mercredi 26 novembre 2014

How the heck did Homo sapiens survive?

I find there are many caveats about declaring when "modern man" came into being. For the purposes of this thread I'll go with what I consider a conservative estimate of 40,000 years. I'm talking about anatomically modern humans with a full complement of human intelligence.



I cannot figure out how the species lasted for the 30,000 years (or so) before mankind settled into agricultural communities and found some strength in technology and numbers. Was it the species' ingenuity that did it? The power to make fire? Before "civilization" kicked in circa 12,000 years or so ago - how did man live, with no fur, no fangs, no claws? What evolutionary advantage did this species have? I can see a lot of disadvantages, but maybe they turned out to be assets - such as the need to take care of young who could not walk for a year or two. It's tempting to believe that mankind's greatest weakness was also its greatest strength - that lack of natural advantages forced humans to organize, cooperate, hunt more efficiency, etc.



But how did we not freeze to death or starve to death in the interim? We had spread far beyond the tropics, where there might have been reliable food and weather. It's a puzzle to me and maybe someone at ISF has some answers.





via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1FtwV1H

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