Return to the BIg Bang: Version II

Post Reply New Topic

Sure beats "counting to a million by 13's" or whatever.


Beautiful sculpture. When I used be heavily into doing art I would sketch in the zoo. I sketched a detailed portrait of an elephant from life. Then I saw an etching of wooly mammonth made in bone by a Cro magnon artist in a photo in a scientific american magazine. Virtually the same animal that I just sketched ( just a little hairier). I could feel the muscles in my hand and wrist twitch - from looking at the photo -it caused my muscles to relive doing the life drawing in the zoo. They were so similiar. LIke I had a sudden bond with the stona age artists.


SIXTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO

Its the middle of the last Ice Age.

Anatomically modern people (folks like us) had left Africa. But were still just timidly clinging to the shores of the Indian Ocean-moving along Asia's tropical south coast. But by 60 thousands years ago they arive by crude boats in Austalia (the first humans to populate Australia) and became the ancestors of the modern Australian aboriginies. They also were timidly moving north into central asia.

But the rest of the Eurasian landmass (including Europe) still belonged to the cold-adapted Archaic humans like the Neanderthals, and the Denisovians. It would not be until around 37 thousand years before the present that modern type people would invade europe (mostly out of central asia by way of the Ukraine) and within a few thousand years displace the Neanderthals in Europe.

Well I'm learning something from it anyways.

About 120,000 to 130,000 years ago was the Eemian period and it was the second latest interglacial period of the current ice age.

I wonder how many people were around back then?

240 thousand years ago.

As luck would have it this leap takes us out of your interglacial, right past the previous glacial (the second most recent of the recent block of four ice ages), and lands us right back into an interglacial.

So its relatively balmy again.

This is shorty before, or at about the time, that anatomically modern people first appeared in southern Africa(around 200 thousand years ago). Folks who looked like us may have been emerging, but there were few of them.

Mitochondrial adam lived a little before that time, and mitochondrial eve a little after that date.

480 thousand years ago.

Not much happened.

One Million BC

That was when the peaceful Shell tribe had to defend itsself against the warlike Rock tribe.

The women looked like Raquel Welch. And wore scanty furs. And the men looked John Richardson, and wielded clubs. They needed the clubs to defend against T-Rexes, giant sea turtles, as well as against other human tribes.

How did modern looking men and women exist prior to 200 thousand years ago? And why were dinosaurs still around after 63 million BP?

Dont know. But thats how it was in one million BC according to the 1966 film of that name.