[HN Gopher] Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sap...
___________________________________________________________________
Child's burial 78k years ago in Kenya was a Homo sapiens milestone
Author : tyjaksn
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-05-08 10:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Why people desperately need to set themselves apart from other
| animals? Seems like the mass killings of Chickens, Cows, Pigs and
| so on make some uncomfortable.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| Interesting as this is, the article nurtures an old misconception
| (with roots both in religion and classical philosophy) that there
| are some traits that distinctly separates humans from other
| animals, and by extension, finding the time when humans developed
| that trait is when we became truly humans. In reality the
| evidence reveals that all such traits, be it burial, toolmaking,
| artistry, abstract thinking etc, is something we share with other
| species to varying degrees. To the extent we have any unique such
| traits currently that radically sets us apart from other species
| then it has been a long and gradual process over eons.
|
| In the case of burials, this old misconception places a
| ridiculously high bar on proof that other species revere their
| dead. Case in point being that of Homo Naledi, admittedly a Homo
| but not a human by a long shot that clearly practiced burials in
| inaccessible cave structures. [0]
|
| [0] https://humangenesis.org/2016/05/18/did-homo-naledi-bury-
| its...
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| There is always a comment like this in one of these threads
| that makes me think too much education can be a bad thing.
|
| Most uneducated people in the world can tell you that there are
| many traits which distinguish people from animals: religion,
| our souls, our ability to learn about the world around us, the
| fact that we act on reason and not on instinct, our ability to
| read and write, etc. It's perhaps one of the most obvious
| things in the world that humans are exceptional amongst living
| beings on Earth.
|
| But with enough fancy words and misapplied education, you can
| say things like "Oh Elephants have burials too, so human beings
| aren't special, we're just wild purposeless animals also. Only
| silly religious people think humans are special"
| logicchop wrote:
| "an old misconception (with roots both in religion and
| classical philosophy)"
|
| There is also a new misconception (with no real roots except
| egalitarianism taken too far) that everything is the same as
| everything else "to varying degrees." That isn't very
| interesting though. I live in the US. To "some varying degree"
| I live on the east coast; but that degree is nil because I live
| far west of the mississippi. Human language, use of tools,
| artistry etc. are so massively remote from the animal cases
| that it's worth labelling it a "distinction" and not a
| "difference."
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > Human language, use of tools, artistry etc. are so
| massively remote from the animal cases
|
| What do you mean by the term "massively remote"?
| zaat wrote:
| I'm unaware of any other animal with writing abilities. The
| differences between human and animal languages are widely
| discussed and the accuracy of the distinctions are
| contested, but in general the properties of being
| generative and recursive are considered to be unique to
| human language.
| smhost wrote:
| > with no real roots except egalitarianism taken too far
|
| This is a strange way of saying that it has roots in ancient
| philosophy. Every major ideology I can think of has forms of
| anti-anthropocentrism spanning from classical animal rights
| to silicon valley's post-humanist techno-utopian ideology.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| How is this relevant to the poster? This just feels like your
| own pet peeve tacked onto the parent comment. I don't think
| we really need to start the culture wars on an article
| looking at anthropological records and a post about
| historical misconceptions.
| animalshumans wrote:
| >the article nurtures an old misconception .. that there are
| some traits that distinctly separates humans from other animal
|
| There are a number of traits that make humans a unique animal,
| it's not a misconception.
|
| Humans:
|
| - Are aware of the existence of good and evil and have the
| capacity for moral reasoning
|
| - Have language
|
| - Are aware of the existence of the distant future, and can
| plan for it beyond the instinctual cycle of a single season
| like a hibernating squirrel
|
| - Are aware of their own mortality and vulnerability
|
| - Have art
|
| There might be more but that's a good start. We are animals, of
| course, nothing "separates us from the animals," in a clean
| way, but boy we're weird animals.
|
| > Immediately downvoted
|
| WTF HN, is this not polite, curious discourse? Why do I even
| try here? Never mind, I hate this website. Bye
| bolzano wrote:
| I was going to leave a similar comment, you've done much
| better at expressing my own objections to the OP. I've tried
| to upvote you but I don't have very much karma (not sure that
| that matters?). Sorry to see this sort of thing happen on HN
| too :(
|
| It would be great if the people who are downvoting you would
| tackle any of your bullet points.
