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>>The women called Eve is roughly 300,000 years ago on
the long end and about 180,000 on the short end. Abundance by any measure does
not appear for many thousands of years (eras) later, nor is there any indication
of an emergent division of labor in society, until thousands of era
later.
Hunter and gathering is in my estimate a very mistaken concept
because our species are birthed as gatherers and only become hunters later. If
anything the gather-hunter appears much later in the human drama. The . .
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I entered this thread on the basis of Jared M. Diamond book,
"Guns, Germs and Steel." The issue, as I understand matters was the interplay
between species activity and environment in a more than less closed ecosystem
and how this very closedness excites - set into motion, migration patterns,
population growth or decline, technological dispersal or diffusion, and becomes
the framework for technology development and conquest or what is the title of
Jared's book, "Guns, Germs and Steel."
This kind of discussion continually surfaces because of our
need to know and explain or describe "how the West won" or why the sons and
daughter of what we understand to be the meaning of European and Europeans
emerged as the ruling peoples and classes of a significant portion of earth.
Then the inevitable occurs . . . a search into species history
to account for species violence and everyone is challenged to put on their
archeological hats. I have no archeological hat as such but read books.
On page 197 of a book called "Genesis Revisited" - 1990, there
is a reference to Jared M. Diamond of the University of California Medical
School at Los Angeles in chapter 9 called, "The Mother Called Eve." I purchased
this book when it was first published 16 years ago and chapter 9 summarizes the
search to understand our species beginnings using modern data made available
through the growth of DNA science and technology tracking.
Now Jared's "Guns, Germs and Steel" opens with the following
words in the first two sentence of the book: "This book attempts to provide a
short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating
the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents?"
The distance between "the mother called Eve" roughly 300, 000
years ago and Jared's stated purpose of his book is a whopping 287,000 years,
with the modern search for a common ancestor for our species dating back as far
as 50 million years ago. The trail between then - 50 million years ago, and now
is broken and may be impossible to reconstruct. Yet about 300,000 years ago,
without any established evidence of gradual changes leading to a profound and
sudden leap - (meaning the transition wherein the emergence of a new
quality establishes itself), there appears Homos sapien and then about 35,000
years ago Homo sapien sapien or our parents and their parents.
Now there is speculation that the two lines of our species
Homo sapien and Homo sapien sapien, may have coexisted together for perhaps
90,000 to 100,000 years and Jared's book is expressly stated to be concerned
with the past 13,000 years.
This stuff is more exciting than winning the World Poker Tour
- (naww), because I have read that sites have been excavated establishing the
common sharing and existence of "the sapien" and "sapien sapien" not only
cohabited common areas but the latter - our parents, had settlements in what we
call the Middle East at least 70,000 years ago.
Now Part 2 of Jared's book is called "The Rise and Spread of Food Production" and the time line he uses to
date the rise of this production is 11,000 years ago. Jared's is a pretty
smart guy as far as I am concerned and understands the questions he will face in
the intellectual market and subtitles Chapter one, "What happened on all
continents before 11,000 B.C."
Before 11,000 Bc is covered in Jared's book in Part One which
is called "From Eden to Cajamarca" where he writes: "... Africans of 100,000
years ago had more modern skeletons than did Neanderthal contemporaries " but no
preserved arts and was not in the business of slaughtering arnimals - "buffalo,
pigs and other dangerous prey . . . They couldn't even fish: their sites
immediately on the seacoast lack fish bones and fish hooks."
These Africans of 100,000 yars ago are said to be a transition
so to speak between Neanderthal and Cro-magnon or the sapein and the sapien
sapien.
"Human history at last took off around 50,000 years ago, at
the time of what I termed our Great Leap Forward. The earliest signs of that
leap come from East African sites with standardized stone tools and the first
preserved jewelry (ostrich shells). Similar development soon appeared in the
Near East and in southeastern Europe, then (some 40,000) years ago) in
southwestern Europe, where abundant artifacts are assoiated with fully modern
skeltons of people termed Cro-Magnons."
When did what we term "civilization" appear or what I
understand the word society to mean as distinct from community or clan?
See . . . what I understand to be the meaning of the West is
barely 700 years old . . . AND . . . if what I understand to be the meaning of
class in its abstract setting is only perhaps only 8,000 - 10,000 years old (if
agricultural production and the slow emergence of surplus is used as an
index) . . . this leads me to except a framework that the West did
not invent violence or is more violent in the absolute sense, that our
predecessors. Given the huge development of the material power of
production, science and the revolution in the methods of destruction and
killing, we are most certainly more violent in the relative sense - meaning
modern methods of warfare empower us with a different capacity than our
predecessor.
