Rain Dance
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"Wonder is the basis of worship."
_Thomas Carlyle
"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby."
_Langston Hughes
"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet."
_Bob Marley
"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters"
_Gen 1:2
It doesn't stop there. Keep in mind, the reproductively successful individual drives the evolutionary adaptations of the group. A female chimp named Gaia (meaning Earth Goddess) has been repeatedly observed, in the wild, choosing inanimate objects such as sticks and rocks, and nurturing, grooming them as a human child with a doll, as if it were her offspring, soulful, dependent and alive. Isolated? Then, similarly, a female baboon, in the wild, in Gombe, Tanzania, does the same with rocks. They literally project their thoughts and emotions on inanimate objects. I'm of the opinion that if these individuals reached reproductive success - they're practiced and refined instincts would become n advantage in caring for their young, whom, in turn, may inherit those same genes.
"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet."
_Bob Marley
"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters"
_Gen 1:2
Eve's conversation with the snake (Genesis 3) is a remnant of an archaic hominin fascination and wonder with our world. It, along with water, is one of the oldest symbols embedded in our minds. Eve's story is a warning - a warning we will revisit at the emergence of agriculture. But, here, the story itself is telling of how and why spiritual beliefs developed in hominins - not just modern day humans.
Think of an animal group - whether comprised of prey or predators, it does not matter. When a potential danger emerges, there is an individual, or small group of guardians or sentinels, that bellows a warning call to alert the group of the threat. Though this is a warning, this can also spell the doom of the one giving the warning - for he or she is drawing attention to themselves in the presence of that threat. "The chances of dying in an attack are greater if you give an alarm call, or on guard behavior. Evolution has acted to increase the speed and intelligence of these animals so thay reduce those costs to a minimum." (Stephen C. Stearns, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University)
Keep in mind, the individual making the call, and their quickened evolutionary advantages over the group. The risks taken to alert the group have forced and shaped a developmental response in that individual; literally faced, in the moment, with respond or die. Thus, the success of the group depends on the success of these individuals. This is not restricted to the topic of this post - the emergence of spirituality - but to evolution across the entire spectrum. What affects you in your life is far more frequent and impactful than what affects our species over geological time. It is not "survival of the fittest," but the adaptation and reproductive success of the individual in relation to others in the group. The lifetime of the individual is much shorter than that of its species, much less community. 85% of human variation is between individuals, and 15% among groups.
When recognition of mortality is trumped by some form of appreciation, connection and wonder, I believe, you have the emergence of spiritual emotion and thought; it is much older than humans.
In chimpanzees, the alarm call you would expect upon discovery of snakes (large and small pythons) is, instead, a call to the group to come, gawk and wonder. This would appear to be counter-evolutionary. Not only does it place the alerting individual in danger, but the group - all being in proximity to a mortal threat. But, instead, they keep a safe distance, some even seeking out a high branch for a better view. Primatologist Jane Goodall explains their facial expressions are of curiosity and fear. This is a social gathering, as some reassure others with a comforting touching, some embrace, and all are making more frequent eye contact - in mutual, yet obvious understanding of the moment.
an·i·mism
ˈanəˌmizəm/
noun
- 1.the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena.
- 2.the belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe.
It doesn't stop there. Keep in mind, the reproductively successful individual drives the evolutionary adaptations of the group. A female chimp named Gaia (meaning Earth Goddess) has been repeatedly observed, in the wild, choosing inanimate objects such as sticks and rocks, and nurturing, grooming them as a human child with a doll, as if it were her offspring, soulful, dependent and alive. Isolated? Then, similarly, a female baboon, in the wild, in Gombe, Tanzania, does the same with rocks. They literally project their thoughts and emotions on inanimate objects. I'm of the opinion that if these individuals reached reproductive success - they're practiced and refined instincts would become n advantage in caring for their young, whom, in turn, may inherit those same genes.
