Fascinating
It's two in the morning and I'm so excited I can't sleep. Yep, you guessed it: Ecological History!
I've gotten through Part 1, "An Infinity Before Man", describing the pre-human situations of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and New Caledonia. Not a whole lot of suprises, but a few. Such as the fact that land crocodiles (hoofed crocodiles, no less) existed as recently as the Pleistocene (i.e. within the last 2 million years); one in Australia and a pygmy one in New Caledonia. I thought the land crocodiles had been extinct for 2 hundred million years.
A few other suprises, such as the dominant animals of New Caledonia (besides its top predator, the pygmy land crocodile) were geckos. And New Zealand, besides all the other mammal-mimicking birds I rave about frequently, had wrens that acted like mice. And frogs that ate them.
But anyway, I finished that part, some interesting stuff. On to Part 2, "The Arrival of the Future Eaters" and the introduction of humans. Here's the really amazing theory Flannery presents.
So there's the proposed "Great Leap Forward" about 50,000 years ago, give or take 15,000 years. The leap that transformed humans from just another medium sized omnivore/scavenger, if one with a slightly wider ecological base than most, into the force that reshaped the world between 70,000 BCE and 30,000 BCE. A switch accompanied by the first verifiable traces of representational art, and a quantum jump in tool complexity.
Finding a reason in physical changes in the human form has always been doubtful; human skeletons from as far back as 120,000 years ago show little difference from modern humans.
Jared Diamond, among others, has been heard to propose that perhaps only the acquisition of language could have driven such a jump. This is also unsatisfying. There are several pieces of evidence that language must have been developing for much longer than that, and was probably already in place in a near-modern, and quite possibly fully modern form by the leap.
Tim Flannery proposes an ecological cause. We see again and again in other species, animal and plant, we accidentally or purposely move around the globe, species that leave their co-evolvees experience a breakout event. They can expand to fill what should normally be an enormous number niches.
In contrast, it is nearly impossible to experience such a breakout while remaining inside one's co-evolutionary framework, interacting with all those other actors which have been evolving in lock step with you, in the proverbial arms race.
So what if the Great Leap came the first time Homo sapiens passed beyond its sphere. The first time it left its ecosystem behind. The first time it was finally free from the finest competition the supercontinent of Afro-Eurasia could produce. When we moved into a land without lions or tigers, with animals that had never seen a carnivorous ape or learned to be wary of them.
In other words, the first time we ever met a tree kangaroo. The Great Leap Forward might have been sparked by an ecological breakout that took place in the Great Golden Age of Lombok.
Now how's that for turning the story on its head? Not Africa, not even Asia, and certainly not Europe, North America, or Luna. The biggest step humans ever took was the step across Wallace's Line onto the small Indonesian island of Lombok.
It'd also mean that behaviourly modern humans were born of the slaughter of an ecological break-out. Baptized in the fires of industrialization and the Third Great Age of Exploration. May our rite of adulthood be different, for we are gathering for another great leap, and if it comes again at such a cost it may be more than we can afford.
I've gotten through Part 1, "An Infinity Before Man", describing the pre-human situations of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and New Caledonia. Not a whole lot of suprises, but a few. Such as the fact that land crocodiles (hoofed crocodiles, no less) existed as recently as the Pleistocene (i.e. within the last 2 million years); one in Australia and a pygmy one in New Caledonia. I thought the land crocodiles had been extinct for 2 hundred million years.
A few other suprises, such as the dominant animals of New Caledonia (besides its top predator, the pygmy land crocodile) were geckos. And New Zealand, besides all the other mammal-mimicking birds I rave about frequently, had wrens that acted like mice. And frogs that ate them.
But anyway, I finished that part, some interesting stuff. On to Part 2, "The Arrival of the Future Eaters" and the introduction of humans. Here's the really amazing theory Flannery presents.
So there's the proposed "Great Leap Forward" about 50,000 years ago, give or take 15,000 years. The leap that transformed humans from just another medium sized omnivore/scavenger, if one with a slightly wider ecological base than most, into the force that reshaped the world between 70,000 BCE and 30,000 BCE. A switch accompanied by the first verifiable traces of representational art, and a quantum jump in tool complexity.
Finding a reason in physical changes in the human form has always been doubtful; human skeletons from as far back as 120,000 years ago show little difference from modern humans.
Jared Diamond, among others, has been heard to propose that perhaps only the acquisition of language could have driven such a jump. This is also unsatisfying. There are several pieces of evidence that language must have been developing for much longer than that, and was probably already in place in a near-modern, and quite possibly fully modern form by the leap.
Tim Flannery proposes an ecological cause. We see again and again in other species, animal and plant, we accidentally or purposely move around the globe, species that leave their co-evolvees experience a breakout event. They can expand to fill what should normally be an enormous number niches.
In contrast, it is nearly impossible to experience such a breakout while remaining inside one's co-evolutionary framework, interacting with all those other actors which have been evolving in lock step with you, in the proverbial arms race.
So what if the Great Leap came the first time Homo sapiens passed beyond its sphere. The first time it left its ecosystem behind. The first time it was finally free from the finest competition the supercontinent of Afro-Eurasia could produce. When we moved into a land without lions or tigers, with animals that had never seen a carnivorous ape or learned to be wary of them.
In other words, the first time we ever met a tree kangaroo. The Great Leap Forward might have been sparked by an ecological breakout that took place in the Great Golden Age of Lombok.
Now how's that for turning the story on its head? Not Africa, not even Asia, and certainly not Europe, North America, or Luna. The biggest step humans ever took was the step across Wallace's Line onto the small Indonesian island of Lombok.
It'd also mean that behaviourly modern humans were born of the slaughter of an ecological break-out. Baptized in the fires of industrialization and the Third Great Age of Exploration. May our rite of adulthood be different, for we are gathering for another great leap, and if it comes again at such a cost it may be more than we can afford.