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Been reading "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", this piece is mentioned as the earliest proof of the Cognitive Revolution that we know of. It displays how
by fishfasell 16d ago
Been reading "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", this piece is mentioned as the earliest proof of the Cognitive Revolution that we know of. It displays how humans were able to envisions things that do not exist, crafting fiction from reality. How early man was able to share stories and how religions probably came to be.
- argee 16d agoIsn't that begging the question? For one, people can wear a lion headdress, making it something that does exist in real life. Secondly, it seems to be carved from a single tusk, which might have forced some choices when it comes to anatomy, rather than being "as conceived".
- Loughla 16d agoBut that's also just ignoring the fact that humans seem inherently drawn to the fantastic, whether in religion or something else. There isn't really any reason to believe that wouldn't have existed 40k years ago, correct?
- saghm 16d agoThat's what they mean by begging the question; you don't really get much useful information from trying to cite something as evidence of what you've already assumed.
- the_gipsy 15d agoThis is the earliest evidence of such fantasy we have. It's not that this piece at this time was the earliest human fantasy, but there is a cutoff line somewhere between humans and our last common ancestor chimpanzees.
- card_zero 16d agoHeh. "What does it signify, this lion with a man's body?" - "ran out of space".
- recursivecaveat 16d agoWouldn't you be wearing a lion headdress for some kind of symbolic reason though? Like it's not a very practical piece of clothing. I would guess you either want to draw some kind of parallel between yourself and lions, or maybe remind people that you're strong enough to have killed a lion. I don't think there are any animals that take hunting trophies like that.
- solidasparagus 16d agoSapiens is super loose about interpreting facts carefully, particularly the prehistory part.
- Cockbrand 15d agoI'm currently reading that book, and I find this sentiment interesting (not knowing any better myself) - is there a critique/fact-check somewhere?
- solidasparagus 10d agoThere are some blog posts by experts in the various fields that I read. An AI can find them if you ask (I don't remember specifics). TLDR; the facts aren't necessarily wrong (with some exceptions IIRC), but the author presents things with extreme confidence when the scientific consensus is much less certain. And then builds a confident narrative on top of it.
- fishfasell 15d agoAgreed. The whole premise of language being created to gossip has zero scientific merit.