Hi everybody, welcome back to Office Hours with the
Brofessor: The Show that’s Proudly Irrelevant.
Today we have Cavemen Rock, Part VIII: The Quest for Excalibur!
Well, you’re probably thinking, I wasn’t expecting Bro
to make that connection! What does
Arthurian Legend have to do with cavemen?
Well, if you’re a paleoanthropology nut like I am, then you already
know! If you don’t know what I’m
referencing, don’t google it yet—that would ruin the surprise.
H.
heidelbergensis
To start with, let’s ask RZA for the keys to the Time
Traveling Elevator again, and go back this time to between 600 and 300
KYA. Homo
antecessor, whose, shall we say, atavistic behavior we discussed last time,
has developed into—or been replaced by—the larger-brained Homo heidelbergensis, named of course for the German city of
Heidelberg, where its fossils were first found.
Of course, as I like to pretend, the reality is that Heidelberg was named
after him!
Now, the line of succession here with H. antecessor is a little fuzzy. Was H.
antecessor ancestral to H.
heidelbergensis, or was H.
heidelbergensis a separate line that arose from ergectus and replaced H.
antecessor? This is a matter of
heated debate among the approximately seven people who care.
At any rate, by 600 KYA or so, we see H. antecessor replaced generally
throughout Europe by H. heidelbergensis. Due to the amount of material of this period
that we have from Europe, we’re focusing on this part of the world right
now. That doesn’t mean interesting
things weren’t happening elsewhere. In
Africa and Asia all sorts of crazy stuff was going on, much of which has just
been discovered. As we do more work in
these parts of the world, surely more cool stuff will show itself! And as for what we have seen from Africa and
Asia during this period, we’ll cover that in future episodes. For the moment, however, we’re focusing on
Europe.
One thing that I really like about these heidelbergensis guys is that they were
some of the first archaic hominins to look reasonably like us up close. Remember, if you saw an ergectus from a distance, you’d recognize it as vaguely humanlike,
but up close you would change your mind. On the other hand, with H. heidelbergensis, you’d have to look much closer to see
differences. For one thing, H. heidelbergensis was the first human
ancestor to be as tall as us. On
average, they stood at five feet seven, which is comparable to modern humans. For
another, they, along with later H.
antecessor, had reached the end of the process of body hair loss, which
means that they might have been hairy, but no more so than my uncle Jim. Everyone has an uncle Jim. He’s the guy who has his wife shave his back
every week.
So let’s see what these guys looked like. We have a wonderful variety of individuals
from H. heidelbergensis remains, as
I’ll discuss shortly, so we get to see a good variety of variation. In fact, we have enough data to put together
whole family portraits:
By
Kennis and Kennis
By
Mauricio Anton
These
are two of my favorite pictures ever.
They’re so wonderful. Of course
the individuals these reconstructions are based on probably didn’t all live at
the same time, but that’s not the point, doofus. How wonderful it is to see them together in a
community, and look at them as they looked at each other! There is something almost mystical here. These are the first human ancestors where I
feel as though I could look into their eyes and see my fellow man, my brother
or sister in the Romance of the Ages. When
I look at these pictures, even more than other reconstructions, I feel like I’m
looking through a window in time. I
would love to hang out with these guys and be friends with them. And I say “friends” deliberately—I can be
friends with my cat or dog, but it’s not the same thing as being friends with
another human. But when I look at these
pictures I have to imagine that if these guys and I got to know each other, we
could actually forge something approximating a human friendship.
How
did they behave?
Could
we be bros with H. heidelbergensis? You might roll your eyes at the absurdity of
this question, but it is an important one.
No matter how much we love our pets, our bonds with them are
intrinsically different from our bonds with other people. Could we have made a genuine human connection
with these creatures?
First
of all, H. heidelbergensis was not
behaviorally modern. There is no
evidence for art, symbolism, religion or any of the marks of a behaviorally
modern society. They probably could not
speak to the extent that we can. Still,
they were certainly no dummies. They
stood on the shoulders of their H.
erectus and H. antecessor forebears,
who passed onto them the persistence hunting strategy, the Acheulean hand-axe,
and the control—but not necessarily manufacture—of fire(2):
If they practiced
persistence hunting, it follows that they knew how animal footprints
worked. That’s huge, because to
understand how footprints work necessitates an implicit understanding of cause
and effect. That’s an incredibly complex
mental process, and just like the pre-planned nature of Acheulean hand-axes, it
would’ve taken thousands upon agonizing thousands of generations for everyone
to get on board with it. But by the time
of heidelbergensis, they had been axe-planning
and persistence hunting for a good million years. Furthermore, the advantages of hand axes,
persistence hunting, and their requisite cognitive abilities suggest that once
developed, they would present an evolutionary advantage and spread quickly.
