1 00:00:06,646 --> 00:00:08,423 We live in a world 2 00:00:08,423 --> 00:00:11,907 that is absolutely infused with religion and spirituality, 3 00:00:11,907 --> 00:00:15,018 sometimes even to the point where maybe we don't recognize it. 4 00:00:15,018 --> 00:00:18,696 It affects everything from something as simple as the holidays we celebrate, 5 00:00:18,696 --> 00:00:20,709 to the names that we give our children, 6 00:00:20,709 --> 00:00:24,000 to something much more really saddening and sort of disheartening, 7 00:00:24,017 --> 00:00:27,346 which is finding a conflict on the other side of the world somewhere. 8 00:00:27,346 --> 00:00:28,900 I mean, any given day, 9 00:00:28,900 --> 00:00:33,042 somewhere somebody is fighting about spirituality and religion. 10 00:00:34,118 --> 00:00:37,614 So, let's take a look at how this all plays out then on a global scale. 11 00:00:37,614 --> 00:00:41,230 Depending on whom you talk to, there's about 20 major world religions - 12 00:00:41,230 --> 00:00:45,672 so, these are ones that are in more than one country, more than one continent. 13 00:00:45,672 --> 00:00:47,744 Add to that hundreds of belief systems, 14 00:00:47,744 --> 00:00:52,733 and out of the 7 billion people who live on this planet at this point in time, 15 00:00:52,733 --> 00:00:57,313 just under 6 billion profess to follow some sort of faith. 16 00:00:57,313 --> 00:01:01,349 Now, I want you to try and imagine a world with no religion. 17 00:01:01,349 --> 00:01:02,587 What would it look like? 18 00:01:03,247 --> 00:01:05,119 Because that is the reality, 19 00:01:05,119 --> 00:01:08,899 is if we go far enough back into our own deep history, 20 00:01:08,899 --> 00:01:12,620 there was a time, maybe not with Homo sapiens, maybe further back, 21 00:01:12,620 --> 00:01:15,117 where we didn't have any religion. 22 00:01:15,117 --> 00:01:17,530 So, as you can see in the slide behind me, 23 00:01:17,530 --> 00:01:20,434 that's a very simplified evolutionary chart, 24 00:01:20,434 --> 00:01:23,457 but it's a question that people in my field, palaeoanthropology, 25 00:01:23,481 --> 00:01:26,521 have asked: How far back does the religious impulse go? 26 00:01:26,521 --> 00:01:29,775 And how would you get at that? It's incredibly subjective, right? 27 00:01:29,775 --> 00:01:32,630 So, obviously Homo sapiens at the top. 28 00:01:32,630 --> 00:01:35,661 We know that Homo sapiens have religion, that's us. 29 00:01:35,661 --> 00:01:38,834 But, what about heidelbergensis before us, and erectus, 30 00:01:38,834 --> 00:01:40,984 and all the way back to Homo hails. 31 00:01:40,984 --> 00:01:43,870 You know, Homo habilis 2.5 million years ago, 32 00:01:43,870 --> 00:01:47,780 they're considered to be a good candidate for the original toolmakers. 33 00:01:47,780 --> 00:01:51,953 And you might wonder - tools, religion, what do these potentially have in common? 34 00:01:51,953 --> 00:01:57,727 But, if you actually think about what a cognitive leap making tools is, 35 00:01:57,727 --> 00:01:59,605 there are some things in common. 36 00:01:59,605 --> 00:02:02,538 For instance, when you're actually making a tool - 37 00:02:02,538 --> 00:02:06,917 so you've got one piece of stone and you've got another to shape it - 38 00:02:06,917 --> 00:02:09,491 you have to hold a mental template in your head 39 00:02:09,491 --> 00:02:12,029 of what that finished product is going to look like. 40 00:02:12,029 --> 00:02:14,840 And also what we find with these early toolmakers, 41 00:02:14,840 --> 00:02:19,648 is that they actually were exhibiting forethought and pre-planning. 42 00:02:19,648 --> 00:02:22,513 They were potentially taking a nice piece of flint with them, 43 00:02:22,523 --> 00:02:25,411 along the landscape, so that when their current tool ran out, 44 00:02:25,414 --> 00:02:28,561 or got down to kind of a nub, they could make themselves a new one. 45 00:02:28,561 --> 00:02:31,756 So, there are some researchers in my field, 46 00:02:31,756 --> 00:02:34,065 especially a fellow by the name of Thomas Wynn, 47 00:02:34,065 --> 00:02:37,999 has teamed up with a neuropsychologist, by the name of Frederick Coolidge, 48 00:02:38,019 --> 00:02:41,470 and the two of them have talked about something called working memory. 