According to scholar Richard G. Klein (see video below), by about 50,000 years ago, a major change had occurred in human behavior (described as behavioral modernity, the great leap forward, or the mind’s big bang). Suddenly, the number of artifacts humans could make had exploded, suggesting an increase in behavioral plasticity.
According to Klein, before 50,000 years ago, virtually everyone thought you could only make artifacts out of stone. After 50,000 years ago, they suddenly realized you could use bone, ivory, antler or shell.
Before 50,000 years ago, people didn’t spatially organize their living areas. In other words, they would cook, clean, eat, etc, everywhere in their living space. After 50,000 years ago, people suddenly realized they could divide their space into a cooking area, and eating area, a cleaning area, etc.
Before 50,000 years ago, humans buried their dead only to dispose of the corpse. After 50,000 years ago, burials suddenly became ritualistic and ceremonial.
Before 50,000 years ago, humans didn’t produce art. After 50,000 years ago, art becomes common.
Before 50,000 years ago, humans didn’t fish and their hunting techniques were less efficient. After 50,000 years ago fishing becomes common and hunting becomes efficient.
How do we explain this? It’s not as if we suddenly evolved into a new species 50,000 years ago. Indeed in another youtube video, Klein tells some university students that if a human from a 100,000 years ago walked into the university lecture hall, you wouldn’t notice anything different about them. The only you thing he said might notice is that person’s really well built.
However Klein believes that sometime around 50,000 years ago, a genetic mutation occurred that suddenly made humans so much smarter allowing them to rapidly spread out of Africa and replace all the other living “humans” so completely.
Klein is not the only one who believes something like this. Geneticist Spencer Wells says in his TED talk (see the 14 minute mark of video below), that from 1 million years ago, to about 65,000 years (a similar date to Klein’s 50,000 BP, though some scientists put the date as early as 80,000 years ago), there’s a long period of cultural stasis where stone tools and other artifacts shows virtually no improvement. Then suddenly after 65,000 years ago, the archeological record shows radical improvement. Wells believes this was because fully complex language began to appear around that time.
In a previous post, I noted that the kind of stone tool Homo Erectus made indicated an IQ of 55, and yet according to Wells, the quality of said tools did not improve until after 65,000 years ago. Does that imply that big brained anatomically modern humans still had an IQ of 55? Why did brain size increase so dramatically if it wasn’t adding anything to our intelligence and if it was adding something to our intelligence, why weren’t our tools improving?
It’s almost as if brain size was increasing in anticipation of that sudden mutation that would suddenly allow us to use it, like a sudden flash of lightening. Of course evolution can’t anticipate, unless you believe in intelligent design. As one documentary put it, it was like humans were suddenly touched by the hand of God. As an atheist I reject all that.
The question remains: what was the average IQ of anatomically modern humans (AMH) who were not yet behaviorally modern? I have previously estimated that the average IQ of Homo Erectus to be 55 and that the most primitive contemporary human races (i.e. bushmen, pygmies, australoids) have a genetic IQ of 70. If we assume the early AMH people were half way between Erectus and Bushmen, that would imply an IQ of 63, and that this behavioral modernity mutation added 7 points.
But 7 points doesn’t sound like enough to produce this huge cultural leap scientists describe. So either Homo Erectus has a much lower IQ than I think or bushmen have a much higher IQ than I’ve given them credit for, or early AMH was much closer to Erectus than Bushmen, despite their modern brain size.
Of course there’s also the possibility that behavioral modernity was caused by a mutation unrelated to intelligence (perhaps the position of the larynx in the throat changed improving speaking efficiency) or perhaps it was not a genetic change at all, but a breakthrough in cultural evolution. In other words, we may have had fully human intelligence since 200,000 years ago when AMH first appeared, but it took until 65,000 years ago for culture to evolve to the point of symbolic behavior. But 135,000 years is a long time for an ability to remain dormant.
Imagine if we took a bunch of modern normal babies from any human race and had the raised from birth in the jungle by chimps with no access to human language or culture. Assuming some of them survived long enough to reproduce in the jungle, how long would it take for their descendants to show behavioral modernity? I can’t imagine it taking 135,000 years.
