Great Leap Forward - Evolution

[GRILL]

hey codz, l GRILL l here - let's dig! (NOTE: this is some heavy stuff. i'm not an astrologist, geologist or paleontologist - i'm just trying to relay some information that I think could be significant).

... apologies for the lack of photos :cry:

GREAT LEAP FORWARD - BEHAVIORAL MODERNITY

Advocates of this theory argue that the great leap forward occurred sometime between 50-40 kya in Africa or Europe. They argue that humans who lived before 50 kya were behaviorally primitive and indistinguishable from other extinct hominids such as the Neanderthals or Homo erectus. Proponents of this view base their evidence on the abundance of complex artifacts, such as artwork and bone tools of the Upper Paleolithic, that appear in the fossil record after 50 kya. They argue that such artifacts are absent from the fossil record from before 50 kya, indicating that earlier hominids lacked the cognitive skills required to produce such artifacts.

Humans of the Acheulean and Mousterian cultures lived in an apparent stasis, experiencing little cultural change. This was followed by a sudden flowering of fine toolmaking, sophisticated weaponry, sculpture, cave painting, body ornaments, and long-distance trade. Humans also expanded into hitherto uninhabited environments, such as Australia and Northern Eurasia.

The Great Leap Forward was concurrent with the extinction of the Neanderthals, and it has been suggested that Cro-Magnon interaction with Neanderthals caused this extinction.

According to this model, the emergence of anatomically modern humans predates the emergence of behaviorally modern humans by over 100 kya.

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I figure it's important to flesh out (pun intended) all possible meanings of "Great Leap Forward" (i.e. the Chinese historical incident (thanks PINNAZ ), Billy Braggs Song (thanks Naitrax ) and the theory of anatomic humans predating behaviorally modern humans

let's take a look at what happened between 40-50 kya.

In astronomy, geology, and paleontology, the abbreviation yr for "years" and ya for "years ago" are sometimes used, combined with prefixes for "thousand", "million", or "billion". They are not SI units, using y to abbreviate English year, but following ambiguous international recommendations, use either the standard English first letters as prefixes (t, m, and or metric prefixes (k, M, and G) or variations on metric prefixes (k, m, g).

source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tya#Symbols_y_and_yr

Appearance of Homo sapiens, ca. 200 kya

Out-of-Africa migration, ca. 60 kya

Last Glacial Maximum, ca. 20 kya

Neolithic Revolution, ca. 10 kya

Referring to the time frame above, we can conclude that the happenings of the theory named Great Leap Forward occurred between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Out-of-Africa Migration.

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) refers to a period in the Earth's climate history when ice sheets were at their maximum extension, between 26,500 and 19,000–20,000 years ago, marking the peak of the last glacial period. During this time, vast ice sheets covered much of North America, northern Europe and Asia. These ice sheets profoundly impacted Earth's climate, causing drought, desertification, and a dramatic drop in sea levels.

model of human migration based on DNA samples

Genetic and fossil evidence shows that archaic Homo sapiens evolved to anatomically modern humans solely in Africa, between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago, that members of one branch of Homo sapiens left Africa by between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago, and that over time these humans replaced earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. The date of the earliest successful "out of Africa" migration (earliest migrants with living descendents) has generally been placed at 60,000 years ago as suggested by genetics, although migration out of the continent may have taken place as early as 125,000 years ago according to Arabian archaeology finds of tools in the region.

[Tasty Applesauce]

Mind-blown. Well done sir. This is a lot to take in, holy crap.

[GRILL]

Mind-blown. Well done sir. This is a lot to take in, holy crap.

Thanks much man! I agree about it being a lot to take in, I'm still processing!