics can spread through the gene pool by randomness; you’ve removed the incentive for that characteristic. A thick skull is less relevant in an age of spears and arrows that can hit from a distance, making survival in club-to-head combat less important. People with thick skulls aren’t more disadvantaged (at least not a lot - cue political joke here) but the advantage is gone, so people with thinner skulls also survive to breed. Also as brains become larger, less skull means more brain, and thinner skulls are more flexible squeezing through the birth canal. * * * > [@](#): > > In mammals, there is a grace we sometimes receive near the point of death, where endorphins (?) flood our brains, easing our passing. When people die from ghastly massive injuries, sometimes (not always) this endorphin drugging lets them die peacefully. > > How in the dickens could something like that evolve? Well, most such evolutionary arguments are “just so stories”, pure fantasy. But a person dying who makes a lot of noise attracts predators to the whole tribe, including the dying creature’s descendants. Assuming this bit about endorphins is true… plus, massive pain triggers endorphins anyway, dying or not. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131/40 "2017-10-09T06:15:56Z")
Colin Renfrew calls this the ‘Sapient Paradox’; modern man appeared 100,000 years ago (the date keeps getting put back- Renfrew tends to talk about 70,000 years, but that is already out of date), but modern technology and civilisation only started to appear 10,000 years ago. This review includes some interesting comments, reflecting some comments in this thread. > **[The sapient paradox: can cognitive neuroscience solve it?](https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/132/3/820/337382)** > > What makes the human mind unique? One answer would be our particular kind of culture, which might be called ‘mindsharing’ culture. Human beings are not onl > [@](#): > > If human beings were biologically modern 70 000 years ago, why the long delay before this cultural potential was realized? One might be tempted to invoke climate as an excuse. The most recent Ice Age effectively prevented the development of agriculture until about 12 000 years ago. But once nature gave us a break, so to speak, we quickly domesticated plants and animals, and moved into larger, more stable communities in regions of the planet favourable to this development. Thus, one solution to Renfrew’s paradox may be that there is no paradox. and > [@](#): > > Renfrew thinks that the interaction between material culture and the brain accounts for a great deal about the acceleration of the cognitive-cultural evolution of humans, a position that I strongly support. Of course, the biological potential had to be there, in the form of increased brain plasticity and a capacity for learning and communication. But humanity could not have reached its present levels of cultural change without first advancing the technology of symbolic communication. Renfrew raises many questions that should concern neuroscientists. How does culture influence brain development? What are the key neural components of the human brain-culture interface, and of our social mind-set? What detailed causal chains enable the cognitive-cultural chemistry of sapient society to work? More urgently, perhaps: how might they be optimized? Basically technological culture has its own, independent evolution, facilitated by and affecting the human mind and its potential. This interaction will continue to increase in scope and complexity for the foreseeable future. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-know-what-happened-to-man/798131.md?page=3)