The Cognitive Revolution

[Heat]

I'm talking about the evolutionary one, not the 1950's movement when I say cognitive revolution.

My question would be that;

If 70,000 years ago there was a Cognitive Revolution happened, giving humans as we now know them a lot of their cognitive functions, how come the agricultural revolution took until 7,000-10,000 years ago to take place? The agricultural revolution as I understand it being when communication started playing a big factor, and different cultures started to emerge.

Because of the CR, again as I understand, the Sapiens of 70,000 years ago generally had more or less the same intelligence as us modern humans do today. It's a common misconception that up until 7,000-10,000 years ago, or basically our ancient ancestors, were not as intelligent as us, because they were, they had almost the same cognitive capabilities as we do now, they just didn't have the knowledge.

So why then, if they had the same cognitive capabilities, did it take until 7,000-10,000 years ago for us to see any real progress, like civilizations emerging, and etc. On an evolutionary timescale we have progress so much in simply the last 2,000 years. Seriously like the last 2,000 years compared to the last 5,000 years before it progressed exponentially. Likewise, the last 200 years compared to the 1,800 before it have seen the same exponential progression. So my point would be why is there a period of a very long amount of time that takes place between the cognitive revolution, and agricultural revolution, given that after the agricultural revolution we have seen exponential growth, and progress as a species, if we had the same cognitive abilities back then, why did it take 60,000 or some-odd years to see any real, measurable objective progress as a species?

And I don't know, it's very likely there is a specific answer for this, and i'm just ignorant on the subject, however I am still very curious anyways.


Also, without even delving in to the topic of the amount of time that elapsed in between, and why that is; is the large period of time in between the CR and AR evidence that to progress as a species it requires working together? Since real progress only came once we formed cultures? Something to think about I guess.


The only possible conclusion I could draw is that it was very hard to survive 70,000 years ago, especially because of the hunter gatherer mentality. However, that still begs the question of how in the past 2,000 years we have seen many many geniuses arise let alone humans with above average cognitive capabilities prior to the past 2,000 years, then how come in the roughly 60,000 years elapsing in between the CR and present day, there were no geniuses that arose to make any noticeable progress. Hell it might have been hard to communicate, but feels as though there should have been something. 

That brings up another question as well(last one), if species 70,000 years ago had the same Cog. functions as us, why for so many years, did no language arise, did they use hand signals, and not try to establish any real form of communication? By hand signals, I also mean any symbols, or whatever.

So in summary: There always comes a time in history, where even if something isn't being invented, someone comes along to point out "Hey that's inefficient", or "Hey wouldn't this make the process faster?", but what confuses me is that for 60,000 years or so a species with relatively the same cognitive capabilities as modern-day humans didn't once have someone come along to say "Hey this is inefficient, we should do it like this" to spur some sort of progress.

[Alex K]

Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs and Steel", at one point argues that settling down and doing agriculture might seem obviously superior to us in hindsight, but that it needn't always have been an immediate advantage to early homo sap. Also, the right package of crops needs to arise for an agricultural society to really take off, and the wild forms suitable for domestication did not grow everywhere. It's long ago that I read it though, you should pick it up -it's a shlep to read at times because it contains so much info, but it is very interesting.

[Heat]

Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs and Steel", at one point argues that settling down and doing agriculture might seem obviously superior to us in hindsight, but that it needn't always have been an immediate advantage to early homo sap. Also, the right package of crops needs to arise for an agricultural society to really take off, and the wild forms suitable for domestication did not grow everywhere. It's long ago that I read it though, you should pick it up -it's a shlep to read at times because it contains so much info, but it is very interesting.

Thanks for the suggestion.

But, man, if I could read that I would. And I could easily say i'm going to check it out, but that would be superficial. Truth is over the summer I checked out about 10 physics/cosmology/space books each over 250+ pages long with high hopes of reading them all. You know how many I read? 0. I read only about 200 pages of the first one. When it comes to reading, i'm just so god damn lazy. I can read on the internet just fine, something about holding a book however, spikes up my ADD and makes me think I cannot stand another page, even though I enjoy what i'm reading.

[Alex K]

Strange, for me it is the other way around.

Buy the ebook then?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Imagine this: You're in a situation consisting of yourself, a mate, a child, and all sorts of things that are trying to eat you, poison you, and infect you. Your total possessions likely consist of a couple of sharp rocks, and maybe a pointy stick or two. On the entire planet, there might be as many as 10000 members of your species, possibly as few as 1000. If you catch enough lucky breaks, you might live long enough to see a wrinkle on your face, but you're more likely to die around the age of 25-30.

Given all of this, I find it hardly surprising that humans of around 70 000 years ago weren't sitting round knocking back a bit of date wine and saying, 'So, old bean, how about we have ourselves a civilization?' 'Civilization, whazzat?' 'Oh, you know - farms, cities, writing, government - the lot.' 'Sounds grand, let's do it tomorrow.'

These things take time, Heat.

Boru

[Excited Penguin]

Are you sure they had the same cognitive abilities? If they did, then you can chalk it all up to chance, I think.

[ignoramus]

I would imagine it would be the advent of language and more specifically, the written word.
That would act as a catalyst and increase the generational knowledge logarithmically.

The same reasons apes can't advance. Every generation starts from scratch, every time.
There is no passing on of knowledge.

[Excited Penguin]

I would imagine it would be the advent of language and more specifically, the written word.
That would act as a catalyst and increase the generational knowledge logarithmically.

The same reasons apes can't advance. Every generation starts from scratch, every time.
There is no passing on of knowledge.

I'm sure that's not true. If apes developed language I'm sure we could help them with a thing or two, lol.

Not to mention we might deliberately increase their intelligence if we learn how to manipulate the brain in that way.

[Jehanne]

I would imagine it would be the advent of language and more specifically, the written word.
That would act as a catalyst and increase the generational knowledge logarithmically.

The same reasons apes can't advance. Every generation starts from scratch, every time.
There is no passing on of knowledge.

I'm sure that's not true. If apes developed language I'm sure we could help them with a thing or two, lol.

Not to mention we might deliberately increase their intelligence if we learn how to manipulate the brain in that way.

They (the apes) are starting to catch-up:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150818-...-stone-age

[Thumpalumpacus]

So in summary: There always comes a time in history, where even if something isn't being invented, someone comes along to point out "Hey that's inefficient", or "Hey wouldn't this make the process faster?", but what confuses me is that for 60,000 years or so a species with relatively the same cognitive capabilities as modern-day humans didn't once have someone come along to say "Hey this is inefficient, we should do it like this" to spur some sort of progress.

Alex's pointing to Guns, Germs, and Steel is a great recommendation (and it's very readable, Diamond has an engaging style of writing). But to address this particular point, I think it's important to realize the interreliance our inventions have upon each other -- and the corollary, that each invention broadens the inventive palette.

Technological advancement is a synergistic process -- look at the nexus between aerodynamics, metallurgy, and microelectronics, for instance: each of those technologies benefited from advancements in the other fields, resulting in advances that would not have happened without each other. This pattern suffuses most human endeavors. The upshot is that each invention feeds the next invention.

The other thing to remember is that 60,000 ya, communications were nonexistent, essentially. The development of writing meant that knowledge could be more truly preserved and shared, without the distortions brought on by oral transmission, or extirpation brought on by the death of the person(s). It took longer to share information, such sharing was probably much less accurate, and almost certainly much less useful.