Necesity, improvement, progress, advance, imagination...

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ildefonso-Diaz-Sandoval

But Neanderthal's creativity was very limited. So was our species. Now it transfigures all we do. What happened?

Language use already involves creativity. Words are reused and applied to things that are of the same kind, but never exactly similar in all respects. When we reuse words where the dissimilarities are significantly greater, but nonetheless the remaining similarities are illuminated rather than obscured in going beyond the original kind, we have metaphor. Language develops through creative acts of metaphor, and the cognitive skills involved in language use also contribute to other creative acts. If Neanderthals' creativity was limited it was likely because of limited cognitive capacities figuring in language use and development, as well as underdevelopment of the physiological structures that make well articulated speech possible.

But Karl, homo sapiens appear to have been no more advanced than Neanderthals until approximately 80,000 years ago. That is an optimistic estimate. Your presentation of language falls though in that technical, artistic and social evolution determines the development of language. In fact, there is a knock-on effect each keeping pace with the other. If human language became more sophisticated it would have occasioned more sophisticated societies or technologies. This does not appear to have occurred.

Neanderthal weapons were as good, if not better than homo-sapiens. They used efficient glues to hold their spear points in place, which aided their ability to kill large prey, like mammoths. The main difference seems to have been the size of their social groups as the caves they inhabited show only a small number of occupants. Certainly, this would not have helped language development.

Stanley Wilkin Now you're seeming to say that Neanderthals were not so limited in creativity after all, which contradicts your previous assertion. And I agree, that's a real possibility. I don't see how my claim fails because I said "If Neanderthals' creativity was limited". Admittedly the If is the old school view of Neanderthals, which I am actually not committed to, but isn't entirely off the table either. As it happens, I lean towards roughly equal limitation or lack thereof for both Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals.

But increasing sophistication is not necessarily reflected in technological development. It can also be manifested in nature lore, for example, which would leave no traces. I agree there is a causal feedback loop between language development and the other cultural stuff. And I would also want to throw a chapter on protolanguage into the story. But at the end of the day, "show and tell" is an advance over mere "show" and if you want to argue for an increase in creativity that is the place to look.

Survival, I believe.

Karl, yes nature lore is both important and usually invisible, except that some ten to twenty thousand years after homo sapiens arrived in Europe, it became visible with possible maps of the environment incised on bones found for use in hunting. There emerges evidence of later domestication processes.

Yes, there is a contradiction within the book and article. Or appears to be one. If hybridity caused creativity why did Neanderthal's show no clear evidence of it? Also, why do Africans, who show no evidence of interbreeding with Neanderthals have so much, or equal to other homo sapiens? Evidence of greater creativity in Neanderthals came before their demise, but because by then they were hybrids perhaps? Homo Sapiens affected them, not them us.

Nazir Ali, a good point but more elaboration necessary.

The Anglo-Irish poet W. B. Yeats ascribed creativity to evil, and it was represented by the Daimon, or the modification of demon. That means the motive which evokes creativity and the evil motive is stronger than the good according to Yeats.

Faisal Al-Doori, Zoroaster, surely?

Yeats knowledge of Eastern ideas, or what was so considered at the time. Daimon is surely Socrates' understanding of inspiration? Can I connect that to drives, the driven nature of creativity and creative ideas? Nothing else matters but to write the or a poem, book, or paint a picture, or complete a symphony?

Yes Dear Stanley.. You've gotten the point related to the drive, Socrates, and Zoroastrian religion.. regards

Interesting and deep reflective topic Stanley, made me to jump in.

In my book Bangla Language I added to findings goes back so e upton 3,000 years back.

250,000 years your mentioning not wrong because human since existence had brain and emotion together with coexistence for living makes people articulate.

Karl's point is correct but not complete. Entanglement is necessary.

Domestication gave rise to a more sophisticated set of languages, the point at where most modern languages originate from, at this this point I suggest our modern understanding of knowledge can be found. As one example, I suggest typology and taxonomy began here, which established the professional or professionalized approach to knowledge.

Indeed, Stanley Wilkin : Domestication gave rise to "taking tally" which gave rise to written records and next, full fledged written languages, without which the accumulation of knowledge beyond what was in any particular individual's head (or in any particular generation's heads) would not have been possible.

I don't agree with your identification of knowledge, typology, and taxonomy with modern sophistication and professionalization. Granted once the latter were in place, rapid "progress" was enabled. However, even in relatively recent historical times there were humble rainforest tribes who had plenty of local knowledge, local typology, and local taxonomy despite their in some respects unsophisticated and unwritten languages.