49 00:02:41,470 --> 00:02:45,954 And so, it's not one spot in the brain 50 00:02:45,954 --> 00:02:48,991 so much as sort of several functions that kind of work together, 51 00:02:48,991 --> 00:02:52,827 that allow things like mental templates and allow things like pre-planning. 52 00:02:52,827 --> 00:02:55,920 Now, they've made the argument that even on a very basic level 53 00:02:55,920 --> 00:02:58,555 chimps probably do have some working memory as well. 54 00:02:58,577 --> 00:03:00,385 Of course, they can also use tools, 55 00:03:00,385 --> 00:03:02,037 they're just not very good at - 56 00:03:02,061 --> 00:03:04,520 Basically, they'll take their stick, 57 00:03:04,521 --> 00:03:07,870 they'll rip off the leaves, they'll use it to dip some termites out, 58 00:03:07,870 --> 00:03:09,355 but then they tend to dump it. 59 00:03:09,355 --> 00:03:11,852 That's pretty much it, they're done with that tool. 60 00:03:11,872 --> 00:03:15,388 So, there's not a lot of examples of chimps reusing tools 61 00:03:15,388 --> 00:03:18,261 or sort of behaving in exactly the same way 62 00:03:18,261 --> 00:03:20,608 as what we see with Homo habilis. 63 00:03:20,608 --> 00:03:24,166 But with that as sort of the base and that idea of working memory, 64 00:03:24,166 --> 00:03:26,294 they've then sort of extrapolated that 65 00:03:26,294 --> 00:03:30,413 and said, let's talk about something that they call enhanced working memory. 66 00:03:30,413 --> 00:03:32,941 And so enhanced working memory - 67 00:03:32,941 --> 00:03:34,962 basically there's several components to it. 68 00:03:34,962 --> 00:03:38,443 This is sort of taking that, and then basically putting it on steroids. 69 00:03:38,443 --> 00:03:41,942 So, not just that basic mental template and pre-planning, 70 00:03:41,942 --> 00:03:44,284 but now let's add to that the ability to envision 71 00:03:44,286 --> 00:03:45,989 and work with abstract concepts. 72 00:03:45,989 --> 00:03:48,062 Let's talk about mental time travel. 73 00:03:48,062 --> 00:03:50,445 Now, what I mean when I say mental time travel, 74 00:03:50,445 --> 00:03:53,027 is the ability to think about past and future. 75 00:03:53,027 --> 00:03:54,952 These are actually very unusual things. 76 00:03:54,952 --> 00:03:56,516 We take them for granted, 77 00:03:56,516 --> 00:04:00,329 but they're not something that necessarily other species can conceive of. 78 00:04:00,329 --> 00:04:03,571 I mean obviously your dog seems to remember about going to the vet, 79 00:04:03,571 --> 00:04:05,887 which is sort of an interesting thing, 80 00:04:05,887 --> 00:04:09,782 but you know he doesn't have a strong sense of clear episodic memories 81 00:04:09,782 --> 00:04:11,169 of having been to the vet 82 00:04:11,172 --> 00:04:14,036 so much as this is a bad thing when I go into this building, 83 00:04:14,053 --> 00:04:17,930 it smells a certain way - and, you know, this is danger basically flashing. 84 00:04:17,930 --> 00:04:21,652 So, the clear ability to also say, with mental time travel, 85 00:04:21,676 --> 00:04:24,301 "When I tried making a tool using this material before, 86 00:04:24,301 --> 00:04:25,615 this didn't work very well, 87 00:04:25,620 --> 00:04:27,766 so, I'm going to do it differently this time." 88 00:04:27,766 --> 00:04:31,376 Or, "I saw this person in the next hunter-gatherer group over do something. 89 00:04:31,376 --> 00:04:33,551 That worked really nicely, I want to do that." 90 00:04:33,566 --> 00:04:36,855 All those kinds of things, as well as being able to think forwards: 91 00:04:36,879 --> 00:04:39,102 so, pre-planning, but even at a greater degree. 92 00:04:39,102 --> 00:04:43,150 Imagination, because again the ability to sort of conceive of something, 93 00:04:43,150 --> 00:04:45,605 like a mental template when you're making a tool, 94 00:04:45,629 --> 00:04:47,887 relies on us being able to visualize something 95 00:04:47,887 --> 00:04:50,376 that doesn't actually exist at that moment in time - 96 00:04:50,377 --> 00:04:52,526 it's more, again, that we're looking forward. 97 00:04:52,526 --> 00:04:55,919 And then, of course, the capacity to understand and manipulate symbols. 