I see this quite literally as "frequency dependent selection," where the advantage of doing something depends on what else is present. Where, in perhaps difficult times, it is advantageous to the mind to put things in a different perspective, alleviating stress in some form from either a pressured mind or existence.
And this is the architecture:
This is the Limbic System in the brain. This system is the center of emotion, memory, sensory perception, time processing, spacial perception, attention, consciousness and instinct. You may have learned of it as the "reptilian brain," or the most ancient part of our mind. This is false and really misleading - in reptiles, birds, etc, it has the same functional equivalent, each well developed. Yet, ours is simply more has more inter-connectedness with other parts of the brain. And that inter-connectedness provided us the mental flexibility to compartmentalize, freeing us up to not only deal in tough situations, but streamline routine tasks (as a result of tool-making and specialization), and thus, create. The VMAT2 gene regulates the development of membranes for proteins that distribute neurotransmitters such as dopamine (reward/motivation behavior), norepinephrine (concentration and attention), serotonin (well-being/happiness), and histamine (stimulation of neurons, mood and motivation). The limbic system is the primary theater for the expression and activities of the VMAT2 gene.
We tend to ascribe a sudden explosion of modern human behavioral traits to Homo sapiens. As new evidence emerges in archaeology, paleoclimatology, evolutionary psychology and genetics, we are shattering earlier concepts of human evolution. And as we investigate similar behaviors in our recent ancestors we can, at least, begin to detect their origins or rudiments and shift time back, perhaps, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.
Symbolic behaviors and spirituality formed as an evolutionary by-product of other mental architecture and adaptations, and may have offered a selective advantage. As seen in chimpanzees "agent detection" - the ability to infer the presence of a threat, "etiology" - linking cause to natural occurrences, and "theory of mind" - knowing others have a mind of their own, could serve as the basis of belief. That they are anatomically centered in the part of the brain, the limbic system - particularly the hippocampus (new memories of experienced events, verbal memory in humans, and procedural memory), mammillary body (spatial memory), hypothalamus (circadian rhythms, attention, emotional processing, stimulation, social ranking), and entorhinal cortex (spatial memories - EC-hippocampus, memory consolidation, directional sense). That, in humans, the limbic system is not archaic, but instead highly interconnected with other parts of the brain, thus higher cognitive abilities.
There is ample evidence that Neanderthals also buried their dead, like Hiedelbergensis before it. Some graves have grave offerings like flowers (mostly with known medicinal value), tools, bones and ochre.
Ochre is a pigment made of crushed red earth used for symbolic representation - covering the body and important objects. It was previously believed that modern humans brought such symbolism with them out-of-Africa some 60kya. Or that, Neanderthals adopted the practice of body paint only once coming in contact with Cro Magnon, or anatomically modern Homo sapiens. But recent evidence suggests Neanderthal use of ochre as early as 250kya. This is not only a sense of symbolism with red ochre, but of an afterlife with burials. And since chimpanzees have the same capacity - and we are diverged and evolved over 7-8mya - then, we can deduct that our earliest hominin ancestors had some form of extended beliefs like spirituality. And that these beliefs may have continued to evolve over time, until we have today's monotheistic, social, law-giving religions.
Once again, there are easy, observable, and testable links to how these thoughts may have developed, first in Heidelbergensis, then in Neanderthal and us Homo sapiens.
Foremost, is tool creation. Observational learning is paramount if a community is to produce the same kinds of tools. Only much later in the chronology of Neanderthals do we see adaptation and innovation akin to Homo sapiens. No matter their location, there is little variation in tools, and little variation in the way they're made for much of their existence as a species. The mind must associate, "if I do this, then this will happen or this will result." Thus, the hypothalamus (attention), mamillary body and entorhinal cortex (spatial memory) and hippocampus (memories, and verbal association) are all employed in, not only in completing the creation of the tool, but teaching it to others.