Following
the premise that, having had a million years’ trial run in fire, knapping, hunting,
and fire, it is safe to assume that H.
heidelbergensis would have had the cognitive ability to reliably and
consistently:
·
plan outcomes (make hand axes);
·
anticipate cause and effect (follow tracks),
and;
·
follow step-by-step processes (control
fire).
Each of these abilities represents
“a giant leap for mankind”: a successful jump over the yawning chasm between
man and beast. If H. heidelbergensis was
able to perform these functions, he would finally, definitively, be more mentally
like us than like a chimpanzee. So I
think it is safe to say that yes, you could forge a genuine human-to-human
friendship with these creatures. That is
not, again, to say they are “behaviorally modern”. H.
heidelbergensis probably couldn’t speak like we do, or learn to read, or
write a symphony. But the groundwork was
there, so I think that even if they couldn’t understand human friendship, they did feel it.
Now,
why am I waxing poetic about these guys?
After all, at a date of 400-ish KYA, these guys are still halfway
between us and those wacky cannibals that we met last time. Fair enough, but we do have evidence of
something very deep down in H. heidelbergensis
that resonates with us today. It is possible—don’t get your briefs in a
knot, I said possible, not certain—that somewhere around this time,
H. heidelbergensis caught a glimpse,
faint though it may have been, of the spiritual.
Atapuerca
Findings
So let’s head back to
Atapuerca, the mountain that isn’t really a mountain. It is here that we find the MOST METAL
PALEOANTHROPOLOGICAL SITE IN THE WORLD: La
Sima de los Huesos, which is Spanish for…
THE PIT…OF BONES!!!!
Isn’t that name badass? Earlier on I talked about how it’s a shame
that there are lots of good Viking metal bands, but no caveman metal bands, at
least as far as I know. Well, if you’re
starting that band, I’ve got your name right here. Take it, it’s yours, just give me a shout-out
at the Grammys.
Anyway, the Pit of Bones gives us a wonderful glimpse
of this H. heidelbergensis population. There’s a wide range of individuals that we
can study, of both sexes, and of a variety of ages. We can also find clues about their lives,
just like with our H. ergectus finds. One poor schlub sustained an injury on his
face that healed oddly, rendering him goofy-looking for the rest of his life
(1):
Fortunately,
he was a good listener and had a really sweet personality, so he could still
get dates.
But even more interesting, to me anyway, than the
physical remains are the implications of their placement here. If we find a pit full of H. heidelbergensis, it raises the possibility of these remains
having been put there on purpose. Could
we be looking at an early form of deliberate burial? If so, what are the implications for their
behavior? Could we even infer the
presence of primitive religious beliefs and rituals? If not, what are some other possible
explanations?
For modern humans, the way we dispose of our dead is a
practice that varies by religious or cultural tradition. Whatever the method, however, every culture
has some way of doing this. Evolutionarily,
this must have emerged because dead bodies bring disease and dangerous
scavengers. For modern humans, however,
treatment of the dead has become infused with ritual, taboo, and beliefs about
the afterlife. It is therefore natural
to jump to the conclusion of “this must be evidence of a funeral”. We must, however, detach ourselves from our
modern cognitive abilities and look at the Pit of Bones from the point of view
of H. heidelbergensis. There is no clear evidence of religious
belief—or, indeed, abstract thought of any kind—at this time depth. Even if the bodies were left there deliberately,
he conclusion is unavoidable that H.
heidelbergensis was not depositing of his dead here for ritual reasons, but
rather simply because a giant hole in the ground is a convenient place to
dispose of dead bodies. Doing something
with dead bodies does not necessarily
imply the existence of religion, despite modern sensibilities.
And that would probably
be agreed upon, if it were not for one important find. As archaeologists dug through the pit, they
made an amazing discovery:
HOLY
MOLEY JUST LOOK AT THAT HAND AXE. THAT
IS A NICE HAND AXE.
Not
only is it well-crafted, but it’s aesthetically beautiful too. It’s made of red quartzite, which would
produce a beautiful sparkling effect in the sun. What’s more, the material appears not to have
been sourced locally, which means that it was brought from some distance away
(I remember reading that somewhere, but can’t find the source. Sorry).
These items took a lot of effort to make, and were the difference
between life and death for their users. Scientists,
as a nod to its beautiful workmanship, have given it the name of Excalibur.
Looking
at this frankly amazing piece, one has to wonder what it was doing at the
bottom of…
THE PIT…OF BONES!!!!
You
almost don’t want to say this, because it would be such an incredible
development, but…could it have been left there on purpose? Are we seeing in Excalibur the first
rumblings of humanity’s belief in the afterlife?
I
know, I know, it sounds crazy. Besides,
it could’ve just been that some guy was exploring the cave, and he fell down
the pit along with his trusty hand axe.
I acknowledge that this is possible, and perhaps even probable.
