Human Universe with Professor Brian Cox

Apeman to Spaceman in 250,000 years


http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/40/human-universe-1


Professor Brian Cox opened his new BBC Two series by doing a great injustice to our ancestors.


His statement that human development was an "ascent" from our ape roots is both anthropocentric and Euro-centric inferring as it does that humans were somehow "chosen" for this adventure, perhaps by god? Furthermore, it fails to recognise that from a biological perspective the evolution of humans is a process of fetalization or more precisely neoteny in chordates (DeBeer, cited in Bednarik 2011). It implicitly perpetuates the idea that evolution is teleological when it is dysteleological. The biological trajectory of the human species, a process marked most recently by a transition from strong to weak, can more accurately be described as a "descent" from our ape ancestry.


As the BBC web site reveals, Professor Brian Cox presents a new theory, which I shall refer to here as the "Large Brain Hypothesis (LBH)". According to the LBH model, the earth's 400,000 year orbital wobble in combination with the precession and rapidly changing environmental conditions in the African rift valley precipitated punctuated increases in brain volume resulting in the present human condition. The examples the professor provided to illustrate his case were the brain cases of Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis and Omo II perhaps unaware that Omo II was a surface find and is certainly not representative of a "modern human" skull having some very robust features. His suggestion of an accelerated development in brain volume coinciding with the events and scenario outlined are simply not supported by the meagre hominin fossil record. Further it fails to account for the average 13% decrease in brain volume from 50,000 years ago to the present day, following a steady course of expansion over a much longer period . If such investment in brain size was so central to our evolution what conditions occurred to cause natural selection to be halted and for the rapid decrease in brain size and 50% reduction in robusticity which followed? Unfortunately LBH provides no answers to this basic question, no surprises.


Instead, Professor Cox parrots the usual Pleistocene archaeological narrative that in just "10,000 generations" we can all trace our ancestry back to one point. That we are "all related to Africans from the Rift Valley". BS. His and my genealogy, as white Europeans, is very unlikely to be traceable to an African ancestry. The genetic data, both Y chromosome and mtDNA suggest that the haplogroups of African and Non-Africans split from a common ancestor of around 160,000 years ago. The origin of this common ancestor is unknown at present (Klyosov 2014).


He pinpoints the "road to civilisation" (from Africa - of course!) beginning at 60,000 years ago although why this date was chosen on this occasion by this professor is unclear citing the forging of Bedouin routes as evidence. No material evidence (for example the obsidian "spearpoints" he makes much ado of) supports this assertion. More critically, cultural evidence which is at odds with the suggestion that these 250,000 year old spear-points are a manifestation of a uniquely African/modern human trait was not presented. For instance, the finely crafted wooden spear from Clacton dated to around 400,000 years old or the javelin-like spears from Schoningen to name two of many more which contradict this mythical narrative.


But more to the point, implying that the human journey to space occurred in a matter of 250,000 years is simply incorrect. The most comparable journey is of course seafaring which probably began over a million years ago but certainly by 840,000 years ago as attested to by the evidence of hominin occupation at the island of Flores amongst others. These journeys, which by all accounts were a much more dangerous and therefore greater step for humankind, occurred without the global resources and expert scientific support that the first journey to the moon benefitted from. The journey to the moon was a precisely calculated exercise that by comparison with the first journeys across the sea was relatively safe (Bednarik 2011). These early journeys may have had failure rates in excess of 50%.


So, as Professor Brian Cox dismisses several million or so years of archaeological evidence of developing culture as irrelevant, he arrives at writing which he proposes was the next "big step" to the moon following spear-points. He suggests that it is at this moment that humans really came into their own. Whilst he may have support in indicating that "writing freed the acquisition of knowledge", contrary to his case, I would counter that the production of exograms (the externalisation of memory traces) was fundamentally more important than writing since it underpins our construction of a "shared" reality and a frame of reference from which volition arises. What he appears to be doing is conflating the culturally accumulated knowledge which allowed for space travel with the conceptual idea of a "modern mind" which empirically does not exist.

Rabbits, neoteny and “modern humans”

"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit.

 "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

I was looking for a tenuous link to rabbits and happened upon this quote from Pooh, apparently describing the course of Pleistocene Archaeology.

Rabbits featured in the news recently but anthropologists and archaeologists may have missed the relevance.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140828142744.htm

Science Daily announced:

“An international team of scientists has now made a breakthrough by showing that many genes controlling the development of the brain and the nervous system were particularly important for rabbit domestication. The study is published today in Science and gives answers to many genetic questions.”

The domestication of rabbits took place fairly recently, purportedly in the last 1,400 years. This has made the task of unravelling the genetic changes that took place less complex than for other animals domesticated much earlier, for instance, humans.

“We predict that a similar process has occurred in other domestic animals and that we will not find a few specific "domestication genes" that were critical for domestication. It is very likely that a similar diversity of gene variants affecting the brain and the nervous system occurs in the human population and that contributes to differences in personality and behaviour, says Leif Andersson”.

Indeed, 50,000 years of domestication brought about major changes that are observed in the hominin fossil record, many of which were deleterious and contrary to natural selection. Only sexual selection can trump natural selection and therefore if the discipline of Pleistocene Archaeology is sincere in its’ quest to unravel the early history of “modern humans” it desperately needs to acknowledge that the “Leaky replacement theory”, “Mostly Out of Africa” and other such models fail to address those changes which are most central to the current “human condition” (Bednarik 2011). Culturally determined sexual selection was ultimately responsible for the rapid decrease in brain volume (37 times that of the previous expansion over the course of millions of years) and 50% reduction in robusticity. These are just two of the traits which are frequently observed in the domestication of animals.

 “The study also revealed which genes had been altered during domestication. The researchers were amazed by the strong enrichment of genes involved in the development of the brain and the nervous system, among the genes particularly targeted during domestication.”

Considered in the context of human domestication this makes perfect sense of “brain re-organisation” especially when the selection is moderated by culturally determined significance. Indeed this process of selection for culturally perceived values continues to the present day and reflects many different pressures and influences including dominance and compliance.