On 22 Sep 95 17:48:55 EDT you wrote:
JF>...The "Cro-Magnon explosion", for want of a better
>term, was a cultural event, powered by human intelligence (in my
>interpretation).
JB>But you're missing my point. I'm not talking about the development
>of culture. I'm talking about the actual appearance of modern man.
>I think you got hung up on your Industrial Revolution analogy. The
>"explosion" I'm talking about is sudden apperance on the scene of a
>creature that cannot be explained by any natural means. As Goodman
>notes: "Modern man is an extraordinary phenomenon, a complex system
>of distinctive physical and mental traits, a whole considerably
>greater than the sum of its parts. Physcially and mentally he took a
>great leap beyond his predecessors, a leap which cannot be explained
>by the demands of the environment or random mutation."
Indeed. The anthroplogist Eiseley sketches the magnitude of the
problem:
"If one attempts to read the complexities of the story, one is not
surprised that man is alone on the planet. Rather, one is amazed and
humbled that man was achieved at all. For four things had to happen,
and if they had not happened simultaneously, or at least kept pace
with each other, the bones of man would lie abortive and forgotten
in the sandstones of the past:
1. His brain had almost to treble in size. 2. This had to be
effected, not in the womb, but rapidly, after birth. 3. Childhood had
to be lengthened to allow this brain, divested of most of its precise
instinctive responses, to receive, store, and learn to utilize what it
received from others. 4. The family bonds had to survive seasonal
mating and become permanent, if this odd new creature was to be
prepared for his adult role.
Each one of these major points demanded a multitude of minor
biological adjustments, yet all of this-change of growth rate,
lengthened age, increased blood supply to the head, moved apparently
with rapidity. It is a dizzying spectacle with which we have nothing
to compare. The event is complex, it is many-sided, and what touched
it off is hidden under the leaf mold of forgotten centuries.
Somewhere in the glacial mists that shroud the past, Nature found a
way of speeding the proliferation of brain cells and did it by the
ruthless elimination of everything not needed to that end. We lost
our hairy covering, our jaws and teeth were reduced in size, our sex
life was postponed, our infancy became among the most helpless of any
of the animals because everything had to wait upon the development of
that fast- growing mushroom which had sprung up in our heads."
(Eiseley L., "The Immense Journey", Victor Gollancz: London, 1958
p122-123)
I would like to see all that plausibly explained using purely natural
causes! :-)
God bless.
Stephen