{"id":23590,"date":"2015-06-15T22:22:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T02:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/?p=23590"},"modified":"2015-06-20T22:37:29","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T02:37:29","slug":"the-importance-of-stone-throwing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/?p=23590","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Stone-Throwing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been trying to pull together all my recent thoughts on the origin of the cycle of visions in a way that holds together and makes sense. But meanwhile, here’s something<\/a> of interest that Alexei brought to my attention yesterday. <\/p>\n

The blogger, Phil Paine, begins by considering the fact that the earliest hominins appear to have lived along riverbanks and lakesides. He notes that these are extremely dangerous environments because they’re where predators come to attack game animals — but also that this offers unique advantages for a clever opportunist.<\/p>\n

The oppor\u00adtu\u00adnity I had in mind was theft. What if you could take advan\u00adtage of the fact that game ani\u00admals will come to the river\u00adside or lake\u00adside, and that preda\u00adtors would follow them and kill them? What would be needed would be some way of dri\u00adving the preda\u00adtors away after they made their kills, then steal\u00ading the fresh kills. There had been, even back then, some spec\u00adu\u00adla\u00adtion about early hominins being scav\u00adengers rather than hunters, but I think those who were advanc\u00ading this idea were think\u00ading more of the kind of scav\u00adeng\u00ading that is done by minor car\u00adni\u00advores that \u201cclean up\u201d the kills of major preda\u00adtors, who usu\u00adally leave sig\u00adnif\u00adi\u00adcant amounts of left\u00adovers after they have gorged them\u00adselves on the best bits. This is not what I had in mind. I was think\u00ading, rather, of hominins divid\u00ading their atten\u00adtion between gath\u00ader\u00ading the numerous tid\u00adbits that can be found on river\u00adbanks \u2014 birds\u2019 eggs, cray\u00adfish, nuts, tubers, small bur\u00adrow\u00ading ani\u00admals, fruit, berries, frogs, fish \u2014 and the theft of fresh kills from preda\u00adtors. How do you steal from a big cat? You let it make its kill, then you drive it away. But, how do you drive it away?<\/p>\n

You throw rocks.<\/p>\n

The more I looked at the phys\u00adi\u00ado\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcal changes that dis\u00adtin\u00adguished early hominins from their simian rel\u00ada\u00adtives, the more they seemed to me to line up with throw\u00ading rocks. Chim\u00adpanzees reg\u00adu\u00adlarly throw things (usu\u00adally excre\u00adment, which they fling as a sign of hos\u00adtil\u00adity), but they are not very good at it. Their wrists are not well-shaped for it, their fin\u00adgers are too long, and their arms and shoul\u00adders don\u2019t have the right con\u00adfig\u00adu\u00adra\u00adtion for pitch\u00ading things accu\u00adrately. But it is pre\u00adcisely these fea\u00adtures that are dra\u00admat\u00adi\u00adcally mod\u00adi\u00adfied in early hominins, and the changes are as dra\u00admatic as those in the lower body and spine that favour bipedal\u00adism. Human beings, the inher\u00adi\u00adtors of these changes, may not be able to run like a chee\u00adtah, or out\u00adper\u00adform other ani\u00admals in many tasks, but they are spec\u00adtac\u00adu\u00adlarly good at throw\u00ading things. One has only to look at children play\u00ading base\u00adball or cricket to see that humans have evolved phenomenal throwing skills. Early hominins had all these fea\u00adtures \u2014 they have remained remarkably sta\u00adble ever since. They prob\u00ada\u00adbly were as good at throw\u00ading rocks and hitting the mark as we are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That was intriguing, but it seemed to refer to a much earlier stage of human evolution than the one I’ve been examining, so I simply filed it away. But just now I was sorting through some old notes and came on a few points I’d jotted down from a book by William H. Calvin titled The Ascent of Mind<\/a> that was published in 1990. <\/p>\n

According to my notes, Calvin hypothesized that throwing things was central to human evolution because it led to the development of sequential skills that required the harmonization of masses of neurons. He further suggested that this was the basis of narrative awareness.<\/p>\n

In other words, language, story, and the visions themselves may all have grown out of the throwing ability that we developed long before we started making tools. Now, that’s fascinating — and completely relevant to the scenario I’ve been trying to develop.<\/p>\n

Calvin’s book is available online at the above link. The main link for his website is http:\/\/williamcalvin.com<\/a>, and I plan to explore it for clues. He looks like a pretty cool dude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been trying to pull together all my recent thoughts on the origin of the cycle of visions in a way that holds together and makes sense. But meanwhile, here’s something of interest that Alexei brought to my attention yesterday. The blogger, Phil Paine, begins by considering the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwSB8-68u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trogholm.panshin.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}