CB>>The great enhancement of sociality that language and culture give bestows and enormous adaptive advantage on humans, from the beginning of the species.<<
One thing that came up in my reading that throws a spanner in the spandrel is this: based on the evidence we have now, we can say that the Cro Magnons out of Africa weren't anymore biologically, socially or culturally well-adapted for survival than the Neanderthals already outside of Africa. In fact, for a long time Neanderthals were more successful. They might even have been more intelligent. They show the same signs of culture and language use that we look for in Cro Magnons. Now I have tried to recapitulate the theory that somehow Cro Magnons developed socially beyond what Neanderthals had, and this might account for their eventual success. One of the differences, at least in some of the readings, was the 'domestication' of the wolf-dog. This might have brought adaptive value to both Cro Magnons and to wolf-coyote-dog (they are arguably all the same species). It might reflect the fact that Cro Magnons had some sort of capability to adapt themselves to living with another species. Which then leads to a number of things, but perhaps most importantly are more advanced social structure (that takes care of individuals across 3 generations, and takes in extended family to fulfill planned social activities for survival, such as a bison hunt, or passing on information as to where a herd of wild goats is going to be next spring, etc.). The strongest analogy that can be found among other animals is that wolves can also do this, although how they achieve this is not the same as how humans would do it. How proto-humans did it, we don't know. So Cro Magnon moved from being a bunch of small bands preying off herds (and competing with wolves) to being a society that in-gathered the bands for more ambitious activities--such as burning fires, to create pasture, to increase bison populations so Cro Magnon and the wolf-dogs could hunt/herd them. I guess one question is: since wolves and humans shared the same range and fed at the same niche, when did this inter-species cooperation start? And why couldn't Neanderthals do this? In the case of the wolf, this animal shows the ability to cooperate with other species besides humans. It cooperates with badgers because badgers are better at digging out prey, while wolves are better at driving to a place that a badger can dig it out. It makes for interesting speculation anyway. CJ -- ELT in Japan http://eltinjapan.blogspot.com/ Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