Second, is language. To be clear, communication need not be lingual to be effective- this is why we have rudimentary spirituality in our primate cousins like chimps. But, once language is actually employed to express an observed or felt phenomenon, the abstract belief of the individual originating the thought is partially or wholly transferred with it - strengthening group cohesion. It only takes one individual to have evolved an emotion that later becomes adopted by the group - an Abraham, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammed. And since the group shares the same mental architecture - thus spreads a shared feeling, perspective and, ultimately, belief. These pathways are primitive. So, we see juxtaposed with dominant alphas, the emergence of thought leaders when we begin to see symbolic representation and burials; perhaps "law-givers," or medicine-men (think on the those medicinal flowers as grave goods) learning, giving, "receiving," or "interpreting" rules that maintain the group.
It is now well-known that Neanderthals made use of language in the way we do - with an allowance on a more complex development over time inherited and refined by us. Since their group size was typically between 5-10 individuals, and no more than 15 at maximum, they appeared to be fierce defenders of their kin (the in-group). So much so, that DNA evidence suggests that in-breeding was the norm. Their ranges were no more than 31 miles from camp or home, compared to early humans range of 124 miles. (Clive Gamble, Center for the Archaeology of Human Origins, University of Southhampton, UK) And the only cultural exchange, trade, or even contact with outside groups occurred during warmer interglacials as evidenced in the archaeological record; they only used red ochre pigments during this time - in warmer periods, when an encounter with a stranger was more likely. Suggesting that outside groups with wider ranges may simply have ran into them. Thus, within a small group - their beliefs would have been quite conservative - perhaps even xenophobic (fear of out-groups) and neophobic (fear of novelty). This cultural rigidity is, at least, a candidate or culprit of their demise. For sharing their regions with Homo sapiens for nearly 400kya+ would certainly add more than a maximum 5% DNA admixture in our Homo sapien gene pool.
I would speculate that any of that admixture between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens would be due to violence. And much less would be as a result of trade and cultural exchange. As we shall see with Homo sapiens, there is a repeated pattern of the victors of war wiping out the resistant males, and keeping the females as spoils of war - civilized or primitive. If you trace the male Y-chromosome in recent history, a good percentage is dominated by European males in the Americas and Australia - with Australian aborigines having 94% European male y-chromosomes, indigenous tribes in the Andes containing upwards of 98% European y-chromosomes, and African-American males containing up to 34%. A wide percentage of the population in Asia can trace it's male lineage to Genghis Khan and the Mongol invasions. (I'll return to these in later posts)
This isolation and conservative nature eventually played into how Neanderthals viewed out-groups and how those out-groups viewed them as strangers. Isolation in their refugia, with no desire to explore outside of their ranges, not only shaped their internal culture, but their skin tones. As mentioned in previous posts, race has been around since Homo erectus first left Africa and spread into the "Old World." During these repeated glacial extremes, Neanderthal skins lightened all throughout the expanse of their geographic range in the northern hemisphere. Less sunlight reached them in the latitudes they occupied compared to the tropics and equatorial climate out of which our common ancestors, like Heidelbergensis and Homo sapiens, evolved. The HYAL2 gene regulates ultraviolet light adaptation in the skins of Europeans and Asians. It lightens the skin to allow more UV rays so that melanocyte skin cells can produce adequate vitamin D (regulating cell growth, the immune system and neuromuscular function). This gene is not present in sub-Saharan Africans, they have more naturally occurring melanocytes, and thus melanin. Nor was it present in the humans that migrated out of Africa, 110-60kya, that eventually populated the entire globe. Introgression with Neanderthals alone in the Middle East, upon that last exodus out of Africa, introduced this gene (18 of them) into these Eurasians. Recent science also suggests that it is much higher in Asians than in Europeans: 46% higher frequency in Japanese, and 66% higher frequency in Southern Chinese. (Neanderthal Introgression at Chromosome 3p21.31 Was Under Positive Selection in East Asians, Molecular Biology & Evolution, Lin et. al, 2013) While we still tend to limit Neanderthal culture and influence to Europe, DNA research has opened up their reach in the absence of their tool industry in archaeology. Not saying that they existed this far east into Asia, but that migrating Homo sapiens carried them on their genes. And there are very close and striking correlations between genes, language and culture.
