What triggered the first ''humans'' so to speak, first idea, of language,music, writing , money, trading etc.?
By that i mean, the spark of consciousness.
Every one seems to have a different opinion on the topic.
Adam and Eve were fully programmed adults.
They could talk, walk and marry on the first day.
Fear of death. Came a moment in Humanity where tribes could get bigger and bigger and destroy the others.
So people had to unite and organize themselves to survive, mostly by seeking safety together.
>>434877
CONSCIOUSNESS IN ITS PRESENT CONDITION ORIGINATED IN CIRCA SEVENTH CENTURY C E , MOST PROBABLY DUE TO AN ELECTROMAGNETIC PHENOMENON THAT EITHER ALTERED PERSONS NEUROPSYCHOLOGICALLY, OR MUTATED THEM GENETICALLY SO THAT THEIR OFFSPRING WERE BORN AS CONSCIOUS MUTANTS, OR BOTH.
>>434877
A guy named steve. He's an asshole tho dont bother.
>>434911
>"... CIRCA SEVENTH CENTURY C E ..."
I MEAN: "... CIRCA SEVENTH CENTURY B C E ..."
>>434877
A lot of these are not uniquely human ideas.
There was an experiment at a zoo in which monkeys were given a vending machine, and each monkey was given a few tokens for it. Once they were shown how the vending machine worked; that if they put a token in they received a treat, the monkeys quickly developed a little economy of their own. Some monkeys would trade sex or other base instinctual services for tokens.
There's a great deal of evidence that dolphins have complex language much like our own.
Alex the parrot could form and understand simple sentences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_%28parrot%29
Elephants enjoy painting.
>>434903
>>434911
Citation fucking needed.
>>434950
Common knowledge does not require citations.
>>434937
None of these living beeing are altering their environment.
for example, metal working. it's been a hard learning process but now we can control and harness the nature.
Why didn't the chimp tried to make huts or find medecine...or did they?
>>434877
I don't think there was any kind of trigger. As our thoughts became more complex, we needed a more nuanced way to communicate. Most animals have a more "primitive" version of language.
>music, writing , money, trading
All products of settled agricultural societies. Unless singing is music then birds and amphibians have us beat by tens if not hundreds of millions of years.
I don't if any of these things are the triggers of consciousness. Maybe just the by-products of consciousness. Perhaps consciousness is just a more "complicated" version of the neural processes of animals. We label our thoughts as special because we cannot truly empathize with how chimps or dolphins think. So we label our thoughts as if they are in a different category than any creature.
>>434877
>implying non-human animals aren't conscious
>>434982
They might not make huts, but they use tools. They throw things, they use sticks to try to catch grubs.
Other creatures do make some pretty amazing dwellings though. Look at prairie dog colonies. The tunnels are always dug with entrances at vary heights; say one at the base of a hill, one further up the hill. This creates a natural draft that helps ventilate the tunnel system.
>>434877
Population size, density, and permanence. These are not useful things for small groups of roaming apes.
"speaking" is just noise made from mouth + applied pattern recognition
when the monkey goes "oooo" "aaaa" its "speaking".
When the cat goes "nyaa~~!!" its speaking.
When the niggers go "ogabagoo" its speaking.
It doesn't have to be intelligible with human for it to be speaking.
When you ask what triggered the first humans to speak, this will go all the way to dinosaur era and beyond. Humans didn't invent speech, nature already did. When the first human came into existence, they were already speaking.
>>435028
>he actually believes in the evolution myth
>>434985
Exactly! why did some forest-desert roamers DECIDED to specifically breed plants to make them more productive and such.
A decision was made to alter the environment. cutting wood. yes beavers cut trees but never too much, they don't breed too much. we fuck all the time and wear clothes to hide the shame and impress others.
dolphins give each other names but they did not built castles with slave labor. we did.
>>435028
My point, exaclty. WHY did it happen. what triggered the need to conquer and enslave, dominate and subjugate others.
>>435034
your perception of time is wrong then, we can breed dogs and alter their physical and mental qualities. what can be said of human life over 100000 generations
>>434877
I know not the others, but reading the wealth of native by Adam Smith will tell you about the origins of money and currency.
To sum it up though, a man cannot be a specialist in every field that produces the necessities and comforts of human life. He thus chooses a specialty and makes it his trade. Say there were a butcher in a small community. Were he to want bread from the baker, he must supply an amount of meat the baker would be willing to trade for in order to get some bread. If the baker, however has no occasion for needing meat, the butcher would be out of luck. He then must be in search of some commodity for trade which any man would be unlikely to refuse. In ancient times, oxen were used as a form of currency. Ancient armors and estates were purchased in oxen. But say you wanted to make a trade for something less valuable than a single ox. You could not break the ox into a portion to offer as trade. This is where metal currencies came in. Metals are easily divided and carried and from them came coinage
Language makes the connection between things and/or concepts in our brain. It thus makes us solve problems and have complex ideas and thoughts. Comunicating by making noises like animals do is not language.
