The Story of Mankind's "Transformation"

How Mankind was transformed into the "Homo Imaginative Sapiens" species.

The archaic (non-imaginative) Homo Sapiens had evolved into anatomically modern humans in Africa, according to both genetic and fossil evidence, around 170,000 years ago. They now had the same physical appearance as modern humans but did not yet have the behavioral characteristics of modern humans. They looked like us but were not yet imaginative (they were still archaic as far as behavior was concerned). Their crude tools were on the same level as the Neanderthals. Around 100,000 years would pass before they would become imaginative.

Human imagination was the spark that transformed the Homo Sapiens into an creative super being. Something in the final evolution of the brain transformed the archaic modern humans into modern "imaginative" humans. What caused this "spark" to take place is open for debate.

The transformation began around 70 to 80,000 years ago or even earlier in South Africa. The evolution of vital cells in the cerebral cortex of the brain was the keystone that slowly opened up the wonders of the universe to this new super animal. Over time billions of potential new pathways were created in the brain of the Homo sapiens. The physical body of a human is that of a rather ordinary animal, it is our brain that separates human beings from the rest of the animal world.

This was the time of "transformation" of the Homo sapiens into the “Homo Imaginative Sapiens”. The true test of being imaginative humans is their ability; to progress over a very long period of time; to be curious, to create new words, languages, to think verbally (other animals cannot do this), new technology, new art, new stories, improve their living conditions, etc.. Human Imagination is the over riding characteristic of modern humans. All human progress depends on creative power of human imagination, without it we would have remained on the same intelligence level as the Neanderthals who themselves never progressed to a higher intellectual level. Their hand axes were never improved during their entire existence. They never had the power to think verbally.

In the animal kingdom; birds build complex nests, beavers build dams across streams, etc. but they have been doing this for thousands of centuries, they have not progressed one bit. Just this spring a robin struggled to build a nest under our side door canopy. It was a real struggle, the straw would blow away as soon as he placed it. Finally one morning the nest was all built, he must have worked all night but he got it done. Talk about perseverance! The mama robin came, laid her eggs, sat on them for about a week and the chicks were born. Then she and the papa robin were busy feeding the chicks and it seems like within a week or so the chicks were out flying around the driveway bumping into the house. Then all of a sudden they were gone!

I took the nest down and marveled at the workmanship. It was very well built, light and strong. The bottom of the nest's inside was made of finer straw, very soft and clean. It was a work of art but was it imaginative? Probably not, robins have been building these nests for thousands of years, they have never progressed one bit. If they had progressed we would now be seeing their nest's with little roofs and maybe a couple of bedrooms, etc. But they had no need for such improvements so they did not progress. Maybe Homo Imaginative Sapiens secret is we are never satisfied. We are always trying to improve our living conditions, our tools and weapons until today we live in a dangerous complex world that is never quite done.

Getting back to the story - With human imagination, the Homo sapiens now had an extremely powerful tool at their disposal; it would change their lives forever. This was the same group of humans who had descended from "mitochondrial Eve". She was the mother of all modern imaginative humans; all her female descendants have the same mitochondrial DNA that has been passed down unchanged through the ages.

Scientists theorize that "Mitochondrial Eve" was the mother in this special little tribe of Homo Sapiens who began their transformation to become imaginative beings. Her descendants would eventually replace all other hominids on the planet BUT this time was just the beginning of the transformation. It would be a long time before these Homo Sapiens would become a fully imaginative species. Although they were very intelligent animals they had not yet developed the creative power of imaginative modern humans. At the beginning of the transformation they were still making the same crude tools and weapons and used fire but they had not yet progressed beyond that limited lifestyle. Before the transformation they were on about the same level of intelligence as the Neanderthals and Homo erectus species. The transformation was the "spark" that started the Homo Sapiens on their journey into their complex world of human imagination.

Before the tranformation they probably could not compete with their distant cousins, the more physically robust Neanderthals so they stayed out of their way as much as possible. For perhaps 100,000 years they stayed in their little corner of Africa - enjoying the good life. If there ever was a paradise this was it. These archaic humans could barely hold their own with most of the other animals and probably were the victims of the larger predators who also lived in their territory.

This lack of a robust physical body may have caused the archaic humans to use their cunning more than their strength to survive. The challenge to survive may have forced them to come up with novel ways to defend themselves with new weapons and tactics. They had a big empty brain so why not use it. Over time they did just that, slowly making more and more connections in their big brain.