Still,
looking at the exceptional quality of this hand axe brings to mind the haunting
possibility that we could be looking at some kind of funeral offering. What could this have looked like? Let’s get in the Wu-Tang time-traveling
elevator and find out:
The
Emergence of “Shouldness”
It was 400KYA.
A tribe of H. heidelbergensis
lived in the forests and plains of what is now northern Spain. They hunted animals like elk and wooly
rhinoceros by following their tracks, running them down, and killing them with spears:
This
spear, for example, was found in Germany and dated to 400,000 years ago.
These spears were mostly sharpened sticks but they may
have worked out the idea of sticking a hand-axe on the end. Hand-axes were extremely important items, and
to be good at making hand-axes was to be evolutionarily successful. They had no language, and communicated
perhaps through onomatopoeic vocal calls, or occasional utterances of isolated
proto-words. They had no music or art,
but they could recognize, and liked producing, audible rhythms and visual
patterns without understanding why. They
felt, but had no concept of, love. They
valued courage, intelligence, and altruism, again without having any
comprehension of these abstract ideas.
Behaviors like hugging, waving, and hand-clapping probably existed among
them and were done in specific times and places. They had also realized that dead bodies
attract scavengers, so they had a habit of disposing of their dead:
Art: Mauricio Anton
The most convenient place
was a big pit, which was found at the back of a cave where nobody lived. It was here that they habitually deposited
bodies, thereby avoiding scavengers and pestilence:
A
scale model of the Pit of Bones…in Lego!
After
a few generations, this habit became so ingrained that even if it would’ve been
convenient to do so elsewhere, they were still disposing of the dead in this
place. It had become a tradition in the
community. It was the place of death,
where children placed their fathers, and were eventually placed
themselves. They may have had some vague
idea of their own mortality, and an idea that they too would someday drop into
that great darkness. That they mourned
their dead is virtually certain, since mourning behavior is present in both
humans and chimpanzees(4). Could it be
that certain specific actions were performed, in the course of mourning, in
association with the disposal of the body?
Perhaps certain vocal calls were made that were exclusive to disposal of
the dead. Perhaps bodies were always
disposed of by the same member of the community. Perhaps even a primitive taboo had developed
wherein this place, the place of death, was avoided by the living.
Finally, one day, somebody
was disposing a body, and it just seemed
right to toss his friend’s hand-axe down with him:
Whoever did this wasn’t
sure why, but he had the feeling that he needed to do it, the feeling of shouldness. He felt that he should dispose of the dead in this place. He should
make the designated ululations at the time of death and when carrying the
body, ululations that he should not
make at other times. And he had a deep,
gut feeling that he should leave the
hand-axe with its owner. Perhaps—just
perhaps—this feeling was developed enough that he could conceptualize some idea
that his friend’s death was not really the end, and left him his favorite tool
in that hope.
But given the isolation
of this occurrence, it does not seem that the community was consistently
depositing grave goods with the dead, and thus it seems that they did not consistently have the cognitive ability
to sense the need for them. But one day,
somebody was getting rid of his loved one, and he thought something like, “Wherever
he’s going, I should leave him this.”
There’s that should again. The shouldness
that this individual felt was the first stirring of the human conscience, of
morality, and of religion. That
individual stood, though he did not know it, at the precipice of perhaps the
most important development in humanity’s behavioral evolution thus far
observed. If you are a theologian
looking for a date to the Fall of Man, I would put it around here
someplace. Shouldness is not mustness, and
necessarily gives us free will, the option always being there not to do as you should. A sense of shouldness, therefore, is a prerequisite for the ability to sin. It is in this sense, demonstrated by a
primitive funeral offering, that we are seeing the first stirring of the
conscience, that noblest of Man’s faculties.
Now before you
neckbearded basement trolls rev up your keyboards, I’m not saying that this is
definitely evidence of funeral practices, or even of deliberate burial. I’m just saying that it could be, and wouldn’t it be cool if it was. I don’t know.
So this, I think, is the
verdict: we still could not interact with H.
heidelbergensis the same way we interact with each other. But we almost
could. While they could not speak,
perhaps their nonverbal communication was humanlike. Important physical actions at the core of our
being, like hand-clapping, pointing, or whistling, would have had some meaning
to them. They probably laughed and cried
like we do, for the same reasons. And I
believe there was that shouldness
which we call a conscience. So on the
big stuff, we connect with these creatures.
We have crossed the behavioral Rubicon, and have by this time almost
certainly had embarked on the path to behavioral modernity. By this time if not earlier, our ancestors were
behaving more like us than like our primate cousins.
Before I go, there’s one
thing I want to leave you guys with: under the direction of the man, the myth,
the legend, the towering badass Svante Paabo and his team of science nerds, we can
now study scraps of H. heidelbergensis
DNA, potentially giving us more clues about their story. I would be interested to see whether this
genetic data could give us any clues to their behavior.
Sources:
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