Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge through social learning around 600,000 years ago

On 1.7.2024. 21:40, JTEM wrote:

  Mario Petrinovic wrote:

         Hematite has hardness 5 to 6, iron has 4.5. It has metallic luster, therefore it is a metal.
         300 kya people started to grind hematite a lot (hence red ochre). The change in face is straight forward, teeth receded, producing a chin. This happened simultaneously with the emergence of red ochre. Hence the fairy tale that H.sapiens is "spiritual" because it used red orche to paint his body.

 They did use red orche to paint their bodies. This is far from "Proof"
that they were spiritual, but it is evidence consistent with it.
 Far better evidence is intentional burials, caring for the dead. It
implies a belief in an afterlife.
 Again, far from "Proof" but it is evidence consistent with the view.
 If "Spirituality" is a soft spot for you, delete the word and replace
it with two words:  "Symbolic Thinking."
 This is something that almost certainly pre dated (so called)
"Modern" man, but how much?
 Chimps and gorillas display some level of symbolic thinking, more so
than young human children...
 One experiment showed young children a model of a room, and then
showed them where a toy was hidden in that model. Next, they placed
them in that room! They didn't find the toy.
 The idea here is that spirituality, religious beliefs required a
level of this "Symbolic Thinking" that just plain doesn't exist in
"Lower life forms."
 Thus, evidence for mysticism/spirituality is evidence for symbolic
thinking, and evidence for symbolic thinking is evidence for
mysticism/spirituality.
 As for habits/tools changing the face...
 If hematite resulted in a chin, absence of that hematite should
present the absence of a chin.
 Is this what we see?

Gee, I cannot believe this, a waste of time. People use hematite, like 300 kya, but to use it as a paint (as far as I know), you have to mix it with milk. This only happened 100 kya. I mean, to get red ochre by grinding hematite is very hard working process. If they used it for painting, why they left it in the ground, in such a huge quantity (there where thick layers of red ochre), why they *didn't* use it as a paint? You are telling me that they made such a big effort to attain red ochre, and then they just left it in the ground?
This "symbolic thinking" is a hoax. Language per se, produces "symbolic thinking". And we definitely had language at least for 3 my (stone tools making).
Burial definitely is belief in afterlife, but why would you do it if you are enjoying real life? To me the belief in afterlife comes from a situation when your existence relies on developed society, and you have low position in this society, so you hope that in afterlife you'll get better. Of course, the afterlife would be your reward for behaving in accordance with social rules in real life. So, the belief in afterlife I tie with very advanced societies.
And, at the end, it isn't the hematite that resulted in chin, it is the use of metal for cutting food that resulted in chin. In the past we used hematite for that, today we are also using metal for that, only this metal is smelted and then ground, unlike hematite, which was just ground. Actually, the iron that you are using today *is* hematite, hematite is iron ore.