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Based on various lines of evidence, not limited to the conceptual error that 200,000 years ago, newly-minted Homo sapiens were modern social humans, I see an important problem. Modern social behavior is the result of 10 – 15,000 years of domestication and urbanization, of humans moving into agricultural zones, creating dense clusters of settlements, which of necessity required selection for obedience, magical thinking, and compliant personalities, and if you didn’t fit in, you were run off or eliminated. Homo sapiens self-domesticated using the same methods that were successful in redesigning the few animal species that could be domesticated. The result was Homo sapiens sapiens, or modern social humans.
Selection for juvenile traits, especially in females, which are linked to both behavior and physical appearance, resulted in increased fertility, tolerance of being ‘handled’ and living in close quarters, and shorter, not longer, life spans due to slavery, violence, overwork, poor nutrition and the easy spread of viral and bacterial infections and degradation of the environment – critically the pollution of water sources. The study of Archaeology is crowded with failure: “advanced” urban and agricultural “empires” that had to be abandoned, with a return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle or partial agricultural (slash and burn subsistence) that remains to this day and continues to destroy tropical forests.
I find it quite unbelievable that 10,000 years of technical invention and the accumulation of Culture, which modern humans depend on, and indeed could not survive without, can be utterly ignored as a significant definition of Homo sapiens sapiens. Individuals today can literally spend their lives sitting on a couch in front of a TV, and be supplied food, clothing, shelter, energy and entertainment by other humans, often thousands of miles distant, who are essentially captive prey who live in dreadful conditions.
No wild human lived like this. Each individual had to be intelligent, curious, and a fast learner, and to shoulder the responsibilities of adulthood. Wild humans had to be continuously aware of the total environment, and be prepared to act instantly when challenged by danger and opportunity. Everyone had a job and shared the work of survival. Modern social humans would utterly fail to measure up.
As populations diverged into two types, agricultural – urban, and nomadic hunter – gatherer, the behavior of urban humans became more aggressively hierarchical and steeply stratified into predator and prey classes. Expansion became an inevitable response to inadequate food supplies and growing population. It’s still “Good to be Pharaoh” whether or not one lives in a quasi democracy or worships the “worst males” Dictators, Gods, Popes or Wall Street crooks; the top of the social hierarchy writes the rules.
What did happen to Wild Humans?
Modern humans exterminated them, not 100,000, 50,000 or 20,000 years ago, but during recent history, and are still using capitalism, colonialism, religionism, environmental destruction, war-mongering, starvation, cultural aggression, and species extermination – scorched earth policies, to eliminate any and all competition.