>>435098
Writing it down, and beeing able to learn other combinations of sounds, make what we speak a language yes.
>>435050
Well I don't know if was as grandiose as you make it out to be. People just realized that if you help these plants grow it will provide you with so much food that you never have to leave that area again. Then they improved their methods and then their population exploded allowing for specialization. Why were humans the first to take advantage of this on a massive scale? I don't know. Perhaps we just the first with the ability to take advantage of that opportunity. We were organized and were capable of building tools complicated enough to farm the land. That may have more to do with our hands then our brains.
>>435098
God gave us both logic and speech,something unique and exclusive to humans.
>>435113
What if the glaciar age is a kind of ''purge''. it's cyclic and renew organic compounds in the ground for live to flurish the second it thaw. there were probably civilisations beyond our comprehension.
the way we see time is flawed. we think we can date archeoligical finds, it is very approximative at the best.
>>435136
>What if the glaciar age is a kind of ''purge''. it's cyclic and renew organic compounds in the ground for live to flurish the second it thaw.
Well I don't think glaciation ever happened in the fertile crescent. Maybe the ice ages put some kind of pressure on hunter gathers to settle? I don't know.
>there were probably civilisations beyond our comprehension.
the way we see time is flawed. we think we can date archeoligical finds, it is very approximative at the best.
I suppose it's possible and it's cool to think about but again there is just no proof. But it's definitely true that a lot about this time period is up in the air (due to almost complete lack of records).
>>435167
yes, that forced live to establish itself. for example the Gobelki tepe in tukey. a site 10th millennium BCE. you do realise the magnitude of thise?
>>435191
It's pretty crazy. Our perspective of history is always changing.
>>435167
or even cyclopeen ruins. they are scattered throughout the world, exaclty where glaciation could never reach.
these structures not using mortar, just rock fitted together to last ages. likes strongholds
>>434958
>common knowledge is undeniable truth
>>435262
It is.
Let me guess, you also think the Holocaust happened.
TOP KEK
>>434921
>>>/reddit/
>>435058
It happened because humans were successful and came to saturate the landscape, and these skills allowed them to live in large, dense, static populations without dying, which is pretty difficult for most animals.
>>434982
>Why didn't the chimp tried to make huts or find medecine...or did they?
Give them fucking time m8, they just started using fire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQcN7lHSD5Y
>>434877
Boredom.
People like to have an endless debate as to whether humanity is inherently good or evil. I'm not sure which side I fall into on that debate, but I do believe that humanity is inherently bored and lazy.
You're on the internet, reading this thread right now because you're bored, right? Imagine living in 20,000+ B.C. No internet, no writing, no concept of drama or music. After you finish hunting/fucking your cavewoman, what the fuck do you do? You must be half insane already since you've been doing those two things for most of your life.
So you decide to smear some shit on the wall. No reason, you're so goddamn bored you just want to do something different, it kinda looks like a mammoth or whatever, so you touch it up a bit, add some more shit, boom. Art.
Exploration and invention come from boredom. Innovation comes from laziness.
>>438138
what you're saying already presupposes the spark of consciousness that OP is asking about. your caveman already reflects on himself and has notions about his environment, a basi sort of "language" like "that is a mammoth", even if he can't speak yet
>>435453
To be fair, this guy is like the Einstein of chimps/bonobos. I think he might be kind of unique. He's one of the strongest (and therefore one of the only) cases ever recorded of a non-human ape communicating with a human reliably through written symbols or sign.
Serious answer from a hobby-linguist: there are many hypotheses put forward but nobody really has a god damn clue.
>>435034
>thinking the march of progress is an even remotely accurate representation of evolution
>>434877
>speak
evolved over millions of years
>music
discovered sounds that trigger good feelings
>writing
practical necessity to store information too difficult to remember
>money
practically necessity to quantify value
>trading
hedging or to allow specialization
>>438166
Boredom is the first symptom of consciousness. If we weren't aware of ourselves, we wouldn't be bored. Is it possible to be so bored you give yourself a soul? I think so. (In my opinion, I have nothing to back this up except personal observations and books I've read, so take it as you will, this is just what I believe.)
