When humans began to control the environment

William P. Hall President Kororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters Assoc., Inc. - http://kororoit.org william-hall@bigpond.com http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net

Access my research papers from Google Citations

Tonight

This will be my next to last presentation in the Human Origins, Cognitive Technologies, and Futures Meetup Series

Following on from last year I want to explore a little more deeply how humans made the transition from occupying a reasonably well defined hunting and gathering niche in savannah and open forest ecosystems to being an alpha consumer across the entire global ecosphere.

– The key to the transition is the evolution of capabilities to socially test, accumulate, share and preserve “scientific” knowledge that enabled humans to control all kinds of natural processes from animal and plant domestication to functions at the sub-atomic level.

– Archaeological landmarks for the beginning of this transition are provided by the ancient sites of Gobekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük

– Evidence collected from these will provide the focus for tonight’s discussion

The following presentation, next month, will take us to what appears to be the beginning of the end of the story of humanity – evidence that global warming triggered by our exploding technological prowess has already initiated the collapse of the global ecosystem we and most life on the planet depends on for our continued survival.

Following on from last year’s Human Origins Meetup

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The first option – infinite growth – is impossible

The second option – unsustainable exponential growth followed by a catastrophic climatic/ ecological collapse - is all too likely. This is the path we are on now. The tipping point is not far away if it is not already too late

The third option – a sustainable steady state - may still be possible if we act now - I don’s see any evidence that we have

evolved the maturity to act effectively

Survival will require deep cultural change from striving for continuous growth to striving for sustainability. This change can only be achieved by political action

To control aspects of the world, we must be able to accurately anticipate the effects of our actions

The mind has no direct perception of reality

Based on sensory input filtered and transduced in a variety of ways we construct a model (i.e., an observation or hypothesis) of the world

We react to the world depending on our mental model and hypotheses about how our actions will affect that world

Our world model and our understanding of it are improved through observing our actions and determining how well they fit the model and our prior understanding (Popper + Boyd)

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Cognitive skills needed to accumulate knowledge for niche expansion (Vaesen 2012; Sterelny 2013, 2014)

Hand-eye coordination - fine motor control needs more neurons Causal reasoning - time-binding; understand goals, actions, and

consequences Function representation - associate particular tools with

particular jobs Natural history intelligence - conscious attention to

understanding the behaviors of predators, prey, fire, other changing aspects of environment

Executive control – anticipating, deciding & planning; not just reacting

Social intelligence - extended childhood, social learning (imitation not emulation), understanding of intentions of others (mirror neurons?), focused teaching & learning, apprenticeship

Intragroup coordination Intergroup collaboration Language

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How much knowledge does it take to make & use tools? Killing prey with stone-tipped spears

Understanding cognitive demands of technologies Thinking a stone-tipped spear

– sequence of steps to make a spear used to bring down prey (chains of operation/cognigram)

– making a bow and arrow set is at least 3x more difficult – each arrow indicates ordered application of specific knowledge

(Lombard 2012; Lombard & Haidle 2012)

Memory capacity: indexing & retrieval

Tools to increase personal access to knowledge – Structured indexing (sagas/mnemonics) x 100

– Personal writing x 100

– Printing/books/libraries x 1,000,000

– Internet/Google Scholar x 100,000,000

(Robertson, D.S. (1998). The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of Civilization. Barnes & Noble, 208 pp)

And then there is the social dimension – people working together for a common goal

– Group 10-50(!)

– Tribe/Community 500-5.000(!)

– City/Nation 50,000-500,000,000(!)

– World 7 x 109

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Estimating the extent of the new knowledge

required to support the Agricultural Revolution in

the Neolithic

From hunting and gathering (12,000 kya) to Çatalhöyük (9,500 ka) in ~3,000 years

Mesolithic in the Levant: ~22,000 - ~11,500 kya Neolithic in the Levant: ~10,000 -

Aggressive scavenging becomes active predation

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Hominins using haak en steek branches as tools (Guthrie 2007): a. for driving big cats away from their prey. b. The simple conversion of a thorn branch into a "megathorn" lance for active hunting.

Predator kills represent a potentially significant resource for scavenging apes

– All savanna predators avoid running into thorn trees and bushes because of the risk to their eyes

– Most will back off if a thorn branch is waved in their faces

– It is a small step from using available thorn branches in defense to actively use them to drive predators away from their kills

– It is another small step to hunt & kill prey themselves

Early human groups pioneered a particular socio-cognitive niche based on 5 principal capacities

Socio-cognitive niche: cooperation, egalitarianism, mind-reading (theory of mind), language, cultural accumulation

Principal classes of social cognition in hunter–gatherer bands and inferred reinforcing relationships between them

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Whiten & Erdal 2011

Functional types of long-term memory

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Long-term memory

Declarative (explicit) Procedural (implicit)

Episodic Semantic

Spatial

Know how Body memory

What happened when? Temporal indexing

Abstracted facts, meanings, concepts, models of external world i.e., our “scientific” knowledge of how the world works Classification indexing

Spatial monitoring & feedback Navigating mapping spatial indexing Cognitive map of the experienced environment What are the landmarks? Where I am on the map? What happened here? What happened there? Where is home? What else do I know about here and there?