Pumpkin Person 
“sometime around 50,000 years ago, a genetic mutation occurred that suddenly made humans so much smarter allowing them to rapidly spread out of Africa”
The genesis of white flight.
Cept whites weren’t around then.
I understand that, just wanted to have a laugh at the expense of WNs.
The genesis of people moving out of black neighborhoods, even if the migrants themselves were still black.
“even if the migrants themselves were still black”
They still do if they have the financial resources.
“perhaps it was not a genetic change at all, but a breakthrough in cultural evolution. In other words, we may have had fully human intelligence since 200,000 years ago when AMH first appeared, but it took until 65,000 years ago for culture to evolve to the point of symbolic behavior.”
I go with culture, which stimulated IQ growth, which stimulated culture, which ….
How many different people came up with the idea of a wheel or a fish hook only to have that bit of culture die with that person or family group?
The wheel and many other tools are so freaking obvious to us today, but look at how many thousands of years it took for AMHs to come up with them and pass them on to a group that survived long enough to keep passing it on.
Well, the reason some scientists think it was a brain mutation is that the dramatic jump in culture seemed to have happened so suddenly.
Like the cultural equivalent of punctuated equilibrium.
Aren’t we talking about a jump in IQ? Isn’t everything pointing to many thousands of alleles that increase IQ? I guess it is how we delimit suddenly. Once we got to the point where we could pass the culture on to the next generations, beneficial changes could have kicked into overdrive.
”However Klein believes that sometime around 50,000 years ago, a genetic mutation occurred that suddenly made humans so much smarter allowing them to rapidly spread out of Africa and replace all the other living “humans” so completely.”
Just what happened with europeans ”recently” (1500-1950)**
I thought pre-historic humans were very curious too*
PP,
you know where Kanazawa theory was based*
Birds with bigger brains are more likely to search for alternative routes flights.
“However Klein believes that sometime around 50,000 years ago, a genetic mutation occurred that suddenly made humans so much smarter allowing them to rapidly spread out of Africa and replace all the other living “humans” so completely.”
Conjecture. You can’t say definitively that this was a cause.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2015/12/02/genetic-reasons-for-human-migration/
RR,
amerindians have the highest % of ”novelty/high risk behavior” DRD4 but they don’t appear to be very ”open-minded” or ”more creative” isn’t* At least in their natural habitat.
Which Natives are you talking about? The allele correlates with miles traveled. The Central and South American Indians were pretty damn creative.
about most of them…
most of human groups are pretty damn creative, look to their cultures…
but i’m talking about modern ones.
”The allele correlates with miles traveled.”
DRD4 seems correlated with a lot of different behaviors and epistasis effect also need to be analysed.
Intelligence seems have a central role in the survive in the natural world… whatever for what the living beings are evolving (don’t confuse with devolving, dead end paths… even to the dead ends) is to increase their intelligence but not exactly by individual adaptation to the new environmental demands but for collective changes via selective pressures, yup, nature is nasty. or not…just bubblebable.
and human artificial environments are par excellence anti-natural, i mean, not exactly select for ”ideal’ intelligence even because it’s a evident atomization of the natural world.
You do look for stuff to argue about. Nowhere in the article does he state that these ideas are definitive. The entire article is peppered with believes and perhapses.
I do look for stuff to argue about as it keeps both parties sharp and always learning something new. Just showing why people migrated, which was caused by a differing allele.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/26/homosexuality-evolution-social-bonding_n_6218406.html?cps=gravity
If i understand it correctly, this is not the origin of homossexuality but how homossexuality or better non-heterossexual behavior can be useful.
Indeed ALL of behavioral traits, before to have a possible/identifiable usefullness, have none…
”Homossexuality EVOLVED to…”
wrong use of words.
Homossexuality/Non-heterossexuality don’t necessarily evolved/has been selected.
Other two indirect ”advantages” or surplus-consequences of homossexuality/non-heterossexuality
– man stop to look just for woman beauty (breats or asshes levels) and start to think in other non-directly sexually attractive traits, intelligence for example…
– man become less violent with more selection of non-very criminal man…
or more emotional/less territorial (at reasonable levels seems perfect)…
– man become more attractive in their appearence or diversely attractive with more mix between feminine and masculine traits…
– people who don’t think crucially in social ways are more prone to think about other aspects of existence and sometimes sexual ab-norm-alities can help in this task…
…
interesting how iffen comments before peepee even made her post.
