Prehistory

We can dig up known archaeological sites and look for artifacts, and then extrapolate from other, extant societies with a similar level of technology.

>>2944236
This basically. At some point historians need to let the archaeologists, anthropologists, primatologists, etc. take over.

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>>2944236
>>2944244
But what if there are tools but little to no cultural artifacts present, such as in the case of archaic homo (heidelbergensis, erectus, etc)?

Behavioral modernity is believed to have arisen only 40,000–50,000 years ago, so up till then everything mostly may have been somewhat carnal and instinctual except for the differences with the rest of the animal kingdom in tool use.

I like A Species Odyssey because it's somewhat believable even if it is a bit dramatized. Here's a version of the original French release.
https://youtu.be/SL2sP8tHgKU

>>2946159
Do you have that doc in english? Or with English subs?

Also the idea of pre-historic men living with other species of hominids and ice age monsters is really cool and I have no idea why its never been touched in any film/novel.

>>2946166
Bit crappy quality, but better than the version on dailymotion (bad translation).
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL88904B377D0F09DB

>>2946166
They do but the quality is worse. Better download a torrent in that case. There's an español version of similar quality on yt also.

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>>2946166
There are a few, but they stray more towards smut or "humans are the real monsters" shit. This might be a good movie to look into, got Desmond Morris for the body language.

>>2946209
Yeah I've seen Quest for Fire and it was alright for what it was.

I wrote a short story when I was in HS about one the first homo-sapiens discovering the concept of a God or Gods by going through a series of adventures involving shrooms, hunts, and war. I'm just surprised there haven't been similar stories.

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>>2946406
Did one about a young Ergaster male encountering a territorial male paranthropus "mourning" the loss of its mate. Eventually, he evades it and makes it back to his clan, where a female is waiting for him (kinda hinted at the beginings of monogamy, but left it somewhat ambiguous).

Was also planning on writing something for a poetry competition (prize money), involving an orrorin "Adam" of sorts, but it never really went anywhere.

>>2944236
>>2944244
Why would they have any artifacts outside of bones. They weren't sentient. Assuming OP meant before homo-sapiens gained sentience ~10,000 years ago.

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>>2946811
>sentience
Every aninal with an advanced nervous system has sone form of sentience, anon. You're thinking of sapience, which most likely has been in our lineage since erectus/habilis, perhaps extending all the way back to the australopiths.

>>2944210

Look at africans/australians is the actual answer

Alot of places were basically living as pre-humans when discovered by europeans

PLaces like the sentinel islands are like a time capsule to pre-human pasts

>>2948498
Do we have any Sentinel Islanders' remains?

I'd be interested in seeing them

>>2948498

not really since those are entirely different genetic offshoots in entirely different environments. evidence from as far back as the Sahara being a grassland shows far more sophistication than those quite literal subhumans living on islands like that.

>>2949715

Maybe in some museum, but access to the island is pretty much not going to happen again.

>>2944457
We can assume that such societies probably weren't all that into art and due to how primitive their tools were we can tell they didn't have much brain power to even think about creating art or having much of a culture aside from eating to survive and fucking to reproduce.

>>2949715
>>2949732

If all we need is remains it won't be an issue.

>>2946811
Got to be the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen. Humans started using tools and fire (pretty much the two things that separate us from any animal) like 250,000 years ago

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>>2952340
>ancient stone tools have been discovered dating to 3.3 million years ago
>Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 0.2 to 1.7 million years ago (Mya).

>>2946811
>>2946850
>>2952340
>>2952690
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity

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>>2957873
>Shea (2011) outlines a variety of problems with this concept, arguing instead for "behavioral variability", which, according to the author, better describes the archaeological record. The use of trait lists, according to Shea (2011), runs the risk of taphonomic bias, where some sites may yield more artifacts than others despite similar populations; as well, trait lists can be ambiguous in how behaviors may be empirically recognized in the archaeological record.

>>2951115
>Though it is definitely not a manufactured object, it has been suggested that some australopithecine might have recognized it as a symbolic face, in possibly the earliest example of symbolic thinking or aesthetic sense in the human heritage, and brought the pebble back to the cave. This would make it a candidate for the oldest known manuport.