|
| We are certainly descended from animals, but we are also
| wildly unique from anything else we've ever seen in the
| biological world, past or present, mostly due to our
| cognitive capacities for art, science, morality, math,
| language, you name it.
|
| Our capacity for language (and its core property of digital
| infinity) alone, as pointed out by Chomsky, doesn't seem to
| have an analogue anywhere in the biological world down to
| perhaps the level of DNA.
|
| That's a great puzzle and mystery, we shouldn't run away from
| it but rather we should embrace it with humility and awe.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| The great trend of the day is abject materialism, a
| philosophy that sees humans as just clever bipeds. I'm not
| too keen on it. There is clearly something different about
| humans.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > There is clearly something different about humans.
|
| That's not what this debate is really about. The
| proponents of "humans are different" are actually
| thinking "humans are superior". They can make a case for
| that, but only in terms that confer advantages and
| entitlement to humans.
|
| Take this example:
|
| > Are aware of the existence of good and evil and have
| the capacity for moral reasoning
|
| and apply it to an encounter in the forest between a
| human and a venomous snake.
|
| Imagine one kills the other without provocation.
|
| Which animal was good, and which one was evil?
|
| Let's try that exercise again three more times. I'll give
| you more information for each case:
|
| 1. The human was your pregnant wife.
|
| 2. The human was the mass murderer, Adolf X.
|
| 3. The snake was hungry and scared, and had a family to
| care for.
| zaat wrote:
| Your example is out of place. A snake is amoral, it
| cannot act in a moral or non-moral way. Morality is by
| definition a trait that only humans posses, as we believe
| that human could or should act in certain ways, despite
| natural instincts.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > we believe that human could or should act in certain
| ways
|
| Are you referring to the voices in your head?
|
| Have you noticed there are more than one voice, and
| sometimes they point you in different directions?
|
| Assuming you don't speak French, Greek or Estonian, and
| have never read a translation of any writing by a French,
| Greek, or Estonian human being, how do you know whether
| French, Greek and Estonian people also have multiple
| voices in their heads like you do?
|
| How can you know that non-human animals don't also have
| voices in their heads?
|
| If non-human animals also have multiple voices in their
| heads suggesting different actions to them, and they make
| choices from those voices, how can you define them as
| "amoral"?
| zaat wrote:
| > Are you referring to the voices in your head?
|
| No. I guess you refer to debating moral dilemma in your
| head, but that's only one aspect of morality.
|
| Not all people share the same moral code, but we do
| expect all human cultures to have a moral code, and we
| expect humans to act on it's basis, despite their natural
| instincts and the rather arbitrary moral rules specific
| to their culture.
|
| Meanwhile we expect animal to behave according to their
| natural instincts.
|
| When humans break our exceptions, we judge them, since we
| know humans can and often are better than that. When
| animals break our exceptions, if ever, we are surprised,
| as this is rare and unnatural.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Amusingly the hip trend in my country is putting dead people
| next to a tree and let nature deal with it.
|
| But the lousy coffee and cake (one slice per person!) thing
| will never disappear.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > evidence reveals that all such traits, be it burial,
| toolmaking, artistry, abstract thinking etc, is something we
| share with other species to varying degrees
|
| If actual achievements speak louder than words, then "varying
| degrees" is a huge gap between human and other species. Yes, we
| know that numerous animals exhibit intelligence and emotions,
| but that does not change the fact that humans are very
| different when it comes to the understanding of time and
| everything that goes with it. Also, there is no other animal
| out there who domesticated fire or developed some kind of
| societal system to expands its own resources beyond what's
| available in the wild.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| The argument can be applied to all species - it is engrained
| in the ongoing diversification process of life itself: all
| species by definition have traits that set them apart from
| others, more or less radically. It is mostly a matter of what
| perspective you want to apply: are the differences the most
| important, or the similarities.
