CDR: Re: Noah's Flood

[Ray Dillinger]

On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Jim Choate wrote:

>
>On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>
>'People' have only been around about a half a million years (depending on
>how stringent one is in defining human).
>
>We're recent(!)hairless apes.
>

My opinion is even more stringent than that.  The archaeological 
record shows human-like anatomy starting about half a million 
years ago, but no evidence of symbolic thought or individual 
experimentation with / invention of tools prior to about the year 
-38K.  

Up to that point, you've just got a few classical tools, made 
the same way generation after generation after generation, and 
after that point you've suddenly got cave paintings, tools made 
out of unfamiliar materials, tools made for new purposes, people 
buried with grave goods (proof that someone at least thought 
*something* about death), sculptures of animals and carvings 
that could not serve as tools (and thus are probably classifiable
as art), etc.  

Something fundamental changed only 40,000 years ago, and even 
though there have been *anatomically* modern humans for about a 
half million years, I pretty strongly suspect that there weren't 
*mentally* modern humans until that change.  

It may have been the development of language that made the 
difference.  

				Ray