1/16/2020 Cultural Evolution - Human Evolution

HU M A N EVO LU TI O N
BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION DISPERSAL PATTERNS CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Cultural evolution is the development of learned behaviour as it is passed from one generation to the next.
Cultural evolution is not con ned only to humans but it is only in primitive form in other groups of animals e.g apes which make and use tools to help gather
food and pass on this learning to others.  The ability to acquire culture and successfully transmit it from one generation to the next depends on genetically
inherited characteristics.
Cultural evolution is the process by which we are able to shape and adapt to our environment. It is a much more rapid process than biological evolution. It is
transmitted as learned information from generation to generation. It required an intelligent brain and communication, preferably speech.

Tools (stone, wood, bone)

All members of the Homo genus manufactures tools. It is probably that the Homo species were not the rst hominids to use tools- Austalopithecines almost
certainly used similar tools to modern chimpanzees.
The onset of tool manufacturing was important for several reasons:

It allowed the species to control their environment in a way they had never been able to control it before.

The use of weapons for hunting allowed them to be the predator instead of the prey (survival advantage).
Sharp cutting tools allowed them to take advantage of new niches such as being able to cut up their kill for easier carrying back to the home base.

Tools such as bone needles eventually allowed the making of clothing and shelter from animal skins.

Tool cultures did not remain static throughout our evolution. They evolved too, changing and becoming more complex. The change from one tool culture to
another was gradual with much overlap existing during the period of transition.

Oldowan Tool Culture

oldest stone tool culture appearing rst in the Gona and Omo Basins in Ethiopia about 2.4 million years ago
made by Homo habilis

pebble tools were stone that were roughly aked on one side to give a chopping edge
the Oldowan culture was simple and unspecialised, resulting in many all-purpose types of tools. They were for
cutting meat, skins or wood, scraping hide and as hammers.

The key innovation is the technique of chipping stones to create a chopping or cutting edge. Most Oldowan tools
were made by a single blow of one rock against another to create a sharp-edged ake. The best akes were struck
from crystalline
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such as basalt, quartz or chert, and the prevalence of these tools indicates that early humans

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had learned and could recognize the di erence between types of rock.
Typically many akes were struck from a single "core" stone, using a softer spherical hammer stone to strike the
blow. These hammer stones may have been deliberately rounded to increase toolmaking control.
Flakes were used primarily as cutters, probably to dismember game carcasses or to strip tough plants. Fossils of
crushed animal bones indicate that stones were also used to break open marrow cavities. Oldowan deposits include
pieces of bone or horn showing scratch marks that indicate they were used as diggers to unearth tubers or insects.

Acheulian Tool Culture

tools of this culture are more specialised than the general all-purpose tools of the Oldowan culture
made by Homo erectus
this tool culture is typi ed by a tear-drop shaped hand axe

choppers did not disappear overnight, but they were not as widely used as the new, specialised tools
they made hand axes, picks and cleavers

tools have akes removed from all surfaces of the rock. Unlike the large akes removed from Oldowan tools,
Acheulian tool makers removed many smaller akes therefore giving them more control over the nished
product

The key innovations are (1) chipping the stone from both sides to produce a symmetrical (bifacial) cutting edge, (2)
the shaping of an entire stone into a recognisable and repeated tool form, and (3) variation in the tool forms for
di erent tool uses. Manufacture shifted from akes struck from a stone core to shaping a more massive tool by
careful repetitive aking. The most common tool materials were quartzite, glassy lava, chert and int.
Making an Acheulian tool required both strength and skill. Large shards were rst struck from big rocks or boulders.
These heavy blades were shaped into bifaces, then re ned at the edges (using bone or antler tools) into distinctive
variations in shape- referred to by paleoanthropologists as axes, picks and at edged cleavers.
About 1 million years ago, symmetrical, teardrop or lanceolate shaped blades (so called hand axes) begin appearing
in Acheulian deposits. Some of these "hand" axes are extremely large and may possibly have had a ceremonial or
monetary function; or they may have been used for very heavy work such as butchering large animals or milling
branches or trees into re fuel. Either way, their size suggests both a more complex technology and a more
interdependent group structure.
By 500,000 years ago the Acheulian methods had penetrated into Europe, primarily associated with Homo
heidelbergensis, where they continued until about 200,000 years ago. The industry spread as far as the Near East and
India, but apparently never reached Asia, where Homo erectus continued to use Oldowan tools right up to the time
that species went extinct.
Finally, Acheulian tools show a regularity of design and manufacture that is maintained for over a million years. This
is clear evidence for specialised skills and design criteria that were handed down by explicit socialisation within a
geographically dispersed human culture.