|
| But the main point I was trying to make was really this: > To
| the extent we have any unique such traits currently that
| radically sets us apart from other species then it has been a
| long and gradual process over eons
|
| I.e. there is no need to find a specific point where all that
| makes us human came into place. It all happened gradually,
| albeit with some leaps and bounds for different traits, at
| different times for different things, and we carry the legacy
| of all those millions of years with us, not just the last 200
| KY. And we share substantial amounts of traits with other
| species.
| thrownintospace wrote:
| On some level hasn't time and language demonstrated on how
| different we are from animals. Those traits that you find
| similar in animals, eg. the elephants returning to the site
| of the dead, basic tool making, etc, never evolve past those
| developments. Why ?
|
| The assumption might be that it takes time to develop, but
| those species never move beyond simplistic uses of language
| and tools despite their ancient ancestry.
|
| Whatever your thoughts are on the evolution and biology of
| life, something is happening in the prefrontal cortex of
| humans that is fundamentally different.
| nfg wrote:
| > there is no other animal out there who [...] developed some
| kind of societal system to expands its own resources beyond
| what's available in the wild.
|
| The trouble with this sort of quasi-dualistic general
| statement in my experience is it doesn't hold up well to
| scrutiny by domain experts. Another way of looking at this is
| that humans have shaped their "wild" environment to their
| advantage which is something many animals do. The trouble is
| in defining wild here - your point rests heavily on a
| definition along the lines of "shaped entirely by non-human
| forces" which is a circular argument. For example (and I'm no
| expert) but think of dam making by beavers and whether the
| resulting pools which expand their habitat and food are
| "wild"?
|
| I'd agree with you that there is a qualitative difference
| between say industrial society and the rest of the animal
| world, but it's not easy to nail down that difference in a
| way which doesn't wind up excluding much of human history.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| I was going to say that.
|
| We can see the Great Wall of China from space.
|
| And we can also see beaver dams from space.
|
| (Note the Great Wall was built for a mundane reason - the
| Han people couldn't defeat the Mongols on horseback, but
| they could keep building walls until the horses could no
| longer enter. Byzantium/Constantinople also adopted that
| strategy, which worked for over 1,000 years until the
| Ottomans built the world's largest cannon and blasted holes
| in it.)
| Others wrote:
| Nit: you cannot see the Great Wall from space unaided: ht
| tps://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall
| ....
| azundo wrote:
| That said, no beaver has seen either from space.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| We can see water coloration from algae in space.
|
| If you weren't impressed when you read the above
| sentence, imagine how algae feel when they read your
| sentence about the Great Wall of China.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Both of the structures I mentioned were deliberately
| created by mammals.
|
| Are the algaes deliberately creating "water coloration"
| in a pattern?
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I think that's a reasonable observation.
|
| I'd add that I think that scientists in the digging-up-stuff
| business are far too ready to assign motive and behavior rather
| than simply describing the physical results.
|
| To be fair, it's part of the marketing they have to do to keep
| that bit of grant money flowing.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Look no further than human babies. There is no single point in
| their lives that you can definitely say that "hey exactly now
| (s)he is a complete human but 1 second ago (s)he was not". It
| is a continuous progression
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| writing.
| lwhi wrote:
| > Interesting as this is, the article nurtures an old
| misconception (with roots both in religion and classical
| philosophy) that there are some traits that distinctly
| separates humans from other animals, and by extension, finding
| the time when humans developed that trait is when we became
| truly humans. In reality the evidence reveals that all such
| traits, be it burial, toolmaking, artistry, abstract thinking
| etc, is something we share with other species to varying
| degrees. To the extent we have any unique such traits currently
| that radically sets us apart from other species then it has
| been a long and gradual process over eons.
|
| Both these things can be true.
|
| There are traits that distinctly separate us .. which have also
| developed gradually over a long period of time.
|
| I think the article is acknowledging a common behaviour between
| humans and a distance relative to humans; if anything it's
| backing up your assertion that development has occurred over a
| long and gradual process.
| gcheong wrote:
| "The discovery, the researchers said, sheds light on the
| development of early complex social behaviors in Homo sapiens."
