Cultural Evolution of Man | Prehistory

Different specialists view emergence of man as a dominant species in the animal Kingdom in different ways. Scientists, seers and philosophers have all tried to understand this process but a fuller comprehension of how mankind emerged has always eluded them. It is like chasing one’s own shadow.

However almost all specialists agree that if this animal has successfully survived under numerous threats arising all through his existence, it is only because in addition to his biotic abilities he had developed an extra apparatus called ‘Culture’. I must hasten to add that this purely adaptation imperative argument as the cause and function of culture is not acceptable to many cultural anthropologists.

For a prehistorian, however such an approach has been always a successful tool of explanation. It was argued that although man is a part of the environment his culture is not. Further, it is a non- tangible package of behaviour which is passed on from one generation to another by the process of enculturation.

Since the operative part of this is non-tangible it is transmitted as a narrative with significant codes which combine together to form the cognitive world of the group. Sperber (1996) very succinctly delineates the problem of identifying these codes. He uses the example of a dog marking its smell as a code of information to other dogs.

“Although some odours are metonymically connected with some objects, we can neither see nor touch the smell of air. It is also quite difficult for us to categories the smells as themselves, specially when we do not succeed in identifying their source objects.”

In archaeology most of us deal with the product of such an enigmatic, invisible and extra-somatic feature of mankind and through these antiquities try to decode the cognitive mind of its creator. Understanding the process of evolution of this factor called culture, therefore, is of cardinal importance to both anthropologists as well as archaeologist.

Darwin’s wonderment at the encounter with people from Tierra del Fuego in South America was more a shock than anything else at seeing specimens of humanity who were so different from Europeans. Before that travellers and seafarers have been exploring inaccessible regions in the deep forests of Africa and Oceania.

They also came across such specimens of humanity that were so very different in both looks and behaviour. Although many of these travellers were carrying message of Christianity and spreading the gospel of love – the names of father Gusunde and father Livingston are well known among them, yet there were some others who were cruel treasure hunters.

One of the most shameful acts of the latter group of explorers is the capturing of these tribal like animals in chain for public display in big cities of England and France. The indigenous inhabitants of Kalahari Desert in South-West Africa maintain several unusual racial features, which enable them to adapt to their harsh environment.

One of these is the development of huge protruding buttocks in the females as fat reserve. This is termed as stteatopegia in technical parplance. A young lady of this community was captured like a wild animal and brought to London in 1805. First she was displayed in nude in Piccadilly against tickets and then in Manchester in the same way.

Finally she was brought to France where the unfortunate lady died because of repeated exposure to extreme cold climate of temperate Europe. Even in death she was not spared. She was dissected and her skeleton was put on display in the Musé de I’ Homme in Paris.

One would naturally like to know why westerners, which include both laymen and scholars, had such a non- repressive desire to look for the bizarre in human kind. Even Linnaeus while describing the various human groups had created a category called Homo monstrosus, as if to take care of these bizarre forms.

Experts working in human evolution and also archaeologists seeking to unravel human activity found many of these explorers’ account very useful for tracing analogies of the past. The heightened interest in such “primitive” societies in the subsequent century is reflected in the form of such publications as those of Marshal Shalins (1972), who floated the concept of ‘Original affluent Society’.

If fossil hunting became important for understanding biological evolution of man, hunter-gatherer studies became as important to understand cultural evolution of man. Archaeological explorations were also playing a similar role in trying to establish routes of cultural migrations of ancient civilisations.

The classic example of this can be seen in the historic work of Heine-Geldern titled- Die Asiatische Herkunft der Sudamerikanischen Metalltechnik published in 1954. Tim Ingold (1999: 399) even goes to the extent of saying that, “hunter gatherers occupy a special place in the structure of modern thought, so special, that had they not existed they would certainly have had to have been invented.” The so-called discovery of the Tasaday in Philippine by Manuel Elizalde in 1971 actually proves this point.

Elizalde had created a fake “Stone Age society living naked in caves”, and published their photographs in National Geographic magazine claiming this as a break through discovery. Within few years it could be demonstrated that he had got a contemporary pastoral community called GINTUI specially posed without clothes to look like a still surviving form of Palaeolithic hunters.

Paleoanthropologists were never sold out to these trite and populist ways of understanding the past. They depended entirely on scientific factors to reconstruct the why and where for of the process of hominid change on more substantive hard core evidences. Diverse evidences from diverse periods seldom yielding the same anatomical parts were painfully gathered to form a complete process.

The story of human evolution was therefore more of a collage and it soon got the nick name of the “nut cracker model”. It proposed that during hominid evolution sometimes around 12 to 10 million years ago terrestrial adaptation was forced on an otherwise brachiating group of primates. Among other things this caused a reduction of the canine and the masticatory apparatus.

