Did We Have A Burst Of Intelligence? It must have been very hard for our ancestors to chase down dangerous animals for food. You have to be amazed at the ingenuity they demonstrated. When they would find a herd, they would sometimes stampede some of them over a cliff, guaranteeing a supply of meat. Other times they would create a corral and a sort of channel forcing the animals to run into the channel and land up in the corral where they could be dealt with. While they were very clever this way, they didn’t seem to be very inventive in other ways. One only has to look at the many thousands of years between improving weapons for hunting. We seem to never have given the Neanderthals the credit they deserved until very lately. We never thought much of them and treated them slightly about the apes. Then we found out they could talk and this was a shock to the scientific community, but that was only the beginning. They practiced art and could start fires. Will we continue to find out more about them and perhaps they were not only the equal of modern humans, but even smarter than us? They were said to have greater brain capacity. Large brains don’t always equate with more intelligence. Some people believe for hundreds of thousands of years we went on our merry way just surviving then maybe 5 or 10 thousand years ago something happened to us. We became not only more inventive, but more inquisitive. We figured out how to create records with writing. Why did we suddenly feel the need for writing when we had no need for it for hundreds of thousands of years? Something stirred us on to more intellectual pursuits. Now we could tell other facts without actually being there in person. We began to build more complex structures even before that time. As I have said there is some indication that was about 20,000 years ago. Not all would agree with this time reference. I believe the Sphinx is one of those ancient structures and there are some scientists that agree with this based on the wear and tear on the object along with water erosion marks. What I believe is the ancient Egyptians renovated it about 4,300 years ago. Why were there so many different types of humans on this planet? That has always puzzled me and scientists keep finding more. It is almost like there was experimentation going on to get it right. Maybe another question is how come Homo sapiens became the dominant humans on the planet and how come there are no more types of humans developing? Some believe we are still evolving, not all of us, but some of us. It is not so much physical, but more to do with our brains. Are we developing powers and if we are is this how we are now advancing? Some ancient people seem to have been ahead of us in some parts of technology. Moving giant stones was one way they surpassed us. Some of these stones we would have no way of moving today, let alone in a society which relied only on man or animal power. Another way they surpassed us was somehow melting stones together. Giant stones have been found which have been fused together in structures. How were the temperatures necessary to do this achieved? The moving of heavy stones has a long history. The Stone Age lasted about 3.3 million years and for most of that time any human types who were around didn’t progress very much. The first use of moving heavy stones might have been in the building of prehistoric Dolmens. A Dolmen was a simple tomb with a huge rock set on two large rocks creating an artificial cave of sorts. Most of them date from about 4,000 B.C. It is amazing how many were built. It is said there are over 3,000 just in the Caucasus region of Russia. They can be found almost everywhere and it is amazing how people in far flung places learned how to build them. How were these huge stones moved, that is the key question? Can you imagine trying to lift a stone which weighed several tons or more so it could be placed atop two standing stones or more? The knowledge of how to build them even spread to places like Ireland. Suddenly Mesopotamia emerged. It was the first civilization we know of and they developed writing. In the scheme of things this was not that long ago. It was only about 6,300 years ago. People had decided to give up being hunter gathers and became city dwellers. The world had changed. Then other civilizations came along like India about 700 years later, Egypt 900 years later, and China 2,000 years later. Around 1200 B.C. Greece was founded and eventually became the home of free thinkers and great inventors. The Greeks were probably the smartest race around in those times. There were many deep thinkers trying to figure out our place In the universe and creating marvelous things like the first steam engine, robots and many other things. This was called the classical period. They even introduced democracy to the world. Why is it that civilization seems to be the key to intelligent curiosity and inventiveness? Does putting people together in one area aid the pursuit of the sciences, engineering and so forth? Does the fact that you can put people together who have the same interests have something to do with the advances which were made? When the Germans in World War 2 decided to put many of their scientists and engineers together at Peenemunde, the result was an incredible advancement in weapons. They allowed them to exchange ideas with each other verses the idea of compartmentalization where each person only knows his piece of the work, which is used in the United States and some other countries. I don’t claim to know the reasons for the sudden burst of intelligence we humans seemed to have, but I do think it is obvious we had it. I also know we are advancing in great leaps. A hundred years from now, if we survive, we will be able to look back and consider this the technological Stone Age.
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