98 00:04:55,919 --> 00:04:59,312 And, so, this is where we get to things like language and to art. 99 00:04:59,312 --> 00:05:02,751 So, you probably saw I said the "God spot," 100 00:05:02,751 --> 00:05:05,199 what we're talking about there is that, 101 00:05:05,199 --> 00:05:08,455 certainly starting in probably about, I think, in the 1990's, 102 00:05:08,455 --> 00:05:10,378 once we, especially neuropsychologists, 103 00:05:10,378 --> 00:05:12,923 once they had their fancy MRI's and other brain scans, 104 00:05:12,923 --> 00:05:14,879 they really started looking to see 105 00:05:14,879 --> 00:05:19,463 if there was one spot in the brain that could be associated with God. 106 00:05:19,463 --> 00:05:21,826 And they even actually did some study 107 00:05:21,827 --> 00:05:24,168 where they actually had the people in the MRI, 108 00:05:24,168 --> 00:05:26,878 and they were like, okay, we want you to think about 109 00:05:26,884 --> 00:05:29,932 your vision of God or faith or spirituality while you're in here, 110 00:05:29,956 --> 00:05:32,243 while we see if we can map the areas of the brain 111 00:05:32,243 --> 00:05:34,292 that light up while we're doing that. 112 00:05:34,311 --> 00:05:36,922 And they kept getting one spot that was lighting up, 113 00:05:36,936 --> 00:05:40,332 and so it was this huge, like, we did it, aha, we found the God spot. 114 00:05:40,332 --> 00:05:43,829 Turns out it's the spot that lights up when people are concentrating. 115 00:05:43,829 --> 00:05:46,489 (Laughter) 116 00:05:46,489 --> 00:05:48,634 So, we definitely know where they concentrate, 117 00:05:48,634 --> 00:05:51,677 but, of course, everybody concentrated on thinking about God, 118 00:05:51,694 --> 00:05:53,039 so, that was the problem. 119 00:05:53,039 --> 00:05:57,195 But I think really what neuropsychologists and what people working on evolution 120 00:05:57,195 --> 00:06:00,168 are working towards, is the idea there's probably not one spot. 121 00:06:00,190 --> 00:06:01,925 Similar to enhanced working memory, 122 00:06:01,925 --> 00:06:04,023 there's actually several parts of the brain 123 00:06:04,023 --> 00:06:06,206 that are all kind of working together 124 00:06:06,206 --> 00:06:09,507 to create that space and those types of abilities. 125 00:06:10,784 --> 00:06:12,585 So, is it all in the lobes? 126 00:06:12,585 --> 00:06:14,466 Behind me on the slide what you'll see 127 00:06:14,466 --> 00:06:18,092 is that on the left-hand side we have a Homo erectus, 128 00:06:18,092 --> 00:06:20,412 so that's 1.65 million years ago. 129 00:06:20,412 --> 00:06:23,255 And then on the right-hand side we have a Homo sapiens skull 130 00:06:23,271 --> 00:06:25,341 from about 20,000 years ago in Germany. 131 00:06:25,350 --> 00:06:28,589 20,000 years ago in Germany, their skulls were identical to ours - 132 00:06:28,601 --> 00:06:30,629 I just thought it might be cooler 133 00:06:30,641 --> 00:06:33,624 to use a sort of fossil skull for Homo sapiens. 134 00:06:33,624 --> 00:06:35,560 Now, what I want you to look at though, 135 00:06:35,560 --> 00:06:38,645 is that when you see the profile, 136 00:06:38,645 --> 00:06:42,214 erectus has that nice big brow ridge we think of, 137 00:06:42,214 --> 00:06:44,039 but you'll notice behind that, 138 00:06:44,039 --> 00:06:48,225 it actually slopes at quite a sharp angle backwards. 139 00:06:48,225 --> 00:06:50,888 Now look at that beautiful, big, old forehead 140 00:06:50,888 --> 00:06:53,591 on the Homo sapiens skull. 141 00:06:53,591 --> 00:06:55,693 Those are the frontal lobes. 142 00:06:57,742 --> 00:07:02,445 This is pretty much where all of our higher reasoning comes from, 143 00:07:02,445 --> 00:07:04,632 from those spots right there. 144 00:07:04,641 --> 00:07:07,318 You know, thinking about it, what's so interesting 145 00:07:07,325 --> 00:07:09,390 is that while we sit here, in this room, 146 00:07:09,390 --> 00:07:10,620 having this conversation, 147 00:07:10,620 --> 00:07:13,715 you're using those frontal parts of your lobes, aren't you? 148 00:07:13,715 --> 00:07:17,438 But the question that's come up is: 149 00:07:17,438 --> 00:07:21,173 It can physically be there, but is it maybe more about wiring? 150 00:07:21,173 --> 00:07:24,271 Not just about size, but then also about how is it wired, 151 00:07:24,271 --> 00:07:27,011 how are the neural pathways moving. 