Kent_Mackem
Striker
It's thought that one of the factors that encouraged our ape-like ancestors to climb down from trees and walk on all our legs was the climate change around The Great Rift Valley long after the dinosaurs had nashed. There were probably several advantages to walking on two legs - seeing predators from a distance in the grasslands, being able to carry stuff and being able to walk while texting.
Once the random changes in genes allowed a drift towards opposable thumbs, allowing us to grip and make tools then the pace quickened. While digging my veggie patch earlier this year I found a flint tool. It wasn't as sleek as a Bronze Age harpooned arrow head, or as polished as an earlier large hand axe. This tool is proper old. It is a flint flake that fits perfectly into the thumb and forefinger of right hand and it has a serated cutting edge. It is an ancient tool, maybe 10,000 years old, that was last held by a caveman cutting open something like a deer for his dinner. People call me boring but for me the finding, researching and holding it in April beat watching rubbish on TV any day of the week.
Stone tools and fire allowed us to hunt for and cook meat. These were the key factors that accelerated the path to where we are now. Speech was another - far easlier to hunt and to cooperate in social groups with more advanced communication. The last huge one was writing. From the moment we invented writing, all of the knowledge gained during a lifetime was not lost as it could be captured in a way better than just talking/singing around the camp fire. This has progressed through books, libraries and then exponentially into the current digital age. When I was young there was often never a hope of having a question answered within seconds. It may have taken days to find the answer if ever, inlcuding (if the questionner had sufficient patience) a trip on the bus to the library or writing to somebody using an envelope and a stamp (What are they?). Now an incredible amount of information both historical and real-time is literally at our fingertips wherever we may be. Compared to just 30 years ago, back when I was still alive, that is absolutely staggering.
There is nothing to suggest that any of the big leaps would definitely not have happened had we started the journey at the same time of the dinosaurs. Although they were around for ages themselves, the timespan of the dinosaurs is greater than the time between them and us. Small mammals thrived once the dinosaurs had died out (as did their descendants the birds) and we eventually evolved from those small, probably nocturnal, mammals.
However, the natural course of evolution is initiated by random DNA mutations. If history was repeated today's resultant most intelligent and dominant species would almost certainly have been very different. Just as its religious accounts, gods and rules (if religion existed) would have been. The laws of Science would still be the same though. Just think.... it might have been a caring species that did not have an inbuilt passion of destroying itself and other species. We might get on together instead of fighting wars. We might allow other animals to live and, once we understood the harm we are doing to the planet, have instead ensured we no longer did such harm. Perhaps there would have been no religion, no wars, no torture, no rape, no theft, no crime, no word "celebrity".
Instead we're mostly the vermin of The Earth. In terms of evolutionary success insects are miles ahead of us.
Once the random changes in genes allowed a drift towards opposable thumbs, allowing us to grip and make tools then the pace quickened. While digging my veggie patch earlier this year I found a flint tool. It wasn't as sleek as a Bronze Age harpooned arrow head, or as polished as an earlier large hand axe. This tool is proper old. It is a flint flake that fits perfectly into the thumb and forefinger of right hand and it has a serated cutting edge. It is an ancient tool, maybe 10,000 years old, that was last held by a caveman cutting open something like a deer for his dinner. People call me boring but for me the finding, researching and holding it in April beat watching rubbish on TV any day of the week.
Stone tools and fire allowed us to hunt for and cook meat. These were the key factors that accelerated the path to where we are now. Speech was another - far easlier to hunt and to cooperate in social groups with more advanced communication. The last huge one was writing. From the moment we invented writing, all of the knowledge gained during a lifetime was not lost as it could be captured in a way better than just talking/singing around the camp fire. This has progressed through books, libraries and then exponentially into the current digital age. When I was young there was often never a hope of having a question answered within seconds. It may have taken days to find the answer if ever, inlcuding (if the questionner had sufficient patience) a trip on the bus to the library or writing to somebody using an envelope and a stamp (What are they?). Now an incredible amount of information both historical and real-time is literally at our fingertips wherever we may be. Compared to just 30 years ago, back when I was still alive, that is absolutely staggering.
There is nothing to suggest that any of the big leaps would definitely not have happened had we started the journey at the same time of the dinosaurs. Although they were around for ages themselves, the timespan of the dinosaurs is greater than the time between them and us. Small mammals thrived once the dinosaurs had died out (as did their descendants the birds) and we eventually evolved from those small, probably nocturnal, mammals.
However, the natural course of evolution is initiated by random DNA mutations. If history was repeated today's resultant most intelligent and dominant species would almost certainly have been very different. Just as its religious accounts, gods and rules (if religion existed) would have been. The laws of Science would still be the same though. Just think.... it might have been a caring species that did not have an inbuilt passion of destroying itself and other species. We might get on together instead of fighting wars. We might allow other animals to live and, once we understood the harm we are doing to the planet, have instead ensured we no longer did such harm. Perhaps there would have been no religion, no wars, no torture, no rape, no theft, no crime, no word "celebrity".
Instead we're mostly the vermin of The Earth. In terms of evolutionary success insects are miles ahead of us.
Last edited:
