Читать книгу Natural Environments and Human Health - Alan W Ewert - Страница 23

Depending on geographical region, with the northern regions developing more slowly than the southern regions because of the influence of Ice Age remnants, the sacred cycle stage comes about 50,000 years ago. This stage is punctuated by behavioral modernity. Behavioral modernity is marked by specific behaviors interpreted through the diversity of artifacts found in settlement remains and the occasional midden. A widely accepted trait definition in anthropology, archeology, and sociology of behavioral modernity is the point at which Homo sapiens demonstrated an ability to use complex symbolic thought and express cultural creativity, often thought to coincide with the origin of language. Symbolic thought includes being able to engage in symbolic thinking such as number systems, writing systems, maps, and models, and demonstrates flexibility in our brain. Developing the capacity for symbolic thought or dual representation allowed culture to be effectively communicated and shared among a larger group of people through language and other symbols; therefore settlements could evolve. It meant humans could share other information such as distances and location of hazards or food. It also meant that people had to be able to understand the symbolism in their culture to be full participants, therefore some people belonged and some did not. Now called a universal developmental task, Judy DeLoache (2010) found that children begin to be able to engage in dual representation at about 18 months and reliably at 3 years of age for some tasks and later for other areas. She defined dual representation or symbolic reasoning as the ability for a person to attribute characteristics and meaning to things that do not really have them. As children develop symbolic reasoning they learn emotional intelligence or how to understand one another’s intentions and motivations. This understanding of intentions and motivations allows for cooperation and community building.

Beginning about 50,000 years ago cultural universals or key elements deduced from archeological evidence have been shared by all groups of people since. In addition to the use of complex language, these cultural elements include use of natural resources (humans’ geographic range expanded, they used different hunting techniques for different species, and began to use marine resources—fish and shellfish), technology (finely made tools, including bone tools, projectile point, special purpose tools, composite tools, and tools with blades and backed scrapers, and the control of fire, including cooking and seasoning foods), social organization (having myths, spiritual practices, and/or religion, expanded exchange or barter networks, organized group hunting, settlements with living spaces and hearths, systematic burial of adults and children, care for the elderly and infirm, game playing, and music), and art (systematic use of jewelry for decoration or self-ornamentation, the use of ochre and then other pigments, and the creation of figurative art such as cave paintings, petroglyphs, and figurines). Hunting and using reindeer was more common than previously, which is why the period beginning 50,000 to 40,000 years ago is sometimes referred to as the Reindeer Age. There still is no evidence of warfare.

There was an upsurge of visual art and music during the sacred cycle stage. The earliest flutes were found during this stage and current research shows that peak experiences of music, present in all human communities, releases dopamine, which emotionally engages the reward system in the brain (Salimpoor et al., 2011). Seasonal rites, initiation rituals, and other ceremonies related to the participation in the sacred ceremonies of life were reflected in cave art (Noble, 1993). The earliest figurative art found is the Venus of Schelklingen and thousands of other wood and bone carvings of female figures have been unearthed. The earliest known ceramic is Venus of Dolní Věstonice, from about 30,000 to 25,000 BCE. These artifacts serve a referential function and given the plethora of female artifacts it seems logical to conclude that they displayed awe and respect for femaleness, birth, and natural systems.

The artifacts, including burial rituals, seem to indicate an understanding of the importance of cycles and the female procreative energy. In some areas children and women were given preferential treatment to be buried inside the settlements in specific relationship to certain parts of the home (Naumov, 2007). They were buried in the fetal position thought to honor the birth and death cycle. Deduced from thousands of artifacts it seems that the female womb was sacred as well as a life-generating deity that was nature herself (Noble, 1993). As both mystery and source of power, the female body was a metaphor for nature; the womb was ever able to renew herself with the cycle of birth. These artifacts give form to the axiom that we intuitively love what is born.

Medina (2008) provides evidence that our brains are wired for flexibility and improvisation, thought to be a consequence of living in the ever-changing natural environment. The evolutionary milestone, the prefrontal cortex, housed in the frontal lobe and controlling executive functions including problem solving, maintaining attention, and inhibiting emotional impulses, allowed for the sacred cycle stage. Humans now were even better equipped to learn through experimentation and adapt to changing natural environments.

With the description of the time period there could be many interpretations of their WorldView in regard to the natural environment and because the population was dispersed there may have been concurrent WorldViews. Putting together the evolution of symbolic reasoning, the long childhood needed for learning, and female carvings and other artifacts in addition to tools, these people’s WorldView may have included awe and respect for nature and natural processes, including childbirth, as well as a shared sense of care and cooperation among humans and with natural systems. Their regard for nature might have contributed to positive outcomes when learning through experimentation, another trait we carry in human brains. The values-of-belonging combined with the enchanted universe cosmological story was still part of many cultures; many possibly added the regenerative universe and reciprocity with nature as foundational for cosmological stories. Cave paintings symbolize their value for natural systems, life in general, and birthing and children in particular. Like other parts of nature, human birth and regeneration were revered. Nature’s cycles (stars, seasons, and migratory paths) generated a rhythm for life.

Any story made up about humans in the sacred cycle stage is theory, including that these people were the first to exhibit cultural creativity, implying that earlier Homo sapiens did not. Published descriptions of the sacred cycle people tell us about the WorldViews of the academicians of the present perhaps more than the people of that time period. For example, of the two main theories (i) that this shift in behaviors occurred gradually over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution as Homo sapiens accumulated knowledge, skills, and culture and (ii) that the language and settlements occurred more like a revolution or sudden event as the result of a genetic mutation or major biological reorganization of the brain that brought forth languages, scientists have labeled the second theory the Great Leap Forward showing a bias that the increase in technology is synonymous with cultural progress. There is a current cultural bias to see early humans in a survival mode with nature. While these people were active, faced environmental challenges, and had no technology, there is no reason to believe that they thought of themselves in a survival mode. They had the time and space for enough art that numerous artifacts survived.

Early humans and the sacred cycle stage are not usually associated with cultivating plants. However, new research sheds light on possible practices that may have occurred before what has commonly been recognized as agriculture, including tending certain plants to increase species diversity, selectively harvesting specific parts of a plant so it grows back prolifically, and replanting sensitive seeds (Turner et al., 2000). The agricultural stage discussed next marks a new relationship with plants.