6 Evolutionary Revolution

Ms. Sangeeta Dey and Prof. A.K. Kapoor

Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Evolution stages of humans

3. Cultural Evolutionary revolution 3.1. The Stone Age

3.1.1. Paleolithic

3.1.2. Mesolithic

3.1.3. Neolithic

3.2. The Bronze Age

3.3. The Iron Age

4. Evolutionary development of brain and cognition power

5. Evolution of communication skills

6. Domestication of Plants and animals

7. Indus valley civilization

8. Emergence of cities, states and Civilization

8.1 The Bands

8.2 The Tribes

8.3 The Chiefdoms

8.4 The Emergence of States

9. Summary

Learning Objectives:

To describe process of evolution and its impact
To understand the progressive evolution of human ancestors
To describe cultural evolutionary phases and eras
To know about factors that lead to emergence of cities, states and civilization
To understand impact of evolutionary changes for cultural tool technologies
To explore the importance of development of brain, speech, language in evolving human beings

1. Introduction

Evolution is the gradual process by which the present diversity of plants and animals arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms. Evolution is a process of social and cultural change in a definite direction particularly from a simple to complex state. This can be from a state of homogeneity to a state of heterogeneity. Evolution of a culture refers to the development of culture and society through progressively more complex stages.

Evolution is a continuous process of diversification and integration. It shows onward and upward movement generating process and even increasing complexity. It involves a change in the form, structure and organization of a culture or a society. When we speak of evolution of an organism we refer to the emergence of certain organisms from other organisms.

It is believed that every species was individually created by God in the form in which it exists today and is not capable of undergoing any change. This is referred as theory of special creation. Special creation was contradicted by fossil evidence and genetic studies, and the pseudoscientific arguments of creation science cannot stand up to logical examination. It was the generally accepted explanation of origin of the origin of life until the advent of Darwinism. However, Lamarck is the first biologist to publish a theory to explain how one species could have evolved into another. He suggested that changes in an individual are acquired during its lifetime, chiefly by increased use or disuse of organs in response to “a need that continues to make itself felt” and that these changes are inherited by its offspring.

Thus the long neck and limbs of a giraffe are explained as having evolved by the animal stretching its neck to browse on the foliage of trees. This is also called as inheritance of acquired characteristics. But it was not until the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 that special creation was seriously challenged. Unlike Lamarck, Darwin proposed a feasible mechanism for evolution and comparative anatomy. The modern version of Darwinism which incorporates discoveries in genetics remains the most acceptable theory of evolution.

Man has evolved both physically and culturally. Cultural evolution is the most important in understanding the evolutionary revolution of human beings. Culture is design for the living. It guides the member for behaving, feeling, responding, thinking and making survival possible. Evolution of culture dimension promotes adjustment of people to environment and adjustment among themselves. Cultural processes also bring changes in a specific part of a culture or in all the parts. Specific changes can be anything like change in the technology of tool making skills, economic life, social organization and political life etc.

2. Evolutionary stages of humans

About 15 million years ago, primates called Dryopithecus and Ramapithecus were existing on the earth. They were hairy and walked like gorillas and chimpanzees. Ramapithecus was more like while Dryopithecus was more ape like. So, they were the forerunners of hominids.
Progress was made further when a skull was discovered about 5 million years ago. It had a brain size of about 500 cm3 within the range of ape brain but its jaw and teeth were human like. It was probably not taller than 4 feet but walked up right. It was named as Australopithecus africanus which lived in East Africa grass lands. Evidence shows they hunted with stone weapons but essentially ate fruits
From the Australopithecus evolved the Homo Habilis (the Handy man) which was characterized by having a larger brain than Australopithecus (650 – 800 c.c.), using tools and being bipedal. They probably did not eat meat.
Homo erectus appeared about 1.5 million years ago. Its brain capacity increased to about 800 – 1200 c.c. and they migrated to Asia and Europe. Fossils of Java man and Peking man belong to Homo erectus. They probably ate meat.
Homo erectus later replaced by Homo sapiens. There were several sub-species of H. sapiens, a wide spread one of which was Homo sapiens Neanderthals (Neanderthal man), a large brained game hunter. The Neanderthal man with a brain size of 1400 c.c. lived in near east and central Asia between 10000 – 40000 years back. They used hides to protect their body and buried their dead bodies.
The oldest remains of H. Sapiens sapiens (cro-magnum) appeared around 35000 years ago, probably having evolved from Neanderthal man. They were as large-brained (1500 c.c.) as they are today and existed as hunter gatherers in co-operative bands. They were stout, short and used hides for clothing. They built their huts and buries their dead bodies.