Eventually as more and more connections were made over a very long period of time. A tiny "spark" of creative imagination began to flicker within the cortex of their brain. This tiny spark continued to slowly expand within the cortex until finally it was firmly established but still a very small part of the brain. The primitive connections were now in place and continued to slowly mulitply as time passed. This was the time the "transformation" began, perhaps between 70 to 80,000 years ago.

The archaic modern human's children began showing signs of becoming creative, becoming a little smarter, more curious then their parents. This never happened before, for thousands of centuries Homo Sapiens offsprings' intelligence had remained static. During the transformation the children began to become a little more imaginative then they were before. It may have happened sporadically skipping generations. Eventually more sophisticated stone and bone tools began to be created. These new tools made it possible for them to develop new weapons and to create beads and other trinkets made from bone and teeth, etc. As they progressed the newer generations became more curious about the world they lived in. With new weapons they also became more aggressive. The progress was extremely slow, it happened over thousands of years.

Slowly over the ages, the "spark" developed into a new "special sense" we call human imagination. This creative imagination sense is strictly a human sense beyond the basic animal senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, balance). The new "Special Sense" enabled people to visualize within their mind, to plan ahead, to create new abstract words, languages, to think verbal thoughts rather then just picture thoughts as animals do,(this was a extremely major jump in human intelligence progress), they began to communicate more complex ideas with each other, to create new art, tools, inventions, ideas, philosophies, etc. The "MIND" of mankind slowly came into existence.

The MIND of mankind comes into existence. Human Imagination was the spark that allowed mankind to progress into the future. When mankind began exchanging ideas using abstract language (vocal sounds) to communicate (verbally) with each other, the MIND of mankind came into existence. People could begin exchanging ideas and improve upon each other's ideas in the tribe and even improve upon ideas in other tribes. There is no sign of this powerful imagination reaching its full intensity, in fact, at the present time it is digging deeper and deeper into the secret worlds of nature, inventing every sort of extremely complex technology.

The modern larger and more sopisticated telescopes, allow modern humans to peer deeper and deeper into the far reaches of the observable universe. Other satellites are traveling out beyond the solar system's planets into deep space revealing new information on the far off worlds in the cosmos. The "Mind" of mankind has discovered many other secret worlds of nature, microscopic, etc. The "Mind" is probing the puzzling world of quantum mechanics, nanotechnology, etc. Its voracious appetite for new knowledge remains unquenchable. The "Mind" is never satisfied its always searching for more secrets of nature

The amazing progress of mankind is due in a large part to the ideas of mankind's super imaginative minds (the geniuses of mankind). These people with their super minds may be more a product of their cultures (Babylonian, Egyptian, Hindu, Greek, Roman, Chinese, European, American, etc.) in which they lived rather than their superior physical brains, although the connections within their brains may be superior in some ways. Are they simply more curious than other people??

The existence of "Mind" of mankind is a product of these super minds being able to communicate with each other and build upon each other’s ideas across time and distance. This is the keystone of human progress. It is going on at a tremendous pace today. This is the "Mind" of mankind.

Astronomy is a good example of the "Mind" of mankind at work over a long period of time and place - right up to the present time. From the time the ancient people watched the stars cross the night sky, the sun rise and set, the moon follow its monthly cycle people have wondered why and how these mysterious phenomena moved across the sky. Over the ages the "Mind" of mankind built upon the speculative ideas and discoveries of these ancient "astronomers" slowly digesting the ideas and discoveries on how the heavens really work.

Astronomy is still a work in progress with new discoveries and ideas continually being put forth by people from all over the world. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Hubble, are just a few of the super minds of mankind who contributed to mankind's knowledge of astronomy. There are thousands of other examples of the "Mind" of mankind at work who contributed to the progress of mankind throughout the ages.

It all started with the "transformation" and forever afterward enabled mankind to constantly improve its technology, tools, paintings and every other possible concept imaginable. With this new power mankind began its relentless progress through the ages. They invented vocal sounds (words) to describe various things and events that they encountered in their daily lives. A major part of the modern humans' imaginative power was their ability to think verbally, invent new words, create sentences and develop languages, .

