Social Formations Assignment

Q. Elaborate the interrelationship between biological evolution and socio- cultural formations of
hominids in the Pleistocene (prehistoric) world.

Prehistory is a fairly recent field of study, a deviation from what was traditionally considered
history in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was a result of the scientific revolution in Europe
leading to recent scientific discoveries and inventions being used to uncover our distant past.
The result of this is that it pushed our conception of history by eons, beyond all human
memory, written or otherwise. Then came Charles Darwin with his theory of biological
evolution, a blasphemy in the eyes of the traditional, religious intellectual circles. How dare
someone assume that humans were not the way they were because some higher being(s)
has/have intended them to be so? The Darwinian theory of biological evolution did another
thing as well. Not only did it wound the misconception that humans were a finished product
from the beginning of time, but it also broke the exclusivity that humans had prided
themselves over, delegating their status to that of an ape or an animal, not a class apart from
the other living components of nature.

Geology is one of the sciences used to supplement the historian’s understanding of

prehistory, provided that Geology studies the chronology of the Earth itself. Geologists have
divided the history of the planet into ‘eons, which are subdivided into ‘eras’. We live in the
Cenozoic era (the era after the continental drift) which began 65 million years ago. Primates
began evolving 70 million years ago, which means that our earliest ancestors existed before
the breaking up of Pangea. Sub-divisions of eras are called ‘periods’ which are further
divided into ‘epochs’. The Cenozoic is divided into two periods: Tertiary and Quaternary.

The Tertiary period has five epochs: Paleocene (65mya-56.5mya); Eocene(56.5mya-

35.4mya); Oligocene(35.4mya-23.3mya); Miocene(23.3mya-5.2mya) and Pliocene(5.2mya-
1.64mya). Bipedalism evolved during the Miocene epoch. Genus Homo evolved and started
making tools in the Pliocene. The Quaternary period has two epochs: Pleistocene (1.64 mya-
12,000BP) and Holocene (12,000BP-now). The paleolithic and mesolithic age of prehistory
belongs to the Pleistocene epoch.

All our knowledge about the Pleistocene epoch come from archeological and geological
sources, leading to the limitation of our ability to reconstruct life in the epoch. There are
mainly speculations and theories with an attempt to include evidences from research being
conducted. The Pleistocene was marked by dramatic climatic swings and Ice Ages. This
created a pressure to survive and adapt, leading to an environment ripe for natural selection.
Resources were exploited using technology to cope with the near constantly shifting Ice Age.
Social Formations Assignment

Biological evolution had already set some of the scene for hominid survival in the previous
epochs through bipedalism and dexterous tool making hands, during the Pleistocene, the
hominids built on pre-existing characteristics and innovated their way to not only survive but
even thrive in this transient environment.

Bipedalism started evolving in Late Miocene hominids, who despite having an arboreal
habitat, occasionally stood on its hind limbs. These hominids broke off into two branches (as
speculated by David Pilbeam), one being proto-chimpanzees, who adapted to forest habitats
by knuckle-walking; and the other being ancestors of humans, who adapted to the grassy
Savannah by taking a step closer to upright walking. They evolved separately from the rest,
possibly during 10mya-5mya (from where there is no fossil evidence), which lead to
mutations that allowed later primates to become bipedal creatures.

In 4.10mya, Australopithecus Anamensis became the first hominid to be fully bipedal. It has
legs thick enough to support its own weight and walking on two feet, despite said limbs being
short and limiting its efficiency to walk. Mary Leaky excavated the footprint of
Australopithecus Afarensis at Laetoli, Tanzania and dated it to belong to 3.75mya. Thus,
Australopithecus became the first fully bipedal ancestor. Bipedalism had several advantages
in the Savannah grasslands. It reduced dependence in trees (which were sparse in the
grasslands), it allowed one to stand upright and survey the area for predators and prey alike
and most importantly, it freed the hands. In the immediate context it allowed hominids to
reach higher for food but later on, further mutations such as an opposable thumb and
enlargement to brain would allow those hands to make tools, a key ingredient in hominid
survival.

