• theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Yeah, people have no concept of how old people are. Behavioral modern humans have been walking around for 2.5 million years

    • FundMECFS@quokk.au
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      8 days ago

      Depends what you mean by behaviourally modern.

      Skulls around 2.5 million year old range (seen in homo habilis for example) are very different (and much smaller) from the ones we currently have. I mean humans only split off from our common ancestor with chimps about 5 - 7 million years ago.

      So timewise 2.5 Mya is just a little more than halfway between our last common ancestors and modern Homo Sapiens (Sapiens).

      The earliest evidence we have for things like symbolic language and abstract art is more like 50-100’000 years ago. That’s what most people mean by behaviourally modern.

      • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        “Depends what you mean by behaviourally modern.” immediately begins defining anatomically modern lmao yup you know what you’re talking about fr

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity

        There is no one definition, as it is debated. If you define it by control of fire, then it’s about 2 million years back.

        EDIT: nice, you edited your comment to add a blurb that’s actually relevant to behavioral modernity now 👍 looks like you learned something from the wikipedia article

        • FundMECFS@quokk.au
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          8 days ago

          Edit 2: This reply isn’t even relevent anymore because the poster is editing their before posts to try and make my replies seem bad, really weird behaviour.

          I never said there was a single definition. Just that most people think it’s characterised by things like symbolic language and art.

          And the first paragraph of the wikipedia article you sent agrees with me

          Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinkingplanning depth, symbolic behavior (e.g., artornamentation), music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others.

          Edit: I posted my paragraoh before you replied with that article. My edit was fixing spelling adding the homo habilis example and fixing language to last common ancestor around my chimp example because I had said “evolved from Chimps” which is inaccurate.

          • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            The earliest evidence we have for things like symbolic language and abstract art is more like 50-100’000 years ago. That’s what most people mean by behaviourally modern.

            You edited your reply to add this entire sentence, after I replied to it, otherwise your original comment would have had nothing at all to do with behavioral modernity and wasn’t relevant to the discussion…