Re: "People first lived in Britain about 700,000 years ago" ?

bent wrote:
I was going to ask if there is any more of this going to happen in the future.

Time is reality's way of keeping everything from happening at once. It would ruin the surprise if we could know what will happen. Reality loves to surprise us.

But realistically, of all the Homo species we, at present, have the shortest history. There is some evidence we have changed within recorded history and in the direction of smaller brains. Figure that out. Of course I would not hang my hat on that being a real trend.

Who were these misfits? You've explained why: our abilities/sufficiency's have come to a point that we can control our destiny. Therefore as of the recent past there will be no more "relatives dropping off" ? e.g. Newsflash, 2021: "[single]Almost human specimen found near-death in Central Park beside fire hydrant."

We do not let natural selection work. We preserve our elderly long beyond when they could survive on their own. There is a good reason to help a young warrior survivor a broken arm but not an old fart who can't chew his food. So the traditional natural selection is out for us.

And we have another issue. In society the best educated and presumably therefore the most intelligent tend to have the fewest children so the dumb inherit the earth. But with 6000 years of history we see no such thing. Now the rich today become the poor of the future so the smart genes go back into the general population.

There is another factor. Societies need certain skills which have absolutely no use for hunter-gatherers. Counting for example. It is called the numeracy gene. It may or may not exist but there are people who are clearly innumerate and there is no way to explain their deficiency to them any more than you can explain color to the color blind or more correctly, sight to the blind. If you buy into this, the gene seems to have appeared about 2500 years ago in or around Greece and has spread through about 1/4 of the population today.

Spreading a gene requires having more children. Looking at children and seeing the cost of raising them mitigates towards having fewer of them. So this gene appears to be neutral but changes the nature of people. It causes nothing new to happen, no wiping out the innumerate, but with it comes a technological society.

I glimpsed some older threads in this ng and there was one post stating something like "after Neanderthal the Germanic tribes took over".

Nonsense of course. The "germanic" would be those entering from Siberia in the second wave but the folks on the north coast of the Med were there all along.

It didn't even occur to me yesterday, but now I'm going to research Neanderthal to see if it was a German thing. Heidelberg... These time periods are huge in comparison to current historical evidence so I have to keep that in mind when chasing my tail.

Precisely. They are huge time periods. Several times all of recorded history. What in the hell were people doing all that time instead of building cities? Or when did a gene appear and spread that simply gave a tendency to build cities?

Fortunately I did a little historical civilization of man reading, sort of taking up where physical anthropology left off. I am not religious and until recently I was hesitant to say that in public, but in doing so I was denying myself proof of my own existence to protect the (insane) beliefs of others.

In all the religions of the world they are so damned simplistic compared to real history they are only suitable for children.

If I had a dime... I was denying myself the ability to express my own opinions on possibly the most fundamental questions there are.

The answer is 43. Now what is the question?

This is really all just a fun exercise. There is no possible way to get enough data to figure out what is going on with any methods we have available today. Archaeology, as is the name of this newsgroup, is another matter. We eventually can find all human towns and cities and figure out enough of what happened to see the progress. The chances of finding the place where the first drum or first knife was made are near zero comparing to finding the first city.

I think coming out of the closet (not the pink one) is important. I have to say while I'm at it, I am really baffled by it. I think religion has this successfully built this fear into it. I think I am more atheist than agnostic. I even think believing in current alien habitation is more prudent.

Religion is something still with us and something we will eventually outgrow. Look at human progress. Way back when the gods were needed to explain everything. Now the only place left for the gods is in the gaps of what is not explained. And those gaps get narrower every day. Today you have to know one hell of a lot of science to find a gap to insert a god. The trend is not in favor of the gods.

In the future at least I will have a bead on how a typical conversation on this topic will go.

If I may be so bold, you sound young and at 62 young has a broad meaning for me. Usually I run into people with all the answers ready to impose them upon the world.

Rule one is do not listen to me. Decide for yourself. When you come up with different ideas than me, let me know so I can learn something.

--
Bombing civilians is always justified to turn the people against their
government. Bombing civilians always increases the support of the
government. Bombing civilians is to justify more bombing.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3945
http://www.giwersworld.org/disinfo/occupied-2.phtml a6
.

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