Interesting how batshit crazy you are. It’s not possible to comment on a post that hasn’t been made yet. There’s no comment section for it yet.
http://shriekingtree.tumblr.com/image/70194740333
“According to Klein, before 50,000 years ago, virtually everyone thought you could only make artifacts out of stone. After 50,000 years ago, they suddenly realized you could use bone, ivory, antler or shell.”
That’s not true.
From wikipedia: “A very famous excavation of bone tools is that of the Blombos Cave in South Africa. A collection of twenty-eight bone tools were recovered from 70 thousand year old Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave. Careful analyses of these tools reveal that formal production methods were used to create awls and projectile points”
“Before 50,000 years ago, humans buried their dead only to dispose of the corpse. After 50,000 years ago, burials suddenly became ritualistic and ceremonial.”
Not true either:
“The earliest undisputed human burial dates back 100,000 years. Human skeletal remains stained with red ochre were discovered in the Skhul cave at Qafzeh, Israel. A variety of grave goods were present at the site, including the mandible of a wild boar in the arms of one of the skeletons”
“Before 50,000 years ago, humans didn’t produce art. After 50,000 years ago, art becomes common.”
Definitely not true, the first uses of art were in africa about a 100,000 years ago:
“These cave artisans had stones for pounding and grinding colorful dirt enriched with a kind of iron oxide to a powder, known as ocher. This was blended with the binding fat of mammal-bone marrow and a dash of charcoal. Traces of ocher were left on the tools, and samples of the reddish compound were collected in large abalone shells, where the paint was liquefied, stirred and scooped out with a bone spatula. The early humans may have applied the concoction to their skin for protection or simply decoration, experts suggested. Perhaps it was their way of making social and artistic statements on their bodies or their artifacts.”
and also:
“A variety of evidence of abstract imagery, widened subsistence strategies, and other “modern” behaviors have been discovered in Africa, especially South Africa. The Blombos Cave site in South Africa, for example, is famous for rectangular slabs of ochre engraved with geometric designs. Using multiple dating techniques, the site was confirmed to be around 77,000 years old. Beads and other personal ornamentation have been found from Morocco which might be as old as 130,000 years old; as well, the Cave of Hearths in South Africa has yielded a number of beads significantly before 50,000 years ago.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/science/14paint.html
“Before 50,000 years ago, humans didn’t fish and their hunting techniques were less efficient. After 50,000 years ago fishing becomes common and hunting becomes efficient.”
No, maybe the first fish hooks were found in eurasia.
“Expanding subsistence strategies beyond big-game hunting and the consequential diversity in tool types has been noted as signs of behavioral modernity. A number of South African sites have shown an early reliance on aquatic resources from fish to shellfish. Pinnacle Point, in particular, shows exploitation of marine resources as early as 120,000 years ago, perhaps in response to more arid conditions inland. Establishing a reliance on predictable shellfish deposits, for example, could reduce mobility and facilitate complex social systems and symbolic behavior. Blombos Cave and Site 440 in Sudan both show evidence of fishing as well. Taphonomic change in fish skeletons from Blombos Cave have been interpreted as capture of live fish, clearly an intentional human behavior.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity#Africa
‘However Klein believes that sometime around 50,000 years ago, a genetic mutation occurred that suddenly made humans so much smarter allowing them to rapidly spread out of Africa and replace all the other living “humans” so completely.n other words, we may have had fully human intelligence since 200,000 years ago when AMH first appeared, but it took until 65,000 years ago for culture to evolve to the point of symbolic behavior. But 135,000 years is a long time for an ability to remain dormant. I can’t imagine it taking 135,000 years.”
Behavioral modernity started in africa and gradually increased to europe, However there is evidence that our mutation rate skyrocketed around 40,000 years ago. Probably due to population density booms, increases in mobility and admixture with neanderthals. I think these are the main causes of the discrepancies we see today, either that or the industrial revolution.