Mousterian Tool Culture

more precisely made and more specialised than the Acheulian tools

made by Homo neanderthalensis

they were often made from int, enabling a ner edge to be achieved in the working of the tool

the trend towards the increase in specialisation resulted in various types of tools being
developed, all designed for a certain purpose

they used tools to make tools

The Mousterian industry appeared around 200,000 years ago and persisted until about 40,000 years
ago, in much the same areas of Europe, the Near East and Africa where Acheulian tools appear. In
Europe these tools are most closely associated with Homo neanderthalensis, but elsewhere were made
by both Neanderthals
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Mousterian tools required a preliminary shaping of the stone core from which the actual blade is struck
o . The toolmakers either shaped a rock into a rounded surface before striking o the raised area as a
wedge shaped ake, or they shaped the core as a long prism of stone before striking o triangular
akes from its length, like slices from a baguette.
Because Mousterian tools were conceived as re nements on a few distinctive core shapes, the whole
process of making tools had standarised into explicit stages (basic core stone, rough blank, re ned nal
tool). Variations in tool shapes could be produced by changes in the procedures at any stage. A
consistent manufacturing goal was to increase as much as possible the cutting area on each blade.
Though this made the toolmaking process more labour intensive, it also meant the edges of the tools
could be reshaped or sharpened as they dulled, so that each tool lasted longer. The whole toolmaking
industry had been adapted to get the maximum utility from the labour invested at each step.
The Mousterian Tradition was marked by the progressive reduction in the use of large core tools such
as hand axes, as specialised ake tools became more common. Flakes of more or less standardised
shapes and sizes were often made with the Levallois prepared core technique. Blocks or cobbles of
int and other brittle fracturing rock were percussion aked on one side until a convex "tortoise shell"
shape was formed. Then, a heavy percussion blow at one end of the core removed a large ake that
was convex on one side and relatively at on the other-- i.e, a Levallois ake. This technique was rst
used by archaic humans in Africa around 300,000 years ago. It was perfected in the Mousterian
Tradition by the Neanderthals and some of their contemporaries.
Tool forms in the Mousterian industry display a wide range of specialised shapes. Cutting tools include
notched akes, denticulate (serrated) akes, and ake blades similar to Upper Palaeolithic tools. Points
appear that seem designed for use in spears or lances, some including a tang or stub at the base that
allowed the point to be tied into the notched end of a stick. Scrapers appear for the dressing of animal
hides, which were probably used for shoes, clothing, bedding, shelter and carrying sacs. These
accumulating material possessions imply a level of social organisation and stability comparable to
primitive humans today.
Because tools were combined with other components (handles, spear shafts) and used in wider
applications (dressing hides, shaping wood tools, hunting large game), Mousterian technology was the
keystone for many interrelated manufacturing activities in other materials: specialised tools created
specialised labour. As these activities evolved and standardised, the e cient and exible Mousterian
toolmaking procedures made possible the accumulation of physical comforts on which wealth and
social status are based.

Upper Palaeolithic Tool Cultures e.g Magdelanian

diverse range of tool cultures existed during this time e.g Magdalenian (bone needles, harpoons and microliths used for the rst time) (A microlith is a
small stone tool usually made of int or chert and typically a centimeter or so in length and half a centimeter wide. it is produced from either a small
blade (microblade) or a larger blade-like piece of int by abrupt or truncated retouching)

made by Homo sapiens

new materials used for the rst time e.g ivory, bone, antler to make tools such as spear throwers, arrow heads, needles and shing hooks

The Upper Palaeolithic industry, dominant from 40,000 to 12,000 years ago, appears to have originated independently in both Asia and (as early as 90,000
years ago) in Africa.
This tool making culture shows a remarkable proliferation of tool forms, tool materials, and much greater complexity of toolmaking techniques. It also quickly
diversi ed into distinctive regional styles, some of which appear as sequentially overlapping but aesthetically recognisable toolmaking cultures.
These adaptations in tool forms respond to the increased range of material tasks that appeared in the Mousterian industry. Regional styles are probably not
just stylistic variations but re ect the adaptation of tools to di erent materials and the manufacturing requirements of di erent habitats, di erent food
sources, and a corresponding increase in the size of human habitations. It is, for example, in the Upper Palaeolithic industry that sewing needles and sh
hooks rst appear.