People began to communicate more complex actions and describe things verbally among each other. This was the first primitive indication of the "Mind" of mankind coming into existence. People continued to have more power to communicate ever more complex and abstract ideas with each other and to build upon and improve each other's ideas. To think verbally is one of the keystones of mankind's philosophical and technological progress through the ages.

Peoples ability to think and communicate verbally inventing new vocal words and sentences improved their ability to create tales around the campfire. In some of their stories they created supernatural beings; gods, angels, devils, witches, religions, etc... Finally after thousands of years some super imaginative minds invented writing. The era of written history was introduced to the world. This was another quantum leap in the progress of mankind.

This progress happened over a long period of time. Eventually new weapons such as better spears, axes, etc. were created that could stand up to any of the large predators that had preyed on them through the ages.

The Neanderthals never evolved this "powerful imagination" and remained at the same intelligence level. Relying more on their physical strength rather then their cunning. They had some crude tools that enabled them to survive but not to progress. They apparently never had the power to think verbally and lacked the communitive powers of modern imaginative humans. However they did have a learning imagination and being in fairly close contact with the modern imaginative humans for thousands of years they may have learned enough to improve their tools somewhat (creative and learning imagination are two different types of imagination, together they form human imagination).

Because of the new weapons and tactics the imaginative humans could now defend themselves better from the predators and their population numbers began to increase substantially. As their populations increased some tribes began to break off and form new tribes slowly migrating into new territories. If the territories were inhabited by Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, etc. using their more sophisticated weapons, the modern humans simply moved into the new territories killing off its inhabitants, enslaving, kidnapping the women and stealing whatever they wanted. Doing what humans do best; lying, killing, pillaging, and raping, unfortunately this is the nature of the "beast".

The Neanderthals species were distant cousins and were too far removed genetically from modern imaginative humans to interbreed with them successfully so even though there were sexual encounters no offspring were born. The latest DNA evidence now indicates that there may have been some successful breeding of the Modern humans and the Neanderthals when the two species met in Europe around 40,000 years ago but this is open for debate.

By the time they migrated into Europe and Asia from Africa around 40 to 50,000 years ago the imaginative Homo Sapiens had already progressed substantially both in technology and language. From Africa they wandered over much of the "old world" (Europe, Asia, and Australia) eventually evolving into the major races of the Homo imaginative Sapiens species. They didn't come to the Americas until around 15 to 20,000 years ago.

The pattern of territorial expansion and survival had now been set for the future generations. These, now aggressive, "Homo Imaginative Sapiens" could go where ever they pleased without fear. One of their favorite sports were raiding the Neanderthals encampments killing the men and capturing their women. These captured women were brought home and became wives but since they could not successfully interbreed with their captors the wives remained barren and became a dead end for the Neanderthal's population survival. Slowly these non-imaginative tribes became extinct.

During the thousands of years of wandering the modern humans began encountering a really tough enemy. They began to encounter other Homo imaginative tribes who had broken away long ago and settled into new territories many thousands of generations before. In the interim period of time these tribes developed their own languages so now they could not even understand each other.

For the next 70,000 years right up to the present time these imaginative humans battled each other trying to gain dominance over the other. History and prehistory is full of these bloody wars and battles and there is no sign of letup in this deadly mayhem.

Ever since the "transformation" when the Homo sapiens became imaginative there has been a constant struggle to gain superiority over their enemies with new and better deadly technology. Warfare technology has become so sophisticated and deadly that mankind is now capable of destroying itself and possibly even the planet.

The imaginative Homo sapiens are truly foreign to each other but they are both close cousins and can interbreed. All the Homo species who inhabited the world over the ages there was now only one Homo Sapiens species left on the planet and that was the "Homo Imaginative Sapiens" species. At the present time there is only one imaginative species but there are many races and they can all interbreed with each other.

Donald Louis Hamilton,  All rights reserved.

Author of; The "Mind of Mankind" - Human Imagination, the source of Mankind's tremendous power.

Anthropology: What happened to our earlier ancestors? - Why did the other Hominids (Neanderthals and Homo Erectus) become extinct while the "Homo Imaginative Sapiens" survived and prospered?

(Click on cover)

The "MIND" of MANKIND
- Human Imagination -
The Source of Mankind’s Tremendous Power!

Donald Louis Hamilton

ISBN 09649265-1-2, 210 pages, trade paperback with drawings.

This is a book that will give you greater insight into the secrets of mankind's unique power - the power of human imagination - Plus much more!.

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