Refuting a Myth About Human Origins

This article from American Scientist has interesting implication for evolution fiction because it suggests that human beings were always modern. There was no time where people were just brutes. At the moment that they (we) were anatomically human, we were, in effect, human, and behaved accordingly. We may have been ignorant, but we were not stupid. The reason this is an opportunity for evolution ficiton writers is because characters can and should plausibly exhibit complexity finally stepping out past their cavemen portrayals. They were us.

Homo sapiens emerged once, not as modern-looking people first and as modern-behaving people later.

John J. Shea

For decades, archeologists have believed that modern behaviors emerged among Homo sapiens tens of thousands of years after our species first evolved. Archaeologists disagreed over whether this process was gradual or swift, but they assumed that Homo sapiens once lived who were very different from us. These people were not “behaviorally modern,” meaning they did not routinely use art, symbols and rituals; they did not systematically collect small animals, fish, shellfish and other difficult-to-procure foods; they did not use complex technologies: Traps, nets, projectile weapons and watercraft were unknown to them. More...