Lastly, affecting the development of spirituality in our hominid line is, mortality:
And in their own hunting, Neanderthals were up close and personal - using spears, pole axes and stone knives on big game. Their skeletal remains reveal fractures similar to those of the rodeo - implying that not only was their strategy dangerous, but deadly. A Neanderthal child of 8 years old was equivalent in maturity to a Homo sapien child of 12 years in age. And they were not the apex predator. So under considerable danger, pressure and predation - species tend to produce offspring earlier, who mature faster, are shorter (in terms of human height), and have a shorter lifespan. And Neanderthals lived no older than 25-28 years of age, on average. On average, as there is evidence of them caring for their elderly (by literally chewing their food for them, nursing them to health with medicine and repairing fractured bones). So it does not mean that no one lived into old age, just not the average.
Mortality bled into their symbolism. There is no evidence that they ate these raptors or corvids. But their bones are found throughout Neanderthal camps across their whole geography - so this is not isolated behavior, but a behavioral aspect of the species. These corvids especially would be found scavenging next to something dead, or in their nests, and raptors are some of the most efficient killers. The bones of these birds are worked only in areas where long flight feathers are located - like the wings and tail, with very little meat. They had to be long, beautiful and dark. Neanderthals were collecting these feathers to be used as ornamentation, and their claws as jewelry; not for bedding or cushion, as bacteria in the soil quickly decomposes feathers. So while we look for representations of cave art, artwork, statues, figurines - like Homo sapiens would produce - we miss that this species also had symbolic art in the form of feathers as jewelry and adornment, and red ochre as body paint. They were simply on a different cultural path. They hunted hard, they died young and were aware of it - even representing it in how they symbolically adorned themselves. A short tough life, a close relationship with raptors and corvids brought them very close to a deep sense of their own mortality, and how even in death, life is sustained in another way (as associated with scavenging birds), thus a sense of an afterlife.
But every human culture, modern or ancient, uses feathers in this way. On a valid tangent - Shamans, as "Bird Men," lace our stories even to this day. It's why you were delivered by a Stork at your birth. This same bird in prehistoric times would nor only deliver your soul to the expecting mother, but carry your soul back upon death across the Milky Way to the origins of life - the center of our galaxy. They looked up, even to the stars, with their mythologies. These "Bird Men", due to ancient cave and stone-age art, were perhaps adopted by Homo sapiens from Neanderthals. Depictions of them can be found on monoliths in the Near East that predate civilization itself. They are, today, misinterpreted as we foolishly investigate "Ancient Alien" hypotheses, mistaking their abilities to carry souls to the stars and bearing bird masks as extraterrestrials...
Additionally, somewhere along the lines of experiencing harsh Ice Ages, warm interglacials, abrupt stadials and swift interstadials...somewhere in the experience of variable and extreme climate change and population bottlenecks, where extinction was a very real possibility, somewhere in the annals of fighting for survival against predators so large you'd lose courage and see yourself as a meal, against other forms of humans encroaching on your ancestral hunting grounds, your home - an individual, with memories transmitted on the waves of language, remembered the stories of how their ancestors survived and what they did for them to be there on that day. These memories of ancestors would have been the basis of ancestor worship - and possibly fed into the cultural conservatism that plagued these Neanderthals.
Could this also feed into the emergence of ritualized burials? Not only, burials, I would say... But the ideas of cannabalism being rampant among Neanderthals. Though it may have taken place - I think it was an actual rarity. What is interpreted as cananbalism is viewed as such because of defleshing marks left on the bones of Neanderthals found in caves. But, today, there exists a moden day example of what could have been taking place - a funeral offering, to the birds and the Nature they may have revered. In Tibet, remarkable close to where Neanderthal gene expression is highest (Southern China), there is a practice of leaving a dead loved one for Nature itself to reclaim. This is a "Sky Burial." This is not for the squeamish:
Every hunter-gatherer culture has a mythology - every single one of them. Spiritual thinking is the default for human existence. Placing an abstract thought or emotional concept into something of aesthetic quality from the environment is deeply embedded in us:
We tend to ascribe a sudden explosion of modern human behavioral traits to Homo sapiens. As new evidence emerges in archaeology, paleoclimatology, evolutionary psychology and genetics, we are shattering earlier concepts of human evolution. And as we investigate similar behaviors in our recent ancestors we can, at least, begin to detect their origins or rudiments and shift time back, perhaps, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.
