On the Possibility of an Astronomical Perspective in the Study of Human Evolution

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of using an astronomical perspective, considering Earth's orbital and climate variations, to better understand the timing and drivers of key events in human evolution, especially the agricultural revolution.

Contribution

It proposes adopting an astronomical, non-anthropocentric approach as a novel perspective to study human evolution and the Sapient Paradox.

Findings

Climatic changes driven by orbital forcing influenced human evolution.

Astronomical effects may offer new insights into the timing of the agricultural revolution.

A non-anthropocentric perspective could complement existing cognitive archaeological approaches.

Abstract

The Sapient Paradox is the apparently unexplainable time delay of several ten thousand years following the arrival of Homo sapiens in Asia and Europe and before the introduction of impressive innovations with the agricultural revolution. Renfrew (2007) has suggested that the solution of the paradox has to do with changes in modes of thought that occurred with sedentism. According to Renfrew, this is a subject of study for cognitive archaeology where the final goal would be to understand the formation of the human mind. Several scholars, however, affirm that climatic change was crucial to such a revolution as it would have been very difficult to develop agriculture during the Palaeolithic. In other words, sedentism was not justified during the ice age, and that may be the solution to the paradox. It is widely accepted that climate variations were due to so-called orbital forcing, the slow periodic changes of orbital parameters of the Earth (known also as the Milankovitch theory). These and other astronomical effects on the climate are discussed along with the consequent impact on human evolution. The question then rises as to whether or not it is possible to adopt an astronomical perspective instead of (or complementary to) the cognitive archaeological one. Such would be possible by adopting a different point of reference (that is, from outside), and a non-anthropocentric approach.