Short-term memory Recording, monitoring ongoing interactions in the world

Performance monitoring & feedback

After Mastin 2010 - The Human Memory

Environmental mapping essential for all self-mobile animals

Basic knowledge requirement for survival – Model/map of the essential environment

Landmarks & coordinates

Know where shelter is

Know where resources can be found

Know where dangers lurk

– Know where I am relative to the above

Neurosensory capabilities – Sensory capabilities to determine spatial relations to landmarks

– Processing capabilities Recognize landmarks & relate these to map

Determine self’s location on map relative to shelter and needs

Access and evaluate memories relating to self’s location on map

Entering location often sufficient to trigger strong memories associated with that location

Hippocampal region known to provide the indexing system for this kind of knowledge in mammals and birds 12

Geospatial mapping in the hippocampal formation

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Allen & Fortin 2013

Pilly & Gossberg 2013

Eichenbaum 2014

First settlements and animal domestication

Settlements and monumental architectures predate agriculture

16 Robinson 2013

Animal domestication and plant domestication

Signal for detecting domestication is changed sex ratio of the harvested animals – especially in the harvesting of young males (years before present)

17 Zeder 2008 Colors denote species

Pre-agricultural monumental architectures in the Levant associated with “settlement

18 Benz & Bauer 2014: p. 11

8 = Gobekli Tepe

10 = Karahan Tepe

7 = Hamzan Tepe

9 = Tasli Tepe

6 = Navalı Çori

11 = Sefer tepe

Becoming settled – surmounting the limitations of nomadic life

Mobile populations are limited to technology they can carry with them or fabricate on demand

Accumulating knowledge for more, and more effective technologies enables more effective harvesting of resources over smaller geographic areas – Increased population size adds capacity for further accumulation of specialized cultural knowledge

Becomes practical to establish core living areas – Permanent shelters (i.e., houses)

– Accumulation of tools and construction of specialized processing areas

– Specialized structures for the long-term, safe storage of food, other resources and cultural activity

Reduced contact with the broad landscape combined with need to manage more and more specialized technology related knowledge – Paths in the landscape no longer provide useful indexes for those trades & guilds that don’t traverse them

– Need to make new mnemonic paths in compactly constructed landscapes

Solution: Kelly (2012). When Knowledge was Power: Build compact monumental landscapes that can be traversed sequentially (e.g., Göbekli Tepe, Stonehenge, Poverty Point, Chaco Canyon Kivas, etc.)

– Göbekli Tepe (not fully excavated) dated ~ 11 kya southern Turkey 3 ka before the agricultural revolution No habitations in immediate vicinity

Several circular structures containing iconic monuments

Suggestion: each specialization had its own guild-hall for the rehearsal and transmission of its secret and arcane knowledge

Sequence of memorable markers used as mnemonic index loci organized to be traversed in ritual procession & dance

May be a number of levels of recognized expertise where initiates must demonstrate accuracy and and completeness of their memory

– Other sites from primary oral cultures have similar features

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Lynne Kelly’s core thesis

(heavily paraphrased) ―

Ancient monuments such as Stonehenge are mnemonic devices forming part of formal knowledge management systems

that helped prehistoric cultures accumulate and transmit the great

increases in new knowledge required to make the transition from hunting and gathering to specialized trades and

roles in settled agricultural communities and city-states

Just published – The Memory Code http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/the-memory-code/

Kelly’s web page: http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/

Social indexing, rehearsing and transmission of large bodies of knowledge

The importance of common indexes for sharing knowledge – Portability is useful for mobile populations (e.g., the smartphone!) – One person’s mnemonic tool is useless to another unless they have shared the rehearsal,

and even then only one person can use it.

A group of people sequentially traversing a landscape with many loci can share their rehearsals of knowledge indexed against each locus

– Specific recitals, songs & dances & other mnemonic rituals associated with each locus – Peer review and criticism can be applied to ensure that each person’s memory coincides

with other people’s memory – Memorized recitals also tested against the real world – those that don’t match will not

be rehearsed any more and forgotten. – Thus, the group shares one index and the knowledge accessed via each indexing locus – Body marks, secret signs, etc. can be used to indicate that an initiate has achieved

perfection in their rehearsals

A common solution to becoming sedentary may be to build artificial landscapes – Participation in the act of building an indexing locus while rehearsing the knowledge

associated with it will powerfully enhance the memory being rehearsed – Need restricted rehearsal spaces: secret mens’ business, secret womens’ business,

secret guilds, levels of initiation, etc. all contribute to preservation of specific bodies of knowledge.