It is argued that the nuts, edible roots and tubers available in the ground had hard shells. These required a grinding function of the jaws that was possible only when the jaws, teeth and the masticatory muscles were re-adapted to sideways or grinding motion. The first structural change that had emerged as a consequence was the reduction of the canines and with this a chain reaction was let loose.

The heavy jaw was slowly reduced and the muscles attached with it started pulling the sides of the skull. Thus, within a period of 6 to 8 million years an elongated nut shaped skull having an inner volume of only 450 cc. becomes rounded with the inner volume increasing first to 600 cc (around 4 million years ago) and then to 1000 cc. (around 2 million years ago). Nature abhors empty space and hence the brain cells multiplied to fill up this additional space.

The changes in the various centres of the brain have been studied reasonably well from endocrinal casts of fossils. The over simplistic reptilian forms of neural arrangements seem to have developed into the extremely complex neo-cortical areas during the path of evolution. These have demonstrated how the areas of association and recording of experiences steadily develops into a stage where the knowledge of the actual could lead to the thought of the possible.

Thus, what started with a struggle to adapt to ground living eventually allowed man a better and larger brain capacity. This not only enabled him to store various experiences but also recall these experiences to develop better strategies of adaptation. For instance our ancestors or early man must have cut his toes on sharp stones spread around water sources.

This experience came useful to him when he had to cut and cure a hunted animal. He picked up or fabricated stones to be used as tools to do those functions that his sturdy canines used to do earlier. Construction of this extra somatic medium marks the beginning of culture.

Fossils associated with tools generally indicate that lower Palaeolithic tools represent the workmanship of the earliest two species of our genus – the H. habilis and H. erectus. It is important to emphasise here that the first group of early man at this point of evolution had still not achieved finer manoeuvrability of the carpals and metacarpals and as such could afford only a “power grip”.

That is, the palm provides the maximum support while the fingers act only as clamps to hold a tool against the palm. This is exactly the way a baby holds a spoon. As against this “precision grip” requires no use of the palm and is comparable to the way an adult holds a spoon.

Such core tools as choppers, chopping tool or even massive handaxes (generally referred to as early Acheulians) are, therefore attributed to the former stage of the grip-most probably extending up to Early H. erectus (possibly extending up to 600,000 to 500,000 years in Africa). Emergence of fine flake tools of upper Acheulian stage coincides with the evolution of the latter form of grip.

The earliest ancestors of man emerged in savannah land. He chose a far more open area than the chimpanzees were used to. Further all evidences known till date tends to indicate that their population density was less than the same in some of the contemporary chimpanzee groups.

Osteological and archaeological evidences strongly suggest an increase in non-vegetarian diet in early man at this stage. The use of a more comprehensive verbal language in order to integrate co-operative behaviour among the members of a group must have started around this time.

We know that almost all species have a genetically coded call which ranges within a span of few responses and these do not have to be taught to them. Evolution of Brocca’s centre and multiplication of the neural sensory network enabled our ancestors to increase the range of verbal codes but these speech modules in man needs to be intentionally taught unlike in all other mammals.

As a consequence of this new ability man could transmit experience to the filial generation. Experiences of all successive generations in this manner can get accumulated as knowledge. Soon man starts taking advantage of this knowledge in making choices for progressively successful adaptation.

A similar cultural tool that played a fundamental role in laying down the foundation of culture was man’s ability to domesticate fire and this may have occurred around 400,000 years ago. Since as a species he evolved within a different ecological background his genetic mechanisms for adaptation is totally tuned to sub-tropical environment.

If therefore, he could survive in another ecological zone, it is primarily because he draws on culture as an additional tool for adaptation. With the elevation of culture to such a fundamental role in human evolution, success of the species starts depending considerably on it.

However, unlike the behavioural characteristics in a species, culture is not identical in description to all mankind. That is a dog barks the same way whether it is in Japan or in Africa. But man does not speak the same lingo everywhere. Man, therefore, appears as the only species in the organic world which adapts through a medium which varies from one group to another.

In social behaviour early man already started showing some changes. Mating within the hoard continued to perform essentially the same functions as it did before. That is, to guarantee group life and to enable the continuation of the species. To ensure the reproduction of such a highly complex being as man, a biological system of year round sexual receptivity had to be evolved.

That is with the withdrawal of rut man and mind was put under the influence of a battery of entirely new hormones which started influencing all his interpersonal behaviours. One of the many such changes was the introduction of ‘fore-play’ a completely nerve dominated stimulation process to make the female receptive for cohabitation.

Love, therefore, emerges as an important psychosomatic phenomenon in man. This may best be designated as “prehistory of Love.” It is also not illogical to assume that male-female relationship had become much closer in the early man than what is observed among the chimpanzees. Further, this closeness created a social environment which could result in many group activities in a co-operative endeavour.

