Human artifacts
We know from fossils that people anatomically indistinguishable
from us
date back 130,000 years or more. A different kind of evidence about
early humans is provided by archaeology, which unearths the artifacts
that they leave behind them. If we go by the archaeological record, the
emergence of modern humans with innate capacities similar to ours,
occurred 50,000 ago. It is not just that their tool kit appears to have
been significantly richer than anything previously attested, but we now
have clear examples of sophisticated art, with rock paintings well over
twenty thousand years old. These have been found as far apart as
Europe, South Africa, and Australia. We also find evidence of a new
diversity of cultural artefacts over both space and time. So what we
see not just more culture but a well-developed capacity for cultural
change.