|
| My takeaway is that this isn't looking so much for the dividing
| line between our species and others in terms of traits but more
| about determining when cultural evolution began to eclipse
| biological as the primary force driving our species
| development.
| f6v wrote:
| You're right in a sense that traits are continuous. But I think
| the notion of bifurcation point can be useful here. At some
| point there's a dramatic change in how system behaves.
| simonh wrote:
| That's true and I think there were two inflection points in
| human evolution.
|
| One is the development of modified tools and fire. Yes I know
| that's two things, but they're both very ancient and probably
| were enabled by the adaptation that gave us language. It's
| possible there were several adaptations there but I suspect
| they all came from one fundamental advance in cognition. This
| drove a series of major evolutionary changes that adapted us
| to a tool and fire using mode of living.
|
| The second I think was prefrontal synthesis, at around the
| time this child was buried. This enabled us to form complex
| linguistic concepts (take this Apple and give it to the girl
| on the other side of the wall) and create tools with multiple
| features composed together, such as needles with an eye hole.
|
| Pretty much everything else derived from these innovations,
| or at least the cognitive capabilities that enabled them.
|
| So yes of course we have abilities other animals don't have,
| but we also have a lot in common. Showing reverence and
| tenderness for the dead is definitely something we share with
| many other mammals, but complex funerary rituals with
| associated burial objects are more a human thing.
| shagie wrote:
| > One is the development of modified tools and fire. Yes I
| know that's two things, but they're both very ancient and
| probably were enabled by the adaptation that gave us
| language. It's possible there were several adaptations
| there but I suspect they all came from one fundamental
| advance in cognition. This drove a series of major
| evolutionary changes that adapted us to a tool and fire
| using mode of living.
|
| There was a bit going around a number of years ago (not
| sure where it stands in current scientific thought)...
| https://www.wired.com/2004/03/docs-drop-jaws-over-gene-
| mutat...
|
| The theory is that there is a mutation which caused the jaw
| muscle of the line of hominids that gave rise to humans. If
| you look at chimpanzees, gorillas, and other hominids
| you'll find a skull with a crest with the anchor point for
| the muscle that enables a very powerful jaw. However, that
| muscle also constricts the size of the cranium which
| likewise constricts the size of the brain.
|
| The theory goes that by weakening this muscle it allowed
| for other mutations to increases the size of the cranium
| and at the same time necessitated the use of fire and tools
| to help overcome the "we can't kill it by biting it."
|
| That mutation traces back to about 2.4 Mya. Earliest hints
| of control of fire was about 2.0 Mya. The Oldowan tools
| date to 2.6 - 1.7 Mya.
| simonh wrote:
| Interesting, thanks. I think the fact that some of these
| advances are very spread out doesn't necessarily mean
| they are unrelated. It would have been very slow going in
| terms of change and iteration back then.
|
| Prefrontal Synthesis is a lot more recent and generates a
| lot of material evidence (in comparison) so I think it's
| easier to see that there was a common cause behind the
| subsequent developments in material culture, which fall
| under the umbrella of Behavioural Modernity.
| lwhi wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I think language was the big differentiator here. Being
| able to contextualise, to tell stories .. and imagine
| worlds before and after one's own, must have accelerated
| the brain's development exponentially.
| 0xBABAD00C wrote:
| > there are some traits that distinctly separates humans from
| other animals
|
| There clearly are distinct characteristics of what it means to
| be human, as opposed to not just other animals, but other
| hominin species as well. For instance, the mutation in
| prefrontal cortex development that allowed us to acquire a
| complete recursive language (a Turing-complete communication
| system), along with all of its benefits for large-scale
| coordination and strategy. This mutation is likely 70k year old
| and has caused a cascade of civilizational advances, from
| complex culture, to myths, to arts, etc.
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/166520v9.full
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Quoth Wiki:
|
| Though there is ongoing debate regarding the reliability of the
| dating method, some scholars believe the earliest 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
| coward76 wrote:
| We should stop digging up graves.
| alextheparrot wrote:
| It'll be a few years before we move off petrol.
| nnamtr wrote:
| I always wonder when I read articles like this, what people would
| think if they were told that 78000 summers later many people will
| be thinking about this specific burial.
| f6v wrote:
| They'd ask: "What is 78000?"