3. Cultural Evolutionary Revolution

Each stage of hominid organic evolution seems to have been accompanied by the major advances in Cultural Revolution. Because stone tools are relatively indestructible, much of early cultural evolution is represented by the evolution of tool industries.

The importance of tools as molders of hominid evolution has been recognized for a long time. Upright posture, leaving the hands free to manipulate objects and carry things form long distances, certainly is dynamically connected with the adoption of tool use by early hominids. In order for a tool to be useful, one must have it with him when the moment arises to put it to work. This takes making the tool in advance – planning; walking on two legs to free one’s hands to carry the tool; and commitment to using the tool. Those parts of the human brain most needed for manipulating tools are well evolved. Aside from the ones mentioned, other highly developed areas include the frontal lobes that organize behaviour into sequences and the motor association areas that control the fingers and the thumbs. The hand itself is marvellously evolved, It combines the powerful curled – fingered grip with which heavy objects can be moved, with the delicate manipulations possible when small objects are held between the fingers and the thumb (and the ability to fully oppose the thumb to all the fingers is uniquely human.

Thus, much of what we take for granted about man today is the result of natural selection operating on his ancestors, adapting them to an environment he himself has created (or began to create): tools. But culture is more than just tools.

According to the latest archaeological data available the cultural evolutionary stages of human ancestors can be described into a three age system: the Stone Age, Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

3.1. The Stone Age

This age is distributed in different chrono-cultural ages such as Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic.

3.1.1. Paleolithic

The term paleolithic commonly used initially referred to the stage in which humans made chipped stone tools. The stage also represent the earliest of human cultures occur within the Pleistocene period. This essentially comprises stone tools prepared with low expenditure of energy in their manufacture. The subsistence economy at this stage by definition is hunting and gathering. Human culture is recorded in the form of quartz or quartzite pebbles which have been shaped by our earliest culture making ancestors. This has been excavated from Olduvian beds in east Africa. However, the earliest culture in Europe is known from Clacton-on-sea in Great Britain and Terra Amata in French Riviera. The time span of Paleolithic is too wide to be studies under one banner. Hence, it is further subdivided into three distinct phases as suggested for the first time by Lartet in 1870.

Lower Paleolithic: On the basis of the number of excellently excavated and recorded sites the entire lower Paleolithic of Europe is studied under two litho – cultural traditions. Here the implications of the term litho-cultural for a layman’s understandings is that since the available cultural remains of this period is largely stone tools, these are used as the basis of deriving various cultural features from this period. These two traditions are – Pebble – flake Tradition and Abbevillio – Acheulian Tradition. D.K. Bhattacharya suggests that this is a provisional name given to a series of industries known form England in the west to Leipzig in the east. This is better understood as a non-handaxe tradition whose earliest occurrence may be traced back to the middle of Mindel glacial and it might have continued upto the end of the following inter-glacial. Generally, these finds consist of some pebble or core choppers and chopping tools accompanied by thick flakes of big size. Basically lower Paleolithic mainly contains core tools which are medium to massive in shape.

Middle Paleolithic: The lower Paleolithic age was of long duration but the middle Paleolithic, the transitional cultural phase, was very short. In many other regions of the world this could be identified as an independent cultural phase as late as 1960s.

Even in Europe, at many places, it could not be distinguished on the basis of a different cultural material but some heterogeneity in the material here and there. The earliest evidence of its emergence were found at a site called La Micoque in France. Here it’s age has been determined at around the closing of the third glacial period Riss while at other places it emerged as late as the closing phase of the last interglacial. Middle Paleolithic mainly contains an emphasis on flake tools with a preponderance of side scapers.