The geographically extensive Aurignacian period (40,000 to 28,000 years ago) is associated with both Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensi throughout
Europe and parts of Africa
The more limited Chatelperronian (40,000 to 34,000 years ago) is a variant of the Aurignacian principally associated with the declining tribes of European
Homo neanderthalensis in Europe
After Neanderthals went extinct, the Gravettian period (28,000 to 22,000 years ago) added backed blades and bevel based bone points to the tool
repertory. ivory beads turn up as burial ornaments, and ritual "Venus gurines" appear.  Ritual and religion were added to the wealth and status
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the brief Solutrean period (22,000 to 19,000 years ago) introduced very elegant tool designs made possible by heating and suddenly colling int stones to
shatter them in carefully controlled ways

nally, the Magdalenian period (18,000 to 12,000 years ago) saw the increased use of delicate aked stones for arrows and spears, multibarbed harpoon
points, and spear throwers made of wood, bone or antler. During this period a new tool appears- symbolic representation, as in the cave paintings from
Chauvat. Symbols de ne human culture as a realm of shared representation and visulisation, rather than soley a domain of imitated technical skills. on
this basis written language soon evolved through the use of pictures and counting tallies that signify administrative control, calender time, historical
record, and spoken narrative.

Upper Palaeolithic tool assemblages include end scrapers, burins (chisel like stone for working bone and ivory), bone points, ivory beads, tooth necklaces, and
abstract animal or human gurines. All these imply a parallel re nement in clothing, shelters, utensils, ornament, medicine, nutrition and ritual practices. by
this time, then, stone and bone tools supported a great variety of manufacturing activities and almost certainly produced both the division of labour based on
gender and age, and a social hierarchy among families within a single group, partly symbolise in the accumulation of valuable possessions and the wearing of
di erent kinds of ornaments.
The increasing tempo of tool innovation and the greater e ectiveness pf Upper Palaeolithic hunting implements put relentless pressure on declining species of
large game, driving many to extinction or into habitats out of human reach. This decline in hunting resources in turn hastened the transition of human
societies from hunter gatherer to agricultural economies. Tools had evolved to in uence, if not determine, human history.

Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic tools

Neolithic Tool Culture

development of blade tools e.g for agriculture

The Neolithic period began around 6,000 years ago when humans rst settled down and began farming. They continued to make tools and weapons from int
and some kinds of tool, such as scrapers for preparing hides, stayed the same. But Neolithic also saw the introduction of new kinds of stone tool. First there
was a movement away from using microliths to make spears and arrows as compostie weapons and instead the universal adoption of int arrow heads.
Second, the harvesting of grain required new tools such as scythes and these were made from int. Neolithic tools were often retouched all over, by pressure
aking, giving them a characteristic appearance and were often laboriously polished, again giving them a distinctive look. Flake tools continued to be made in
the Neolithic, but they are often more crudely made than earlier ake tools.

Implications of Stone Tool Evolution

As stone tools became more complex from earlier Oldowan through to Acheulian, Mousterian and Upper Palaeolithic they required signi cantly more time
and e ort to manufacture. An Oldowan tool takes very few blows to make; an Acheulian hand axe about 50; a Mousterian blade approximately 100 and a
Palaeolithic knife blade around 250 strikes. There must have been bene ts to spending greater time and energy making more complex tools.

Use of Fire
This was rst controlled by Homo erectus.
The evidence for its use by this species:-

some form of a hearth e.g ring of stones around charcoal

charcoal sites and charred bones found with fossil remains

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Homo erectus had learnt to cook food, but there is no evidence they could start a re.
Survival Advantages of Using Fire
provided warmth, enabling H. erectus to leave Africa and survive the colder climates of Asia and Europe (even during the ice ages)
at night, re would provide illumination, allowing groups to extend the length of "home base: activities e.g tool making
protection- kept dangerous animals away

(greatest implication) cooked food- to enhance avour, tenderise food or allow more nutrients to be extracted, greater range of new sources of food.
Reduced parasites and microbes. Increased nutritional intakes, particularly higher levels of protein, would have further fueled biological evolution.

maintained better health as cooking food destroyed parasites, bacteria etc

hardened wooden spear points
it is likely to have had an important function in social organisation- more time spent socialising and sharing around the camp re at night. This would
have driven further developments in tool cultures, social organisation, hunting preparation and possibly even language development.