Plus I wouldn't really consider recognizing shapes as other, real world shapes, an indicator of sapience. My dog recognizing other dogs on the TV and barks at him, but I don't consider that consciousness like you and I have. Language is just a natural by product that most intelligent creatures seem to have, even apes and dolphins communicate.
>>438454
>If we weren't aware of ourselves, we wouldn't be bored.
self-awareness is a meaningless abstract concept and can't be related to feelings of boredom which is a physical sensation
it is like saying believing 1+1=2 can make you feel hot or cold
>>438443
yes, but what caused the first tribe to cut down trees and make shelter instead of sleeping on the ground like an ape. how did we come to wear clothes? we have the same hair density as a chimp or an ape. our hair follicule are simply thinner, and BECAME thinner because of our ''consciouness''. you won't see a dog farming flax to weave it and wear it. he's relying on only his body. we went beyond that need and it's rather curious
It was a gradual process, not a sudden. Look up cultural revolution.
The only real question is what genetic change exactly was needed so humans adapt a more efficient teaching
method then animals.
>>435050
>why did some forest-desert roamers DECIDED to specifically breed plants to make them more productive and such
Fallacious thinking. Agiciulture started where ideal plants and climatic conditions were present. Before agriculture these people already gathered the seads of wild wheats that grew on them on in vast fields. There was no such sudden deicision from not doing to doing. It was a gradual process.
>>435136
>it is very approximative at the best.
Not really, radiosiotope dating is quite exact. You can even date vintage wines within year for example.
>>439313
>what caused
Lack of natural shelters, so again, increased population size.
>how did we come to wear clothes
Weather turned cold/humans moved to colder areas. Human was cold. Animal has more fur. Human ripped of fur from dead animal. Human was not cold.
Please stop thinknig there was some kind of ex machina happening, your questions all have simple explanations.
>>435262
>something having a source makes it undeniable truth
>>439350
these are all just cause and effect that actually explain it though
what metaphysical force came to the earth and swept up humans to become better than animals?
>>434982
They already know how to use spears.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyKHOw69ECU
>>434877
God created man and woman with the ability to speak to Him. We never lost this ability. This is what separates us from animals, which cannot speak because did not want any other creature to be His special creation.
>>435034
>Just a 3 foot tall chimpanzee
>Making Heidelbergensis look like a sub-human when they were our closest non-Neanderthal relatives and had brains more or less as big as ours
>implying an old man can't be a member of a different species
>Calling Papua New Guineans a different species
>implying Cro-Magnon wasn't always considered our species
This fucking picture I swear. Why don't they try updating it with new fossils, like Homo naledi? Or proof of Neanderthal DNA? Or how about those Hobbit-like people from Indonesia?
>>438138
I guess Homo erectus was the earliest bored human, as they made scratches on shells in patterns, therefore making it art.
700,000 year old art.
>>439412
>Lying on the internet
Dolphins and crows can speak to each other. And humans can lose the ability to speak, like feral children for example.
>>439407
they can fish too, but it was showed to them.
i know they can understand what they're doing.
but they did not make matches and marshmallow nore can they learn it themselves.
sure they know how it works, but they probably don't know it's due to phosphorus sesquisulfide
they don't even require cooked meat.
>>435031
>When the cat goes "nyaa~~!!"
Fuck off weeb.
>>439421
>700,000 year old art.
and was made with the Photoshop.
>>435453
He probably doesn't have any idea what the fire does. Primates like to mimic things that they see others do.
>>434941
??? (Not OP)
>>439507
no, that's an other subhuman fedora wearing motherfucker
>>439507
>Primal thought
Primal thought
>>439500
>He probably doesn't have any idea what the fire does.
the monkey is roasting a marshmellow, the fucker knows perfectly well what the fire does.
>>435453
>essentially planet of the apes: the rising
>kumbayaah song played in the background
why is mankind so retarded
>>438179
they should kill him before he starts spreading the info on the others.
>>434877
nah
>>434877
yep
>>439375
backing up your arguments with some kind of proof does help others taking your point seriously
>>439402
>metaphysical force
Humans have better teaching methods than animals, therefor knowledge can accumulate. Thats pretty much it.
>>434982
metal working is a really recent thing even for humans. In fact, there are many humans today who are still in the stone age.
>>440002
>many
Please, those people are going extinct as we speak.
>>434884
/thread
Why are people still responding?
>>435020
>Other creatures do make some pretty amazing dwellings though. Look at prairie dog colonies. The tunnels are always dug with entrances at vary heights; say one at the base of a hill, one further up the hill. This creates a natural draft that helps ventilate the tunnel system.