– Upper Paleolithic: This period shows a marked departure from the past in terms of tool typology and technology as well as its authorship. Towards the end of the last interglacial Wurm, around 34-35,000 years ago, Europe was face to face with an entirely different cultural phase. The characteristic tools of this period were made on Blade always accompanied by some tools and other objects made on bone, ivory, antler, etc. In other words non-lithic material had came in full use during this period. Moreover artistic activities had also set in with full fury, adding a new dimension to this cultural phase. Thus upper Paleolithic mainly contains thick elongated tools with a good percentage of finished bone tools and a good degree of art execution.

3.1.2. Mesolithic

Mesolithic is the earliest cultural phase of Holocene culture which shows no indication of change in economy from the Paleolithic. In term of evolutionary sequence it succeeds the upper Paleolithic and precedes the Neolithic. It started around 10,000 BC and continued upto around 5000 – 6000 BC. In certain parts of Europe it continued even upto 2000 BC. Usually there is a worldwide change towards microlithization observed during this period. It is also accepted as a period in which hafting of a series of tools on suitable organic handles has emerged as a new technological evolution. The tradition of composite tool manufacture has lead to a specialization in microlithic types in almost all over the Old World during this period. Till the first quarter of the present century it was not recognized as an independent cultural phase. The Mesolithic gained recognition as a separate cultural phase only after the discovery of the site at Mas d’ Azil, a cave in France near the well known magdelanian site.

3.1.3. Neolithic

This is the last Stone Age in human prehistory. For about 99 % of our evolutionary history, man has subsisted through foraging for vegetable foods and hunting for meat; he was hunter – gatherer leading a nomadic existence, always in search of greener pastures and depending upon the mercy of nature.

Bipedalism, tool use, speech and unique social forms such as permanent bonding, the family and Kinship were evolutionary devices which imposed a permanent barrier between other primates and humans. It is best defined as that period which precedes the discovery of metals and which shows the earliest evidence of any one or more of the following socio – cultural traits:

Evidence of food production precisely demonstrated with domestication varieties of cereals. Indirect evidence of productive economy like saddle and querns or ceramics are not always known to be developed coevally with agriculture.
Evidence of animal domestication as a live stock economic means. The domestication of plants and animals allowed the human ancestors to produce more food on a given area of land and thus to support larger populations. Permanent settlements were formed near the field and they began to hold title to pieces of land and call them their own.
Communities which adopt agriculture, no matter in what rudimentary stage it is, will always tend to be less mobile. Subsequently, sedentism is accepted as an indicator of agricultural knowledge. Since agricultural success requires larger band or group size, the settling of such a group invariably require a social control to prevent conflict. In other words, Neolithic sites can also be identified on the basis of evidences of villages, temple structures or similar other indicators of the sacred and the secular trends. In most of the Neolithic sites a new lithic technique is introduced. This is called the grinding and polishing technique.

3.2. The Bronze Age

This age is named as Chalcolithic also. This term is used to designate the cultural period which marked the emergence of metals like copper, tin, lead and gold and subsequently manufacturing alloys.

Since such an emergent technology can never replace the earlier techniques, stone tools continue to occur in this period. There has been prolonged debate about whether the knowledge of metallurgy should be taken as the diagnostic trait of Chalcolithic cultures or the mere presence of metal within a find should be enough to declare it so. Since metallurgy is demonstrable only at places of natural occurrence of ore. There is no archaeological way to prove if a given site represents a metal manufacturing community expanding its power over larger area and hence away from the actual manufacturing site or it represents a non-manufacturing community who obtained metal by way of trade only. The mere presence of metal, therefore, is taken to designate the find as Chalcolithic. It is needless to emphasize that the culture has to be proved to be pre-iron in technique.

3.3. The Iron Age

Iron Age in India brings one to the threshold of ancient history. In archaeology, the Iron Age was the stage in the development of any people in which tools and weapons whose main ingredient was iron was prominent. The adoption of this material was often coincided with other changes in society, including differing agricultural practices, religious beliefs and artistic styles. Iron Age is usually said to end in the Mediterranean with the onset of historical tradition during Hellenism and the Roma Empire, in India with the onset of Buddhism and Jainism, in China with the onset of Confucianism, and in Northern Europe with the early Middle Ages.