Whether Bipedalism created or arose from the need to make tools is still a debate among
scholars, but it nevertheless set in motion a chain of events that became essential for human
survival in the paleolithic. Gordon Childe gave an excellent description of tools as
“extracorporeal organs” which can be made, used and discarded at will, many a times even
modified to fit a myriad of other tasks or improved to perform the same task efficiently.
Primates may have also used tools as is speculated from the behavior of chimpanzees. It has
been noted that certain species of chimpanzees use sticks to fish termites out of logs. This
may have been the earliest development of substituting existing limbs with extended ones to
achieve certain ends. However, it is in no way similar to how the hominids made their tools,
which required visualization and execution of a certain level.
Social Formations Assignment

Childe also observed how tool making became a fine example of cultural adaptation to a
given problem. Tool making required advanced levels of visualization, skill and knowledge;
all of which evolved through the process of trial and error. This creates impressions and
collective memory within a group. This acquired knowledge is then passed down to the
young, who may make their own advancements and thus a tool slowly starts taking its final
form. Tools are social products, and the tool makers social animals.

The evolutionary quirk that made it possible for humans to make exceedingly complicated
tools, an opposable thumb, first appeared in Homo Erectus. The Oldowan culture recognized
by Mary and Louis Leaky was associated with these hominins. The tools recovered at
Olduvai Gorge were first identified as core tools, but this assumption was later corrected by
discoveries at secondary sites like Koobi Fora area of East Turkana, where the flake tools
were found strewn around an animal carcass rather than the core, which was retrieved 14km
away from the other tools.

The sites of Koobi Fora and Olduvai Gorge reveals another aspect of early hominin life; the
carrying of food and tools to a shelter some distance away from its source. The humans
inhabiting these sites would carry raw materials and food from sources located at a distance
for further processing at these shelters. This was a behaviour that had not been demonstrated
by nonhuman hominids so far.

Tool making allowed Homo to adapt better to conditions of food scarcity by allowing them to
diversify their diet. Thanks to tools, they were able to compete with other carnivores in the
Savannah for meat when fruits and tubers became scarce. They survived times of crisis by
consuming everything that was edible and developing tools to help them in various adaptive
strategies such as hunting, gathering and scavenging.

Another aspect that may have affected the tool making abilities of the genus Homo is its brain
size, which kept increasing in the species and sub-species that emerged later on in the
timeline. Over many generations, the jaw size decreased in the genus, leading to an
enlargement of the skull, accommodating the growth of the brain. Homo Habilis had a brain
of 800 c.c.; Homo Erectus had a 1000 c.c. brain and Homo Sapien Sapiens have a brain size
of 1400 c.c. Brain size allowed advanced levels of conceptualization; seen in case of tools,
spiritual ideas, language, etc.

Animals generally have behaviour ingrained in their genes. The human infant does not have
these nerve paths stamped into the germ plasm of their race, but as Gordon Childe puts it “is
Social Formations Assignment

born an heir to a social tradition”. The process of this social tradition is transformed by
language, as in it allows precept to be transferred more articulately, thus enhancing the
quality of education provided to a child. In the words of Childe, language serves as a vehicle
for the transmission of the social heritage of experience.

Homo Habilis had a larger brain than Australopithecines (800 c.c. and 450 c.c. respectively),
despite both species flourishing on the same diet. The larger brain, according to Brian Fagan,
could have been a product of the complex social network that was built on the basis of food
sharing. The existence of an economy of sorts between the H. Habilis shows that there was
probably a sophisticated language that was used to communicate and coordinate things such
as scavenging and tool production. However, one can only theorize about the workings of the
minds of H. Habilis as there is little archaeological evidence to corroborate such claims.

There is an anatomical difference between all other mammals and humans that allow humans
to make as many articulate sounds as they make; that is the position of the larynx. Most
mammals have high larynxes with a flat skull shape. But in humans, the skull is arched,
allowing for the larynx to be situated lower. This enables humans to make many distinctive
sounds.

