Human Condition (eBook)

Robert G. Bednarik, born in Vienna but an Australian since 1970, contradicts norms. He has undertaken numerous expeditions crossing the sea on rafts built with stone tools, but he cannot swim; he has produced 1165 academic publications, including many books, but has no formal education; he edits three scientific journals and two series of monographs, but not in his native language. As a complete autodidact, he regards himself as ignorant as did Socrates. Consequently his principal interest is the origin of the human ability to create constructs of reality, and in a wide variety of fields providing supplementary information in that quest.

Foreword 6
Preface 10
Acknowledgments 15
Contents 16
1 A Little Epistemology 18
Prolegomenon 18
Anthropocentric Realities 22
The Role of Archaeology 25
The "Mother of All Modern Humans" 28
Archaeological Fetishes 33
References 37
2 The Expulsion of Eve 41
Reviewing the Corpus in Question 41
The African Exodus 50
Tools and Cultures 56
References 61
3 The Hard Evidence 72
Investigating Iconicity 72
Paleoart of the Lower Paleolithic 77
Pigment 77
Petroglyphs 79
Proto-figurines 82
Portable Engravings 85
Beads and Pendants 88
Two Incommensurable Models 90
Toward a Universal Theory 95
References 100
4 Seafaring, Beads and External Hard Drives 106
Heroes of the Dreamtime 106
The First Mariners Project 110
Bringing Beads to the Natives 118
Academic Tyranny 122
The Big Bang of Consciousness 127
References 130
5 An Alternative Paradigm 135
A Sense of Perfection 135
The Domestication of Humans 141
The Fetalization of Humans 147
The Pain of a New Idea 151
References 155
6 The Big Picture 159
A Preamble 159
The Human Ascent 162
Theory of Mind, Language, and Exograms 168
Ontogenic Plasticity and Neoteny 173
References 178
7 Advanced Human Cognition: A Faustian Deal 184
A Little Neuroscience 184
The Susceptibility of the Human Brain to Illness 188
The Great Paradox of Recent Human Evolution 193
Assembling the Puzzle Correctly 197
Becoming Human 201
The Human Condition 204
References 206
Index 214