The emerging human kind was progressively acquiring larger brain because of their selective advantage. The hip bone was also being progressively modified by the same process to afford an efficient bipedalism. A stage comes in this dual change when the large brain box becomes too big to come out of the narrowing birth canal.

Natural selection works to terminate gestation before the full development of the foetal brain to solve these two opposing trends in evolution. Thus, more than 60 percent of a human baby’s brain develops outside mother’s body. Consequently a human child is the most helpless child at birth when compared with other animals. This extended duration of dependency of the child allows more time for learning basic emotions and their symbolic vocalisation.

Many experts believe that delayed maturation was one of nature’s methods to allow adequate time for learning because much of human survival had to depend on learned behaviour. Probably at this stage the velocity of maturation had to be established also in the genetic base.

The extreme importance of this mother-child bonding for the survival of the species can also be demonstrated by the fact that bio­chemically it is also so controlled that the mother does not ovulate and hence another child is not born until the first is out of ‘mother’s milk’ stage (Post-partum amaenorrhae).

New archaeologists argue that another change in human behaviour occurred at this stage, and this was the adoption of what is termed as “home-base foraging”. This involved choosing a circular area by the band and coming back every night to the home base.

The constraints of menstruating females, pregnant and young weaning mothers and to top it all, the need of keeping fire constantly fed and alive might have been the compelling forces which must have called for this change. The choice of home-based economy was unique to man when compared to all other foraging animals.

This must have eventually led to a situation where one or two mother-child pairs got attached to one or more males and this must have led to the formation of a prototype of family. Soon these units become definable in terms of economic production.

To hold such units together within a larger group or band, a stronger social system needs to be evolved and all specialists agree that such a social system as the binding force was evolved from as early as the Neanderthals (about 100,000 years ago). The evidence from Shanidar cave in Iraq substantiates how both emotion and altruism had already developed in Man at this stage.

It was the pressure to extend the effectiveness of family unit in organising task of production and survival that led man to fashion rules of conduct and the institutionalisation of behaviour within the members of a family and also between families. Mate regulation must have evolved subsequently to diffuse sex competition or even to seek stability of large group solidarity.

But the most important of these was to prevent able-bodied young males of one band being lured into another band on the strength of their eligible females. If this process is allowed then the constant losing of effective hunters of the band can bring it to the brink of starvation. Therefore, once again we see that even the birth of such social institution as family and marriage and their internal ordering are essentially linked to survival strategy.

This is a significant stage in terms of fragmentation within without weakening the total group solidarity. Now the regional groups or bands aggregates are obliged to exchange resources and also co-operate in order to seek defence in the event of other groups invading their territory.

Finally we shall consider another complication that arose because of the liberation from rut in our early ancestors. Females develop sexual maturity 3 to 5 years before males. The entering of males into reproductive activity before they are physically strong enough to defend and fend for subsistence needs to their units can weaken the structure of the group. Initiation rites seem to have developed at this juncture to prevent such weak pairings.

The ideological sanction of manhood to the male has to be imparted formally with initiation rites before he could be counted as ready to replace the older males of the band in social responsibilities. Consequently, more often than not such rites involved the performance of acts of valour or withstanding of physical pain. Many of the rock paintings known from Franco-Cantabrain Europe during 18,000 to 10,000 B.C. demonstrate such a possibility.

By the time man emerged as an accomplished hunter, he had solved his basic problem of survival within the framework of his chosen environment. Now no predator could destroy him easily. No extreme climate could retard him because his cultural repertoire had already introduced the art of building artificial habitation and the method of keeping it warm against cold windy climate.

Molodova and Kostijenki in Ukrania provide detail evidence of this. Man increase knowledge of his biological environment on which his survival depends. Since his cultural accomplishments are cumulative, in each generation he progresses towards a more secure system of supply.

The cultural apparatus also becomes increasingly complex with the progression of time. This complexity is reflected not only in his technological skills but also in the resource redistribution system to suit the new organisational structure evolved by him at every stage of evolutionary progression.

This might have been achieved by ascribing authority to a chosen individual. Such an assumption may have Hobbsian reverberations, but the fact remains that once human beings opted for group living there has been an incessant need to have an authority structure with a headman or chief.

It has been argued that this kind of society crystallises around 6000 to 4000 B.C. when agriculture began in most part of the Old World. It is estimated that while approximately 250 square miles of land was needed ordinarily to feed a band of 25 foragers, only 6 square miles of agricultural land can supply food for as many as 150 inhabitants.

If one can assume that management of labour and redistribution of produce is crucial to the success of a farming society, one would naturally like to scan the possible ways in which this can be operationalised. Probably one of the earliest methods to organise this labour intensive economy was to create certain permanent loyalties.

