The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior.
TL;DR: The African Middle and early Late Pleistocene hominid fossil record is fairly continuous and in it can be recognized a number of probably distinct species that provide plausible ancestors for H. sapiens, and suggests a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviors in Africa, and its later export to other regions of the Old World.
About: This article is published in Journal of Human Evolution.The article was published on 2000-11-01. It has received 2165 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Behavioral modernity & Later Stone Age.
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Howard Hughes Medical Institute1, Harvard University2, Broad Institute3, University of California, Berkeley4, University of California, Los Angeles5, Chinese Academy of Sciences6, Max Planck Society7, Columbia University8, Massachusetts Institute of Technology9, Cayetano Heredia University10, University of Pennsylvania11, University College London12, University of Bern13, Leiden University14, Nanyang Technological University15, University of Chicago16, Estonian Biocentre17, National University of La Plata18, University of Oxford19, University of Bergen20, Novosibirsk State University21, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology22, Sofia Medical University23, Armenian National Academy of Sciences24, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute25, Raja Isteri Pengiran Anak Saleha Hospital26, Case Western Reserve University27, University of Tartu28, Estonian Academy of Sciences29, Stony Brook University30, Illumina31, Gladstone Institutes32, University of Helsinki33, University of Washington34, Bashkir State University35, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology36, Pompeu Fabra University37, University of Arizona38, University of Cambridge39, Leidos40, Université de Montréal41, University of Utah42, Altai State University43, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research44
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andamanese do not derive substantial ancestry from an early dispersal of modern humans; instead, their modern human ancestry is consistent with coming from the same source as that of other non-Africans.
Abstract: Here we report the Simons Genome Diversity Project data set: high quality genomes from 300 individuals from 142 diverse populations. These genomes include at least 5.8 million base pairs that are not present in the human reference genome. Our analysis reveals key features of the landscape of human genome variation, including that the rate of accumulation of mutations has accelerated by about 5% in non-Africans compared to Africans since divergence. We show that the ancestors of some pairs of present-day human populations were substantially separated by 100,000 years ago, well before the archaeologically attested onset of behavioural modernity. We also demonstrate that indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andamanese do not derive substantial ancestry from an early dispersal of modern humans; instead, their modern human ancestry is consistent with coming from the same source as that of other non-Africans.
1,133 citations
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TL;DR: It is shown that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.
Abstract: Altruism—benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself—and parochialism—hostility toward individuals not of one9s own ethnic, racial, or other group—are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two—which we term “parochial altruism”—is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because altruistic or parochial behavior reduces one9s payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by eschewing these behaviors. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to success in these conflicts. Our game-theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.
917 citations
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01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: Boyd and Richerson as mentioned in this paper argued that culture is a pool of information stored in the brains of a population, that gets transmitted from one brain to another by social learning processes.
Abstract: Over the past 25 years, Boyd and Richerson have become well-known across a wide range of disciplines for their path-breaking work on evolution and culture. This work collects twenty of the influential but relatively inaccessible published articels that form the backbone of this research. It could not be more timely given the growing influence of evolutionary psychology. The papers - which were published in a diverse set of journals and which are not easily available - a conceptually linked and form a cohesive, unified evolutionary account of human culture. Their interdisciplinary research is based on two notions. First, that culture is crucial for understanding human behavior: unlike other organism, socially transmitted beliefs, attitudes and values heavily influence our behavior. Secondly, culture is part of biology: the capacity to acquire and transmit culture is a derived component of human psychology, and the contents of culture are deeply intertwined with our biology. Taking off from these two assumptions, Boyd and Richerson's novel idea is that culture is a pool of information, stored in the brains of a population, that gets transmitted from one brain to another by social learning processes. Among their conclusions: culture can account for both our astounding ecological success as well as the maladaptations that characterize much of human behavior. Interest in Boyd and Richerson's work spans anthropology, psychology, economics, philosophy, and political science, and has influenced work on animal behavior, economics and game theory, memes, and even archaeology.
829 citations
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TL;DR: The authors exploit newly available massive natu- ral language corpora to capture the language as a language evolution phenomenon. But their work is limited to a subset of the languages in the corpus.
826 citations
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TL;DR: A population model shows that demography is a major determinant in the maintenance of cultural complexity and that variation in regional subpopulation density and/or migratory activity results in spatial structuring of cultural skill accumulation.
Abstract: The origins of modern human behavior are marked by increased symbolic and technological complexity in the archaeological record. In western Eurasia this transition, the Upper Paleolithic, occurred about 45,000 years ago, but many of its features appear transiently in southern Africa about 45,000 years earlier. We show that demography is a major determinant in the maintenance of cultural complexity and that variation in regional subpopulation density and/or migratory activity results in spatial structuring of cultural skill accumulation. Genetic estimates of regional population size over time show that densities in early Upper Paleolithic Europe were similar to those in sub-Saharan Africa when modern behavior first appeared. Demographic factors can thus explain geographic variation in the timing of the first appearance of modern behavior without invoking increased cognitive capacity.
819 citations
References
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01 Jan 1997TL;DR: Deacon as mentioned in this paper provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness, drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the coevolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions.
Abstract: This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.
2,256 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, a modified version of the timescale proposed by Imbrieet et al. for the ODP Site 677 has been proposed, based on the precession signal in the record from ODP site 677 that provides the basis for the revised timescale.
Abstract: Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 677 provided excellent material for high resolution stable isotope analysis of both benthonic and planktonic foraminifera through the entire Pleistocene and upper Pliocene. The oxygen isotope record is readily correlated with the SPECMAP stack (Imbrieet al.1984) and with the record from DSDP 607 (Ruddimanet al.1986) but a significantly better match with orbital models is obtained by departing from the timescale proposed by these authors below Stage 16 (620 000 years). It is the stronger contribution from the precession signal in the record from ODP Site 677 that provides the basis for the revised timescale. Our proposed modification to the timescale would imply that the currently adopted radiometric dates for the Matuyama–Brunhes boundary, the Jaramillo and Olduvai Subchrons and the Gauss–Matuyama boundary underestimate their true astronomical ages by between 5 and 7%.
1,599 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the relative widths of the magnetic polarity intervals for the entire Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic have been systematically determined from magnetic profiles from the world's ocean basins.
Abstract: We have constructed a magnetic polarity time scale for the Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic based on an analysis of marine magnetic profiles from the world's ocean basins. This is the first time, since Heirtzler et al. (1968) published their time scale, that the relative widths of the magnetic polarity intervals for the entire Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic have been systematically determined from magnetic profiles. A composite geomagnetic polarity sequence was derived based primarily on data from the South Atlantic. Anomaly spacings in the South Atlantic were constrained by a combination of finite rotation poles and averages of stacked profiles. Fine-scale information was derived from magnetic profiles on faster spreading ridges in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and inserted into the South Ariantic sequence. Based on the assumption that spreading rates in the South Atlantic were smoothly varying but not necessarily constant, a time scale was generated by using a spline function to fit a set of nine age calibration points
1,408 citations