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Evidence of humans quantifying is roughly as old as this
| burial. The communication difficulty here would come from
| translating 78,000 into their mathematical system.
| jart wrote:
| > Only humans treat the dead with the same respect, consideration
| and even tenderness they treat the living.
|
| Humans probably learned it from elephants.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_cognition#Death_ritua...
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I doubt we learned it from elephants, rather it is a product of
| higher consciousness. Empathy with another being and realizing
| it can be lost.
| yakubin wrote:
| It isn't an inevitable product though. E.g.[1]:
|
| _> Mongolian culture is famous, along with Tibetans, for
| "sky burial," which leaves the body of the deceased on a high
| unprotected place to be exposed to the elements and devoured
| by wildlife. It's part of a Vajrayana Buddhist outlook about
| the needlessness of "respecting" the body after death._
|
| Personally, I'd prefer if this was what would happen to my
| body than any Western ritual. Alas, in the West we have laws
| which, in practice, impose religious precepts long after the
| states are secular on paper.
|
| [1]: https://www.bustle.com/articles/97030-5-interesting-
| death-an...
| phenkdo wrote:
| It's not Buddhism per se, The Zoroastrians (religion of
| pre-islamic Persia) also practice this by leaving the
| bodies in "towers of silence" for birds of prey to devour
| them.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Mongols and Tibetans probably got it from them given
| their original location in Bactria/Margiana
| yakubin wrote:
| Yes. I think the author of the paragraph wrote about
| Buddhism in the context of Tibetans. It isn't applicable
| to Mongols as well.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > It isn't an inevitable product though. E.g.[1]:
|
| Yes, and there are still tribes that eat the flesh of the
| dead - this was a major cause of what we identified later
| on as prion-related diseases: https://www.npr.org/sections/
| thesalt/2016/09/06/482952588/wh...
| spockz wrote:
| I would say that by now the laws more represent social
| norms and habits rather than religious precepts. (Even
| though they come from those precepts originally.)
| KONAir wrote:
| Serious question; How is Mongolian "return to nature"
| similar with Tibetian "We have no space for burial grounds"
| similar? Isn't this more of a case of flexible religion or
| more of a flexible "monk" trying to fit in as many
| traditions as possible into one religion?
| yakubin wrote:
| The practice is similar. The motivation is different. The
| quoted paragraph may be phrased a bit poorly. I don't
| think the Mongolian practice has anything to do with
| Buddhism.
| jb1991 wrote:
| >Only humans treat the dead with the same respect, consideration
| and even tenderness they treat the living. Even when we die, we
| continue to be someone for our group,"
|
| Is this true? Elephants walk very far, as a group, to mourn years
| later the loss of a member from their family, by returning to
| where it died. Why would we think humans are so special in this
| regard?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| >"The child was buried in a residential site, close to where this
| community lived, evincing how intimately life and death are
| related. Only humans treat the dead with the same respect,
| consideration and even tenderness they treat the living. Even
| when we die, we continue to be someone for our group," Martinon-
| Torres added.
|
| > "This would likely have been a group act, perhaps by members of
| the child's family. All of these behaviors are, of course, very
| similar to those observed in our own species today, so we can
| relate to this act even though the burial dates to 78,000 years
| ago," said study co-author Nicole Boivin, an archaeologist and
| director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human
| History in Germany.
|
| You have to be careful drawing inferences. Human sacrifice
| victims were also many times buried with great care.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Llullaillaco
|
| Given the prevalence of childhood mortality in ancient and pre-
| historic times, an elaborate burial of a child has a pretty good
| chance of being part of some ritual sacrifice.
| quattrofan wrote:
| Here we go again this nonsense often from anthropology that
| people use to justify our mistreatment of animals "Only humans
| treat the dead with the same respect, consideration and even
| tenderness they treat the living. Even when we die, we continue
| to be someone for our group". This is simply not true, elephants,
| whales and others have been seen to do this.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-09 23:02 UTC)