What it means to be a rational animal: Incalculable even to ourselves

Man is a rational animal. If one knew only the definition and had never met a man, one would assume that a rational animal meant a reasonable animal. In fact we know that man is, just as often, unreasonable. The possession of reason, which distinguishes him from the lower animals, means that he can act reasonably as they cannot, but also unreasonably, as they cannot.

The animals, not having reason, cannot misuse it. Man has it, can misuse it, does misuse it. ... Man is endlessly ingenious in discovering ways of misusing his reason. The commonest way, perhaps, is to leave it unused. Most of us would rather not think at all when any effort is involved. The use of the body is easy, and promises pleasure. The use of the mind is difficult and holds out no such promises. So man is always trying to by-pass the use of the mind.

He thinks with reluctance, which makes him a slave to habit. He thinks with the will, which makes him a slave to desire. He thinks with the imagination, which makes him a slave to slogans. Not using the full power of his mind, he loses perspective. Things closest -- that is, closest to the body’s power to respond to them -- loom biggest. ...

One result of all these ingenious ways of avoiding the use of the mind is that man is intensely gullible: offer him happiness, and all his defenses are down. And the trouble is that man is not consistent: you cannot even rely upon him to act unreasonably: for he is damaged, but not wholly; and he is free. ... The wandering mind can concentrate, the tired will can make a stand, the thrusting self is capable of supreme sacrifice. You never know when. There is that element in man which makes him incalculable, even to himself” - Frank Sheed (1897-1981), Society and Sanity (pp. 55-58).

It was not science that moved away from incisive explanations like this in favour of rubbish about the “God gene” or the evolution of the delusion of free will. It was society, wanting simple answers to come from science, which require no effort on anyone’s part.

Human evolution: Oldest hand-crafted flute so far is 35,000 years old

The pieces of the ancient flute

comprise a 22-centimetre instrument with five holes and a notched end. Conard said the flute is 35,000 years old.

“It’s unambiguously the oldest instrument in the world,” said Conard. His findings were published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Other archeologists agreed with Conard’s assessment.

Well, that's reassuring.

The Hohle Fels flute is more complete and appears slightly older than bone and ivory fragments from seven other flutes recovered in southern German caves and documented by Conard and his colleagues in recent years.

Now, here's the interesting part:

Roebroeks said it’s difficult to say how cognitively and socially advanced these people were. But the physical trappings of their lives — including musical instruments, personal decorations and figurative art — match the objects we associate with modern human behaviour, he said.

“It shows that from the moment that modern humans enter Europe ... it is as modern in terms of material culture as it can get,” Roebroeks said.

That's the thing about the evolution of human culture. It never actually seems to happen. Someone just makes a flute and starts playing it, and soon every tribe has a flute.

A bit like the history of mathematics, I suppose. Someone just invents an idea like the Pythagorean theorem or zero, and everyone just picks up from there.

Evolutionary psychology on the importance of - of all things - shopping

"Shopping is throwback to days of cavewomen: A woman's love of shopping is a throwback to her days in the caves, according to a new study," (UK Telegraph 25 Feb 2009), says Ben Leach:

Dr David Holmes, of Manchester Metropolitan University, said skills that were learnt as cavemen and women were now being used in shops. He said: "Gatherers sifted the useful from things that offered them no sustenance, warmth or comfort with a skill that would eventually lead to comfortable shopping malls and credit cards.

Look, I know women who love to shop. I also know women who hate to. shop

I am part of the latter crew. I can seldom find the groceries people here really eat. And no food is better than the stuff that was in the ground less than half an hour ago.

That thin layer of topsoil on the Earth is the detritus of what lived before us. The vegetables we grow draw on those life forms' preserved stores - the topsoil is their estate and we are their heirs.

If some people don't understand that, I am not here to start a fight. But ... shopping?

I bet, if we could raise the dead, more cave women would agree with me about the importance of fresh food than about the importance of shopping.

Human evolution: Pottery older than we thought?

Okay, okay, you always wondered where your great aunt got that perfectly awful stuff. But that's not what we are talking about here.

Haim Watzman tells us (NatureNews, 01 June 2009), "Earliest evidence for pottery making found: Fragments from a Chinese cave push back the dawn of the craft by more than 1,000 years."

Shards of pottery dating back 18,000 years have been unearthed in a cave in Hunan province, southern China.

The manufacture of ceramic pots and other items is generally associated with the change from Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies into sedentary Neolithic communities, which began about 10,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean. But pottery manufacture began considerably earlier in East Asia, during the late Paleolithic. Until now, the earliest previous finds in East Asia were dated to 15,000–16,000 years ago.

Well, the basic idea isn't difficult. Clay grows very hard when subjected to intense heat, and most other methods of producing a waterproof container are much more labour intensive. So I wouldn't be surprised if the craft turns out to be older still.

Religion: Why writing things down matters

One of the causes of "just-so" storytelling about human evolution is the fact that, until comparatively recently, people did not write things down or manufacture a lot of objects.

People like Pascal Boyer can write books like Religion Explained, secure in the knowledge that no documents or extensive artifacts are likely to turn up from 50 000 years ago that challenge his claims.

To see what difference this makes, consider the case of King Tut's tomb. Archaeologists have unearthed an extensive story of the short-lived effort of one Pharaoh to convert Egypt to monotheism. We actually know a fair bit about what happened there, due to deciphering writings and examining extensive artifacts.

Now and then a brief light is shone on a far earlier era, and here is one: An Australian cave painting depicts a marsupial lion ("Cave Painting Depicts Extinct Marsupial Lion " by Stéphan Reebs, Natural History Magazine 09 May 2009):

Several well-preserved skeletons of the leopard-size beast have been found. Now, a newly discovered cave painting offers a glimpse of the animal's external appearance.

In June 2008, Tim Willing, a naturalist and tour guide, photographed an ancient painting on a rockshelter wall near the shore of northwestern Australia. Kim Akerman, an independent anthropologist based in Tasmania, says the painting unmistakably depicts a marsupial lion.

It shows the requisite catlike muzzle, large forelimbs, and heavily clawed front paws. And it portrays the animal with a striped back, a tufted tail, and pointed ears.

Those last three features aren't preserved in skeletons, but Aborigines would have known them well. Australia's first people landed on the continent at least 40,000 years ago and were contemporaries of the big predator.

Similarly, an article in Science, 323 (30 January 2009) pushes back the art timeline:

In 2002, a discovery at Blombos Cave in South Africa began to change how researchers view the evolution of modern human behavior. Archaeologists reported finding two pieces of red ochre engraved with crosshatched patterns, dated to 77,000 years ago. Many experts interpreted the etchings as evidence of symbolic expression and possibly even art, 40,000 years earlier than many researchers had thought (Science, 11 January 2002, p. 247). Now the Blombos team reports on an additional 13 engraved ochre pieces, many dated to 100,000 years ago. The researchers suggest that some of the engravings may represent an artistic or symbolic tradition. If so, the timeline for the earliest known symbolic behavior must once again be redrawn.

Go here for more (paywall).

When timelines are getting redrawn this often, my advice is - for now - forget them. At some point, our ancestors differentiated themselves from knuckle-dragging apes, and that was an event with great consequences (if that is now it really happened), about which we have almost no information.

Note: Here is a contest question at Uncommon Descent: Question 3: In 400 words, to be judged in two weeks, and printed as a post: What do we really know about human evolution that could not simply be overturned by a new find? The winner will receive a free copy of Expelled. The contest will be judged in two weeks, May 27.