152 00:07:27,011 --> 00:07:29,358 So, this is where the scholars I mentioned, 153 00:07:29,358 --> 00:07:31,223 Wynn and Coolidge working together, 154 00:07:31,223 --> 00:07:35,950 have made the argument that they believe that the truly modern thought, 155 00:07:35,950 --> 00:07:39,614 that ability [which includes] imagination, mental time travel, 156 00:07:39,614 --> 00:07:41,647 they believe it started with modern humans. 157 00:07:41,647 --> 00:07:44,575 So, what do I mean when I say modern humans? 158 00:07:44,575 --> 00:07:46,274 About 200,000 years ago, 159 00:07:46,285 --> 00:07:48,639 we've been able to find the earliest skeletons, 160 00:07:48,639 --> 00:07:51,854 that we currently have of what we would call fully modern humans. 161 00:07:51,854 --> 00:07:55,209 That means that their skeletons were identical to ours, 162 00:07:55,209 --> 00:07:57,897 and their brain size was exactly the same. 163 00:07:57,897 --> 00:07:59,773 Now, that doesn't mean though, 164 00:07:59,773 --> 00:08:02,597 that they were actually using all of the abilities we had, 165 00:08:02,597 --> 00:08:05,358 and this is something that is a particular area of mine 166 00:08:05,359 --> 00:08:08,371 that I find really fascinating, as well, trying to figure out: 167 00:08:08,371 --> 00:08:10,058 When did they become us? 168 00:08:10,058 --> 00:08:12,879 Because we're more than just the brain size and the body, 169 00:08:12,894 --> 00:08:15,151 it's also about how we use that brain. 170 00:08:15,151 --> 00:08:18,405 And what's so fascinating about the early humans in Africa, 171 00:08:18,405 --> 00:08:22,736 is that, for probably about the first 80,000 years or so, 172 00:08:22,736 --> 00:08:24,613 they're not really doing much different 173 00:08:24,613 --> 00:08:26,899 than the ancestor species that came before them. 174 00:08:26,899 --> 00:08:28,913 They're making really nice tools, 175 00:08:28,913 --> 00:08:31,713 surviving quite well, making good use of their landscape, 176 00:08:31,713 --> 00:08:33,926 all of those types of things are in place. 177 00:08:33,926 --> 00:08:38,876 But what we're not seeing is those kinds of behaviours that make us go: They're us. 178 00:08:38,876 --> 00:08:42,447 And then, suddenly, around 120,000 years ago, 179 00:08:42,447 --> 00:08:46,069 what starts happening is we suddenly start finding 180 00:08:46,069 --> 00:08:48,412 what we call symbolic behaviour. 181 00:08:48,412 --> 00:08:50,032 And what we mean when we say that 182 00:08:50,056 --> 00:08:52,777 are things that we would consider to be non-utilitarian. 183 00:08:52,801 --> 00:08:59,810 So, not something that's useful at a very 1:1 ratio level of survival, 184 00:08:59,834 --> 00:09:01,896 something to keep you warm at night, 185 00:09:01,896 --> 00:09:03,980 something to eat, something to shelter you. 186 00:09:04,391 --> 00:09:06,152 We start finding burials. 187 00:09:07,098 --> 00:09:10,536 120,000 years ago is the oldest burials we know of in the world, 188 00:09:10,536 --> 00:09:14,465 and not just burials but burials with grave goods in them. 189 00:09:14,465 --> 00:09:18,901 So, in this case, what we're talking about at the 120,000 mark - 190 00:09:18,901 --> 00:09:22,336 they were finding a few marine shells that have perforations, 191 00:09:22,336 --> 00:09:25,734 and some of the perforations look like they probably occurred naturally, 192 00:09:25,734 --> 00:09:27,903 some may have been made by tools, 193 00:09:27,903 --> 00:09:33,202 but the kicker is that those little holes in the shells have wear marks on them, 194 00:09:33,202 --> 00:09:36,011 which means that they were being worn in some fashion. 195 00:09:36,011 --> 00:09:39,232 Now, there's nothing about doing that that is remotely useful 196 00:09:39,232 --> 00:09:42,251 for again heat, shelter, food. 197 00:09:42,251 --> 00:09:44,962 So, what's going on? What's happened? What's changed? 198 00:09:44,962 --> 00:09:47,545 And this is kind of the story going forward, 199 00:09:47,545 --> 00:09:50,954 and this is again where Wynn and Coolidge have made this argument, 200 00:09:50,954 --> 00:09:52,516 and other scholars have as well, 201 00:09:52,516 --> 00:09:55,960 that modern humans is where that big change takes place. 