What did man eat and why or the origin of human needs is an
issue that can only be traced and speculated upon in the context of the broken
trail of our history. Neanderthal man or the sapien did not and could not
consume flesh as a culture or ritual, nor did such an impulse to do such emerge
in his environment. This statement pushes the time line back beyond 70,000
years. There of course are no classes, caste and only the rudiments of clans but
not the clans of an agricultural society, which is organized in
correspondence with/to a given set of instruments and tools and simple
mechanical machines and rudimental mechanical motion.
In other words . . . Genesis 1 of the Bible is a brief summary
of the history and emergence of Neanderthal man.
Genesis 2 of the Bible is the story of Cro-Magnon or your wife
brothers best friend cousin.
Between the time of the women called Eve - 300,000 years ago,
and this sudden appearance of us . . . (which is yet to be explained in an
acceptable manner for many), is an overlaping period of more than less peaceful
coexistnece of say 90,000 years, where both types of folks populated the earth.
Ok . . .lets do this.
The Adam and his female mate of Genesis 1 do not have the
ability to reproduce themselves. This ability is granted in Genesis 2. That is
to say, the coexistence of Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon women, or more
accurately Neanderthal women and Cro-Magnon man could not bear fruit. (I will
most certainly go to hell for this.) Why? For the same reason that a horse and
donkey can make a mule, but mules cannot reproduce themselves our make little
mules. It has do with chromosomes but I ain't no scientist although I read a lot
of books on this subject.
Now Cro-Magnon women intuitively understood the subtle
difference but Cro-Magnon man . . . (you dogs!) took longer to understand the
finer points of species activity and spend 50,000 years complaining about why
his women could not bear him a child. Its like . . . brother, you keep looking
in the wrong places. "Come out of the woods and steeps looking for women!"
Now . . . the Neanderthal was a gatherer and could not on the
basis of an unexplained leap become a hunter because his environment prevented
this and his environment (a more than less closed ecosystem) did not need
changing - from the standpoint of his species existence, so he could not
conceive of changing it in the direction of Cro-Magnon.
Here is the meaning of the legend of Gilgamesh.
Damn.
Ok . . . Gilgamesh was a King of divine parents on the mothers
side!
He was 75% God and demanded the right of first night with all
the women and generally got on everyone's nerves, because the fellows wanted him
to leave the wife alone and take some of them daughters. To keep Gilgamesh.
occupied and happy a decision was made to find him a friend or playmate. The
elders - actually his court, decided to get him a wild man from the steeps -
your wife brother or the Neanderthal man.
How do we capture this Neanderthal man because he outruns
all of us and is much stronger, eats fruits and vegetation so we cannot invite
him to the bar be q, and drinks water from the river with the gazelle?
The plan was to send a Cro-Magnon women to the river to
befriend him for a period of time and the have repeated sex with him as a basis
for civilizing him. (I swear this is what the legend states). Anyway after
repeated sex and interchange where the Neanderthal learnt a modern
language the animals would no longer befriend him and he was brought to the
city.
The Neanderthal was brought to the city and became Gilgamesh
friend and was challenged to a wrestling match in which he bested Gilgamesh and
bent his knee. From there both went on to discover the secret of immortaliy,
which Gilgamesh was finally denied.
Jared's book is in fact about diffusion on various levels and
not simple a tale of wave after wave of violence and guns and germs. The Bible
is the depositary of some very ancient materialism .. . our earliest, taken from
older records. The Adam in Genesis 2 and his progeny become the gatherer-hunter
because they are a different man/women.
Now none of this have very much to do with the West because
that is another story.
However, what this means for me is several things in terms of
politics and economics. It is a mistake to confuse the different kinds or rather
different branches of our species, in unraveling species activity. To attribute
class formations, concepts of wealth and male supremacy, agricultural relations
and tools and the emergence of caste to the Neanderthal is not well thought
out or reasoned. Here is the guy of Genesis 1 of the Bible. He is not a hunter
and on his own does not deplete the all important alkaline content of his closed
ecosystem.
Cro-Magnon is another story and creates history and he appears
suddenly and without adequate explanation in Africa. He depletes his environment
of specific alkaline content or a breach takes place in his living that compels
him into migratory patterns. Absolutely no one their own volition chooses to
live in the unbearable cold because of its limited alkaline content. Meat eating
becomes a culture ("a culture") in such environments, for another set of
biological reasons not limited to a faulty understanding called the protein
theory. Even here it is a limited need that is expanded with the emergence
of bourgeois exchange relations, which in turn creates needs that are its
condition and precondition for circularly motion.
Necessity and need operates on a somewhat different basis for
the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon and Marxism has to this day combined this
divergence in our species and to that degree is without authenticity.
Jared Diamond has a valid approach that is more than less
materialist in my opinion. He covers his subject as well as can be expected.
I prepare my journey to hell.
Waistline.
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