Ideas

by Peter Watson

  Olga Soffer, of the University of Illinois, also points out that some of the Venus figurines appear to be wearing caps that are woven. She thinks that textiles were invented very early on: she has, she says, identified impressions of netting on fragments of clay from Upper Palaeolithic sites in Moravia and Russia that suggest the possibility of net hunting. She also believes that cordage–ropes made of plant fibres–extends back 60,000 years and helped early humans construct sailing vessels, with the aid of which they colonised Australia.67

  Beads first appeared at Blombos cave in South Africa 80,000–75,000 years ago. They are common by 18,000 years ago, but their most dramatic arrival is seen towards the end of the ‘creative explosion’ in a series of burials in the 28,000-year-old site at Sungir in Russia. Randall White, the archaeologist who has studied these beads, reports on three burials–a sixty-year-old man, a small boy and a girl. The figures were adorned with, respectively, 2,936, 4,903 and 5,274 beads plus, in the case of the adult, a beaded cap with fox teeth and twenty-five mammoth-ivory bracelets. Each bead, according to experiments White carried out, would have taken between an hour and three hours to produce–13,000–39,000 hours in total (somewhere between eighteen and fifty-four months). So the word ‘decoration’ hardly applies and we need to ask whether these beads are evidence of something more important–social distinctions, maybe, or even primitive religion. White certainly thinks social divisions were already in existence 28,000 years ago; for one thing, it is unlikely that at Sungir everyone was buried with thousands of beads that took so long to make–there would hardly have been time for real work. It is possible, therefore, that the people who were buried with beads were themselves religious figures of some kind. The differences in decoration between individuals also imply that early humans were acquiring a sense of ‘self’.68

  The very presence of grave goods, of whatever kind, suggests that ancient people believed at least in the possibility of an afterlife, and this in turn would have implied a belief in supernatural beings. Anthropologists distinguish three requirements for religion: that a non-physical component of an individual can survive after death (the ‘soul’); that certain individuals within a society are particularly likely to receive direct inspiration from supernatural agencies; and that certain rituals can bring about changes in the present world.69 The beads at Sungir strongly suggest that people believed in an afterlife, though we have no way of knowing how this ‘soul’ was conceived. The remote caves decorated with so many splendid paintings were surely centres of ritual (they were lit by primitive lamps, several examples of which have been found, burning moss wicks in animal fat, another use of fire). At the caves of Les Trois-Frères in Ariège in southern France, near the Spanish border, there is what appears to be an upright human figure wearing a herbivore skin on its back, a horse’s tail and a set of antlers–in other words, a shaman. At the end of 2003 it was announced that several figures carved in mammoth ivory had been found in a cave, near Shelklingen in the Jura mountains in Bavaria. These included a Löwenmensch, a ‘lion-person’, half-man, half-animal, dating to 33,000–31,000 years ago, suggesting a shamanistic magical or religious belief system of some sophistication.

  David Lewis-Williams is convinced of the shamanistic nature of the first religions and their link to the layout of cave art. He puts together the idea that, with the emergence of language, early humans would have been able to share the experience of two and possibly three altered states of consciousness: dreams, drug-induced hallucinations, and trance. These, he says, would have convinced early humans that there was a ‘spirit world’ elsewhere, with caves–leading to a mysterious underworld–as the only practical location for this other world. He thinks that some of the lines and squiggles associated with cave art are what he calls ‘entoptic’, caused by people actually ‘seeing’ the structures of their brains (between the retina and the visual cortex) under the influence of drugs.70 No less important, he notes that many paintings and engravings in the caves make use of naturally-occurring forms or features, suggesting, say, a horse’s head or a bison. The art, he suggests, was designed to ‘release’ the forms which were ‘imprisoned’ in the rock. By the same token, the ‘finger flutings’, marks made on the soft rock, and the famous hand prints, were a kind of primitive ‘laying on of hands’, designed again to release the forms locked in the rock.71 He also notes a form of organisation in the caves. Probably, he thinks, the general population would have gathered at the mouth of the cave, the entrance to the underworld, perhaps using forms of symbolic representation that have been lost. Only a select few would have been allowed into the caves proper. In these main chambers Lewis-Williams reports that the resonant ones have more images than the non-resonant ones, so there may have been a ‘musical’ element, either by tapping stalactites, or by means of primitive ‘flutes’, remains of which have been found, or drums.72 Finally, the most inaccessible regions of the caves would have been accessed only by the shamans. Some of these areas have been shown to contain high concentrations of CO2, an atmosphere which may, in itself, have produced an altered state of consciousness. Either way, in these confined spaces, shamans would have sought their visions. Some drugs induce a sensation of pricking, or being stabbed, which fits with some of the images found in caves, where figures are covered in short lines. This, combined with the shamans’ need for a new persona every so often (as is confirmed today, among ‘stone age’ tribes), could be the origin of the idea of death and rebirth, and of sacrifice which, as we shall see, looms large in later religious beliefs.73

  Lewis-Williams’ ideas are tantalising, but still speculative. What we can be certain of, however, is that none of the complex art, and the ancient ceremonies that surrounded the painted caves, could have been accomplished without language. For Merlin Donald the transition to mimetic cognition and communication was the all-important transformation in history, but the arrival of spoken language was hardly less of a breakthrough.

