Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1994 - 169

For

The

Triumph
by JOHN

IS
HUMANKIND
its
impending
looking
extinction straight in
the eye. "Is Humanity
SUDDENLY,
Suicidal?" asks Edward O.
Wilson, Baird Professor of
Science at Harvard, in The
New YorkTimesMagazine. His
answer: You bet your life!
Elsewhere in The Times there
are equally dour observations
from Princeton astrophysicist
J. Richard Gott, III, who cites
the "Copernican principle"
that earth does not enjoy special favors in the solar system
where the sun reigns, and
therefore, by implication, neither does humankind. In fact,
says Gott, at the rate humans
are multiplying themselves
and diminishing their environment,
we had better seek habitation elsewhere in the galaxy while we still
have a chance.
For durability, humankind was
much more impressive in its fossil
days. It wasn't easy for Homo erectus
to leave the relative comfort of
Africa 1,000,000 years ago, walk
around the Mediterranean Sea, and
settle in the Old World. But erectus
managed to stick it out so well that
it evolved into the earliest sapiens by
about 400,000 years ago.
With the waxing and waning of
glaciation to the north, and the
fluctuations of climate north and
east of the Mediterranean, sapiens
had to adapt, culturally and physically, to a "temperate" environment
of some extremes. So, sapiens neanderthalensis came along with thick
bones, powerful muscles, and a
physique that only a Neanderthal
could really appreciate. That was
about 125,000 years ago. Then it
happened. About 35,000 years ago
neanderthalensisdeparted, and sapiens
alone remained, so impressive to
modern anthropologists that they
called the remarkable
species
84 Archaeology

of
L.

Fossil

Homo

COTTER

trails and tarried in plant
food localities. Given the
paucity of rock-shelter evidence, moderns can only surmise what life was like for
early humans. A few flaked
stones and their conjectural
uses are about all that remains to tell the tale.
The thought of Homo erectus and those other stalwarts
of the pr ^-sapienshomodays in
Eurasia more than 500,000
years ago surviving birth,
childhood, and the most demanding adulthood, and facing early death, all evidently
without the means for making fire, boggles the mind.
BY PHILIP ANDERSON
ILLUSTRATION
Consider surviving the winter
by hunting fresh meat or savsapiens sapiens- not just "wise" but ing vegetable gleanings while doing
without fire, depending on nests of
"wise wise" - the best to date.
Which leads me to wonder what gathered wood or grass and mud for
shelter, or huddling under an eroded
sapiens sapiens will be up to next.
Will the twenty-first century human
pocket in a cliff, if one were handy, all
become sapiens sapiens sapiens ? By the while feeding babies and small
2050 there may be more than
children, caring for them in their
11,000,000,000 humans cluttering
helplessness, and surviving to a ripe
the planet. With that many people age of 25 or a little more - with luck.
You can't fault homofor persistence.
in the world, we may have outSo what can the study of the
smarted ourselves. It might be necsparse and deductively evoked annals
essary to get back to homo basics,
of the humbler homosand early sapiens
and knock off a couple of sapiens.
When you come to think about it, do for us? Make us a bit reflective,
the early homobunch, those pr ^-sapi- even humble, in the face of potenens aspirants, were far ahead of tially disastrous changes in the lifemodern humans in survival tech- ways of sapiens sapiens. We have reniques, unaided as they were by made our world in the space of the
high-tech mobility, shelter, and food last 120 years, and continue to
production. Consider how homo evi- change the human environment and
dently began that spectacular and the way we live in more and more
nervy colonization of Eurasia, the drastic fashion. Is that good for the
Near East, and thither Asia before species in the long run? How long will
the run be, for that matter? The
being able to produce fire when
needed. No anthropologist today is twenty-first century will probably tell.
quite sure if and when pr ^-sapiens Stick around - as long as you can.
folk got the hang of using friction or
sparks to ignite tinder, or how to in- John L. Cotter is curatoremerìtusof
American Historical Archaeologyat the
sulate and carry burning embers
from stopping place to stopping
University Museum of Archaeologyand
followed
the
as
place
they
game Anthropology,UniversityofPennsylvania.

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1994

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