Each stage of hominid organic evolution seems to have been accompanied by the major advances in Cultural Revolution. Because stone tools are relatively indestructible, much of early cultural evolution is represented by the evolution of tool industries. The importance of tools as molders of hominid evolution has been recognized for a long time. Upright posture, leaving the hands free to manipulate objects and carry things form long distances, certainly is dynamically connected with the adoption of tool use by early hominids. In order for a tool to be useful, one must have it with him when the moment arises to put it to work. This takes making the tool in advance – planning; walking on two legs to free one’s hands to carry the tool; and commitment to using the tool. Those parts of the human brain most needed for manipulating tools are well evolved. Aside from the ones mentioned, other highly developed areas include the frontal lobes that organize behaviour into sequences and the motor association areas that control the fingers and the thumbs. The hand itself is marvellously evolved, It combines the powerful curled – fingered grip with which heavy objects can be moved, with the delicate manipulations possible when small objects are held between the fingers and the thumb (and the ability to fully oppose the thumb to all the fingers is uniquely human. Thus, much of what we take for granted about man today is the result of natural selection operating on his ancestors, adapting them to an environment he himself has created (or began to create): tools. But culture is more than just tools.
Evolutionary Development of Brain and cognition power
There is a dramatic increase of the brain case as we approach specimens of Homo sapiens. This is indeed worth noting, and physical anthropologists have spent a great deal of time studying the rapid increase in brain size in the course of post-australopithecine evolution. The reasons are complicated. First, in general, the overall size of our ancestors increased at each evolutionary stage. We concluded that there were strong selective pressures for this increase in size, probably because a larger body size made it easier to hold and use tools, and also increased the amount of muscle available to hunters and foragers on long treks. But the brain grew larger, proportionately as did the body. It is an increase in the kinds of connections between brain cells that is apparently responsible for the emergence of new kinds of mental operations such as thinking and using language, operations that are fundamental to human existence. Scientists have been able to document that the tremendous growth in brain size, by carefully studying the contours of the insides of fossil brain cases, between the Australopithecus and Homo erectus was accompanied by an increase in size and complexity of the outside surface of the brain called the Cerebral Cortex. This expansion of the cortex is the most recent evolutionary development of the brain, and it is the cortex that is primarily associated with thinking and language use. This also provides us with the ability to pass messages back and forth directly between these association areas, to compare and contrast there different recognitions – in other words to think. In other words, regardless of why the anthropoids acquired these features, without them regular tool use – a preeminent specialty of our hominid ancestors as they evolved – could not have developed.
Evolution of Communication skills
One of the most important features of culture is language, which also profoundly influenced and was influenced by human evolution. There are three areas of brain that are highly evolved in the humans and appear to be crucial for human linguistic ability. One is called Broca’s area and is located toward the front of the dominant side of the brain. This area activates, among things, the muscles of the jaw, lips, tongue, and larynx. The second is Wernicke’s area by a large bundle of nerve fibers (called the Arcuate Fasciculus) and is the brain site where verbal comprehension takes place. The third area is the Angular Gyrus, situated next to Wernicke’s area serving as a link up between parts of the brain that receives stimuli from the sense organs of touch, hearing and sight. Man could not possibly speak without these brain areas. It is interesting to note that all three are located in the cortex – the “new” brain which, as already been emphasized is most evolved in humans and appears to have first approached its modern size and complexity in Homo erectus. The fact that all three are located in the cortex allows sensory inputs and verbal representations to be connected with each other without having to go through the “old” brain – especially the limbic system which activates such basic responses as aggression, fear, hunger and sexual arousal. Consequently, human beings can think, talk and experience the world without involving these “gut” level states. Other animals, including our primate relatives, have not developed these brain areas nearly as much as man has. Thus many important aspects of man brain’s seem to have evolved as speech specialization; and it can be reasonably supposed that verbal communication was so adaptive for the man’s ancestors, that strong selective pressures progressively moulded these changes. Certainly, language is a principle cornerstone of human existence.
Emergence of Cities, States and Civilizations
Humans lived in simple egalitarian societies. As the population of agricultural societies grew, increasingly complex political structures evolved to coordinate the activities of a larger number of people. A city can be defined as a central place that performs economic and political functions for the surrounding area. A state can be defined as an independent political unit that includes many communities in its territory with a centralized government that has the power to collect taxes, draft citizens for work and for war and enact and enforce laws. Civilization can be accurately used to mean that the society was characterized by the presence of cities and large towns and the inhabitants were citizens of some kind of common wealth. Archaeologists have identified several stages through which human societies passed before states appeared.
- The Bands : The basic unit of human social organization was a small egalitarian society called a band. The only subunit of the band was the family or a group of related families held together by kinship and marriage bonds. Leadership was informal, probably not resting for very long with any one person. The leader’s power came from force of personality rather than from laws or traditions defining the role and naming the person to assume it. Bands were and are the usual form of society among the hunting and gathering people who do not have a strong sense of territoriality. Owning and defending land would not make sense for people who were often moving from one area to another.
- The Tribes : A slightly larger, more complicated form of social organization called the tribe can be inferred from the archaeological record in the Near East. The tribe was larger than a band. It was made up of group of families related by common descent or by membership in a variety of kinship-based groups such as clans or lineages. The power of leaders was weak, with individual family heads being more important than anyone leader. Kinship groups seem to have been bound together for different reasons in different cultures. Lines of ancestral descent were becoming an important part of tribal life- evidence include skulls of many generations found buried under the floors of their descendents houses in Near eastern villages. There was little or no stratification, and division of labour was still largely by age and sex.
- The Chiefdom: A third stage of pre-state organization, the Chiefdom, first appeared around 7500 B.P. chiefdoms were probably theocracies, with the ruler or a member of his family serving as a high religious official. For the first time, the position of leader existed apart from the person who occupied. That is, his power came not from his personality, but from his position or role as leader. When a chief died, the role was filled by someone from the particular line of descent. Chiefdoms were characterized by large villages, among which some craft specialization existed. Some villages in the Near east, for example, worked only on Pottery others produced large amounts of copper goods. In Mesoamerica, some villages made magnetite mirrors, while others made shell ornaments. All villagers seem to have worked part-time at crafts as well as at farming. Signs of both activities can be found in the remains of houses whose members were part of chiefdom.
- The Emergence of State : Most anthropologist’s would agree that the following events mark the transition from chiefdom to state. Complex chiefdoms break up and collapse. Regulatory organizations change, and a formal, centralized, legal apparatus for governing emerges. Specialized economic activities become the function of particular groups. Territorial expansion follows the emergence of the state.