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we're going to talk about
the information remind this morning is the topic about books is just coming out
a lead and it prepares
the way to thinking about the change in consciousness at the Millennium
obviously what happens at the Millennium
is something to do with our minds it's not that the laws of nature or going to
change should be a 2000
it's a mental event to say *** and a cultural event
and we're going to start this morning by talking about the evolutionary context
ported a book
called the visionary mind comes at a time when there's a tremendous amount of
interest in the evolutionary psychology
psychologists in the last five to 10 years
discovered Darwin and IQ
psychologists who need speak to me with that sort
enthusiasm and bright-eyed quality of the new combat
I'm they've seen the light they've discovered
darling I wonder why as a biologist they haven't discovered on a long time ago
going after all opened up the field to be visionary
psychology with his book the expression of the nation's them and the animals
at there was a lot of speculation at the end of the 19th century about the evil
racial consciousness
however academic psychology
this century has got involved in
behaviorism rats in a cage is pushing levers
I'm not cognitive psychology computer models
all neural processes none of which has left much space for
evolutionary terrorizing so they come rather late
to receive additional rate speculation there's been
Commission given to biologists to speculate about even mention of the mine
in this way by the
analysis all selfish genes
they feel it is that talking about selfish genes that somehow scientific
and it's getting everyone Commission this is this kind of discussion is
epitomized in Steven Pinker his recent book
how the mind works and is based on the idea that human behavior is determined
by genes and gene for everything
and day then rikehart in theoretical terms
what these jeans would lead us to expect selfish behavior
jeans unfortunately that conclusions and not terribly surprising
all demon and at the end of a lecture he gave recently in London
which was met with considerable skepticism I'm
somebody said we're not just going as well the most important care idea you've
been able to produce real selfish between syria
and he said that up to 90 calculations they founded
because females have any 10 to exert a time
I'm which a rare and precious resource that means conserving
whereas males produce millions of *** they did used
after a lot of working out that women would tend to
I'm seek high status males and want to stay with them whereas man
would tend to be promiscuous to and spread selfish genes with predated
who is an ad disappointment in the election
up and somebody was had to say
is that all
said anyway this said
the fact that this rather players welcome Selfish Gene speculation is
going on
has given other people within the scientific world
commission to think more widely about it. pollution most english words there
is a purely speculative since we don't really know what happened in the past
I'm many of them are just so stories
rather like claims a concert how the leopard
got its Pauls and so on but they have been in this
Martin explosion you have speculation about how refurbishment past
time there are several rather interesting ideas
come up and I just wanted to bring up to three of these
this morning because I'm there is no shortage of speculations about what
happened in human past
in the books have Terence McKenna there I'll several new ideas which might
amplified
and these ideas about conscious even lucien
the first I guess that I want to talk about it by
put forward in a book by Steven Meisel and MIT AP and called the prehistory of
the mind
he's a British archaeologist but
in this book he brought together a wealth of evidence from the fossil
record from archaeology
from just on you primate behavior
and from the study of child psychology
to put together a very interesting
discussion of what happened to human minds during the three and a half
million years
human even nation before recorded history began
a fast upright walking home in aids
I'm not believed to have emerged in Africa am at three and a half million
years ago
australopithecus these were
upright walking tool using they use simple same tools
precursors about ourselves human history
three and a half million years ago it went on before we have the records from
the great civilizations the domestication of animals the
agricultural revolution occurred ten thousand years ago
the first civilizations about 5,000 years ago maybe seven thousand years ago
I'm industrialized nation in two or three hundred years ago
but for the vast majority of human history
people living in quite different quite different way
and it seems to be very reasonable supposition that a great deal about
psychology a great deal of working on mines has been shaped by this enormously
long period
about which we know say little well nineteen point out is that these
I say we don't know what they thought about and how they work for
if these early human beings these early hominids
I'm must've had
several different kinds of intelligence they must've had a cessation
intelligence that was special
beings they lived in social groups and we know from studies of chimpanzees and
other social primates
that they're very subtle interactions within the group there a dominant
interactions there a
cooperative interactions and to get it right
requires a kind of intelligence about what how other members in the group
going to react what's appropriate behavior and so
all social animals must involve some kinda station telecoms
and we can reasonably assume that I'm ancestors
I'm a hominid ancestors had a cessation intelligence to enable them to live
together and work together and social groups
they had a technical intelligence that enabled them to make stand tools
and maybe other technical devices on technical things maybe five business
string
which haven't let traces in the archaeological record
they must've had a knack for historical intelligence