Birth of marriage as an institution can be taken as a means that the early settlers of Neolithic population adopted to convert unstructured pattern of mating into one of the primary social institutions. This can at once tie certain members of a group into obligatory kinship loyalties.

Every community also attempts to add a dose of ideology to give a ritual aura to this institution to suit its chosen path of social ordering. Chastity, virgin cults and controlling marital fidelity are some such ideological features which are bound to have originated at this juncture and later on canonised in the Judo-Christian and other moral codes during the historical period.

The early metal users (4000-1000 B.C.) must have developed a social system to adapt to the new technology and the advantages gained through it. It will not be difficult to assume that full-blooded professionals with ranks and codes may have had to be initiated at this stage.

Unlike what has usually been propagated that prostitution is the earliest profession in human cultural history I would like to propose that ‘Priest’ is the earliest professional. The temple of Jerricho and the excavations at Ur will amply demonstrate this phenomenon.

Here we must pause a while to reflect on the extremely diverse contexts in which metal yielding sites are recorded in south and Southeast Asia. Thus, the arguments of a hard core cultural materialist or Marxist approach may not exactly bracket them all as having established professional settlements like the Bell Beakers in south Europe or Indus-Siswal group in northwest India.

The evidences of Ganeshwara-Jodhpura range of sites in Rajasthan where microliths occur with metal are clear indicators of the fact that at mining camps one might encounter relatively impoverished material culture and to apply my argument of rise of a complex society with regular professionals may not be applicable to many such sites yielding metal.

Students of social formation might feel inclined to look for the reasons for the rise of a state at some place and the absence of one at another place. For instance the entire range of Black-and Red ware sites in the middle Ganga and further east as also the early settlements in the rocky mid-lands of the Krishna tributaries show no indication of the rise of a complex society.

It is, therefore, not difficult to appreciate that having an advantage of any efficient technology (read metal extraction for this argument) does not automatically lead to a complex society. Any technician can easily be hijacked to serve an alien society on the power derived from successful consolidation of a political or military power.

Thus, one can easily see why Agrarias, a community of tribal smiths of Madhya Pradesh do not become Tatas, neither are they even employed as menials in Tatanagar. Jodhpura-Ganeshwara, in the same light have to be viewed as labourers who were finishing ingots of metal to be carried to Kalibangan which lies around 250 km further north.

We have briefly gone into the processes through which this unique feature called culture was developed in mankind. We have also seen the tremendously important role that culture has played in human progression from his primeval past to the rise of state. Yet we seem to be regularly sacrificing this unique ability of our species on the altar of development and globalisation. But that is a different matter.

In sequel I would like to mention another important aspect of the scholarship of Prof. Irawati Karve. Her approach of looking at the Puranas providing a road map towards understanding structures and dynamics of past societies was entirely new in Indian anthropology. Prof. Karve must have been influenced heavily by the strong tradition of Indology of Pune and adopted their technique for anthropological enquiries.

The reverberations of her magnus opus titled Yuganta reached all over India and brought her the honour of Sahitya Academy award. Yet not much has been said about this work in the academic journals. Let me borrow her ‘other-end-of-the-tunnel’ method to understand the process of social formation during the rise of early state.

I would like to come back to the concept of chastity and virginity as means to understand the consolidation of marriage as an institution. It is after Iron Age in India (assuming that the 1000 B.C. sites of North India, usually referred to as Painted Gray Ware culture, also belongs to the same period when Mahabharata was written) when for the first time these concepts are alluded to.

In Sumeria, around the same period (1600 B.C.) Hamurabi’s lengthy and explicit legal treatise had been written. But here one cannot find a single reference to sexual regulatory laws. Yet in the Old Testament, approximately from the same time period one finds laws of stoning to death to deal with cases of adultery.

When Kunti invokes the Sun God in her sprightly curiosity, the latter is delighted and proposes cohabitation. What Surya tells her is extremely revealing. He says that there will be nothing wrong in their acts of love, neither is it her parents’ or elders’ business to stop her. Yet the same Kunti abandoned the child born in this process out of shame.

It is equally significant to note that subsequent to her marriage she practised Niyoga to obtain as many as three more children and yet there was no social stigma against them. That a transition towards developing a moral code in conjugal relationship was gradually getting rooted can be easily surmised from this.

In the same way the sexual overtures of Surpanakha in Ramayana appears to be more close to what could be accepted as normal rather than the fire purification test of chastity which Sita is made to go through. There is no doubt, therefore, that these values were beginning to emerge while the hangover of older practices continued in some sections of the society.

Archaeologists deal with antiquities and antiquities do not speak. Consequently much of our cultural interpretations remain not only tentative but also segmented. It is through anthropological wisdom alone that we can construct a continuous story of the past. Laboratory oriented scientists might find us speaking on speculative ground. While we do not deny this entirely here is a possibility that you have the complete liberty to either throw out or accept.