Missing 50,000 years

No former glory

Originally posted by tinfoil hatter
(it is said that) humankind has been on the Earth for over 10,000,000 years and within this period many great civilizations have risen and fallen... So the 50,000 years you speak of may just have been a rebuilding period from a former glory.

Maybe so, I'm not claiming it to be fact...

And quite right you are too, because it is not a fact. We know this from the evidence of the intervening ten million years.

The evidence comes from palaentology. There is a mountain of it. Sadly for the followers of the Sleeping Prophet, it makes nonsense of the claim that humans have been around for ten million years, or that they have been civilized for longer than ten thousand years or so.

Ten million years ago, there weren't any humans. There weren't any chimpanzees, bonobos or gorillas either. All evolved from a common ancestor, which was also our ancestor. The chimp and gorilla lines split off from ours between 8 and 4 million years ago*.

You'll find more information here. But for a far more interesting, indeed fascinating account of hominid evolution, I recommend to you The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins.

The earliest ancestors found in our direct line of descent are Ardipithecus and Australopithecus. They lived from five and a half to about two million years ago. 'Pithecus' means 'ape'; these creatures were very far from human.

By about two and a half million years ago, some australopithecenes had evolved smaller molars and larger brains, and learned to use simple tools of stone and bone. Louis Leakey, who first discovered their fossil remains, called them Homo habilis ('Handyman'). This is the earliest creature to be recognized as a member of the genus Homo ('man'), but it certainly wasn't human; it was just an ape that looked a bit more human than earier apes had done. Many scientists would prefer to reclassify habilis as a subspecies of Australopithecus.

The use of tools doesn't signify humanity, incidentally; chimps and bonobos also use tools, not to mention some birds and certain other creatures.

In fact, the first beings we would recognize as vaguely human only arrived on the scene about 1.8 million years ago. Homo erectus was the first human ancestor to walk fully upright. It made fairly well-finished tools and appears to have made use of fire. No-one can say for sure whether this species evolved language before it died out about 150,000 years ago, but even without this characteristic human property, few scientists would hesitate to describe erectus as a kind of human.

The Edgar Cayce variety of human, which is known as Homo Sapiens, has only been around for about 250,000 years. However, humanity as we know it didn't really get started until the cultural explosion that occurred in the Upper Paleolithic, about 50,000 years ago.

For that story, see my earlier post.

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*All the dates in this post are approximate. Assume a variation of (at least!) ± half an order of magnitude from the stated figure in every case.

[edit on 5-9-2007 by Astyanax]

Originally posted by gingern

why did take 50,000 years to get from stick to pyramd and only 4000 years to get from pyramid to moon landing?

Maybe it takes a civilisation 50,000 years to clear it's head after experimenting with all the plants that can be eaten, drunk ..... or smoked.

The mystery of the pyramids is this ~ Detox scheme on a massive scale.

The Hindu's had a modern concept of the universe before the birth of Christ (planets and stars are spherical and the solar system revolves around the sun).

This means it's entirely possible that people knew something important and subsequently forgot it in later generations.

Originally posted by nixie_nox
I think we hit a lot of road blocks at first, the dark ages, etc. But now we know how to tear down those roadblocks.

This can be looked at the other way that evolution is leaving smarter and smarter people.

It usually only takes one or two inventions to mainstream things. Like the engine. Which now you have a tractor that can do mass farming instead of a plow or horse.

Dark ages was caused by plague and famine killing people thus population fell into a recession.

Originally posted by gingern

why did take 50,000 years to get from stick to pyramd and only 4000 years to get from pyramid to moon landing?

Why did it take 6,000 years to get from horse and cart to internal combustion engine, but only 60 to get from internal combustion engine to space flight?

reply to post by Astyanax



That's good that your going by the current science, but science isn't infallible. Cayce could still be proven right. There is no 100% proof that some form of humans ancestors could not have been around 10,000,000 years ago. Though probably a small hairy bipedal ape like creature, if ever discovered. Cayce never said, to my knowledge, that the original humans were homo sapiens.

Also, there's always the possibility that there just weren't many human ancestors around then for anyone to find them, yet.

But to be fair, Cayce has been wrong before, after all he was only human. So like I said in my original post, I'm not claiming what he said was fact, just that I'm keeping an open mind until I see actual proof that he was wrong, or right.

