Hominization

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Contextual Quote

"Teilhard links hominization with the emergence of the noosphere—during which time “the earth ‘gets a new skin’” (Teilhard de Chardin, 1959/2002, p. 183). The noosphere then develops through socialization .. and the later, planetization, which he saw as beginning to emerge in his times." [1]

Discussion

William Irwin Thompson:

"When we look back over the process of Hominization, we see that it is really a natural drift of small bifurcations with enormous consequences. First comes the shift from knuckle-walking to upright posture. Standing tall indicates a shift from short sight lines in the forest to long sight lines in the savannah and over the reeds of lake shores. It also indicates a shift in emphasis of the sensorium from smell to sight. Sir Alastair Hardy and Elaine Morgan (Morgan, 1997) have argued that walking in the bouyancy of water helped support the body’s new upright posture and eliminate the surface hair of what Jared Diamond calls ‘the third chimpanzee’ (Diamond, 1993). With the climate change and dessication that prodded the movement to savannah cultures in Kenya and lacustrean cultures in Ethiopia, there also emerged a compressive force for hominids to gather protectively in small groups or bands. This bifurcation had several consequences. Facial recognition and pattern recognition for rank and hierarchy — whether matristic with bonobos or patriarchal with the chimpanzees — became critical for survival and thus encouraged the development of higher cognitive skills. Also, food-sharing, as Glenn Isaacs (1978) has argued, encouraged social bonding and co-operation. As food was brought back to a base-camp, a sexually dimorphic behaviour pattern emerged — much like the Kalahari Bushmen of today — in which women performed food-gathering of plants and tubers and invented fibre technologies for their transport and clothing, and men ranged farther from camp in hunting and invented constantly developing systems of stone tool manufacture.

The shift in diet brought about by collaborative food production — as opposed to opportunistic feeding on fruits and nuts in the forest — also effected a change in encephalization. The massive mandibular muscles that had to be strapped down to the sagital crest on the skull were no longer critical. The slow release of pressure on the skull enabled the brain case to expand and allow for the larger brain required for facial recognition, rank perception, and hunting in groups; the new meat diet aided an easier ingestion of protein that also encouraged the growth of a larger brain than was the case with Lucy, an Australopithicine (Johanson and Edey, 1981).

And then there is the little matter of sex. In the famous conundrum of the anthropological profession of ‘Who lost oestrus?’, we have to confront the mysterious shift from the chimpanzee’s oestrus cycle to the human menstrual cycle. Fortunately, we now have Franz de Waal’s studies of the bonobos, and not just Jane Goodall’s studies of the chimps. The bonobos certainly look and behave more like the third chimpanzee, in that they stand, and practice frontal intercourse and oral sex, both homo- and heterosexually (de Waal and Lanting, 1997). In fact, they have made sex into a culture, and use it for social bonding and conflict resolution. Humans certainly seem closer to bonobos than chimps, except, of course for Republicans, who in their love of militarism and national defence seem closer to the warring chimps. Bonobos, if they could vote, would more likely favour the nurturing role of Big Government, Social Security, and Gay marriage.

So, looking back, Hominization is an evolutionary process involving the shift to upright posture, encephalization, living in home-based bands, and a shift in diet from nuts and fruits to tubers and meat produced through collaborative hunting endeavours. The shift from oestrus to menstruation seems to be a bifurcation that holds the beginnings of Symbolization and art. Red ochre is mined and most likely used for decoration on women first, then statuary of women. Red ochre becomes iconic and symbolic of the menstrual flow of women (Dunbar et al., 1999)."

(http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.64.853&rep=rep1&type=pdf)


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