Documentary The Day We Learned To Think
Understanding
of humans’ earliest past often comes from studying fossils. They tell us much
of what we know about the people who lived before us. There is one thing
fossils cannot tell us; at what point did we stop living day-to-day and start
to think symbolically, to represent ideas about our environment and how we
could change it? At a dig in South Africa the discovery of a small piece of
ochre pigment, 70,000 years old, has raised some very interesting questions.
Anatomically
modern humans (Homo sapiens)
emerged in Africa roughly 100,000 years ago. We know from fossil evidence thatHomo sapiens replaced other hominids around them and
moved out of Africa into Asia and the Middle East, reaching Europe 40,000 years
ago.
Prof
Richard Klein believes art is a landmark in human evolution. Unquestionable art
that’s widespread and common suggests you’re dealing with people just like us.
No other animals, after all, are able to define a painting as anything other
than a collection of colours and shapes. This ability is unique to humans.
Other
scientists agree. They believe art defines humans as behaviourally modern, and
its beginning must coincide with the ability to speak and use language. If
someone has the imagination to devise a shared way to describe their
environment using art then it seems inconceivable that they could not possess
language and speech. The search for the moment our ancestors became
behaviourally just like us is also the hunt for the first evidence of art.
Category: Archaeology, Evolution, Science
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