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There are clear limits to the size of groups that can be formed and maintained in such a way. In order to function, all members of a group must know each other intimately.
Two chimpanzees who have never met, never fought, and never engaged in mutual grooming will not know whether they can trust one another, whether it would be worthwhile to help one another, and which of them ranks higher. Under natural conditions, a typical chimpanzee troop consists of about twenty to fifty individuals. As the number of chimpanzees in a troop increases, the social order destabilises, eventually leading to a rupture and the formation of a new troop by some of the animals.
Only in a handful of cases have zoologists observed groups larger than a hundred. Separate groups seldom cooperate, and tend to compete for territory and food. Humans, like chimps, have social instincts that enabled our ancestors to form friendships and hierarchies, and to hunt or fight together. However, like the social instincts of chimps, those of humans were adapted only for small intimate groups.
When the group grew too large, its social order destabilised and the band split. Even if a particularly fertile valley could feed archaic Sapiens, there was no way that so many strangers could live together.
How could they agree who should be leader, who should hunt where, or who should mate with whom? In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. But even gossip has its limits.
Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than human beings. Even today, a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number. Below this threshold, communities, businesses, social networks and military units can maintain themselves based mainly on intimate acquaintance and rumour-mongering.
There is no need for formal ranks, titles and law books to keep order. A small family business can survive and flourish without a board of directors, a CEO or an accounting department. But once the threshold of individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel.
If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust. How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions?
The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation — whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe — is rooted in common myths that exist only in peoples collective imagination.
Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths.
Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights — and the money paid out in fees.
Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.
What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis. Take for example the world of business corporations. Modern business-people and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales. The legend of Peugeot affords us a good example.
An icon that somewhat resembles the Stadel lion-man appears today on cars, trucks and motorcycles from Paris to Sydney. Peugeot began as a small family business in the village of Valentigney, just kilometres from the Stadel Cave. Today the company employs about , people worldwide, most of whom are complete strangers to each other. These strangers cooperate so effectively that in Peugeot produced more than 1. There are many Peugeot vehicles, but these are obviously not the company.
Even if every Peugeot in the world were simultaneously junked and sold for scrap metal, Peugeot SA would not disappear. It would continue to manufacture new cars and issue its annual report. Even then, the company could borrow money, hire new employees, build new factories and buy new machinery.
Peugeot has managers and shareholders, but neither do they constitute the company. All the managers could be dismissed and all its shares sold, but the company itself would remain intact. If a judge were to mandate the dissolution of the company, its factories would remain standing and its workers, accountants, managers and shareholders would continue to live — but Peugeot SA would immediately vanish.
In short, Peugeot SA seems to have no essential connection to the physical world. Does it really exist? Peugeot is a figment of our collective imagination. But it exists as a legal entity. Just like you or me, it is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates. It can open a bank account and own property. It pays taxes, and it can be sued and even prosecuted separately from any of the people who own or work for it.
Homo sapiens lived for untold millennia without them. During most of recorded history property could be owned only by flesh-and-blood humans, the kind that stood on two legs and had big brains. If in thirteenth-century France Jean set up a wagon-manufacturing workshop, he himself was the business. If Jean had borrowed 1, gold coins to set up his workshop and the business failed, he would have had to repay the loan by selling his private property — his house, his cow, his land.
He might even have had to sell his children into servitude. He was fully liable, without limit, for all obligations incurred by his workshop. If you had lived back then, you would probably have thought twice before you opened an enterprise of your own.
And indeed this legal situation discouraged entrepreneurship. People were afraid to start new businesses and take economic risks. This is why people began collectively to imagine the existence of limited liability companies. Such companies were legally independent of the people who set them up, or invested money in them, or managed them.
Over the last few centuries such companies have become the main players in the economic arena, and we have grown so used to them that we forget they exist only in our imagination. Despite their having no real bodies, the American legal system treats corporations as legal persons, as if they were flesh-and-blood human beings. And so did the French legal system back in , when Armand Peugeot, who had inherited from his parents a metalworking shop that produced springs, saws and bicycles, decided to go into the automobile business.
To that end, he set up a limited liability company. He named the company after himself, but it was independent of him. If one of the cars broke down, the buyer could sue Peugeot, but not Armand Peugeot. If the company borrowed millions of francs and then went bust, Armand Peugeot did not owe its creditors a single franc.
The loan, after all, had been given to Peugeot, the company, not to Armand Peugeot, the Homo sapiens. Armand Peugeot died in Peugeot, the company, is still alive and well.
How exactly did Armand Peugeot, the man, create Peugeot, the company? It all revolved around telling stories, and convincing people to believe them.
Seeing that the priest had properly and assiduously observed all the procedures, millions of devout French Catholics behaved as if God really existed in the consecrated bread and wine.
In the case of Peugeot SA the crucial story was the French legal code, as written by the French parliament. According to the French legislators, if a certified lawyer followed all the proper liturgy and rituals, wrote all the required spells and oaths on a wonderfully decorated piece of paper, and affixed his ornate signature to the bottom of the document, then hocus pocus — a new company was incorporated.
When in Armand Peugeot wanted to create his company, he paid a lawyer to go through all these sacred procedures. Once the lawyer had performed all the right rituals and pronounced all the necessary spells and oaths, millions of upright French citizens behaved as if the Peugeot company really existed. Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it.
Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies?
Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals. Over the years, people have woven an incredibly complex network of stories. Within this network, fictions such as Peugeot not only exist, but also accumulate immense power. An imagined reality is not a lie. I lie when I say that there is a lion near the river when I know perfectly well that there is no lion there.
There is nothing special about lies. Green monkeys and chimpanzees can lie. This alarm conveniently frightened away a fellow monkey who had just found a banana, leaving the liar all alone to steal the prize for itself.
Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world. The sculptor from the Stadel Cave may sincerely have believed in the existence of the lion-man guardian spirit. Some sorcerers are charlatans, but most sincerely believe in the existence of gods and demons. Most millionaires sincerely believe in the existence of money and limited liability companies.
Most human-rights activists sincerely believe in the existence of human rights. No one was lying when, in , the UN demanded that the Libyan government respect the human rights of its citizens, even though the UN, Libya and human rights are all figments of our fertile imaginations. Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens has thus been living in a dual reality.
On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as gods, nations and corporations. Bypassing the Genome The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively.
But it also did something more. Since large-scale human cooperation is based on myths, the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths — by telling different stories. Under the right circumstances myths can change rapidly. In the French population switched almost overnight from believing in the myth of the divine right of kings to believing in the myth of the sovereignty of the people.
Consequently,ever since the Cognitive Revolution Homo sapiens has been able to revise its behaviour rapidly in accordance with changing needs. This opened a fast lane of cultural evolution, bypassing the traffic jams of genetic evolution.
Speeding down this fast lane, Homo sapiens soon far outstripped all other human and animal species in its ability to cooperate. The behaviour of other social animals is determined to a large extent by their genes.
DNA is not an autocrat. Animal behaviour is also influenced by environmental factors and individual quirks. Nevertheless, in a given environment, animals of the same species will tend to behave in a similar way.
For example, common chimpanzees have a genetic tendency to live in hierarchical groups headed by an alpha male. Members of a closely related chimpanzee species, bonobos, usually live in more egalitarian groups dominated by female alliances. Female common chimpanzees cannot take lessons from their bonobo relatives and stage a feminist revolution. Male chimps cannot gather in a constitutional assembly to abolish the office of alpha male and declare that from here on out all chimps are to be treated as equals.
For similar reasons, archaic humans did not initiate any revolutions. As far as we can tell, changes in social patterns, the invention of new technologies and the settlement of alien habitats resulted from genetic mutations and environmental pressures more than from cultural initiatives.
This is why it took humans hundreds of thousands of years to make these steps. Two million years ago, genetic mutations resulted in the appearance of a new human species called Homo erectus. Its emergence was accompanied by the development of a new stone tool technology, now recognised as a defining feature of this species. As long as Homo erectus did not undergo further genetic alterations, its stone tools remained roughly the same — for close to 2 million years!
In contrast, ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have been able to change their behaviour quickly, transmitting new behaviours to future generations without any need of genetic or environmental change. As a prime example, consider the repeated appearance of childless elites, such as the Catholic priesthood, Buddhist monastic orders and Chinese eunuch bureaucracies. The existence of such elites goes against the most fundamental principles of natural selection, since these dominant members of society willingly give up procreation.
This abstinence does not result from unique environmental conditions such as a severe lack of food or want of potential mates. Nor is it the result of some quirky genetic mutation. In other words, while the behaviour patterns of archaic humans remained fixed for tens of thousands of years, Sapiens could transform their social structures, the nature of their interpersonal relations, their economic activities and a host of other behaviours within a decade or two.
Consider a resident of Berlin, born in and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same. In a one-on-one brawl, a Neanderthal would probably have beaten a Sapiens.
Neanderthals could share information about the whereabouts of lions, but they probably could not tell — and revise — stories about tribal spirits. Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenges.
Archaeologists excavating 30,year-old Sapiens sites in the European heartland occasionally find there seashells from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. In all likelihood, these shells got to the continental interior through long-distance trade between different Sapiens bands. Neanderthal sites lack any evidence of such trade. Each group manufactured its own tools from local materials.
The Catholic alpha male abstains from sexual intercourse and childcare, even though there is no genetic or ecological reason for him to do so.
Another example comes from the South Pacific. Sapiens bands that lived on the island of New Ireland, north of New Guinea, used a volcanic glass called obsidian to manufacture particularly strong and sharp tools.
New Ireland, however, has no natural deposits of obsidian. Laboratory tests revealed that the obsidian they used was brought from deposits on New Britain, an island kilometres away. Some of the inhabitants of these islands must have been skilled navigators who traded from island to island over long distances. Yet the fact is that no animal other than Sapiens engages in trade, and all the Sapiens trade neworks about which we have detailed evidence were based on fictions.
Trade cannot exist without trust, and it is very difficult to trust strangers. The global trade network of today is based on our trust in such fictional entities as the dollar, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the totemic trademarks of corporations. If archaic Sapiens believing in such fictions traded shells and obsidian, it stands to reason that they could also have traded information, thus creating a much denser and wider knowledge network than the one that served Neanderthals and other archaic humans.
Hunting techniques provide another illustration of these differences. Neanderthals usually hunted alone or in small groups. Sapiens, on the other hand, developed techniques that relied on cooperation between many dozens of individuals, and perhaps even between different bands. One particularly effective method was to surround an entire herd of animals, such as wild horses, then chase them into a narrow gorge, where it was easy to slaughter them en masse.
If all went according to plan, the bands could harvest tons of meat, fat and animal skins in a single afternoon of collective effort, and either consume these riches in a giant potlatch, or dry, smoke or in Arctic areas freeze them for later usage.
Archaeologists have discovered sites where entire herds were butchered annually in such ways. There are even sites where fences and obstacles were erected in order to create artificial traps and slaughtering grounds. We may presume that Neanderthals were not pleased to see their traditional hunting grounds turned into Sapiens-controlled slaughterhouses.
However, if violence broke out between the two species, Neanderthals were not much better off than wild horses. Fifty Neanderthals cooperating in traditional and static patterns were no match for versatile and innovative Sapiens.
And even if the Sapiens lost the first round, they could quickly invent new stratagems that would enable them to win the next time. What happened in the Cognitive Revolution? New ability Wider consequences Planning and carrying out The ability to transmit larger quantities of information complex actions, such as avoiding about the world surrounding Homo sapiens lions and hunting bison The ability to transmit larger quantities of information Larger and more cohesive groups, about Sapiens social relationships numbering up to individuals a.
Cooperation between very The ability to transmit information about things that do large numbers of strangers not really exist, such as tribal spirits, nations, limited b. The Cognitive Revolution is accordingly the point when history declared its independence from biology. From the Cognitive Revolution onwards, historical narratives replace biological theories as our primary means of explaining the development of Homo sapiens.
To understand the rise of Christianity or the French Revolution, it is not enough to comprehend the interaction of genes, hormones and organisms. It is necessary to take into account the interaction of ideas, images and fantasies as well. This does not mean that Homo sapiens and human culture became exempt from biological laws.
We are still animals, and our physical, emotional and cognitive abilities are still shaped by our DNA. Our societies are built from the same building blocks as Neanderthal or chimpanzee societies, and the more we examine these building blocks — sensations, emotions, family ties — the less difference we find between us and other apes.
It is, however, a mistake to look for the differences at the level of the individual or the family. One on one, even ten on ten, we are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees. Significant differences begin to appear only when we cross the threshold of individuals, and when we reach 1,—2, individuals, the differences are astounding. If you tried to bunch together thousands of chimpanzees into Tiananmen Square, Wall Street, the Vatican or the headquarters of the United Nations, the result would be pandemonium.
By contrast, Sapiens regularly gather by the thousands in such places. Together, they create orderly patterns — such as trade networks, mass celebrations and political institutions — that they could never have created in isolation.
The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups.
This glue has made us the masters of creation. Of course, we also needed other skills, such as the ability to make and use tools. Yet tool- making is of little consequence unless it is coupled with the ability to cooperate with many others. How is it that we now have intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads, whereas 30, years ago we had only sticks with flint spearheads?
Physiologically, there has been no significant improvement in our tool-making capacity over the last 30, years. Albert Einstein was far less dexterous with his hands than was an ancient hunter-gatherer. However, our capacity to cooperate with large numbers of strangers has improved dramatically. The ancient flint spearhead was manufactured in minutes by a single person, who relied on the advice and help of a few intimate friends.
The production of a modern nuclear warhead requires the cooperation of millions of strangers all over the world — from the workers who mine the uranium ore in the depths of the earth to theoretical physicists who write long mathematical formulas to describe the interactions of subatomic particles.
Biology sets the basic parameters for the behaviour and capacities of Homo sapiens. The whole of history takes place within the bounds of this biological arena.
However, this arena is extraordinarily large, allowing Sapiens to play an astounding variety of games. Thanks to their ability to invent fiction, Sapiens create more and more complex games, which each generation develops and elaborates even further. Consequently, in order to understand how Sapiens behave, we must describe the historical evolution of their actions.
Referring only to our biological constraints would be like a radio sports-caster who, attending the World Cup football championships, offers his listeners a detailed description of the playing field rather than an account of what the players are doing. What games did our Stone Age ancestors play in the arena of history? As far as we know, the people who carved the Stadel lion-man some 30, years ago had the same physical, emotional and intellectual abilities we have.
What did they do when they woke up in the morning? What did they eat for breakfast — and lunch? What were their societies like? Did they have monogamous relationships and nuclear families?
Did they have ceremonies, moral codes, sports contests and religious rituals? Did they fight wars? The next chapter takes a peek behind the curtain of the ages, examining what life was like in the millennia separating the Cognitive Revolution from the Agricultural Revolution.
English, Hindi and Chinese are all variants of Sapiens language. Apparently, even at the time of the Cognitive Revolution, different Sapiens groups had different dialects. For nearly the entire history of our species, Sapiens lived as foragers. The past years, during which ever increasing numbers of Sapiens have obtained their daily bread as urban labourers and office workers, and the preceding 10, years, during which most Sapiens lived as farmers and herders, are the blink of an eye compared to the tens of thousands of years during which our ancestors hunted and gathered.
The flourishing field of evolutionary psychology argues that many of our present-day social and psychological characteristics were shaped during this long pre-agricultural era.
Even today, scholars in this field claim, our brains and minds are adapted to a life of hunting and gathering. Our eating habits, our conflicts and our sexuality are all the result of the way our hunter-gatherer minds interact with our current post-industrial environment, with its mega- cities, aeroplanes, telephones and computers.
This environment gives us more material resources and longer lives than those enjoyed by any previous generation, but it often makes us feel alienated, depressed and pressured.
To understand why, evolutionary psychologists argue, we need to delve into the hunter-gatherer world that shaped us, the world that we subconsciously still inhabit. Why, for example, do people gorge on high-calorie food that is doing little good to their bodies?
In the savannahs and forests they inhabited, high-calorie sweets were extremely rare and food in general was in short supply. A typical forager 30, years ago had access to only one type of sweet food — ripe fruit. If a Stone Age woman came across a tree groaning with figs, the most sensible thing to do was to eat as many of them as she could on the spot, before the local baboon band picked the tree bare.
The instinct to gorge on high-calorie food was hard-wired into our genes. Today we may be living in high-rise apartments with over-stuffed refrigerators, but our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah. Other theories are far more contentious. For example, some evolutionary psychologists argue that ancient foraging bands were not composed of nuclear families centred on monogamous couples.
Since no man knew definitively which of the children were his, men showed equal concern for all youngsters. Such a social structure is not an Aquarian utopia. A good mother will make a point of having sex with several different men, especially when she is pregnant, so that her child will enjoy the qualities and paternal care not merely of the best hunter, but also of the best storyteller, the strongest warrior and the most considerate lover.
If this sounds silly, bear in mind that before the development of modern embryological studies, people had no solid evidence that babies are always sired by a single father rather than by many.
Though ancient hunter-gatherer societies tended to be more communal and egalitarian than modern societies, these researchers argue, they were nevertheless comprised of separate cells, each containing a jealous couple and the children they held in common. This is why today monogamous relationships and nuclear families are the norm in the vast majority of cultures, why men and women tend to be very possessive of their partners and children, and why even in modern states such as North Korea and Syria political authority passes from father to son.
In order to resolve this controversy and understand our sexuality, society and politics, we need to learn something about the living conditions of our ancestors, to examine how Sapiens lived between the Cognitive Revolution of 70, years ago, and the start of the Agricultural Revolution about 12, years ago.
Unfortunately, there are few certainties regarding the lives of our forager ancestors. We obviously have no written records from the age of foragers, and the archaeological evidence consists mainly of fossilised bones and stone tools. Artefacts made of more perishable materials — such as wood, bamboo or leather — survive only under unique conditions. The common impression that pre-agricultural humans lived in an age of stone is a misconception based on this archaeological bias.
The Stone Age should more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood. Any reconstruction of the lives of ancient hunter-gatherers from the surviving artefacts is extremely problematic.
Over the course of his or her life, a typical member of a modern affluent society will own several million artefacts — from cars and houses to disposable nappies and milk cartons.
Our eating habits are mediated by a mind-boggling collection of such items, from spoons and glasses to genetic engineering labs and gigantic ocean-going ships.
In play, we use a plethora of toys, from plastic cards to ,seater stadiums. Our romantic and sexual relations are accoutred by rings, beds, nice clothes, sexy underwear, condoms, fashionable restaurants, cheap motels, airport lounges, wedding halls and catering companies.
Religions bring the sacred into our lives with Gothic churches, Muslim mosques, Hindu ashrams, Torah scrolls, Tibetan prayer wheels, priestly cassocks, candles, incense, Christmas trees, matzah balls, tombstones and icons.
We hardly notice how ubiquitous our stuff is until we have to move it to a new house. Foragers moved house every month, every week, and sometimes even every day, toting whatever they had on their backs.
There were no moving companies, wagons, or even pack animals to share the burden. They consequently had to make do with only the most essential possessions. An archaeologist working , years from now could piece together a reasonable picture of Muslim belief and practice from the myriad objects he unearthed in a ruined mosque.
But we are largely at a loss in trying to comprehend the beliefs and rituals of ancient hunter-gatherers. A reliance on artefacts will thus bias an account of ancient hunter-gatherer life. One way to remedy this is to look at modern forager societies.
These can be studied directly, by anthropological observation. But there are good reasons to be very careful in extrapolating from modern forager societies to ancient ones. Firstly, all forager societies that have survived into the modern era have been influenced by neighbouring agricultural and industrial societies. Secondly, modern forager societies have survived mainly in areas with difficult climatic conditions and inhospitable terrain, ill-suited for agriculture.
Societies that have adapted to the extreme conditions of places such as the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa may well provide a very misleading model for understanding ancient societies in fertile areas such as the Yangtze River Valley. In particular, population density in an area like the Kalahari Desert is far lower than it was around the ancient Yangtze, and this has far-reaching implications for key questions about the size and structure of human bands and the relations between them.
Thirdly, the most notable characteristic of hunter-gatherer societies is how different they are one from the other. They differ not only from one part of the world to another but even in the same region. One good example is the huge variety the first European settlers found among the Aborigine peoples of Australia. These clans bonded together into tribes on a strictly territorial basis.
It stands to reason that the ethnic and cultural variety among ancient hunter-gatherers was equally impressive, and that the 5 million to 8 million foragers who populated the world on the eve of the Agricultural Revolution were divided into thousands of separate tribes with thousands of different languages and cultures.
Thanks to the appearance of fiction, even people with the same genetic make-up who lived under similar ecological conditions were able to create very different imagined realities, which manifested themselves in different norms and values. One band might have been belligerent and the other peaceful. Perhaps the Cambridge band was communal while the one at Oxford was based on nuclear families.
The Cantabrigians might have spent long hours carving wooden statues of their guardian spirits, whereas the Oxonians may have worshipped through dance. The former perhaps believed in reincarnation, while the latter thought this was nonsense.
In one society, homosexual relationships might have been accepted, while in the other they were taboo. In other words, while anthropological observations of modern foragers can help us understand some of the possibilities available to ancient foragers, the ancient horizon of possibilities was much broader, and most of it is hidden from our view.
There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities. The Original Affluent Society What generalisations can we make about life in the pre-agricultural world nevertheless? It seems safe to say that the vast majority of people lived in small bands numbering several dozen or at most several hundred individuals, and that all these individuals were humans. It is important to note this last point, because it is far from obvious.
Most members of agricultural and industrial societies are domesticated animals. They are not equal to their masters, of course, but they are members all the same. Today, the society called New Zealand is composed of 4.
There was just one exception to this general rule: the dog. The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens, and this occurred before the Agricultural Revolution. Experts disagree about the exact date, but we have incontrovertible evidence of domesticated dogs from about 15, years ago.
They may have joined the human pack thousands of years earlier. Dogs were used for hunting and fighting, and as an alarm system against wild beasts and human intruders. With the passing of generations, the two species co-evolved to communicate well with each other. Dogs that were most attentive to the needs and feelings of their human companions got extra care and food, and were more likely to survive.
Simultaneously, dogs learned to manipulate people for their own needs. A 15,year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between humans and any other animal. Members of a band knew each other very intimately, and were surrounded throughout their lives by friends and relatives. Loneliness and privacy were rare. Neighbouring bands probably competed for resources and even fought one another, but they also had friendly contacts.
They exchanged members, hunted together, traded rare luxuries, cemented political alliances and celebrated religious festivals. Such cooperation was one of the important trademarks of Homo sapiens, and gave it a crucial edge over other human species. Sometimes relations with neighbouring bands were tight enough that together they constituted a single tribe, sharing a common language, common myths, and common norms and values.
Yet we should not overestimate the importance of such external relations. Even if in times of crisis neighbouring bands drew closer together, and even if they occasionally gathered to hunt or feast together, they still spent the vast majority of their time in complete isolation and independence. Trade was mostly limited to prestige items such as shells, amber and pigments.
There is no evidence that people traded staple goods like fruits and meat, or that the existence of one band depended on the importing of goods from another.
Sociopolitical relations, too, tended to be sporadic. The tribe did not serve as a permanent political framework, and even if it had seasonal meeting places, there were no permanent towns or institutions. The average person lived many months without seeing or hearing a human from outside of her own band, and she encountered throughout her life no more than a few hundred humans. The Sapiens population was thinly spread over vast territories.
First pet? A 12,year-old tomb found in northern Israel. Her left hand is resting on the dog in a way that might indicate an emotional connection. There are, of course, other possible explanations. Perhaps, for example, the puppy was a gift to the gatekeeper of the next world. Most Sapiens bands lived on the road, roaming from place to place in search of food.
Their movements were influenced by the changing seasons, the annual migrations of animals and the growth cycles of plants. They usually travelled back and forth across the same home territory, an area of between several dozen and many hundreds of square kilometres. Occasionally, bands wandered outside their turf and explored new lands, whether due to natural calamities, violent conflicts, demographic pressures or the initiative of a charismatic leader.
These wanderings were the engine of human worldwide expansion. If a forager band split once every forty years and its splinter group migrated to a new territory a hundred kilometres to the east, the distance from East Africa to China would have been covered in about 10, years.
In some exceptional cases, when food sources were particularly rich, bands settled down in seasonal and even permanent camps. Techniques for drying, smoking and freezing food also made it possible to stay put for longer periods. Most importantly, alongside seas and rivers rich in seafood and waterfowl, humans set up permanent fishing villages — the first permanent settlements in history, long predating the Agricultural Revolution.
Fishing villages might have appeared on the coasts of Indonesian islands as early as 45, years ago. Important deposits in the state of Jalisco were not discovered until the late s. By there were around known opal mines in this region alone. Other regions of the country that also produce opals of lesser quality are Guerrero , which produces an opaque opal similar to the opals from Australia some of these opals are carefully treated with heat to improve their colors so high-quality opals from this area may be suspect.
Another source of white base opal or creamy opal in the United States is Spencer, Idaho. Opals of all varieties have been synthesized experimentally and commercially.
The discovery of the ordered sphere structure of precious opal led to its synthesis by Pierre Gilson in Furthermore, synthetic opals do not fluoresce under ultraviolet light. Synthetics are also generally lower in density and are often highly porous. Opals which have been created in a laboratory are often termed "lab-created opals", which, while classifiable as man-made and synthetic, are very different from their resin-based counterparts which are also considered man-made and synthetic.
The term "synthetic" implies that a stone has been created to be chemically and structurally indistinguishable from a genuine one, and genuine opal contains no resins or polymers. The finest modern lab-created opals do not exhibit the lizard skin or columnar patterning of earlier lab-created varieties, and their patterns are non-directional.
They can still be distinguished from genuine opals, however, by their lack of inclusions and the absence of any surrounding non-opal matrix. While many genuine opals are cut and polished without a matrix, the presence of irregularities in their play-of-color continues to mark them as distinct from even the best lab-created synthetics.
Two notable producers of synthetic opal are Kyocera and Inamori of Japan. Most so-called synthetics, however, are more correctly termed "imitation opal", as they contain substances not found in natural opal such as plastic stabilizers.
The imitation opals seen in vintage jewelry are often foiled glass, glass-based " Slocum stone ", or later plastic materials. Other research in macroporous structures have yielded highly ordered materials that have similar optical properties to opals and have been used in cosmetics. The lattice of spheres of opal that cause interference with light is several hundred times larger than the fundamental structure of crystalline silica.
As a mineraloid , no unit cell describes the structure of opal. Nevertheless, opals can be roughly divided into those that show no signs of crystalline order amorphous opal and those that show signs of the beginning of crystalline order, commonly termed cryptocrystalline or microcrystalline opal.
