by James Gregory

Created on: May 21, 2009   Last Updated: June 02, 2009

A Comparison of the Pleistocene Man and Modern Humans

Know Thyself said Plato, and centuries later, it seems we are still scratching at the surface. Biological and psychological science has given us our current view on the world, in a remote and detached sense. The patterns we saw, the trends we plotted, all happened Out There as we, observers, watched and theorized. Now science is showing us that we are not nearly as separated from the natural world as we arrogantly assumed. Humanity of the 21st century are slowly coming to realize what our ancestors took as granted- that we are an integral part of nature, bound by its rules and subject to its whims. As consequence of this trend, we are now calling the into question the sovereignty of our mind- is it really the brain of a caveman, made respectable by society? Or has it evolved with time, permanently separating us from the crudeness of our forebears? Regardless of the conclusion drawn, we must accept that our theories will ever be full of holes, approximations, and conjuncture. All things being equal, that makes the question of the rise of the human mind on par with all other biological theories.

In order to make a comparison between past and present, we need to determine, at least for the purposes of this discussion, the definition of human. To ask if humans have evolved since they became humans requires us to set a criteria that separates the ape from the man. In this case, a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do. In short, the criteria is human-level intelligence. This threshold point seems to have been around two hundred thousand years ago, during the mid- to late- Pleistocene.

The earliest known modern man remains were found in southern Ethiopia in 1947. Christened Omo 1, these remains remained in dispute over the next forty years until further expeditions recovered remains that matched Omo 1, resulting in a partial skeleton consisting of a skull, mostly complete arms, pelvis, and legs. Researchers on site have reasoned that these remains are indeed human; asides from some differences in hand and ankle structure,

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