Conclusion

By any calculation, symbolically reasoning H. sapiens is not a simple behavioral extrapolation from the hominids that preceded it. Our species does not do what they did, only a little better. Instead, we are radically and qualitatively different from any of our predecessors. Evidently, by 200 kyr ago the human brain had, for whatever reasons, evolved to a point at which a relatively minor genetic change was capable of producing an instrument with an entirely new potential: a potential that had then to be ‘discovered’ by its possessor, in much the same way that birds possessed feathers for millions of years before co-opting them for flight. As extraordinary as its result may be, the evolutionary mechanism involved in the acquisition of modern human consciousness was thus entirely routine. Palaeoanthropology is a diverse discipline with many subdivisions and ramifications, and more than its share of controversies. But if any of its messages is clear, it is that modern H. sapiens has not been burnished to its current condition by eons of gradual perfectioning selection. Remarkable behaviorally as we human beings undoubtedly are, we are not a fine-tuned product of gradual evolutionary refinement. Instead, we are the random result of a long process of highly sporadic evolutionary experimentation that dates back to the first bipedal hominoids and well beyond.

See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Obsidian Hydration Dating; Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted.