Late Middle Paleolithic Adaptations and Their Possible Consequences

Abstract

I proposed a model based on certain empirical generalizations drawn from the extant lithic and paleontological data of the early Wiirm of the Levant-a model which, it was hoped, could explain the distributions observed. Means were proposed for testing the adequacy of the sample on which the generalizations were made, although testing the model itself would involve a more complex and sophisticated series of tests. What I propose to do in this paper can only be termed speculation; my justification for this rather dangerous game is my understanding of the purpose of this symposium-to explore in a free-wheeling fashion the implications of some current notions on human evolution. I will summarize briefly the substance of my earlier paper, and then explore some related problems dealing with the nature of the biological and cultural changes from Neanderthal to fully modern man. Anyone rash enough to engage in this game of speculation had best make explicit the assumptions and theoretical underpinnings of his argument; the following paragraphs are designed to do just that. In most general terms, the theoretical approach used here is the application of general systems theory to human evolution. The study of human evolution is the study of the development of human behavioral systems; and the human behavioral system is composed of two necessarily related subsystems: the biological and the cultural. Culture is defined in Leslie White's terms as man's extra-somatic means of adaptation (White, 1959)-all those means of coping with the external world that are learned and not genetically determined. Culture in this sense is predicated on the capacity to symbol, and fully human culture must be distinguished from the protoculture observed by Goodall and others in the behavior of the nonhuman primates. It is clear that culture has been the principal means of human adaptation for at least half a million years; it is culture and the consistent use of cultural means for solving problems of environmental differences that have allowed man to remain the highly generalized single species he is. Man is viewed as one component in an ecosystem, and the nature of the linkages between the human species and the environment are complex. Like all other forms of life, man survives by capturing free energy from the environment and harnessing it for his own needs of nourishment, heat retention, and the like. It can be demonstrated that the history of the evolution of human cultural systems is the history of increasingly efficient means of capturing and harnessing energy. In so doing, man has brought into being a highly complex information system based on the use of symbols-language-and has developed many sophisticated means for extending the range of symbolic communication. Within this framework, evolutionary change is viewed as structural change in the matter/ energy relations obtaining between the human species and its environment; such structural change can bring about new and more complex kinds of organization both between the human species and its environment and among members of the human species themselves. The former kind of change occurs within the economic system, and the latter within the social system. At a higher level of analysis, both of these systems can be viewed as subsystems of the cultural system. All this defining of subsystems and their interrelationships is intended as more than just a new and complicated verbiage; it is intended to convey the idea that culture is embedded in man's ecological relationships and cannot fruit