4. Evolutionary Development of Brain and cognition power

There is a dramatic increase of the brain case as we approach specimens of Homo sapiens. This is indeed worth noting, and physical anthropologists have spent a great deal of time studying the rapid increase in brain size in the course of post-australopithecine evolution. The reasons are complicated. First, in general, the overall size of our ancestors increased at each evolutionary stage. We concluded that there were strong selective pressures for this increase in size, probably because a larger body size made it easier to hold and use tools, and also increased the amount of muscle available to hunters and foragers on long treks. But the brain grew larger, proportionately did the body. It is an increase in the kinds of connections between brain cells that is apparently responsible for the emergence of new kinds of mental operations such as thinking and using language, operations that are fundamental to human existence. Scientists have been able to document that the tremendous growth in brain size, by carefully studying the contours of the insides of fossil brain cases, between the Australopithecus and Homo erectus was accompanied by an increase in size and complexity of the outside surface of the brain called the Cerebral Cortex. This expansion of the cortex is the most recent evolutionary development of the brain, and it is the cortex that is primarily associated with thinking and language use. This also provides us with the ability to pass messages back and forth directly between these association areas, to compare and contrast there different recognitions – in other words to think. In other words, regardless of why the anthropoids acquired these features, without them regular tool use – a preeminent specialty of our hominid ancestors as they evolved – could not have developed.

5. Evolution of Communication skills

One of the most important features of culture is language, which also profoundly influenced and was influenced by human evolution. There are three areas of brain that are highly evolved in the humans and appear to be crucial for human linguistic ability. One is called Broca’s area and is located toward the front of the dominant side of the brain. This area activates, among things, the muscles of the jaw, lips, tongue, and larynx. The second is Wernicke’s area by a large bundle of nerve fibers (called the Arcuate Fasciculus) and is the brain site where verbal comprehension takes place. The third area is the Angular Gyrus, situated next to Wernicke’s area serving as a link up between parts of the brain that receives stimuli from the sense organs of touch, hearing and sight.

Man could not possibly speak without these brain areas. It is interesting to note that all three are located in the cortex – the “new” brain which, as already been emphasized is most evolved in humans and appears to have first approached its modern size and complexity in Homo erectus. The fact that all three are located in the cortex allows sensory inputs and verbal representations to be connected with each other without having to go through the “old” brain – especially the limbic system which activates such basic responses as aggression, fear, hunger and sexual arousal. Consequently, human beings can think, talk and experience the world without involving these “gut” level states. Other animals, including our primate relatives, have not developed these brain areas nearly as much as man has. Thus many important aspects of man brain’s seem to have evolved as speech specialization; and it can be reasonably supposed that verbal communication was so adaptive for the man’s ancestors, that strong selective pressures progressively moulded these changes. Certainly, language is a principle cornerstone of human existence.

6. Domestication of Plants and animals

When humans first began to cultivate wild plants and raise wild animals, they began a kind of evolution, a change in gene frequencies over time, to occur. Agriculture had almost replaced hunting and gathering as the main way of life. Modern studies of living hunters and gatherers suggest that this change did occur because agriculture provided a better standard of living than hunting and gathering and also due to the fact that they have to work less and eat better. It was the Neolithic culture which started the food production. The portable and lightweight material possessions of many hunters – gatherers were replaced by heavier tool kits and more lasting houses. Grind stones, implements of tillage and axes with ground and polished edges were essential parts of farming culture. Food production led to changed altitudes towards the environment. Cereal crops enabled people to store their food, creating surpluses for use in winter. The hunter-gatherer exploited game, fish and vegetable foods but the farmer altered the environment by the very nature of exploitation. Shifting cultivation or ‘slash and burn cultivation’ meant felling trees and burning vegetation to clear the ground for planting. Voracious animals stripped pastures of their grass cover, than heavy rainfalls denuded the hill of valuable soils and the pastures were never the same again. It implies that however, elementary the agricultural technology, the farmer changed the environment.

7. Indus Valley Civilization

The Neolithic phase was followed by the emergence of Chalcolithic cultures. It witness an ancient civilization in the Indian subcontinent that flourish around the Indus River basin and known as Indus Valley Civilization. They neither had any cities nor script. Thus the Indus Civilization, the first known civilization in India. It is also known as Harappan culture after the name of a major site of this civilization, Harappa in Punjab. But the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro led to the discovery of Indus Valley civilization. All the cities of the Indus Valley Civilization such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Chanhu-daro,Lohumju-daro etc., display the remarkable skill of the Indus Civilization in town planning and sanitation.