202 00:09:56,400 --> 00:10:00,407 They've made the argument potentially even that the change started here, 203 00:10:00,407 --> 00:10:03,323 but that some sort of genetic mutation or something else 204 00:10:03,347 --> 00:10:05,538 happened around 40-50,000 years ago, 205 00:10:05,538 --> 00:10:08,534 and that that was when truly modern behaviour, 206 00:10:08,534 --> 00:10:12,517 the full suite of behaviours that we associate with being modern, 207 00:10:12,517 --> 00:10:17,431 music and mathematics and the ability to envision things that aren't there, 208 00:10:17,431 --> 00:10:20,348 and all of these things which are very much about us, 209 00:10:20,372 --> 00:10:23,633 and, of course, full language, communication, all that kind of thing. 210 00:10:23,633 --> 00:10:26,588 They see it as happening around 40-50,00 years ago, 211 00:10:26,588 --> 00:10:29,490 which coincides with when modern humans left Africa. 212 00:10:29,490 --> 00:10:31,691 Maybe it might have been as early as 60,000, 213 00:10:31,701 --> 00:10:34,050 so somewhere in that 40-60,000 range, 214 00:10:34,050 --> 00:10:36,045 is when modern humans left Africa 215 00:10:36,065 --> 00:10:38,756 and basically went out and populated the Old World. 216 00:10:38,756 --> 00:10:42,780 Now, I'm personally going to talk to you tonight about the Ice Age in Europe, 217 00:10:42,784 --> 00:10:45,887 and it's not that there weren't interesting things being done 218 00:10:45,887 --> 00:10:48,649 by modern humans who went to other parts of the Old World. 219 00:10:48,673 --> 00:10:51,394 In Asia and Australia, there's lots of fascinating stuff, 220 00:10:51,407 --> 00:10:53,897 but I study the Ice Age, so it's what I know best. 221 00:10:53,897 --> 00:10:57,451 So, that's where we're going to stick with, looking at the Ice Age, today. 222 00:10:57,465 --> 00:11:00,231 When it comes to Europe, let's set the scene a little bit. 223 00:11:00,231 --> 00:11:02,364 Obviously, we've got an Ice Age going on, 224 00:11:02,388 --> 00:11:05,507 and an Ice Age is not static by any means. 225 00:11:05,518 --> 00:11:07,859 We certainly have movement of the glacier sheets, 226 00:11:07,859 --> 00:11:11,487 but overall definitely colder, an icy environment, 227 00:11:11,487 --> 00:11:13,729 but very rich in animals as well. 228 00:11:13,729 --> 00:11:15,262 Huge herds of bison and mammoth 229 00:11:15,271 --> 00:11:17,425 and all these other things on the landscape. 230 00:11:17,425 --> 00:11:20,220 So, lots of things to eat, which was kind of a pull factor 231 00:11:20,236 --> 00:11:22,165 that probably kept modern humans there. 232 00:11:22,165 --> 00:11:26,231 They show up in Europe somewhere around 40,000, even 45,000, in some spots, 233 00:11:26,231 --> 00:11:28,010 and they spread out around there, 234 00:11:28,010 --> 00:11:33,065 and this again coincides with what we call the creative explosion, sometimes. 235 00:11:33,089 --> 00:11:35,888 It's not that they weren't doing interesting things before, 236 00:11:35,912 --> 00:11:38,527 but this is when it starts getting really interesting. 237 00:11:38,532 --> 00:11:41,515 This is when we start finding a lot of symbolic materials, 238 00:11:41,515 --> 00:11:45,806 like portable art pieces and lots of jewellery and other interesting things, 239 00:11:45,806 --> 00:11:48,425 in the archaeological record alongside the stone tools. 240 00:11:49,279 --> 00:11:50,908 So, what would we look for? 241 00:11:50,910 --> 00:11:53,721 Let's go back to this idea of religion and spirituality, 242 00:11:53,743 --> 00:11:56,347 and how you get that in the archaeological record. 243 00:11:56,369 --> 00:11:58,423 Because, if you think about that far back, 244 00:11:58,445 --> 00:12:00,673 basically, we're working with stone tools. 245 00:12:00,673 --> 00:12:02,628 So, there's not really much to go at, 246 00:12:02,628 --> 00:12:05,768 and so how do we start trying to move beyond that, 247 00:12:05,768 --> 00:12:08,684 and actually look for these indirect clues? 248 00:12:08,684 --> 00:12:11,828 Well, there's three main things that people in my field tend to use 249 00:12:11,828 --> 00:12:13,168 looking at that. 250 00:12:13,168 --> 00:12:15,825 The first is burials with elaborate grave goods. 251 00:12:15,825 --> 00:12:18,973 So, the necklace itself at the 120,000 mark, 252 00:12:18,973 --> 00:12:20,898 very interesting, very cool, 253 00:12:20,898 --> 00:12:22,851 but we can take that a bit farther, 254 00:12:22,851 --> 00:12:27,908 and say: What about if they're putting lots of elaborate items into that burial? 