Disadvantages to Using Fire

burning (injury to the body)
ecological destruction

attract competitors
increases work required- to gather fuel

Manufacture and Use of Clothing

Fashion has been said to be as "crucial to the emergence of the modern human as music and dance, art and humour, and language." Because there has been
no prehistoric scraps of clothing lying around, scientists have had to judge which humans would have been rst to wear clothes. They gured out how to use
the analysis of lice, or body lice adapted to clothing. it was found in Florida that humans probably started wearing clothing about 170,000 years ago, around
830,000 years after our ancestors lost their body hair. Theories to why we shed our hair are to get rid of pre-clothing lice and other deadly blood sucking
parasites which infested our ancestral fur. Another is that we needed to cool our body temperature by sweating when we came out of the forest into the
blazing savannah.
Warmth
The taking up of clothing 170,000 years ago ts well with the penultimate ice age occurring 180,000 years ago, which indicates they started wearing clothing so
they could keep warm. A few degrees below zero Celsius is "the limit of human cold tolerance without protection."  By the time of the Upper Palaeolithic in
Europe 35,000 years ago, there was found evidence of bone needles that suggested that people were making sophisticated, tailored clothing with multiple
layers that shielded them from the cold.
Neanderthal Clothing: it is probable that in the colder climates they wore some sort of protective clothing for warmth. It is likely that they used animal skins for
this purpose. Indirect evidence of this includes Neanderthal sites that have been found to have stone awls or borers, which are akes shaped to produce a
beak-like projection on one end or side. They are usually used to punch or drill holes in relatively soft materials like wood and leather. Another source of
evidence  is anatomical. A Neanderthal from the French site of La Ferrassie has a particular wear pattern on int incisor teeth which matches that of older Inuit
women in the subarctic North America during the 19th and early 20th centuries. For them it was from a life time of chewing their husband's boots every
morning to soften them. It is likely that the Neanderthal found was softening leather in this this way. There is no evidence of what this clothing may have
looked like, but the working of skins could also have been connected with making cordage, bags and tents.
The lack of sophisticated clothing may have contributed to their extinction. During some severe cold snaps around 40,000 and 35,000 years ago, only modern
humans were properly equipped with tailored clothing and could migrate into those most thermally challenging places.
Social Status/Display of Wealth
Early humans, even before clothing, decorated their bodies. It was highly likely they were adorning themselves with body paints, plant material and animal
skins. Adornment creates visual shorthand that tells others instantly who we are, who we want to associate with and who we wish to be. From fossil records
ornamentation began to show up roughly 75,000 years ago. Archaeologists believe ostrich shells were used as beads and red ochre was probably used as
body paint.
During the Upper Palaeolithic, our ancestors spent huge amounts of time into ornamenting their garments. In Sungir there was found
12,000 pierced mammoth ivory beads that had been sewn onto clothing  in the graves of a male adult and two children from 26,000 years ago. It has been
estimated that it would have taken an hour to make each bead with stone tools, resulting in thousands of hours of work. This indicates that it is not just
decoration, but a big investment and a display of wealth. So showing o clothing is an innate part of human nature and enhances personal identity and social
interaction.

Abstract Thought
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Communication/Language
Facial expressions, body language and gestures were the early forms of communication. These were accompanied by primitive noises such as grunts and
screeches.
There are two regions in the left hemisphere of the brain, Broca's area and Wernicke's area that are responsible for the structure and sense of speech and the
co-ordination of the throat and mouth muscles.
It is di cult to asses when speech rst began but the standardising of patterns of tool making around the time of Homo erectus suggests complex
communication took place which could have involved speech. Australopithecus africanus and Homo habilis had speech centre developments greater than the
modern apes.
Art
Homo sapiens are the species most closely associated with the development of art
they produced cave paintings- mostly of animals e.g horses, deer, oxen and mammoths
art may have been a way of communication the traditions and values that gave a group a sense of identity. It indicates a sense of beauty. It developed as
a result of more leisure time.
bone and ivory carving began about 15,000 to 10,000 years ago

it enables cultural information to be transferred from one generation to the next

Spirituality
rst exhibited by the Neanderthals
they buried their dead, often surrounding them with owers (evidence by pollen grains found at the burial sites). The body is always aligned in an east-
west direction with legs curled up in a sleeping posture. The head is usually resting on a stone and facing south.

there is some evidence that the bodies were decorated with red ochre and black manganese dioxide
it is possible that they had some form of religion