Isolated water molecules, and silanols , structures such as SiOH, generally form a lesser proportion of the total and can reside near the surface or in defects inside the opal. The structure of low-pressure polymorphs of anhydrous silica consist of frameworks of fully corner bonded tetrahedra of SiO 4. The higher temperature polymorphs of silica cristobalite and tridymite are frequently the first to crystallize from amorphous anhydrous silica, and the local structures of microcrystalline opals also appear to be closer to that of cristobalite and tridymite than to quartz.
The structures of tridymite and cristobalite are closely related and can be described as hexagonal and cubic close-packed layers. It is therefore possible to have intermediate structures in which the layers are not regularly stacked. Microcrystalline opal or Opal-CT has been interpreted as consisting of clusters of stacked cristobalite and tridymite over very short length scales. The spheres of opal in microcrystalline opal are themselves made up of tiny nanocrystalline blades of cristobalite and tridymite.
Microcrystalline opal has occasionally been further subdivided in the literature. Typical water content is about 1. Two broad categories of noncrystalline opals, sometimes just referred to as "opal-A", have been proposed. The first of these is opal-AG consisting of aggregated spheres of silica, with water filling the space in between. Precious opal and potch opal are generally varieties of this, the difference being in the regularity of the sizes of the spheres and their packing.
The second "opal-A" is opal-AN or water-containing amorphous silica-glass. Hyalite is another name for this. Noncrystalline silica in siliceous sediments is reported to gradually transform to opal-CT and then opal-C as a result of diagenesis , due to the increasing overburden pressure in sedimentary rocks, as some of the stacking disorder is removed.
This makes the opal surface very hydrophilic and capable of forming numerous hydrogen bonds. The word 'opal' is adapted from the Latin term opalus , but the origin of this word is a matter of debate. References to the gem are made by Pliny the Elder.
It is suggested to have been adapted from Ops , the wife of Saturn , and goddess of fertility. The portion of Saturnalia devoted to Ops was "Opalia", similar to opalus. Another common claim that the term is adapted from the Ancient Greek word, opallios. This word has two meanings, one is related to "seeing" and forms the basis of the English words like "opaque"; the other is "other" as in "alias" and "alter".
It is claimed that opalus combined these uses, meaning "to see a change in color". However, historians have noted the first appearances of opallios do not occur until after the Romans had taken over the Greek states in BC and they had previously used the term paederos.
However, the argument for the Sanskrit origin is strong. The term first appears in Roman references around BC, at a time when the opal was valued above all other gems. The opals were supplied by traders from the Bosporus , who claimed the gems were being supplied from India. Before this, the stone was referred to by a variety of names, but these fell from use after BC. In the Middle Ages, opal was considered a stone that could provide great luck because it was believed to possess all the virtues of each gemstone whose color was represented in the color spectrum of the opal.
In Scott's novel, the Baroness of Arnheim wears an opal talisman with supernatural powers. When a drop of holy water falls on the talisman, the opal turns into a colorless stone and the Baroness dies soon thereafter. Due to the popularity of Scott's novel, people began to associate opals with bad luck and death.
Even as recently as the beginning of the 20th century, it was believed that when a Russian saw an opal among other goods offered for sale, he or she should not buy anything more, as the opal was believed to embody the evil eye. Opal is considered the birthstone for people born in October. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Opal disambiguation. For other uses, see Opals disambiguation. A hydrated amorphous form of silica.
For the American sunflower, see Jerusalem artichoke. Play media. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. December Learn how and when to remove this template message.
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Archived from the original on 10 June It is now generally agreed that the first clear evidence, based upon experiment, for the existence of dietary factors of the nature of vitamins came from the school of Bunge at Basel.
In Lunin, one of the workers in that school, fed mice upon an artificial mixture of the separate constituents of milk; of all the constituents, that is, which were then known, namely the proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and salts. He found that upon such a mixture the animals failed to survive and was led to conclude that "a natural food such as milk must therefore contain besides these known principal ingredients small quantities of unknown substances essential to life".
Such a statement, already half a century old, when allowed to stand out clear and apart from a context which tended to bury it, seems to contain the essentials of what is believed today.
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