255 00:12:27,908 --> 00:12:29,884 Impossible entities being depicted. 256 00:12:29,894 --> 00:12:32,162 So, when I use the term impossible entities, 257 00:12:32,162 --> 00:12:35,619 we're referring to things that do not appear anywhere in nature. 258 00:12:35,619 --> 00:12:39,960 So, we're not referring to anything in the real world. 259 00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:42,304 Something that's, say, half-animal, half-human, 260 00:12:42,304 --> 00:12:43,965 would be an impossible entity. 261 00:12:43,966 --> 00:12:47,189 And then, of course, trying to identify magic and spiritual themes 262 00:12:47,213 --> 00:12:48,632 in the art itself. 263 00:12:48,632 --> 00:12:50,860 And this is on portable pieces and, of course, 264 00:12:50,860 --> 00:12:53,044 my particular area of study, the cave walls. 265 00:12:54,137 --> 00:12:56,079 So, to quickly go over a couple of these 266 00:12:56,079 --> 00:12:58,729 and I'll give you some ideas of what we're seeing. 267 00:12:58,730 --> 00:13:01,589 For an elaborate burial, this one is a very famous burial 268 00:13:01,589 --> 00:13:03,687 and it's an absolutely fascinating one. 269 00:13:03,687 --> 00:13:06,180 This is actually one of three burials from this site. 270 00:13:06,180 --> 00:13:08,343 This particular one is the adult male, 271 00:13:08,343 --> 00:13:11,940 and it's about 28,000 years old, it's from Russia, 272 00:13:11,940 --> 00:13:16,212 and you notice there's little white things all over his skeleton there. 273 00:13:16,212 --> 00:13:17,751 Those are ivory beads. 274 00:13:18,747 --> 00:13:22,677 There are approximately 3,500 ivory beads in this burial. 275 00:13:22,677 --> 00:13:25,238 An archaeologist in our field, his name's Randy White, 276 00:13:25,238 --> 00:13:27,486 actually went to the effort of trying to do 277 00:13:27,510 --> 00:13:29,435 what we call experimental archaeology. 278 00:13:29,435 --> 00:13:32,222 And he actually took the mammoth ivory and practiced 279 00:13:32,222 --> 00:13:34,677 until he could get quite good at making the beads, 280 00:13:34,677 --> 00:13:37,646 and even when he was good at it, it took an hour per bead. 281 00:13:37,646 --> 00:13:39,388 Do the math on that. 282 00:13:39,388 --> 00:13:41,851 Then on top of that, we actually have the fact 283 00:13:41,851 --> 00:13:44,196 that the two other burials at that particular site 284 00:13:44,196 --> 00:13:45,814 are actually of two children. 285 00:13:46,511 --> 00:13:48,071 A little boy and a little girl, 286 00:13:48,071 --> 00:13:50,002 and they're buried in a double burial. 287 00:13:50,017 --> 00:13:51,890 The little boy has 4,500 beads, 288 00:13:51,914 --> 00:13:54,128 so 1,000 more than the adult male, 289 00:13:54,128 --> 00:13:56,403 and the little girl has over 5,000. 290 00:13:56,403 --> 00:13:59,465 So, what we're seeing here then is potentially the fact 291 00:13:59,465 --> 00:14:03,576 that they're seeing death as being a state that's different than life, 292 00:14:03,576 --> 00:14:06,499 and yet worth recognizing and worth paying attention to, 293 00:14:06,499 --> 00:14:08,620 and worth acknowledging, and, frankly, 294 00:14:08,620 --> 00:14:11,700 worth the sheer amount of effort of making all those beads 295 00:14:11,700 --> 00:14:14,036 only to bury them in the ground and cover them up. 296 00:14:14,036 --> 00:14:16,858 So, something is definitely going on in that sense. 297 00:14:18,779 --> 00:14:21,103 Then, of course, we come to impossible entities. 298 00:14:21,103 --> 00:14:23,512 And this one is a wonderful, classic example. 299 00:14:23,512 --> 00:14:27,292 This is an ivory carved figurine, it's probably about this tall. 300 00:14:27,292 --> 00:14:29,023 Head of a lion, body of a human. 301 00:14:29,047 --> 00:14:32,233 Again coming back to that, that doesn't exist anywhere in nature. 302 00:14:32,239 --> 00:14:34,736 So, what's going on? Why are they depicting this? 303 00:14:34,751 --> 00:14:36,454 This is not a self-representation. 