Symbolic behaviors and spirituality formed as an evolutionary by-product of other mental architecture and adaptations, and may have offered a selective advantage. As seen in chimpanzees "agent detection" - the ability to infer the presence of a threat, "etiology" - linking cause to natural occurrences, and "theory of mind" - knowing others have a mind of their own, could serve as the basis of belief. That they are anatomically centered in the part of the brain, the limbic system - particularly the hippocampus (new memories of experienced events, verbal memory in humans, and procedural memory), mammillary body (spatial memory), hypothalamus (circadian rhythms, attention, emotional processing, stimulation, social ranking), and entorhinal cortex (spatial memories - EC-hippocampus, memory consolidation, directional sense). That, in humans, the limbic system is not archaic, but instead highly interconnected with other parts of the brain, thus higher cognitive abilities.
There is ample evidence that Neanderthals also buried their dead, like Hiedelbergensis before it. Some graves have grave offerings like flowers (mostly with known medicinal value), tools, bones and ochre.
Ochre is a pigment made of crushed red earth used for symbolic representation - covering the body and important objects. It was previously believed that modern humans brought such symbolism with them out-of-Africa some 60kya. Or that, Neanderthals adopted the practice of body paint only once coming in contact with Cro Magnon, or anatomically modern Homo sapiens. But recent evidence suggests Neanderthal use of ochre as early as 250kya. This is not only a sense of symbolism with red ochre, but of an afterlife with burials. And since chimpanzees have the same capacity - and we are diverged and evolved over 7-8mya - then, we can deduct that our earliest hominin ancestors had some form of extended beliefs like spirituality. And that these beliefs may have continued to evolve over time, until we have today's monotheistic, social, law-giving religions.
Once again, there are easy, observable, and testable links to how these thoughts may have developed, first in Heidelbergensis, then in Neanderthal and us Homo sapiens.
Foremost, is tool creation. Observational learning is paramount if a community is to produce the same kinds of tools. Only much later in the chronology of Neanderthals do we see adaptation and innovation akin to Homo sapiens. No matter their location, there is little variation in tools, and little variation in the way they're made for much of their existence as a species. The mind must associate, "if I do this, then this will happen or this will result." Thus, the hypothalamus (attention), mamillary body and entorhinal cortex (spatial memory) and hippocampus (memories, and verbal association) are all employed in, not only in completing the creation of the tool, but teaching it to others.
Second, is language. To be clear, communication need not be lingual to be effective- this is why we have rudimentary spirituality in our primate cousins like chimps. But, once language is actually employed to express an observed or felt phenomenon, the abstract belief of the individual originating the thought is partially or wholly transferred with it - strengthening group cohesion. It only takes one individual to have evolved an emotion that later becomes adopted by the group - an Abraham, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammed. And since the group shares the same mental architecture - thus spreads a shared feeling, perspective and, ultimately, belief. These pathways are primitive. So, we see juxtaposed with dominant alphas, the emergence of thought leaders when we begin to see symbolic representation and burials; perhaps "law-givers," or medicine-men (think on the those medicinal flowers as grave goods) learning, giving, "receiving," or "interpreting" rules that maintain the group.