  It is too soon to say whether the picture given above needs to be changed radically as a result of the discovery of Homo floresiensis, on the Indonesian island of Flores, and announced in October 2004. This new species of Homo, whose closest relative appears to be H. erectus, lived until 13,000 years ago, was barely one metre tall, and had a brain capacity of only 380 cc. Yet it appears to have walked upright, to have produced fairly sophisticated stone tools, may have controlled fire, and its predecessors must have reached Flores by rafting, since there is no evidence that the island was ever attached to the mainland of Asia. The new species’ small size is presumably explained by adaptation to an island environment, where there were no large predators. But, on the face of it, H. floresiensis shows that brain size and intelligence may not be as intimately linked in early species of man as previous scholarship had suggested.74

  2

  The Emergence of Language and the

  Conquest of Cold

  To Chapter 2 Notes and References

  The acquisition of language is perhaps the most controversial and interesting aspect of early humans’ intellectual life. It is, so far as we know, and together with mimetic cognition (if Merlin Donald is right), the most important characteristic that separates Homo sapiens from other animals. Since the vast majority of the ideas considered in the rest of this book were expressed in words (as opposed to painting, or music, or architecture, say), an understanding of the invention and evolution of language is fundamental.

  Before we come to language itself, though, we need to consider why it developed. And this is where we return to the significance of meat-eating. As was outlined in Chapter 1, the brain size of Homo habilis showed a marked increase over what went before, and this was associated with an advance in stone tool technology. Important in the context of this chapter is the discovery of stone tools up to ten kilometres from the raw material source, which implies that, beginning with H. habilis, early man was capable of ‘mental maps’, planning ahead, predicting where game would be and transporting tools to those sites, presu
mably in advance. This is intellectual behaviour already far beyond the capacities of other primates. But we also know, from the archaeological remains at sites, that early man ate antelope, zebra, and hippopotamus. Searching for large animal prey would have pitted early humans against hyenas when scavenging, and against the prey itself when hunting. Some palaeontologists argue that this could not have been accomplished as solitary individuals or even, perhaps, as small groups. A relationship has been observed by some zoologists between brain volume and the average size of social groups among primates. There is even a view that brain size is correlated with what Steven Mithen calls social intelligence. According to one estimate, the australopithecines lived in groups with an average size of sixty–seventy individuals, whereas H. habilis groups averaged around eighty.1 These provided the basic ‘cognitive group’ of early man, the group he had to deal with on an everyday basis, and the increasing size of this cognitive group would, say the palaeontologists, have stimulated the growth of man’s social intelligence. Distinguishing one group member from another, and one’s own kin within this wider group, would have become much easier once language had developed, and easier still once beads and pendants and other items of bodily adornment had been created, with which people could emphasise their individuality. Against this, George Schaller, who was mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 1, points out that lions hunt quite successfully in groups without language.

  We do also see a marked change in technology in the Upper Palaeolithic, and in hunting technique, both of them changes that are difficult to imagine without language. In Europe at least a whole range of tools appear–including hafted tools, harpoons and spear throwers made of shaped antler and bone (the first ‘plastics’); at the same time we see the development of blades, produced as ‘standardised blanks’ that could be turned into burins, scrapers, awls or needles as required.2

  In southern Africa we see a very different picture when comparing the remains excavated at Klasies River Mouth (120,000–60,000 BP) with the much younger Nelson Bay cave (20,000 BP). The latter contains more bones of large dangerous prey, like buffalo and wild pigs, and far fewer eland. By this time too, people had developed projectiles such as the bow and arrow that allowed them to attack prey at a distance. And there is an equivalent difference between the seal remains at Klasies and Nelson Bay. The age of the seals at Klasies indicates that ancient humans lived on the coast all through the year ‘including times when [food] resources were probably more abundant in the interior’.3 At Nelson Bay, however, the inhabitants timed their coastal visits to late winter/early spring when they could catch the infant seals on the beach, and then moved inland when it was more productive to do so.4 There is a final difference in these two sites as regards fishing. There are no fish among the debris at Klasies, while fish predominate at Nelson Bay. As we saw above, by now harpoons had been invented. Could such co-operation have been achieved without language? Could the concept of the harpoon barb be passed on without a word for it?