The modern-day arch in the skull of humans first appear in Homo Erectus. It was as close to
Homo Sapiens as hominins can be, with 1000 c.c. brain and dexterous hands. There is
archaeological evidence of H. Erectus’ ability to come up with creative solutions, a
diversified diet, an increasingly complex social formation is found in the archaeological sites
such as Saint-Acheul, where the first hand axes were discovered. The inhabitants of the
Acheulian culture could be treated as a those with an aesthetic sense, given the artistic bent of
their tools.

Migration was widely practiced from the times of the Homo Erectus. This tradition was kept
even by the species that evolved after them, like the Neanderthals. Bipedalism enabled these
humans to scout the grassland-like terrains and icy expanses of the onset and retreating Ice
ages with more efficiency. They kept moving to escape scarcity and pick more robust lands
that could support them. They lived in band cultures like the Mousterian culture, made more
varied and non-standardized tools. There was a debate over the non-standardization of these
tools, referred to as the Bordes-Binford debate. Bordes declared that the variations of the
tools arose from the diversity of regions and Binford believed that this was because of the
existence of different species and sub-species.
Social Formations Assignment

Many of the biologically evolved feature started to facilitate various cultural adaptations like
the modifications of the larynx allowing the genus Homo to develop a more articulate
language with different sounds, or bipedalism freeing forelimbs to develop as hands which
end up developing tools; culminate into society. There are repeated patterns of inhabitation in
the Upper Palaeolithic near the same sites, which point towards some sort of a community
life that was practiced. Cave Art also started to evolve to show the importance of certain sites
and giving insight into what captured the collective imagination of these people. It is
deliberated on the basis of these drawings that there were band societies that inhabited these
sites. They had no sense of territorialism. They also exclusively saw animals as prey or
predator, not as possessions. In fact, the concept of private property was most probably non-
existent. The shelter also tended to circular when constructed, showing social inclusion
instead of exclusion. There probably still was a hierarchy in terms of sexual relations, hunting
or religious skills.

Bipedalism also gave rise sexual division of labour. The mother’s parental investment in the
child was way more than any other within the community. By foraging, she ensured a reliable
source of food for her child and for the rest of the band in the scenario of a failed hunt (which
is what happened most of the time). It was also a low-risk occupation with high energy yield,
which allowed her to take care of the child more effectively. This arrangement worked very
differently from the gender-based division of labour later on, which was more of a social
construct to control women’s reproductive right. Our ancestors now were probably unaware
of patriarchal institutions.

All these fascinating mutations in our evolutionary history allowed us to create cultures,
emotions and strategies binding us together in the form of a society. These societies left
behind art that allows us to peek into the lives of the people that made these drawings. There
is a great amount of discourse about them and the interesting observations around them. It is
seen as a very deliberate act and not simply as for artistic expression due to the complexities
associated with the act itself. The spots for the creations of these fine and detailed works were
clearly chosen. They were usually in dark and dangerous caves, with very little natural light.
The detailing on the paintings show that they clearly took a lot of effort, also the fact that in
the absence of natural light there had to be substituted with a man-made invention. Also,
certain spots had paintings juxtaposed on top of one another. There are multiple debates as to
the nature of the paintings. They almost exclusively happen to be scenes or animals from a
hunt. The art provides a peak into the complex ways that palaeolithic band societies operated.
Social Formations Assignment

Thus, this essay has tried to highlight the link between biological evolution and cultural
developments. Mutations in the human gene pool allowed the creation of species and sub
species that adapted to various climates through strategies allowed by their bodies. Many a
times, cultural adaptations enabled by these mutations allowed these people to tide over
changing climatic conditions and other external challenges. Within my limited knowledge I
have tried to uphold by argument, i.e., biological evolution (such as the development of a
larger brain and opposable thumbs) enabled cultural developments and adaptive strategies
(such as tools) which allowed our ancestors to thrive in adverse conditions and create
complex societies, not unlike our own. This interesting chain of cause and effect is always a
pleasure for any historian to trace.

Bibliography:

Fagan & Durrani, Brian & Nadia. People of the Earth. 15th ed. Taylor and Francis. 2018

Childe, Gordon V. What happened in History?. Populer Books House. 2017

Bogucki, Peter. The Origins of Human Society. Wiley-Blackwell. 1999

Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. Fingerprint Publishing. 2013