# The history of human emotions, from the Paleolithic to the present. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 25, 2011, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-human-emotions-from-the-paleolithic-to-the-present/590270 "2011-07-25T14:50:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2011, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-human-emotions-from-the-paleolithic-to-the-present/590270/21 "2011-07-25T22:31:48Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > We do know that the toolkit of Neandertals was remarkably stable over tens of thousands of years. They made the exact same stone tools the exact same way over and over again. But modern humans don’t do that. Once modern humans arrived we see all sorts of different methods of making stone tools which changed over and over. Except that in places like Australia the toolkit also didn’t change for tens of thousands of years. In the most extreme cases the toolkit actually _regressed_ to pre-Sapiens levels, something never seen amongst Neanderthals. I’ve heard this argument about both Neanderthals and Erestcus. But it doesn’t hold water once you realise that it is equally true of semi-isolated Sapiens populations. The reason why sapiens toolkits were so plastic seems to have been entirely attributable to the lack of isolation. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-human-emotions-from-the-paleolithic-to-the-present/590270/22 "2011-07-25T22:43:39Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The reason why sapiens toolkits were so plastic seems to have been entirely attributable to the lack of isolation. Ah, the “Hey, that’s cool what you did there!” hypothesis. ---
**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:** [July 25, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-human-emotions-from-the-paleolithic-to-the-present/590270/23 "2011-07-25T22:54:14Z")
And whenever sapiens and neanderthal populations came into contact, the neanderthals readily adopted the tools the sapiens were using. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-human-emotions-from-the-paleolithic-to-the-present/590270/24 "2011-07-26T14:36:20Z")
Absolutely top-notch answers so far! Some comments: > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Jaynes doesn’t present any hard evidence, and there would not appear to be any way to get hard evidence, putting the thesis outside of science as we practice it. You might call it a work of literary criticism, since all he can do is examine early texts. Today we have far more and far earlier texts than he had access to in 1976. History is a longer continuum than he gave credit for. You’re right, of course, that “far more and far earlier texts than he [Jaynes] had access to in 1976” have been uncovered in the meanwhile, and of course massive progress has been made in pretty much every relevant field: Archeology, psychology, neurology, etc., etc., _possibly_ making Jaynes obsolete once and for all. Interestingly, however, Jaynes’ contemporary followers have apparently put together a volume of essays trying to reconcile Jaynes’ theories with the latest developments in the relevant fields. I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, but it’s on my reading list. > [@njtt](#): > > Furthermore, Jaynes is far from the only person to have studied these issues. For instance, an earlier (and IMHO less loopy) attempt along these lines is Bruno Snell’s _[The discovery of the mind: in Greek philosophy and literature](http://books.google.com/books?id=9wagIUQ81EkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false)_. I had not heard of Snell’s book, for some reason, but it, too, is now on my reading list. Thanks for the tip! ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-human-emotions-from-the-paleolithic-to-the-present/590270/25 "2011-07-26T16:59:46Z")
As a sidenote, I’ll add that the book that got me thinking about all this in the first place was E. R. Dodds’ _The Greeks and the Irrational_. According to Prof. Dodds, the concept of a “personality,” equipped with a will and capable of introspection and reminiscence, simply did not exist to the Homeric Greeks (and presumably not at any point in history before them, either). Granted, the book came out way back in _1951_, so other scholars might well have proven Prof. Dodds wrong by now. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-human-emotions-from-the-paleolithic-to-the-present/590270/26 "2011-07-29T15:38:54Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Three comments about Jaynes’ thesis: > > 1. I do not believe it is “loopy.” He does have a variety of supporting evidence. It sounds “loopy” in part because of the exaggerated way he phrases it, writing “early Bronze age men lacked subjective consciousness” rather than that those “men tended to have a community-oriented ‘religion’” or some such. > 2. I don’t think Jaynes’ consciousness has that much to do with emotion. > 3. It is incorrect to equate Jaynes’ “bicameral mind” with the mind of Paleolithic man. Instead bicameralism arose with early civilization. I agree wholeheartedly on points 2 and 3, but not – at least not entirely – on point 1. Jaynes writes that Bronze age men lacked subjective consciousness because he believes that Bronze age men lacked subjective consciousness. It’s not simply an “exaggerated way of phrasing it” – it is, very precisely, what Jaynes actually believed. According to Jaynes, instead of weighing the pros and cons of different options against each others and consciously making subjective decisions, bicameral men blindly, immediately and unquestioningly followed what they believed were “the voices of the gods.” These commanding “voices” were, however, in fact nothing but aural hallucinations originating in Wernicke’s area of the brain, triggered through overwhelming stress whenever the situation called for a decision to be made. If this sounds more like mental illness than anything else, well – Jaynes himself makes a direct connection to schizophrenia. So, yes: According to Jaynes, what he terms “bicameral men” – the warriors of the Iliad, and the builders of the pyramids – were one and all what we today would term schizophrenics. Loopy? Yes, no, perhaps – in any case, it’s what Jaynes claimed was the truth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-human-emotions-from-the-paleolithic-to-the-present/590270.md?page=1)