Re: Questions about the Upper Paleolithic

<lsj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1124888685.279429.158010@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> > In a TTC lecture on anthropology I was listening to recently, the professor
> > was discussing the upper paleolithic in near halcion terms. The folks were
> > taller, stronger, healthier, lived longer, had fewer diseases, a broader
> > diet, little (if any) indication of warfare, no famine, more leisure time
> > and no body odor (OK, that last one I made up). The professor went on to
> > describe the neolithic revolution as a relative descent into "nasty, brutish
> > and short". Once mankind began farming and herding, this lifestyle became a
> > ball and chain, they became slaves to their own technological advances.

> There is some evidence that life did get nastier in the neolithic
> revolution. But life was no vacation before that either -- the
> average lifespan in the paleolithic was nowhere near threescore
> and ten. If the paleolithic had been a paradise, the population
> wouldn't have remained near-static for millennia, and then started
> to _in_crease in the neolithic.

Some poor thinking here. Most populations
of most species 'remain static'. No one
claims that they occupy paradise, but they
are (by definition) well adapted to the niche
they occupy.

With farming, etc., humans found a new
niche -- which allowed them to expand
their numbers enormously. But we are
not well-adapted to it -- not as it was, nor
as it is now. Give us another few hundred
thousand years (assuming it's just a natural
process) and we might learn how to cope
with being couch potatoes.


Paul.


.

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