“Contrasted with this view of a spontaneous leap in cognition among ancient humans, some authors, primarily working in African archaeology, point to the gradual accumulation of “modern” behaviors, starting well before the 50,000 year benchmark of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution models. Howiesons Poort, Blombos, and other South African archaeological sites, for example, show evidence of marine resource acquisition, trade, and abstract ornamentation at least by 80,000 years ago. Given evidence from Africa and the Middle East, a variety of hypotheses have been put forth to describe an earlier, gradual transition from simple to more complex human behavior. Some authors have pushed back the appearance of fully modern behavior to around 80,000 years ago in order to incorporate the South African data. Others focus on the slow accumulation of different technologies and behaviors across time. These researchers describe how anatomically modern humans could have been cognitively the same and what we define as behavioral modernity is just the result of thousands of years of cultural adaptation and learning. D’Errico and others have looked at Neanderthal culture rather than early human behavior for clues into behavioral modernity. Noting that Neanderthal assemblages often portray similar traits as those listed for modern human behavior, researchers stress that the foundations for behavioral modernity may in fact lie deeper in our hominin ancestors. If both modern humans and Neanderthals express abstract art and complex tools then “modern human behavior” cannot be a derived trait for our species. Recent archaeological evidence, they argue, proves that humans evolving in Africa some 300,000 or even 400,000 years ago were already becoming cognitively and behaviourally ‘modern’. These features include blade and microlithic technology, bone tools, increased geographic range, specialized hunting, the use of aquatic resources, long distance trade, systematic processing and use of pigment, and art and decoration. These items do not occur suddenly together as predicted by the ‘‘human revolution’’ model, but at sites that are widely separated in space and time. This suggests a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviours in Africa, and its later export to other regions of the Old World.’
http://www.evoanth.net/2016/10/18/staying-mobile-secret-success/
Good post. Perhaps behavioral modernity emerged a lot more gradually than Richard Klein and Spencer Wells thought at the time of their lectures (new discoveries have since been made). Wells’s claim that culture stagnated from 1 million BP to 70,000 BP is hard to square with the huge increase in encephalization over that time so perhaps AMH always had a fully modern brain, though it probably improved gradually as we evolved into Cro-Magnons.
Cochran and Harpending cite Klein saying that modernity in behavior appeared around that time. Let me check what they say around that part.
I think you’re on to something; let’s suppose that we know more about ancient European artifacts than ancient African artifacts just because it’s easier to do research in Europe, the artifacts don’t degrade as fast in Europe, and they haven’t had as long to degenerate. We might just not be as familiar with the beginnings of a process that started in Africa a long time ago as we are with its later results in Europe. Plus, once this initial development happened in Africa, they may have enabled people to accomplish successful migrations, which opened up many more avenues for development as people entered new environments.
Besides, a “behavioral modernity” that happened long after several modern human groups split of begs the question of how everyone managed to then acquire modernity. A modernity that began earlier is easier to explain.
The AMH package could have come back to Africa with the back migrations. It would have been before extensive contact with the Neanderthals. Which means we didn’t get much AMH via Neanderthal input, which is likely why we are AMH with a little N rather than Neanderthal with a little AMH.
”it’s easier to do research in Europe, the artifacts don’t degrade as fast in Europe, and they haven’t had as long to degenerate.”
Not so easy because intact areas seems very rare in european continent, specially in western europe. Maybe there are strong evidences of pre-historic something in Rome city, but we have many anthropomorphic layers in this site.
To add to those cited by the above poster (a few of which said poster may have allready cited):
Many modern behaviors are first seen in MSA Africa (sometimes broadly similar to the Uluzzian or upper paleolithic of homo-Sapiens in Europe):
The oldest projectiles(though throwing spears and not yet bows) occur ca. 270,000 bc Ethiopia (likely associated with some form of early sapiens-transitional sapiens/heidelbergensis)
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078092
Evidence of arrowheads and adhesives dates at least 60-70,000 in South Africa
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.466.2274&rep=rep1&type=pdf
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/08/26/Oldest-arrowheads-found-in-Africa/95431282863088/
Middle stone age cultures of southern Africa ca 150-70,000 bc show modern behaviors , including the use of bone tools, shell beads, the trade of minerals across substantial distances, the making of heated fat-based paints from ochre, seasonal fishing and shellfish, use engraved ornaments, and upper paleolithic-style stone points.
