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Human Thermodynamics and Culture (I)

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Human-Earth System Dynamics

Abstract

Why did humans begin their first cultural change? This could likely happen only after humans—especially those who were the most physically inferior—found that the environment in which they were living had changed or that they could not compete with other, stronger carnivores. During this process, humans began to learn how to use simple tools and to create more complicated cultural traditions. As a result of population growth on the one hand and of the constraints in living spaces and resources available on the other hand, some groups of humans began to migrate out of Africa. Existing archaeological findings suggest that Homo sapiens existed in environmentally and geographically diverse areas. Of course, this has been the result of “natural selection” of human beings and has followed the so-called Win-Stay Lose-Shift principle. However, historians and anthropologists have highly simplified, if not dismissed, the biological factors that may have decided or influenced the dynamic behaviors of humans and civilizations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In what follows in this section, unless stated otherwise, all biographical information about Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is based on Packard (1901, Chap. I).

  2. 2.

    See Osborn (1896, pp. 159-60) and Coleman (1977, pp. 1–2). Although Lamarck was not the first thinker to advocate organic evolution, he was the first to develop a truly coherent evolutionary theory (Gould 2002, p. 187).

  3. 3.

    Cited from http://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/_example-katie.html. Accessed 2014-11-22.

  4. 4.

    See http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-jean-baptiste-lamarck-french-naturalist-science-source.html. Accessed 2014-11-22.

  5. 5.

    In what follows in this section, unless stated otherwise, all biographical information about Charles Robert Darwin is based on http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/darwinc/about.htm (accessed 2014-11-23).

  6. 6.

    See Darwin (1888, pp. 8–10) and Desmond and Moore (1991, p. 10) for more detailed evidence.

  7. 7.

    Cited from Mayr (1982, pp. 479–80).

  8. 8.

    See, for example, Roth et al. (2009), Arai et al. (2009), Hackett et al. (2013), and Bonduriansky (2012).

  9. 9.

    The following five paragraphs heavily draw on a Wikipedia article “Neoevolutionism,” though I have also checked the original references and made several revisions of and corrections to them.

  10. 10.

    Cited from Bowler (2003, p. 367).

  11. 11.

    Cited from Singer (2009).

  12. 12.

    Cited from Springer and Holley (2012, p. 94).

  13. 13.

    Based on Bower (January 27, 2011), Bowler et al. (2003), Croft (2002, p. 261), and Wells and Read (2002, pp. 138–40). Note that earlier human migration out of Africa included Homo erectus, followed by that of Homo antecessor into Europe and by Homo heidelbergensis, who was the likely ancestor of both modern humans and Neanderthals.

  14. 14.

    The differences in eating habits have been witnessed by the ancient teeth (Zaatari et al. 2016).

  15. 15.

    See Mellars (2006) and Gravina et al. (2005). In addition, a simulation based on a slight difference in the carrying capacity of the two groups indicates that the two groups would be found together only in a narrow zone, at the front of the Cro-Magnon immigration wave (Currat and Excoffier, 2004).

  16. 16.

    See, for example, Lovejoy (1988) and Hunt (1994).

  17. 17.

    See, for example, Diamond (1997, pp. 126–7) and Ehret (2002, pp. 64-75, 80-1, 87-8).

  18. 18.

    See Ehret (2002, pp. 82–4). In addition, most of southern Africa was occupied by Pygmy peoples and Khoisan who engaged in hunting and gathering, and some of the oldest rock art was produced by them (pp. 94–5).

  19. 19.

    Source: https://wikivisually.com/wiki/African_history (accessed 2017-12-29).

  20. 20.

    Note that the term for axe is now called as [fu] in Mandarin Chinese. However, it is unlikely that the somewhat twisted syllable “fu” existed in the proto-Chinese language since the ancient Chinese (even some modern Chinese including myself) could not correctly pronounce the letter ‘f’.

  21. 21.

    Clarke and Sokoloff (1999, p. 644). In addition, the energy consumption for the brain to simply survive is 0.1 calories per minute, while this value can be as high as 1.5 calories per minute during crossword puzzle-solving (Source: https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2006-07/mental-workout, accessed 2018-3-1).

  22. 22.

    See model at the end of Chap. 7 for a more comprehensive description of the conditions under which a civilization is born.

  23. 23.

    The thoughtful reviews about the effects of population history on spatial patterns of neutral variation in humans would have been conducted by Handley et al. (2007) and Novembre and Di Rienzo (2009).

  24. 24.

    Furthermore, it has been found that the original “Y-chromosomal Adam”-DNA sequencing has mutated rarely over 20,000 generations (source: https://www.cambridgedna.com/genealogy-dna-genetic-genealogy.php, accessed 2018-1-21) and that some genes only have mutation for every million years (Hahn et al., 2007).

  25. 25.

    See Schönemann (1997) and Mackintosh (2011, pp. 353–4) for more details about existing criticism of the IQ and its measurement.

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  1. Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, China

    Rongxing Guo

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Guo, R. (2019). Human Thermodynamics and Culture (I). In: Human-Earth System Dynamics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0547-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0547-4_2

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