The cities was built after careful planning as is clear from the streets which tough vary in width yet intersect at right angles. These streets thus divide the entire city into square or rectangular blocks which are further intersected by narrow lanes. Some of the streets are very long and wide. All the roads are aligned east to the west and north to south. The corners of the streets were rounded so that loads should not get dislodged. The bricks used for the pavements were comparatively of small size and were plain surfaced. L-shaped bricks were occasionally used for corners. Mud mortar was universally used. The plaster of the walls was mainly of mud and gypsum. The city had an elaborate drainage system, consisting of horizontal and vertical drains, street drains, soak pits etc. The foundations were usually erected on high platform to protect them against floods. Some of the most significant objects found in these sites are a large number of seals, beads, naturalistic statues, chess-boards, weights and measures, terracotta figurines, metal utensils and weapons and stone axes.

8. Emergence of Cities, States and Civilizations

Humans lived in simple egalitarian societies. As the population of agricultural societies grew, increasingly complex political structures evolved to coordinate the activities of a larger number of people. A city can be defined as a central place that performs economic and political functions for the surrounding area. A state can be defined as an independent political unit that includes many communities in its territory with a centralized government that has the power to collect taxes, draft citizens for work and for war and enact and enforce laws. Civilization can be accurately used to mean that the society was characterized by the presence of cities and large towns and the inhabitants were citizens of some kind of common wealth. Archaeologists have identified several stages through which human societies passed before states appeared.

8.1. The Bands

The basic unit of human social organization was a small egalitarian society called a band. The only subunit of the band was the family or a group of related families held together by kinship and marriage bonds. Leadership was informal, probably not resting for very long with any one person. The leader’s power came from force of personality rather than from laws or traditions defining the role and naming the person to assume it. Bands were and are the usual form of society among the hunting and gathering people who do not have a strong sense of territoriality. Owning and defending land would not make sense for people who were often moving from one area to another.

8.2. The Tribes

A slightly larger, more complicated form of social organization called the tribe can be inferred from the archaeological record in the Near East. The tribe was larger than a band. It was made up of group of families related by common descent or by membership in a variety of kinship-based groups such as clans or lineages. The power of leaders was weak, with individual family heads being more important than anyone leader. Kinship groups seem to have been bound together for different reasons in different cultures. Lines of ancestral descent were becoming an important part of tribal life- evidence include skulls of many generations found buried under the floors of their descendents houses in Near eastern villages. There was little or no stratification, and division of labour was still largely by age and sex.

8.3. The Chiefdom

A third stage of pre-state organization, the Chiefdom, first appeared around 7500 B.P. chiefdoms were probably theocracies, with the ruler or a member of his family serving as a high religious official. For the first time, the position of leader existed apart from the person who occupied. That is, his power came not from his personality, but from his position or role as leader. When a chief died, the role was filled by someone from the particular line of descent. Chiefdoms were characterized by large villages, among which some craft specialization existed. Some villages in the Near east, for example, worked only on Pottery others produced large amounts of copper goods. In Mesoamerica, some villages made magnetite mirrors, while others made shell ornaments. All villagers seem to have worked part-time at crafts as well as at farming. Signs of both activities can be found in the remains of houses whose members were part of chiefdom.

8.4. The Emergence of State

Most anthropologist’s would agree that the following events mark the transition from chiefdom to state.

Complex chiefdoms break up and collapse.
Regulatory organizations change, and a formal, centralized, legal apparatus for governing emerges.
Specialized economic activities become the function of particular groups.
Territorial expansion follows the emergence of the state.

9. Summary

Evolution is an important phenomenon that was occurred in the human origin and survival to combat the circumstances of the environment and in the process of evolution which was either physical changes or cultural manifestations lead to the emergence of a “Revolution” which further mould the way a change was acquired by the humans. Evolutionary revolution is the changes in the development of any culture whether stone age or tool techniques or bronze age or copper age or cranial enlargement or communication skills or domestication of agriculture or emergence of states or bands or trines or chiefdom is a slow and continuous changes which ultimately through various connecting stages leads to the settlement of well accepted culture which we are witnessed now – a– days.

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