Burial Signi cance

removal of diseased or contagios tissue

burial with tools, food and owers suggests concern for the deceased, indicates that individuals cared for each other more during life
establishes greater social bonding which is important and advantageous in overcoming hardships and hazards, thus survival mpre likely

indicates development of rituals, religion and belief in life after death

Food Gathering
Hunter Gatherer and Division of Labour
Homo erectus lived in groups gathering and hunting food and sharing it in a home base. The women collected roots, fruits and vegetables while the men went
hunting for meat. This allowed them to  exploit many di erent types of food.
It also encouraged the development if tools for hunting and transporting and cutting up food. Some scientists believe that the association with kin led to more
complex social structures and encouraged the formation of a larger, more complex brain e.g social groupings and division of labour allowed a longer
childhood period, increasing the opportunity for cultural knowledge to be passed on.
Food sharing evolved - those collecting food and those hunting food returned to home base. This led to feelings of kinship, strengthening bonds withing the
group.
More time was available to develop better tools and containers. As aking techniques improved longer cutting edges were available to be made.
Improved hunting meant more meat available which contained more protein- lesser amounts of food and time needed for eating enabled humans to survive
the ice age.
To successfully hunt large animals, groups needed to develop improved co-operation and communication skills.
Co-operative Hunting
Advantages:

allowed larger animals to be killed so more food is obtained for less e ort

increased the range of food eaten which increases the range of nutrients taken in

improved the supply of food. If food is more available people stay healthier and more children survive.
large animals supplied furs, sinews, bone so more useful items could be made e.g shelters

Domestication of Plants and Animals

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It is believed that domestication of animals occurred before plants because nomadic life was prevalent at that stage. The rst animal to be domesticated was
the dog, occurring 12,000 years ago. Sheep and goats were domesticated in the Middle East 9,000 years ago.
Wheat and barley were domesticated 10,000 years ago. It is believed that plant domestication occurred in two stages; weeding out competing species from
naturally growing wild cereals; collecting seeds and growing them.
Advantages of domestication:

as a source of milk or hair, an animal may be more useful alive, providing a steady income

organisms were killed or harvested at their optimum age- thus providing humans with the most nutrients possible
a herd or ock is a "living larger"- meat on the hoof does not decay

when cattle were domesticated, they could be used to lift and carry

animals and crops became a source of wealth and could be traded

populations became settled and towns and cities developed. As a result; Occupations developed to support food productiion e.g carpentry, clothing, art,
medicine; opened up new technological opportunities e.g pottery- to store food and carry water, smelting.
further selective breeding occured e.g domestication of bees, use of yeasts for bread and beer making, use of bacteria for cheese making

Disadvantages of domestication

thousands of years of selective breeding have altered the characteristics of domesticated animals and plants to the extent that many breeds could not
survive without human intervention
selective breeding led to a decrease in gene pools of domesticated species leading to the loss of some characteristics e.g hardiness and resistance to
disease. This may result in possible dangers in the future since raw material for selection is being lost
the potato famine in Ireland shows the danger of monoculture in farming. One disease wiped out the nation's potato supply- the nation's staple food
supply at that time. Thousands of people starved to death.
as a result of permanent settlements developing (which was only possible once plants became domesticated), pollution became a problem

loss of soil fertility as repeated planting and harvesting removes soil nutrients e.g nitrogen. Fertiliser/compost must be added to maintain soil fertility.

domestication of animals and plants encourages the formation and growth of towns, therefore population density increases which increases disease

Implications of domestication
Domestication of plants and animals led to a greater availability of new food sources, both plant and animal plus products thereof (such as milk for example).
These nutritional bene ts directly result in higher survival rates of larger populations in a given area (towns). Furthermore, domesticates provided the
possibility of trade with other groups, increasing wealth, availability of foreign or exotic items (possibly raw materials for tool manufacture etc) further driving
cultural evolution. The advent of professions and specialist roles in a society could then develop further.

Shelter
Caves and Temporary Settlements (hunter Gatherers)
Neanderthals lived during the Ice Age. They often took shelter from the ice, snow, and otherwise unpleasant weather in Eurasia's plentiful limestone caves.
Many of their fossils have been found in caves, leading to the popular idea of them as "cave men".
The earliest Homo sapiens lived inside cave entrances while others built huts in forested areas. Long houses made of stone blocks were also used for
communities of 30-100 people. Hunting weapons which allowed for a safe distance, such as the spear or bow, were used to hunt the woolly mammoth and
bison.
The hunter-gatherers were thought to be nomadic, travelling from place to place because of the following reasons:

in search of food

in search of water
due to change of seasons

to meet their friends and relatives

animals moved from one place to place their food and those who are hunting them had to follow their movements

In 2012 it was discovered hunter gatherers lived in temporary shelters for part of the year and then all year round.

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