Change Points in the Modern Human Timeline

We don’t think about the multi-generational consequences of the innovations we develop but the long-term impacts of advances in human activities have had a profound impact on both our health and our own development.

A study published last year suggests that women who drink beer are far more likely to develop psoriasis than women who do not drink beer. Beer is also closely associated with gout — which word, curiously, comes to us from Middle Latin through French.

Beer, it seems, was a popular local brew in southern France prior to Roman times. The southern French imported wines but had the means of making their own beer. Beer, in fact, is considered to be one of the most ancient processed foods and is at the heart of the “bread or beer” debate.

Did ancient humans begin cultivating grains to make bread or beer? It’s an interesting question (to archaeologists) that has spurred plenty of debate and some investigation.

Here’s the most interesting aspect of the history of grain agriculture: recent research suggests that the development of agriculture led to a decline in human health. That seems counter-intuitive, given that agriculture is credited with giving rise to civilization. And yet, it resonates with all the ills of urban living. Cities have not been very good for man’s health, even as they have contributed to the advancement of human knowledge and culture.

Some people speculate that women may have discovered beer as women may have been more responsible for developing agriculture than men. Men were accustomed to going off to hunt. As humans began to look for stable food supplies, it may have been the men who first thought to corral animals like pigs, goats, and sheep. While the men were off chasing the critters, women may have noticed that seeds dropped from fruits and grains produced new plants.

There came a day when someone tasted beer for the first time. The process of developing beer, it turns out, is more complex than the process of developing wine so it seems unlikely that the first beer was a random gift from nature. More likely beer was an experimental brew. We can’t know for sure.

Things don’t happen quickly even in modern times. Thomas Edison reportedly found 2,000 ways not to make light bulbs before he succeeded in developing the first commercially viable light bulb. Edison’s experimental processes compressed into a few years the behaviors that our ancestors had to develop over many generations 100,000 years ago.

One recent article suggests that advances in spearhead making produced a cognitive change in human experience. We learned to think differently by developing a new method for making spearheads and passing that new method on. The new process called for greater cooperation and communication between people.

It’s doubtful this one process led to so much change. We have evidence of other social activities occurring around the same timeframe, including long-range trading of seashells and possible attempts at artistic expression. 100,000 years ago humans were beginning to think abstractly in more than one place and in more than one way.

Still, it may have been a confluence of genes that appeared among several groups that led to these new ideas and practices. It could be that the seeds for greater social complexity were laid in a more distant past we have yet to begin imagining. Our picture of human sociality only extends back about 100,000 years today.

There is much yet left for us to learn about how our distant ancestors lived and the factors that contributed to or influenced the choices they made. Human culture 100,000 years ago was probably more vibrant and active and innovative than we presently believe. I say “probably” because every time new research is published our view of that timeframe changes. Our idea of what our 100,000-year-ago ancestors were like becomes more complex, more sophisticated.