304 00:14:36,454 --> 00:14:39,451 And there's people in my field who have made the proposal 305 00:14:39,451 --> 00:14:41,880 that, maybe, this could be some sort of mythology, 306 00:14:41,898 --> 00:14:44,998 something to do with origin stories and things like that. 307 00:14:44,998 --> 00:14:47,007 So, there's these interesting examples 308 00:14:47,029 --> 00:14:49,410 that exist throughout the archaeological record. 309 00:14:49,434 --> 00:14:51,884 That particular one is about 32,000 years old. 310 00:14:53,515 --> 00:14:55,077 What about hunting magic? 311 00:14:55,077 --> 00:14:57,156 When I say hunting magic, I mean this, 312 00:14:57,156 --> 00:14:59,325 this is from the cave called Niaux, in France, 313 00:14:59,325 --> 00:15:02,569 and you've got a bison that's painted on a cave wall, 314 00:15:02,569 --> 00:15:05,707 and if you notice it looks like there's almost some sort of spear 315 00:15:05,731 --> 00:15:07,093 sticking out of its side. 316 00:15:07,093 --> 00:15:09,733 So, in this case what people have proposed 317 00:15:09,733 --> 00:15:14,488 is that what we could be seeing is them almost trying to kill the animal 318 00:15:14,488 --> 00:15:16,283 ritually in the cave first, 319 00:15:16,307 --> 00:15:19,372 in order to ensure success when they go out on the real hunt. 320 00:15:19,373 --> 00:15:22,789 And we do have some examples where there's not just the spears, 321 00:15:22,789 --> 00:15:26,104 but there's also punctuation marks, 322 00:15:26,109 --> 00:15:29,837 which almost looks like maybe somebody was banging a real spear or something 323 00:15:29,837 --> 00:15:31,801 at the image on the wall. 324 00:15:31,801 --> 00:15:34,724 So, again, that suggests some sort of harnessing 325 00:15:34,724 --> 00:15:38,068 of some unseen world - there's something going on. 326 00:15:38,068 --> 00:15:41,512 And then this is another great example here of an impossible entity 327 00:15:41,512 --> 00:15:45,013 which has also been potentially identified as being a shaman. 328 00:15:45,013 --> 00:15:47,888 Now, the reason why they say that is the idea that: 329 00:15:47,888 --> 00:15:49,606 What if they were wearing a mask? 330 00:15:49,630 --> 00:15:52,342 What if this, rather than being an impossible entity, 331 00:15:52,355 --> 00:15:56,021 is an actual depiction of a human partially dressed up like an animal? 332 00:15:56,021 --> 00:15:58,284 You see the legs have a much more human look, 333 00:15:58,284 --> 00:16:01,518 they're not very bison-like, yet the head has that very bison look, 334 00:16:01,518 --> 00:16:03,155 and the arms are also very human. 335 00:16:03,155 --> 00:16:07,928 So, this is where they started to talk about the idea of shamanistic practices, 336 00:16:07,928 --> 00:16:10,322 because shamans, of course - 337 00:16:10,322 --> 00:16:12,654 the term itself comes from Russia, 338 00:16:12,654 --> 00:16:16,298 but it's applied a lot to basically spiritual practices 339 00:16:16,298 --> 00:16:19,035 where there are specific members of your tribe 340 00:16:19,035 --> 00:16:21,738 who intercede on your behalf with an unseen world. 341 00:16:21,738 --> 00:16:24,815 Whether it's to influence weather, to influence the hunt, 342 00:16:24,815 --> 00:16:26,386 or to do with health, 343 00:16:26,386 --> 00:16:29,500 and with people being sick and trying to make them better again, 344 00:16:29,500 --> 00:16:31,206 there's these people that do that. 345 00:16:31,206 --> 00:16:35,238 And what's so interesting about some modern examples, for instance, 346 00:16:35,238 --> 00:16:39,453 is that there is a fellow by the name of David Lewis-Williams, 347 00:16:39,453 --> 00:16:43,025 who is a researcher in rock art who works in South Africa, 348 00:16:43,025 --> 00:16:47,247 and he had the wonderful opportunity to actually speak with the San people, 349 00:16:47,271 --> 00:16:50,494 who are a hunter-gatherer group living in northern Southern Africa. 350 00:16:50,494 --> 00:16:52,090 They live out in the desert, 351 00:16:52,095 --> 00:16:54,517 and still practice the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. 352 00:16:54,517 --> 00:16:56,755 And guess what? They still do rock art. 353 00:16:56,755 --> 00:17:00,405 So, here had the opportunity to ask them, "So, why do you guys do the art?" 354 00:17:00,405 --> 00:17:02,436 Now, it doesn't explain all the art, 355 00:17:02,436 --> 00:17:05,502 but certainly shamanistic practices played a large role in it. 356 00:17:05,502 --> 00:17:07,233 Things like handprints. 