  Still more deductions can be made about the origin of language from examination of the sudden appearance of early humans in difficult environments, in particular the very cold parts of the world, notably Siberia. Siberia is important because the conquest of cold was man’s greatest achievement before the invention of agriculture, and because it was the jumping-off point for what turned out to be the greatest natural experiment in mankind’s history–the peopling of America. And, we may ask, would any of this been possible without language? Many sites in greater Siberia have been dated to at least 200,000 years ago and their very existence raises the question of fire (again) and of clothing. The climate was so harsh that many palaeontologists feel that the land could not have been occupied without man wearing ‘tailored’ clothing. However rough this tailoring would have been, it nevertheless implies the invention of the needle very early on, though nothing has ever been found. In 2004 it was reported by biologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig, in Germany, that body lice are different from hair lice. Mark Stoneking and his colleagues infer that body lice ‘probably evolved from hair lice when a new ecological niche–clothing–became available’. Based on the rate of mutation, they date this to 75,000 BP.5

  To conquer Siberia and Australia, early humans would have needed not only needles, to make clothes, but in the case of Australia rafting vessels, and in both places an elaborate social structure, involving kin and not-kin (and an appreciation of the differences). All of which would have required elaborate communication between individuals–i.e., language.6 Experiments show that group decision-making grows less effective in assemblies of more than six. Larger groups can therefore exist only with a hierarchy and this too implies language. By ‘communication’, we mean proto-languages, which probably lacked both tenses and subordinate clauses, where the action and thought is displaced from the face-to-face here-and-now.7

  Some time between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago, the area of sea that now separates Siberia from America–the Bering Strait–was land, and ancient man was able to walk from Eurasia to Alaska. In fact, during the last ice age that part of the world was configured quite differently from the way it is now. Not only was the land that is now submerged above water but Alaska and parts of what is now Yukon and the Northwest Territories, in Canada, were separated from the rest of the Americas by two gigantic ice sheets. Beringia, as this area is known to palaeontologists and archaeologists, stretched as an unbroken landmass from deepest Siberia across the strait and for three or four hundred miles into north America. Then, around 10,000 BP (though it was of course a very gradual process), the seas rose again as the world warmed up and the glaciers melted, and what we now call the Old World was cut off from the New and from Australia. Earth was effectively divided into two huge landmasses–Eurasia and Africa on the one hand, the Americas on the other. Early man then set about developing on the two landmasses, each for the most part unaware of the other’s existence. The similarities and the differences in the course of that independent existence tell us a great deal about humanity’s fundamental nature.

  Mys Dezhneva (or Uelen), the easternmost point of Siberia, is 8,250 miles from the Olduvai Gorge, as the crow flies. The route taken by early man was anything but straight, however, and a journey of 12,000 miles would be nearer the mark. It is a very long way to walk. Such archaeological and palaeontological remains as have been found place H. erectus in Asia from 800,000–700,000 years ago, associated with primitive tools of the Oldowan kind and, from 400,000–350,000 years ago, with the use of fire. H. erectus cave sites contained many charred bones of animals–deer, sheep, horses, pigs, rhinoceros–showing that s/he used fire for cooking as well as warmth. What is less clear is whether H. erectus knew how to start fires, or only preserved naturally-occurring flames, though there are sites with deep charcoal deposits, which do suggest that hearths were kept burning continuously.

  The latest evidence suggests that modern humans left Africa twice, first around 90,000 years ago, through Sinai into the Levant, an exodus which petered out. The second exodus occurred around 45,000 years later, along a route across the mouth of the Red Sea at the ‘Gate of Grief’ in Ethiopia. Humans reached the Middle East and Europe via the valleys of Mesopotamia, and south-east Asia by ‘beachcombing’ along the coasts. (This cannot quite be squared with the most recent evidence that early humans reached Australia around 60,000–50,000 BP.)8

  Studies of H. erectus skulls found in China show around a dozen tantalising–and highly controversial–similarities with those of Mongoloids and native Americans. These similarities include a midline ridge along the top of the skull, a growth of the lower jaw which is especially common among Eskimos, and similar shovel-shaped incisors. Taken together, these traits suggest that Chinese H. erectus contributed some genes to later Asian and native American Homo sapiens, though this evidence is very controversial.9 At the same time, it is important to stress that no trace of H. erectus or H. neanderthalensis has ever been found in America
or, for that matter, above the 53° north parallel. This suggests that only H. sapiens successfully adapted to very cold weather. Mongoloid people are adapted to cold, with double upper eyelids, smaller noses, shorter limbs, and extra fat on their faces. Charles Darwin, in his travels, encountered people at Tierra del Fuego who didn’t need much clothing.10

  Excavations by Russian (Soviet) archaeologists tell us a little about what Homo sapiens was capable of at that time. Some Asian scholars claim that s/he was in the region as early as 70,000–60,000 years ago and that modern humans evolved independently and separately in Asia. However, the fossil evidence for both claims is very thin.11 Most likely, modern humans arrived in Siberia between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, after evolving in Africa. Certainly, traces of human settlement do not occur in north-east Siberia until around 35,000 years ago, when there is an ‘explosion’ of sites which record their presence. This may have had something to do with the changing climate.12