Something I've often wondered : are animals that create complex dwellings like that actively innovating their designs, or are they just entirely motivated by instict? What I mean is, does the groundhog think to itself "I could dig these tunnels so that air flows more easily through them" or does he just feel an instinctual drive to build it in that manner, as all the groundhogs who didn't have that instinctual drive died out because of the less-efficient design?
So if someone really wants to read an academic hypothesis into the evolution of cognition instead of anons guessing, read this:
http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/busey/q551/PDFs/DonaldEvolution.pdf
This was really an eye opener for me, especially how it crushed my own theories of cognition vs mammals cognition. No matter how sensational the headlines are about certain monkeys etc, they can not in their current evolutionary state ever come close to even a baby of a few months cognitively. This article explains why.
>>440889
Episodic memory, they can act really good on their complex surroundings, but there is no voluntary will, planning, training etc. They always live in the now so to speak. Because they just don't have the cognitive framework to voluntary access memories like humans do.
>>435453
>that look on his face as the fire gets going, knowing he's about to make delicious roasted marshmallows
The most content look in the world
>>439950
That's a pretty good point I haven't seen on here ever.
Nice.
>>435453
>It's not okay to interfere with natural evolution
>Except in the case of great apes because that shit's fucking cool
>>434877
>Ctrl+F
>No "Paleolithic"
>All these people not getting it
I've only taken a year or so of prehistory, so here's basically what they told us are standard answers to these questions.
>Language
Language developed in the late Paleolithic (50,000 years ago). No one really knows how this developed, but it probably co-developed with the explosion of increasingly complex hunting technologies common at the time (a way to tell others how heavy an atlatl weight should be, what a rock should look like to make a blade core, those kinds of things).
>music
I don't really know that that well, but a common theory is that it developed out of early human hunting calls. Apparently people think that we would sing songlike phrases to communicate to others what was going on in their area of the hunt.
>writing money
Don't know, but these came much later than music and language. According to a econ PhD student I'm friends with, money was a post-agricultural development (so, less than 10000 years ago) which came along with the development of specialized classes.
>trading
Trading came along with the rise of civilizations (a little bit later than agriculture). It's easier to support and care for hundreds of thousands of people if you trade for goods with other communities. You also see evidence that trade occurred between hunter gatherer tribes (like shells and obsidian found in the great plains), but that's not what would be strictly considered trading.
The "spark of consciousness" probably occurred in the late Paleolithic, as well, in conjunction with a ton of technological, geographical and cultural changes to human cultures. That was also when human brains evolved into their current form.
>>440985
Chimpanzees and bonobos might as well be members of the genus Homo at this point.
>>441038
>Language developed in the late Paleolithic (50,000 years ago).
No it didn't, there is evidence of Neanderthals speaking, who are slightly older than us. The oldest languages are most likely click based languages, like what the Khoisan speak.
>>435058
Subjugation is animalistic selfishness and sociopathy. Ants will fuck up another ant colony simply because fuck red ants. Monkeys will chimp out and murder neighboring clan's children because fuck you. Just because violence and subjugation of others exists throughout nature does not justify accepting it as normal.
>>435058
What were the first words?
You find the simplest words, ma, fa, animal sounds, are the most consistent between language families.
It seems language started as simple identification, mother, father, and animals identified by the sounds they made, most likely as hunting behavior. Identification of things, leads to identification of actions, and noun verb syntax follows
God.
>>441047
You're totally right, speech is much older, maybe a hundred thousand or more years old is what I'm getting. I'm familiar with the evidence for Neanderthal speech, what's the evidence for click based languages coming first, though? Statistical methods, or is it somehow physiological?
Vocal Cord Parasites
>>439346
>Not really, radioisotope dating is quite exact. You can even date vintage wines within year for example.
Only because the example you gave was recent. The further back in time your subject is, the more inaccurate it becomes. That's not to say that it's not useful though.
>>434877
IT's always been with us. When we were in the trees, away from predators, we probably communicated and sang to calm each other down. Trading food for other food or even for a scratch on the back. I believe humanity was with us from the beginning. From the beginning humans who dared to stand up, all the way to today.
But I still don't think we got it right just yet.
>>434877
>Money
Money was invented like in 500 bc you fucking retard
>>434877
psychedelics baby
>>434877
>if I can't understand it then it must not be a form of communication!
Animals have their own languages too, senpai
>>441142
Well, the Khoisan are the oldest people on the planet, and they lived like all humans did prior to 10,000 years ago. So we look at them to see what we once were: hunter gatherers that know the land like the back of their hand.
There is also a theory that click languages developed so that when they would stalk their prey, the prey wouldn't hear them.
