If you're a religious person, and don't like the idea of human evolution, you might want to skip this one.

Or else, think of the ideas here as a hypothetical - what if you found legitimate skulls that looked *almost exactly human, but not quite. And what if you invented and trusted a technology that was able to determine that this skull was x number of years old? If you took it as a solid fact, then an abundance of interesting ideas come out of it.

Note: this is not meant to be a technical detailing of human evolution, but rather just a laying out of ideas and concepts to come to some interesting conclusions.

Rough Timeline of Progression of Human Evolution

Here are some major steps in the evolution of humans:

  • Human / Chimpanzee Split - ~8.5 million years ago
  • Bipedalism (=standing on 2 legs) - ~7 million years ago
  • First use of fire as a tool - ~1.75 million years ago
  • First modern humans - ~200 thousand years ago
  • First use of clothing - ~100 thousand years ago
  • First use of language (that wasn't just a repertoire of sounds or grunts) - ~70 thousand years ago
  • First planting of crops and taming of animals - ~10 thousand years ago
  • First use of written language - ~5 thousand years ago
  • First "civilizations" - ~4 thousand years ago
  • First use of computers - ~80 years ago
  • First use of artificial ideation / cognition - ~5 years ago

Note the exponential looking growth, with huge periods of little to no change, then things happening faster and faster.

What did Ancient Humans do all day?

If we teleported back in time, before the advent of language, to observe a group of humans, what would we think of them? What would these people do all day? Would we consider them thinking concious beings?

We can suppose that much of their time would be devoted to look for food for themselves.

  • Other non-language using animals, like chimpanzees can pack hunt without consious planing and language communication
  • Perhaps these humans were lazy oppertunists - they stayed in relatively safe spots, with somewhat predictable food sources, conserving as much energy as they could
  • Once a group's population became too large, infighting might have caused a small group to leave the territory in search of another safe space of their own

Once the first use of crop planting, and animal husbandry started (~10k years ago), things became much more interesting. Once food wasn't a daily pressing issue, what would humans do all day? Perhaps they would socialize more, and work on building safe places. "Civilization"" would grow exponentially from here. People would spend more time "thinking". These people would seem much less alien to us.

Idea: If we teleported a newborn infant from 200k year ago, and raised them in a modern society, they would likely grow up to be a completely normal "civilized" person.

The Importance of Language

Without language, humans may have never had the exponential growth that they did.

Perhaps they would always be living in the safe spots, awaiting opportunities for food. Even if food was abundant, perhaps they would be doing the same kinds of things that gorillas or chimpanzees do at the zoo. Would we think the human is conscious (Having complex internal thoughts)? Probably not

The ability to communicate specific and complex ideas with each other is so powerful.

Language as a Prerequisite to Consciousness

Lets again consider a human before ~70k years ago. What is going on in his mind?

Perhaps they have some vague ideas - thoughts of a specific type of food, or another specific human. Perhaps they would still "dream", since many animals do. But what more is a dream than a sequence of vague ideas that we later try to make logical connections about?

But once you have language, your ability to have complex ideas grows exponentially. It compounds with the more vocabulary you have. You can have an "internal monologue" that we sometimes think of as consciousness. Can you really have that without a language framework?

Closing Thoughts

Even though I studied human evolution, language and cognition in school, I never fully appreciated these ideas - I suppose when you're in school, many of us are mainly focused on getting good grades, and we take this information for granted rather than deeply exploring the topics.

When you start researching and reflecting on these ideas yourself from "first principals", you grow a huge appreciation for your own history. Consider that you have millions (or billions) of ancestors that would not be able to comprehend the ideas that you might have.

It's no wonder that artificial thinking machines developed with language - it is an incredibly powerful tool.

Could humans unlock another tool as powerful as language? Perhaps augmentations to the brain that enables thinking of even more complex thoughts?

We spend so much of our time looking forward into the future. But sometimes, it's very interesting to look backward, and see the actual rate of exponential growth in things happening in our history. An overwhelming majority of our history was just groups of individuals, sitting around in relatively safe spaces, waiting for food opportunities, and trying to conserve as much energy as possible.

One more thing

I am definitely not good at writing yet. The thoughts seem much more rich and elegant in my mind. When I try to write them down, I see all of the logical flaws and edge cases, or inadequate explanations. While language is incredibly powerful, it's sometimes difficult to distill the rich vague ideas and connections in our minds to a constrained series of words that others may read and understand. I wonder how other writers deal with this. Requires more practice I suppose...