sites; blombos, Howiesons Poort, and Pinnacle point
e.g.:the preparation of stone for making microliths by precise heat treating to increase its flakeability at pinnacle point SA. from ca 150-70,000 bc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Point
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howiesons_Poort
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave#Ochre_processing_workshop
A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/14/6180.full
Bone harpoons from central Africa ca. 90,000 bc.
http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-katanda-harpoons.html
The ishango bone (a mathematical object), dates to ca 20,000 bc, in the Katanda/Semliki region
Dave says:
”You need a hyperactive immune system to survive in Africa because the whole continent is a festering cesspit of disease. A high disease load also selects for earlier sexual maturity, which is very bad for IQ.
Notice that African races are more ill-tempered and prone to violence than their European relatives — this is true of humans, horses/zebras, and even honeybees. It’s a natural consequence of tropical climate plus geographic isolation. With no winters to clear out the riff-raff, you survive by killing others before they kill you.”
http://diversityischaos.blogspot.com.br/2016/10/two-studies-may-explain-why-people-of.html
i thought when humans were or are subconsciously being selected the environment tend to have a huge role as well usually happen among almost other species and this scenario above will be perfectly possible… but when humans become more self-aware they can select for benign traits that are independent from environment they are.
Based on this theory above, in the comment, how explain the existence of smarter african groups and proto-civilizations in african continent* How explain the existence of ”african–high mutational load-esque” populations in non-tropical areas for the long time* How explain irish travellers or gipsies** Gipsies are more prone to be diseased or to have bad variants than other peoples*
And vikings and mongols*
already the possible/pedantic answer here: ”animal levels” of awareness make humans selectively dependend from environments. ”Higher levels” fo awareness make humans (and any other animals) selectively independent from environments.
” Notice that African races are more ill-tempered and prone to violence than their European relatives”
Yes as well the englishmen during middle ages…
avgs… it’s not all africans who are more ill-tempered and prone to violence, period.
conjectures*
And ashkeNAZIS**
they evolved in tropical areas* 😉
or they suffered more with brain injuries** 😉
I thought jews evolved in desert like/ temperate climates
Yes, i know…
well, jewish merchant/demagogue types evolved in urban regions is not*
since Babylon…
the ”same’ people**
Englishmen today are the same than roman times*
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/mans-best-friend/
in the world where this fat cheap loser == chink-lover still can ”give suggestions” about ”behavioral/genetic quality”… no doubt, it’s not a SERIOUS world.
IT
Another beneficiary of the Jewish nepotism on the Retarded white goyische’s (mentally ill leftist, rightist proto-sociopath ” social Darwinist ‘, or mentally ill Christian)
HUMANS ARE EMOTIONALLY RETARDED…
because this
Something for pumpkin http://www.evoanth.net/2016/10/27/autism-schizophrenia-evolved/
Some traits of schizophrenia, autism, homossexuality, many of this polemic traits can become ”useful” if they were in fact selected/improved/evolved.
Schizophrenia in my vulgar understanding seems like ”imagination out of control”, but humans may evolved to the mental ability to project visually correct images out of their body without confusing it with the real images. Imagination is quasi-like that but at least my imagination is not very good, not good resolution, 😉
Autism have a lot of evolvable/developable traits… and yes even one of the most hated trait via conservatives, such homossexuality/non-heterossexuality can be evolvable.
Maybe this traits already are evolved in some few individuals.
I don’t really buy the “Great Leap Forwards” model.
See pg. 78 here: https://cashp.columbian.gwu.edu/sites/cashp.columbian.gwu.edu/files/downloads/ASBrooks_The%20Revolution%20that%20wasn't.pdf
Lots of significant innovations were happening well before 50ka, though their incidence did increase over time.
However, that syncs with the oft made observation by economic historians that the rate of technological progress has historically displayed an exponential trend.
Interesting link
Jm8 gave a plethora of links showing why this hypothesis of modern human behaviors arising at 50kya re wrong.
Truth be told I think the IQ of hunter gatherer populations is greatly underestimated. the simple fact that the IQ test is a test itself should be considered a cultural bias. Eurasians have been constantly conditioned and bred for societal behavior/ domestication African’d culture did not evolve with their genes.
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