The age of civilization keeps getting pushed further and further back as more discoveries are made.
Mesopotamia was thought to be the cradle of civilization, now there are some who doubt this.
The ruins of a settlement at Catalhoyuk are thought to be around 9000 years old and could have been home to as many as 10000 people.
Marine archaeology looks to be the next step in unearthing some more exciting finds over the next few years imo and possible pushing the case for civilization back even further.
But as others have stated toolmaking and a population explosion due to our ability to farm and domesticate animals meant that we were able to live in permanent settlements with an excess of resources being able to be stored.
Once this started to happen we suddenly had time on our hands, there was no need to continually be out hunting and gathering food or looking for new verdant area's to move to.
Once we had more time on our hands we started to think more about the world around us apart from just the need to survive.
Religion, government, communication ie a written language and the arts suddenly became as important to us as the ability to hurl a spear accurately or track a deer.

My 2c for what its worth.

It was the transition from mysticism to education during this 50,000 years that caused the big change. The advance in thinking as opposed to accepting. When mankind started putting the spirits behind them and doing for itself, we started to advance. The paradigm shift from spirits ruling through a shaman to man ruling themself with advice from the spirits led to the greatest leap in human evolution. Until this point, tribes would follow a cyclic migration led by the shaman or wise man. When they stopped migeating and settled into an area, the ability to accumulate items and store food allowed them the chance to learn different skills and pass them on to the next generation.

Dreaming prophets and Hindu cosmographers

Originally posted by tinfoil hatter
Cayce could still be proven right. There is no 100% proof that some form of humans ancestors could not have been around 10,000,000 years ago.

How about 99.9999% proof? That's pretty much what the combined evidence from paleontology, geology and a score of other sciences provides. Or are you going to hold out for the 0.0001% possibility?

This man Cayce got his 'information' from dreams. Do you honestly think somebody's dreams -- which as you say were often wrong -- stack up credibly against the work of generations of scholars dedicated to a quest for the truth?

Also, there's always the possibility that there just weren't many human ancestors around then for anyone to find them, yet.

May I suggest you look into the story of human evolution a little more deeply? There's a great account in Dawkins's The Ancestor's Tale, which I'm currently devouring, but really, there's no shortage of fascinating books and articles about it. Once you're more familiar with the science behind the story (once you understand exactly how scientists have formed their ideas about the evolution of humankind), you'll understand how solid the evidence really is. Oh, there are plenty of controversies -- did habilis pre-date ergaster, how to deal with potentially anachronistic finds like the skull found a few years ago in Chad, what really became of the Neanderthals? In some cases we'll never know the answers to these questions. But the main thrust of the story and much of the detail is very clearly understood and there really isn't much room for doubt.

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Originally posted by C.C.Benjamin
The Hindu's had a modern concept of the universe before the birth of Christ (planets and stars are spherical and the solar system revolves around the sun).

I would be very interested to learn more about this; could you please provide links or sources?

I live in a country with a sizeable Hindu population and heritage and I am not unfamiliar with the religion. As far as I know, the basic Hindu (and Buddhist) cosomography is centred around a gigantic mountain, Meru, usually located somewhere in the Himalayas (Mount Kailas is sometimes equated with it). The upper slopes of Mount Meru are the home of the gods; the slopes lower down are populated by beings of lesser but still celestial degree, such as apsaras. The foothills of this huge mountain are the Himalayas. The earth surrounds Mount Meru on all sides, and the sea surrounds the earth.

There are many versions of this basic cosmography. In some, this universe floats in a sea of milk, in others it is carried on the back of an animal such as a turtle or an elephant. In Buddhist versions, the top of the mountain contains/is a being/flame/jewel/etc. of pure enlightement.

Almost every Hindu and Buddhist sect runs variations on this cosmography; but I must say I've never heard of a spherical earth, heliocentric solar system, etc.

Given the evident cultural exchanges between the Alexandrian Greeks and India in the third century BC and after, it would not be altogether surprising if later Indian cosmology followed Greek speculation about such things; or maybe the speculation went the other way round. But you're clearly referring to something more ancient. I'm looking forward to learning more.

Well the last ice age probably had a lot to do with it.... think about it.... ice covers a good portion of the globe... all the water tied up in glacier's causes causes a massive drought is the areas not immediately adjacent to them... end result a drop in the food supply and a subsequent drop in population.... as a result lack of progress.

Also by all accounts the population was scattered in relatively small tribes until the late neolithic, the melting of the glacier's and the invention of agriculture and the formation of towns. The larger the populations, the more stimuli for progress.

[edit on 11-9-2007 by grover]

I remember talking about this in Philosophy class awhile ago.
The best I can do to help is:

If we're looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism and then at the development of its interaction with the environment. Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life perceived through the hominid coming to the evolution of mankind. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man. Now, interestingly, what you're looking at here are three strings: biological, anthropological -- development of the cities -- and cultural, which is human expression.

Now, what you've seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that are involved here -- two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it -- you're beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you're looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years. You're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within this generation.

Via Professor Eamonn Healy, University of Texas. Part of the movie Waking Life.