This was all a lot of work, so it is understandable why people used this technology only when they had no other way

Formal process – think school, college, university degrees, scientific publications

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Do these wall paintings from Çatalhöyük have mnemonic functions?

Çatalhöyük is one of the first fully agrarian cities

– Inhabited from ~9,600 years ago until ~7,800

– Population ~5-7 K, 10 K max

Mostly abstract mnemonic(?) wall paintings common

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Check out Flikr pictures of the site

Some technologies developed at Çatalhöyük

Cultivation of crops and living in towns required a universe of new and increasingly complex technologies

In transition this new knowledge has to be added on top of the old knowledge

– See lime plaster below

23 Pegler 2012

Hodder 2012

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Operational chains for cooking with clay balls and their cross-connections.

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Tanglegram for the use of clay

Mnemonics, settlement, the agricultural revolution and increasing cultural complexity

With settlement, nomadic groups become territorial and build villages Positive feedback drives ever-increasing growth rate of cultural knowledge accumulation for

ever-increasing ecological hegemony over environmental resources – Culturally accumulating knowledge enables more efficient/effective control & of local resources

– Surplus resources enables population growth providing more capacity for cultural memory

– Development of ever more sophisticated mnemonic devices

– Greater population allows more specialization of crafts, trades and guilds able to accumulate still more varied and detailed knowledge of the world’

Cf Masonic ritual, craft guilds Tracking demographic and cultural transitions in the Near East from small nomadic groups

of hunter-gathers, through settled groups of local foragers, to the formation of agricultural towns:

– Bar-Yosef, O. 2011. Climatic fluctuations and early farming in West and East Asia. Current Anthropology 52(S4), S175-S193 - http://tinyurl.com/lv5rhgn.

– Goring-Morris, A.N., Belfer-Cohen, A. 2011. Neolithization process in the Levant: the outer envelope. Current Anthropology 52(S4), S195-S208 - http://tinyurl.com/kjgyu5d.

– Belfer-Cohen, A., Goring-Morris, A.N. 2011. Becoming farmers: the inside story. Current Anthropology 52(S4), S209-S220 - http://tinyurl.com/lrttpv6

– Zeder, M.A. 2011. The origins of agriculture in the Near East. Current Anthropology 52(S4), S221-S235 - http://tinyurl.com/mr8grhj

– Vigne, J.-D., Carrère, I., Briois, F., Guilaine, J. 2011. The early process of mammal domestication in the Near East: new evidence from the Pre-Neolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Cyprus. Current Anthropology 52(S4), S255-S271 - http://tinyurl.com/kr4yvyo

– Bocquet-Appel, J.-P. 2011. The agricultural demographic transition during and after the agriculture inventions. Current Anthropology 52(S4), S497-S510 - http://tinyurl.com/kh2yhns 26

Controlling the environment uses energy Increasing scientific knowledge shows us how

Excepting biomass (which has its own problems), hydro and nuclear the remaining energy is from burning hydrocarbons to produce water, CO2, and other pollutants.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, causing global warming 28

Next month: is it the end of the story?

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Inconvenient Facts: The average global temperature for June 2016 was the highest for this month ever recorded (cont.)

The combined global average temperature for June 2016 was the highest for June in the 137-year period of record, at 0.90°C above the 20th century average of 14.8°C, breaking the previous record set in 2015 by 0.02°C—the 14th consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken

Australia's mean temperature during June 2016 was 1.30°C (2.34°F) above the 1961–1990 average, the sixth highest June temperature since national temperature records began in 1910. Minimum temperatures were much warmer than average, while maximum temperatures were near average. The nationally-averaged minimum temperature was 2.22°C (4.00°F) above average—the fourth highest June minimum temperature on record.

Globally, June 2016 tied with March 2015 as the ninth highest monthly temperature departure among all months (1,638) on record. Overall, 14 of the 15 highest monthly temperature departures in the record have all occurred since February 2015.

(US NOAA – State of the Climate Global Analysis – June 2016

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Inconvenient Facts: Globally, 2015 was by far the hottest year yet

recorded

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15 of the 16 warmest years on record have occurred this century.

The global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07°C per decade since 1880 and at an average rate of 0.17°C per decade since 1970. If the graph is indicative, the rate of increase is accelerating! NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies - http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

The average global temperature across land and ocean surface areas for 2015 was 0.90°C above the 20th century average of 13.9°C

Not only was 2015 the calendar year most extreme temperature, but also the most extreme temperature for ANY 12-month period on record.

Inconvenient fact: As temperatures spiral out of control, 2016 is already on track to be the hottest year ever

The latest extreme temperatures are in part an effect of the current El Niño.

As we are entering what appears to be La Niña part of the climate cycle, the rate of temperature increase may slow or even turn negative for a year or so.

However, each El Niño tends to be more extreme than the previous one. 32

Click graphic for animation