Karl, I suggest the language did become more sophisticated and the habitation of specific intellectual skills, both the driver and the consequence of taxonomy, is evident in Sumerian society. The societies you mention, although not primitive, remain limited to the sophistication or complexity of their environments. Experiences would probably have changed little from one generation to the next. I suspect that pre-mesolithic human societies used a far greater number of interrogatives and imperatives. Language was probably without the hierarchies, differences in use, common I suggest since urbanisation.

I earlier made the point, or should have done, that understanding of the environment, clearly evident by the mesolithic, aided the construction of human environments as separate from the natural environment or 'wild'. This domestication led to the separation of human centres from the wild. Human beings became the subject, as they remain still. These were achieved over many thousands of years. Changes in language, which involved a growing sophistication (longer words, words combined, grammar recognised, more refined descriptives) thereby aided the creation of more complex societies.

Stanley, I think that our unique human creativity is a function of our brain structure. I cant comment in terms of the moment in time when our increasingly complex development made creative developments obvious. So at the risk of becoming tangential to your question I can comment on brain function generally and my direct experience with creativity. I have an essay on Academia " "SuprAconscious The Brain Machine that makes us Human" which you might enjoy reading? My observations of Ghost crabs (200 million old model) successfully competing with Dingos (30 million year old model) opened the door to several insights about brain function, human reality, and the creative process.

Another novel idea about early human evolution is "semi speciation"

This idea is that humans radiated out into the widest possible range of environments and adapted as required by survival. Had they remained isolated they would have became separate species as did the bonobo /chimp development. However human remained mobile and retained sufficient cross fertility to recombine , bring the new adaptive genes with them.

Thus modern humans contain DNA from perhaps 20 -30 now extinct races.

Interbreeding with Neanderthal is well established and the consequent extinction perhaps inevitable as the strengths of both races combined.

Lots to chat about perhaps? Best Wishes Ron Horgan

Ron, interestingly your second thesis is one I have been advocating for at least a decade as the evidence points to that. What I call horizontal evolution. The first one goes back a long way of a brain mutation but fails as early signs of human creativity in South Africa discounts it. Yet, such activity is considered to go back to 100,000 years and no more. Symbolic behaviour in Neanderthals has not been confirmed although there are claims for other homo species.

The question of homo extinction raises the problem of why we are alone, the only one left.

Stanley I think that we are alone because we absorbed the libraries of adaptive experience that the extinct tribes contributed to the modern human.

This gave the modern humans additional tools for survival with the result we see?

The other homo species are mostly known from DNA sequences in our genomes so evidence of behaviour is unavailable . David Reich "Who we are and How we got here" summarises recent developments.

Possibly Ron, but it's being alone, the only species that is, which has caused us to consider ourselves more important than other species, to exaggerate our importance to and in the cosmos with all the problems caused. We even have religions that illustrate that importance with special ties to the deity. Although being alone provided us with less competition it also placed limitations on our understandings. In terms of horizontal evolution, we now have nowhere else to go.

Unfortunately Stanley ,the next stop on our destination train tour is Styx junction.

The existential challenge we now face is the clash between the instinctive biological drives necessary for survival at all stages of evolution, and the reality of a finite planet. The petrie dish is nearly full.

Its not an exaggerated sense of our own importance that is lethal , it's our own biology that needs to be controlled by our intelligence.

You have touched on the the major issues required for survival.

First rather than downplay the phenomena of self aware intelligent Homo sapiens in the universe, change perspective and realize that we are actually the universe itself come to life. We are active agents of the universe . Further we are connected to the eternally unknowable force that created the universe.

This second element is the belief that is essential for our survival as intelligent social animals.

These anthropocentric perspectives are what will give us the belief and hence disciplines to survive this ultimate evolutionary challenge.

This may look like the ranting of a broken down delusionist?

It's not. This is a hard edged analysis of our human dilemma and leads to a strategy for global survival. We have the human strengths and expert people to survive where perhaps every other advanced planetary civilization has failed.

ET is not out there.

If any readers here want to help build the future read my essays on Academia.

David Attenboroughs' " A Perfect Planet" series shows us the astonishingly beautiful world that we have been given. It is indeed sacred. A gift to be passed onto future generations with our blessings.

Google me and Academia to lift the despair you feel and see a way out of the lethal trap unthinking human blunders have built.

Best Wishes Ron Horgan

Creatividad

Economics and sex.

Lou

Thanks Stanley.

Lou