because if you're living as a hunter-gatherer as aidid
10 unless you know what to hunt and how to hunt it
what the habits that the animals are that you're hunting if you know unless
you know what together
where to gather it what things a good to eat what things a good as herbs
you don't get paid for and this requires an enormously detailed
knowledge of Natural History not just human beings chimpanzees have to have
this and
many other creatures gone so this must have been part of that mental makeup
and then at some stage they began to talk and they must have had a linguistic
intelligence we don't know when language began
some people put it fifty thousand years ago some people put it much longer
ago but that really nobody knows language leaves in a possible traces
that something very strange happened about a hundred thousand years ago
on ancestors achieve brain size is
roughly the same as today several hundred thousand years
human beings have had brains at the current capacity
yet per hundred thousand years they were not
writing programs and building computers
and thinking of feinstein's equations in tone something else was going on with
those brains
and we haven't P what it was that brain size
the development of current frame size is not the reason
that has been this explosion of technical innovation recently
brain size hasn't changed much for a hundred thousand years
and it wasn't until about 50,000 years ago that was the
beginning said and part
paintings in caves in that kind of thing somethings
what happened why did aren't and civilization any begin
tens of thousands of years after the brain that reached its present capacity
and what enabled these different kinds intelligence to give rise to
and the agricultural revolution mom humanity and so on
well the hypothesis that my eyes and puts forward
is that about fifty thousand years ago some crucial transition occurred
whereby these previously separate intelligences
somehow came together cross specialized each other
and produced the beginnings of characteristically human mentality
the can't the connection of social and technical intelligence meant that people
started using technical skills for making things like jewelry
ornaments grave goods the
the mixing technical and natural historical intelligence
lead to a great improvement in hunting technologies in weapons in axe heads
and spearheads and arrowheads and so on
the matching a session natural historically intelligence
that led to a whole kinda mythic understanding if the animal in the
natural world
which we find in all cultures around the world today
and with the combining these with linguistic intelligence
I'm there was a a whole
best are human development have mental development
he compares this to cathedral
a Romanesque and Norman cathedral has side chapels almost sealed off from each
other with no interaction
where is the great gothic cathedral so to open up and all these different
things can mix together somehow he thinks this
transition fifty thousand years ago it was associated with the origin of
religion
and seems to have been based on
a sense of human connection not just with the *** but with the heavens
when I asked my eyes and how he understood this to have happened
I'm especially given his chosen meant for at the Cathedral
I said do you think there really was a breakthrough from some
extra terrestrial intelligence into the human realm
that stage seems all your evidence points to it
and he said of course not that's impossible
and good
so I said how do you know it's impossible axons
everybody all around the world according to urinate own evidence seems to have
undergone this transition it seems to have shaped human mentality as we know
it
he said he said oh yes he said well the very fact everyone believes it shows
that this is an incredibly persistent illusion
grant third
and that's about how do you know soon an illusion he said because it's a
persistent
surely you can have things that are true that a persistent to
he admitted in the end it was just a matter of opinion
and bed the everything he said points towards
some breakthrough to another round of consciousness
around 50,000 shares again something that happened with human groups all
around the a
and I think this is the first time I've seen a convincing building up evidence
from somebody who's coming from a very hard nosed position
that gives us some clues as to a major shift in consciousness
that happened and it involved some connection with the higher dimension not
some people will like to interpret that in terms of visits spaceships Chariots
of the Gods & Saiful
I'm I think that there are many other ways have thinking about is now I can
guess the terence will be able to suggest at least one
can't
can yep
budget before we and get just 10 the I'm
speculation about the past I want to mention which I found particularly
interesting
concert this year's crop of books on the subject which is barbara ehrenreich
spoke
blood rites she's an American writer based in New York
and in her book blood rites completely changed around my idea
human prehistory what she shows very convincingly is that our image of man
the hunter
striving for fun to the African savanna about three million years ago
and is intact pretty implausible
human beings with small they were
they couldn't run very fast they weren't particularly strong that tools were
extremely primitive
it's much more likely that for most of human history it was not Manhunter
but manhunt head I'm
in fact most bearing remains Valley hominids
show the marks and scratches and tooth marks
large caps on them human beings
we're on the African savanna with lots of game but also with lotsa big
predators
they were extremely vulnerable and a great deal
Martin have human mentality she argues with shaped by
millions who hears but being preyed on
by large predators the it wasn't until about 50,000 years ago
that there was a improvement in hunting technologies
all around the world whereby human beings could indeed
become fairly effective hunters but to most
at the three and a half million years at home in its history it was manhunt ed
she shows very interesting is that this