When in the course of human evolution did hominids become like ourselves? Archaeologist Nicholas Conard asked this question before a plenary session of the conference on the Cradle of Language in Stellenbosch, South Africa. The question is important to this blog because an answer would provide a bottom range for its focus. Once behaviorally modern humans appear, this blog’s concern is finished. As an absolute most-recent date, Conard suggests it was certainly established by 40 thousand years ago and possibly 80 thousand. These dates are long after the biological evolution of Homo sapiens, but Conard states that “The main characteristic Homo is that our cultural development can and does vary independent of our biological morpholotgy.” (Abstract here)
Conard proposed “behaviorally modern” to be a people who communicate “within a symbolically organized world” and that evolution toward behavioral modernity accelerated in the middle of the Late Pleistocene (around 100,000 years ago). The oldest material Conard cited were eight amazingly ancient wooden spears associated with the bones of over 20 horses recovered near Schöningen in Saxony. These well crafted wooden objects appear to have been made between 300 and 400 thousand years ago, well before the emergence of Homo sapiens. Although these weapons and fossils do not prove that hunting large game was universal among Homo of that ancient date, they do show that well-planned and successfully executed large game hunts were already occurring during the period of late Homo erectus.
The Middle Stone Age (as much as 200,000 years ago) in Africa saw mining and use of pigments and “reflect a widespread ability to structure the world into a symbolically organized whole.” Decorated ostrich eggs are as old as 100,000 years.
Burials of the dead from the Upper or Late Paleolithic (100 thousand years ago). Although these could be disposals of undesirable cadavers among a settled population, many bodies have been buried with material goods suggesting respect and possibly needs in an afterlife. Neanderthals also manufactured and used ornaments. The oldest musical instruments were flutes, from perhaps 40 thousand years ago. Carved figurines date only to 30 thousand years ago.
None of this guarantees that these peoples spoke; however, Conard reports there is universal agreement among archaeologists that the presence of a symbolic, material evidence demonstrates the presence of speech.
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