It is now well-known that Neanderthals made use of language in the way we do - with an allowance on a more complex development over time inherited and refined by us. Since their group size was typically between 5-10 individuals, and no more than 15 at maximum, they appeared to be fierce defenders of their kin (the in-group). So much so, that DNA evidence suggests that in-breeding was the norm. Their ranges were no more than 31 miles from camp or home, compared to early humans range of 124 miles. (Clive Gamble, Center for the Archaeology of Human Origins, University of Southhampton, UK) And the only cultural exchange, trade, or even contact with outside groups occurred during warmer interglacials as evidenced in the archaeological record; they only used red ochre pigments during this time - in warmer periods, when an encounter with a stranger was more likely. Suggesting that outside groups with wider ranges may simply have ran into them. Thus, within a small group - their beliefs would have been quite conservative - perhaps even xenophobic (fear of out-groups) and neophobic (fear of novelty). This cultural rigidity is, at least, a candidate or culprit of their demise. For sharing their regions with Homo sapiens for nearly 400kya+ would certainly add more than a maximum 5% DNA admixture in our Homo sapien gene pool.
I would speculate that any of that admixture between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens would be due to violence. And much less would be as a result of trade and cultural exchange. As we shall see with Homo sapiens, there is a repeated pattern of the victors of war wiping out the resistant males, and keeping the females as spoils of war - civilized or primitive. If you trace the male Y-chromosome in recent history, a good percentage is dominated by European males in the Americas and Australia - with Australian aborigines having 94% European male y-chromosomes, indigenous tribes in the Andes containing upwards of 98% European y-chromosomes, and African-American males containing up to 34%. A wide percentage of the population in Asia can trace it's male lineage to Genghis Khan and the Mongol invasions. (I'll return to these in later posts)
This isolation and conservative nature eventually played into how Neanderthals viewed out-groups and how those out-groups viewed them as strangers. Isolation in their refugia, with no desire to explore outside of their ranges, not only shaped their internal culture, but their skin tones. As mentioned in previous posts, race has been around since Homo erectus first left Africa and spread into the "Old World." During these repeated glacial extremes, Neanderthal skins lightened all throughout the expanse of their geographic range in the northern hemisphere. Less sunlight reached them in the latitudes they occupied compared to the tropics and equatorial climate out of which our common ancestors, like Heidelbergensis and Homo sapiens, evolved. The HYAL2 gene regulates ultraviolet light adaptation in the skins of Europeans and Asians. It lightens the skin to allow more UV rays so that melanocyte skin cells can produce adequate vitamin D (regulating cell growth, the immune system and neuromuscular function). This gene is not present in sub-Saharan Africans, they have more naturally occurring melanocytes, and thus melanin. Nor was it present in the humans that migrated out of Africa, 110-60kya, that eventually populated the entire globe. Introgression with Neanderthals alone in the Middle East, upon that last exodus out of Africa, introduced this gene (18 of them) into these Eurasians. Recent science also suggests that it is much higher in Asians than in Europeans: 46% higher frequency in Japanese, and 66% higher frequency in Southern Chinese. (Neanderthal Introgression at Chromosome 3p21.31 Was Under Positive Selection in East Asians, Molecular Biology & Evolution, Lin et. al, 2013) While we still tend to limit Neanderthal culture and influence to Europe, DNA research has opened up their reach in the absence of their tool industry in archaeology. Not saying that they existed this far east into Asia, but that migrating Homo sapiens carried them on their genes. And there are very close and striking correlations between genes, language and culture.
Lastly, affecting the development of spirituality in our hominid line is, mortality:
If it weren't for the music...
In hunting, just as in the discovery of fire, tracking and monitoring the behavior of other animals is an advantage. And requires a deep intelligence. Neanderthals not only tracked raptors to gain the spoils of their hunt, but corvids like crows, ravens and rooks. These corvids were typically in the same geographic ranges that Neanderthals occupied. Following these scavengers would likely yield to them some sort of food source.And in their own hunting, Neanderthals were up close and personal - using spears, pole axes and stone knives on big game. Their skeletal remains reveal fractures similar to those of the rodeo - implying that not only was their strategy dangerous, but deadly. A Neanderthal child of 8 years old was equivalent in maturity to a Homo sapien child of 12 years in age. And they were not the apex predator. So under considerable danger, pressure and predation - species tend to produce offspring earlier, who mature faster, are shorter (in terms of human height), and have a shorter lifespan. And Neanderthals lived no older than 25-28 years of age, on average. On average, as there is evidence of them caring for their elderly (by literally chewing their food for them, nursing them to health with medicine and repairing fractured bones). So it does not mean that no one lived into old age, just not the average.