>>2944210
We barely know anything about the Median Empire, we only know it existed through third party evidence. What makes you think we can somehow figure out a culture or society that left behind no evidence except some bones and maybe stone tools of unknown function?

>>2946481
>Ergaster mourning
Ergasters are more devolved mentally than the first humans meaning they dont have the capacity to feel depression or sorrow. Instead they were unhinged violent psychotic savages that killed eachother all the time and couldnt figure out why this is a problem ever.

It truely is horrifying to know that humans were once completely evil at a certain point in time a long ago.

>>2957981
If their brains were the cause of that aggression then they wouldn't be evil. Evil is a choice.

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>>2957981
No, the paranthropus was mourning, not the ergaster. Also, I'd like to know the source of that claim.

>>2958033
Evil is a behavior caused by

Low Empathy + Pleasure from Suffering = Evil
High Empathy + Pleasure from Altruism=Good

Humans only recently evolved empathy but had pleasure from suffering since they were bipedal hairy apes meaning early humans were evil.

>>2958081
sounds like bullshit. source very much required. empathy can be found in many mammals not just humans. i would imagine it's in birds too

>>2958092
Not even chimps have empathy anon, its very recent in our brain.

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>>2958111
What about bonobos? Not to mention most, if not all of the fossils found indicate creatures with very little aggression (small canines) and a more gracile bauplan (ardipithecus and orrorin, possibly sahelanthopus).

>>2957870
wew

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>>2958125
Sorry, that's the cropped version, here's the original.

>>2958111
Chimps have empathy. Chimps even have primitive spirituality and social structure

>>2946481
>there are fanficcers for hominid apemen
cringe as fuck.

>>2958204
Better than craving young Greco-Roman boipucci.

>>2958172
Chimps have no empathy fucktard, chimps regularly kill eachother for no reason.
>>2958125
Bonobos are rapist so no empathy.

>>2958235
Not for no reason, Chimps kill for any reason a Human would, war, usurpations, or domestic spats.

>>2957870
Sexy

>>2958225
I'm not sure about that. One is depraved, the other is pure autism...

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>>2958235
But they show no signs of force. All parties appear willing, hence no violence ensues.

I honestly can't tell if you're one of those people who say act strictly like one species of Pan, be it paniscus or troglodytes. Both are wrong, both are extremes due to the environment in which they live. Our time on the savanna encouraged cooperation not confrontation.

I think this belongs more on /sci/

>>2958235
humans are rapists so no empathy

>>2948498
>Africans

No. 99% of all hunter-gatherer culture in that continent is extinct. As for the Adamanese islands? Maybe.

>>2957981
Chimpanzees mourn and have empathy dude. Homo ergaster was more than likely just the earliest members of the species Homo erectus, as the similarities are too strong. Are you saying that Homo erectus was less intelligent than a fucking chimpanzee?

Homo sapiens was apparently 300,000 years old.

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>>2960791
>homo sapiens
Archaic sapiens, not modern.

>>2949750
This.

We practically have to do this for more "recent" civilizations and lost people, if the evidence isn''t there than there's not much we can roll with.

>>2960791
Yes, but we already knew it was older than that, since Neanderthal was older than 200,000, and Neanderthal is near universally considered sapiens now

>>2961126
Since when? If Neanderthals are Sapiens, then Heidelbergensis should be as well.

>>2960791
Not according to the paper that you're talking about. The paper classifies that skull as sapiens, but lists a number of physical features which clearly make it non-sapiens (or at best, some kind of transitional species that hasn't been described yet). As far as I've seen, they haven't really explained their classification yet, except vague comments about the origin of the species. That means what they have probably can't be classified as a sapiens by current metrics, and the next issue of Nature will probably feature some kind of criticism.

>>2957981
> Instead they were unhinged violent psychotic savages that killed eachother all the time and couldnt figure out why this is a problem ever.

You're gonna need to source this.

This is a good thread.

>>2946799
Prehistoric warfare seems so brutal

>>2957870
thicc

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>>2973754
Family life was pretty bad, too.

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>Neanderthals used fires and large animal bones to honor their dead rather than flowers
Brutal

>>2974754
sounds pretty nice

thread theme
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I remember..