Review by Donald Johanson
Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness
BY IAN TATTERSALL
Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1998 ($27)
"At one cave in France, you have to paddle up an
underground stream, then walk, wriggle, and crawl for two
hours before finally, a mile underground, reaching the
terminal chamber.... Today, entering such caves is an
alien experience, even with the benefit of electric
light, and you feel that [our forebears] must have been
extraordinarily courageous to have undertaken such
subterranean journeys by the faint and vulnerable light
of fat lamps. But at one point..., far underground, there
is a muddy ledge that bears the footprints of a child, no
more than six years old, who had pranced down the ledge,
digging in his or her toesDyou can still see the
imprints just before the drop-off to the cave floor a
foot below. At another site you can see where, a thousand
yards underground, an adult must have taken the hand of a
child and traced its finger across the soft surface of
the cave wall. And at yet another, you can see where an
adult had held a child's hand against the cave wall and
blown pigment over it, leaving on the wall a negative
imprint of the tiny fingers and palm."
-from: Becoming Human
A momentous event transpired in human prehistory some 40,000 years
ago when fully modern humans, armed with remarkably sophisticated
tools and an unprecedented intelligence, began to populate Europe.
Usually referred to as Cro-Magnons, these Homo sapiens encountered
another species of humans, H. neanderthalensis, who had reigned
unchallenged for perhaps 200,000 years throughout western Asia,
most of Europe and even the British Isles. Peering out from a rock
overhang, the lighter-skinned, cold-adapted Neanderthals were no
doubt puzzled and frightened by the similar-looking but
technologically superior beings that confronted them. These new
humans brought with them a way of interacting with the world that
initiated a slow but irreversible slide toward extinction for the
Neanderthals.
In this superbly written book, Ian Tattersall combines his unique
knowledge of the human fossil record, Paleolithic archaeology,
primate behavior, prehistoric art, as well as the workings of the
human brain and our extraordinary cognitive powers, to offer a
convincing scenario of how we have come to hold dominion over the
earth. Tattersall, who is chairman of the department of
anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York
City, is one of our most competent and thoughtful chroniclers of
human evolution, and here he ponders human uniqueness and attempts
to explain the underlying processes that have made this possible.
For him, "Homo sapiens is not simply an improved version of its
ancestorsDit's a new concept, qualitatively distinct from them in
highly significant if limited respects." Trends in human evolution,
such as increase in brain size, are discernible only in retrospect;
such innovations were episodic and not the result of a process of
hominization directed toward the emergence of ourselves.
The "creative explosion" responsible for modern humans is perhaps
most dramatically witnessed in Ice Age art. Examples of the art are
found in caves such as Lascaux in France (and many, many others),
which may have served as some sort of sanctuary, and in objects
such as the Venus figurines, which even today, in the shape of soap
bars, are bought by women as fertility aids. Tattersall believes
that the art, supported by economic surpluses and executed by true
artisans, was a reflection of how these early modern humans
explained the world around them and their relation to that world.
Modern humans came to live in a world of their own creation; unlike
Neanderthals, they were not simply reacting to "the world as nature
presented it to them." Burials from the Upper Paleolithic (as the
period from about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago is known) reflect a
deeply spiritual side: these early H. sapiens offered elaborate
grave goods to accompany the deceased in the afterlife. Neanderthal
burials, on the other hand, are devoid of grave offerings and, like
most of Neanderthal society, reflect an absence of ritual and
symbolic activity.
Neanderthals were hunters, but their tools were far less
sophisticated than those of early modern humans. They lacked hafted
spears and relied on a Middle Paleolithic tool tradition, based on
flake technology, that varied little over time and space. Upper
Paleolithic blade technology, on the contrary, was truly
innovative, changing over some 30,000 years with substantial
elaboration of different tool types. This highly efficient use of
raw materials demanded great skill and knowledge and resulted in
long, thin blades with 10 times more cutting edge per lump of flint
than those of Middle Paleolithic technology.
Technologically and symbolically superior H. sapiens brought
Neanderthals to extinction some 30,000 years ago, when they drove
the earlier humans into peripheral areas of Europe where resources
were diminished or less familiar. Our success, Tattersall proposes,
is largely the result of language, not simply the intuitive level
of understanding and rudimentary communication characteristic of
Neanderthals, but symbolic, syntactic language, which distinguishes
us even today. Language is fundamental to our ability to think; it
is "more or less synonymous with symbolic thought," and human
intellect is simply impossible in its absence. The rich
archaeological record, and to some extent the anatomy of our vocal
apparatus and enlargement of certain areas of the brain, supports
the notion that Cro-Magnons were fully capable of language. Seeing
modern humans as an abrupt departure from all that came before,
Tattersall eliminates Neanderthals from our direct ancestry (contra
the Multiregional theorists, who view Neanderthals and other
archaic species of Homo as ancestral to modern humans; see "The
Multiregional Evolution of Humans," by Alan G. Thorne and Milford
H. Wolpoff; Scientific American, April 1992).
Many of Tattersall's inferences concerning human uniqueness are
deeply founded in his theoretical approach to evolution: he
embraces "punctuated equilibria" and shuns such modish formulations
as Richard Dawkins's "selfish gene," E. O. Wilson's "sociobiology"
and the ever popular "evolutionary psychology," which explains
myriad human behaviors as genetically controlled leftovers from
life in a hunting-gathering "ancestral environment." For
Tattersall and I totally concur,the process of evolution is not
characterized by the gradual accumulation of small changes but by
diversification and ultimately speciation. This perspective makes
it easy to see how European populations of pre-Neanderthals became
isolated, evolving into a distinct manifestation of our genus
Homo a classic speciation event. From this perspective, it seems
logical, then, that we will not undergo any further speciation: our
limitless cultural capacities permit cultural solutions to
environmental changes (we build furnaces; we don't grow fur). And
reproductive barriers simply no longer exist; air travel permits
humans from around the globe to reproduce anywhere their plane
ticket takes them.
By around 15,000 years ago, humans had undergone a diaspora that
brought them to nearly every part of the planet. These humans, like
their forebears 25,000 years earlier, were fundamentally the same
as we are today. It is noteworthy that no matter where they lived,
they were hunters (exceptional ones at that) and gatherers.
Tattersall reminds us that, perhaps like the Pygmies of the Mbuti
Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they saw themselves
as part of the natural world, dependent on it and probably even
respectful of it, like the Pygmies who cry, "Mother Forest, Father
Forest."
All this was to change when we became agriculturists. In contrast
to a hunting-gathering way of life that exploited but did not
attempt to alter nature, the very essence of growing crops demanded
modification of the natural environment. With this innovation began
a battle with the natural world that has often led to extremely
detrimental consequences, such as deforestation, soil degradation,
aridification and so on.
But most important, it distanced us from nature and lessened our
reverence for the natural world. We have become arrogant enough to
believe that we are now outside of nature. In truth, however, as
Tattersall poignantly reminds us, we will never escape our
responsibilities to the global ecosystem. With this in mind, he
concludes, "Barring disaster, we will almost certainly forever be
the idiosyncratic, unfathomable and interesting creatures we have
always been."
Let us hope that we live up to our name-Homo sapiens, "Man the
Wise."
DONALD JOHANSON is professor of anthropology and director of the
Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. His most
recent book is From Lucy to Language, written with Blake Edgar and
published by Simon & Schuster in 1996.
http://www.sciam.com/1998/0398issue/0398review1.html