Mortality bled into their symbolism. There is no evidence that they ate these raptors or corvids. But their bones are found throughout Neanderthal camps across their whole geography - so this is not isolated behavior, but a behavioral aspect of the species. These corvids especially would be found scavenging next to something dead, or in their nests, and raptors are some of the most efficient killers. The bones of these birds are worked only in areas where long flight feathers are located - like the wings and tail, with very little meat. They had to be long, beautiful and dark. Neanderthals were collecting these feathers to be used as ornamentation, and their claws as jewelry; not for bedding or cushion, as bacteria in the soil quickly decomposes feathers. So while we look for representations of cave art, artwork, statues, figurines - like Homo sapiens would produce - we miss that this species also had symbolic art in the form of feathers as jewelry and adornment, and red ochre as body paint. They were simply on a different cultural path. They hunted hard, they died young and were aware of it - even representing it in how they symbolically adorned themselves. A short tough life, a close relationship with raptors and corvids brought them very close to a deep sense of their own mortality, and how even in death, life is sustained in another way (as associated with scavenging birds), thus a sense of an afterlife.
But every human culture, modern or ancient, uses feathers in this way. On a valid tangent - Shamans, as "Bird Men," lace our stories even to this day. It's why you were delivered by a Stork at your birth. This same bird in prehistoric times would nor only deliver your soul to the expecting mother, but carry your soul back upon death across the Milky Way to the origins of life - the center of our galaxy. They looked up, even to the stars, with their mythologies. These "Bird Men", due to ancient cave and stone-age art, were perhaps adopted by Homo sapiens from Neanderthals. Depictions of them can be found on monoliths in the Near East that predate civilization itself. They are, today, misinterpreted as we foolishly investigate "Ancient Alien" hypotheses, mistaking their abilities to carry souls to the stars and bearing bird masks as extraterrestrials...
Additionally, somewhere along the lines of experiencing harsh Ice Ages, warm interglacials, abrupt stadials and swift interstadials...somewhere in the experience of variable and extreme climate change and population bottlenecks, where extinction was a very real possibility, somewhere in the annals of fighting for survival against predators so large you'd lose courage and see yourself as a meal, against other forms of humans encroaching on your ancestral hunting grounds, your home - an individual, with memories transmitted on the waves of language, remembered the stories of how their ancestors survived and what they did for them to be there on that day. These memories of ancestors would have been the basis of ancestor worship - and possibly fed into the cultural conservatism that plagued these Neanderthals.