357 00:17:07,233 --> 00:17:09,435 They talked about the idea that caves 358 00:17:09,435 --> 00:17:13,558 were almost like a transitional place between worlds. 359 00:17:13,558 --> 00:17:15,303 That once you go into a cave - 360 00:17:15,327 --> 00:17:17,441 we go in with headlamps and lots of light, 361 00:17:17,441 --> 00:17:19,473 and we know what a cave is, geologically. 362 00:17:19,488 --> 00:17:21,079 But imagine if you didn't know. 363 00:17:21,096 --> 00:17:24,297 It almost has a feel of maybe being a portal to another reality. 364 00:17:24,297 --> 00:17:27,169 And they've talked about the idea of those cave walls 365 00:17:27,169 --> 00:17:30,169 as almost being maybe membranes that they could touch, 366 00:17:30,169 --> 00:17:33,199 and through those membranes touch the unseen. 367 00:17:33,199 --> 00:17:35,166 So, now, we get specifically 368 00:17:35,166 --> 00:17:37,444 to a research project that I've been working on, 369 00:17:37,444 --> 00:17:39,650 where I said, okay, well, let's try with this, 370 00:17:39,650 --> 00:17:43,476 because, of course, modern people in Africa doing this - 371 00:17:43,476 --> 00:17:46,862 minimum of 10,000 years' difference between what's happening in Europe, 372 00:17:46,881 --> 00:17:49,032 could we get at that? Is it possible? 373 00:17:49,032 --> 00:17:53,716 Are we seeing on the walls, potentially, some of the trance-like imagery 374 00:17:53,740 --> 00:17:56,321 which they have said that that's why they're doing it. 375 00:17:56,321 --> 00:18:00,617 Because you see, the actual human mind - 376 00:18:00,641 --> 00:18:04,202 Obviously, trance is when we go into an altered state of consciousness. 377 00:18:04,202 --> 00:18:07,740 There's many things that will be culturally specific to where you live, 378 00:18:07,740 --> 00:18:09,838 like the animals you see in the imagery, 379 00:18:09,862 --> 00:18:13,350 but geometric imagery actually happens to be almost universal. 380 00:18:13,350 --> 00:18:14,700 And the reason for that 381 00:18:14,724 --> 00:18:19,416 is our eyes are only hard-wired to be able to produce certain shapes 382 00:18:19,440 --> 00:18:21,219 when we're in a state of trance. 383 00:18:21,219 --> 00:18:23,545 And so this is where, what I've looked at is, 384 00:18:23,545 --> 00:18:26,316 can we find those in the caves in Europe. 385 00:18:26,316 --> 00:18:27,839 And the study is still ongoing, 386 00:18:27,839 --> 00:18:30,357 but I thought I'd share a little with you today, 387 00:18:30,357 --> 00:18:32,917 which was that with dots, with lines, with grids, 388 00:18:32,917 --> 00:18:35,191 yes, absolutely, we're finding those. 389 00:18:35,191 --> 00:18:37,672 But, some of the other ones, not so much. 390 00:18:37,672 --> 00:18:41,763 Zigzags, there's only about 15 examples over 300 sites 391 00:18:41,763 --> 00:18:43,569 that have zigzags in them. 392 00:18:43,569 --> 00:18:48,092 So, they're not totally behaving the way that the people in, say, South Africa are. 393 00:18:48,092 --> 00:18:50,773 When it comes to spirals, there's only two. 394 00:18:50,773 --> 00:18:53,838 So, in that sense spirals are even more uncommon, 395 00:18:53,853 --> 00:18:57,466 and not something that we're seeing throughout the archaeological record. 396 00:18:57,466 --> 00:18:59,166 So, what does that mean? 397 00:18:59,166 --> 00:19:01,110 Basically, what it suggests to me - 398 00:19:01,110 --> 00:19:03,110 I can't give you a definitive answer, 399 00:19:03,110 --> 00:19:07,772 and say, "Yes, absolutely, there were spiritual people living back then." 400 00:19:07,772 --> 00:19:10,098 But, the signs are definitely there to suggest 401 00:19:10,098 --> 00:19:12,094 this was something that was developing, 402 00:19:12,118 --> 00:19:13,505 something that existed. 403 00:19:13,505 --> 00:19:16,049 And I'll leave you with the thought that they're us. 404 00:19:16,073 --> 00:19:17,547 In every sense of the word, 405 00:19:17,547 --> 00:19:21,384 those people who lived between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago were modern humans. 406 00:19:21,398 --> 00:19:24,070 So, if we're capable of it, why wouldn't they have been? 407 00:19:24,070 --> 00:19:25,376 Thank you. 408 00:19:25,376 --> 00:19:29,857 (Applause)