Could this also feed into the emergence of ritualized burials? Not only, burials, I would say... But the ideas of cannabalism being rampant among Neanderthals. Though it may have taken place - I think it was an actual rarity. What is interpreted as cananbalism is viewed as such because of defleshing marks left on the bones of Neanderthals found in caves. But, today, there exists a moden day example of what could have been taking place - a funeral offering, to the birds and the Nature they may have revered. In Tibet, remarkable close to where Neanderthal gene expression is highest (Southern China), there is a practice of leaving a dead loved one for Nature itself to reclaim. This is a "Sky Burial." This is not for the squeamish:
 |
| Defleshing marks |
 |
| Are these revered birds returning the soul from which it came? |
Our brains have evolved to express extreme interconnectedness. And at every step on the evolutionary ladder - it had to streamline this processing, abstracting and categorization of information in order to maintain its efficiency or become neurologically stressed, overwhelmed and dysfunctional. It did this - not by evolving the prefrontal cortex, or the neocortex - which are widely believed to be uniquely evolved in humans. The prefrontal cortex in humans in not larger than that in lemurs or lamas. For brain to body size, chihuahuas should be utter geniuses. The neocortex, though larger in humans, has not evolved to include an increase in neurons within the increased size of the structure itself. It is the expanded interconnected nature of our brains, with older systems like the limbic, that make us uniquely human. Our limbic system is tightly connected to the prefrontal cortex. These systems are not working in isolation - but have coevolved with extreme efficiency. "Mental flexibility was the actual advantageous adaptation versus the neo- and prefrontal cortices" (Liane Garbora, University of British Columbia) The coevolution of this brain architecture helped to streamline, store and implement routine and repeated solutions to problems. Upon this framework, tradition would emerge using these structures and the connections between them, along with interpersonal, intrapersonal and extrapersonal explanation for hard to abstract causes and occurrences of natural phenomena, and the difficulties of existence. You would use much more of your brain trying to figure out the deep scientific workings of the natural world, and lose focus, utilizing less of your available attention, on trying to actually survive in it, and its very real confrontational exigencies. For a being faced with its existence, spirituality is a connection, an additional interface, a communion. For the scientific mind, it is a pressure valve. Both perspectives are valid. Without this adaptation, and spiritual sense, I believe, we would not have had the capacity to later investigate science. And I'm an atheist.
There are, literally, Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) in our genome. Those regions where not Neanderthal, Heidelbergensis, Erectus or any other hominin had more advanced or rapid evolution. Only 8.3% of these accelerated regions are shared with Neanderthals and Denisovans, likely occurring no longer than 440kya. So, there is a valid trajectory - for which we must give these sister-species credit. Still, genome-wide 12% of our DNA is accelerated uniquely in modern humans. The vast majority of them have to due with brain development in utero (previous post), neuron survival, motor-sensory application (technological/anatomical interface) and, alas, interconnectivity. And these human accelerated regions in the genome where these substitutions occur "tend to be older than substitutions genome-wide, or in other functional elements....recent substitutions clustered temporally which indicates the HARs that have changed since the most recent common ancestor with Neanderthals and Denisovans are particularly fast evolving" ("Analysis of Human Accelerated DNA Regions Using Archaic Hominin Genomes," Burbano, et al., 2012) They are two times as fast actually; that they are clustered in time and fixed in our genome rather quickly in our evolution - denoting a responsiveness to events.
There are, literally, Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) in our genome. Those regions where not Neanderthal, Heidelbergensis, Erectus or any other hominin had more advanced or rapid evolution. Only 8.3% of these accelerated regions are shared with Neanderthals and Denisovans, likely occurring no longer than 440kya. So, there is a valid trajectory - for which we must give these sister-species credit. Still, genome-wide 12% of our DNA is accelerated uniquely in modern humans. The vast majority of them have to due with brain development in utero (previous post), neuron survival, motor-sensory application (technological/anatomical interface) and, alas, interconnectivity. And these human accelerated regions in the genome where these substitutions occur "tend to be older than substitutions genome-wide, or in other functional elements....recent substitutions clustered temporally which indicates the HARs that have changed since the most recent common ancestor with Neanderthals and Denisovans are particularly fast evolving" ("Analysis of Human Accelerated DNA Regions Using Archaic Hominin Genomes," Burbano, et al., 2012) They are two times as fast actually; that they are clustered in time and fixed in our genome rather quickly in our evolution - denoting a responsiveness to events.
We evolved alongside and around Neanderthals and Denisovans. The birth of our lineage with Neanderthals is virtually simultaneous, and with Denisovans separated by less than 200ky. A particularly warm climate speciated us away from Homo Heidelbergensis/Ergaster - which we can being to pinpoint in time, in archaeology and in our genome. As Homo sapiens we have been a species for nearly a half million years; evolving into our modern anatomy since 195kya.
The young boy, in the picture atop this post, is from the Omo River Valley, in Ethiopia - where anatomically modern humans emerged.
The young boy, in the picture atop this post, is from the Omo River Valley, in Ethiopia - where anatomically modern humans emerged.
To our arrival:
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