Evolution Revisited

Now we know where the civilization began and how it was developed, but the question that follows without being responded to is: So that? So that it appeared the civilization? Then, as many students today admit with frustration, all the data indicate that the Man would have to be still without any type of civilization. Any obvious reason does not exist of which we had to be in favor of civilized more than the primitive tribes of the Amazonian forest or the most inaccessible places of New Guinea.

But, one says to us if these natives still live like in the Age of Stone, is because there are been isolated. But, isolated of what? If they have been living in he himself planet that we, so that they have not acquired he himself scientific and technological knowledge that, supposedly, we have developed? Nevertheless, the true enigma is not based in the delay of the men of the forest, but in our advance; then it is recognized now that, in the normal course of the evolution, the Man would have to be typified by the men of the forest and not by us. To the Man, it took two million to his years to advance in his “industry of the tool”, from the use of stones so as it found them, until the moment at which one noticed that it could chip them and give form them to adapt them better to his intentions. So that other two million years not to learn to use other materials, and other ten million years to more dominate the mathematics, engineering and astronomy? And, nevertheless, we are here, less than 50,000 years after the Man of Neanderthal, taking astronauts to the Moon.

Therefore, the obvious question is this one: Were really we and our Mediterranean ancestors those that we developed to outpost civilization so?

Although the Man of Cro-Magnon did not construct skyscraper nor used metals, there is no doubt that hers it was a sudden and revolutionary civilization. Its mobility, its capacity to be constructed refuges, its the impulse to get dressed, its manufactured tools, its art, all it, composed a sudden civilization that came to break an interminable beginning of human culture that came extending itself during million years and that advanced to a slow and extremely painful step.

Although our students cannot explain the appearance of the Homo sapiens and of the civilization of the Man of Cro-Magnon, there is no doubt at least, so far, as far as the place of origin of this civilization: Near East. The high earth and the mountain ranges that extend in a semiarch from Montes Zagros, in the east (where, at the present time, is the border between Iran and Iraq), passing through Monte Ararat and the mountainous chain of the Taurus, in the north, to lower, towards the west and the south, by hills of Syria, Lebanon and Israel, they are filled with caverns where the evidences of a Man more modern have been conserved than prehistoric.

One of these caves, the one of Shanidar, is located in the northeast of the semiarch of the civilization. At the present time, the ferocious Kurds as much look for refuge in the caves of this zone for themselves as for their flocks during the cold months of winter. Thus he also had of being in one night winter of 44,000 years ago, when a family of seven members (one of which she was a baby) looked for refuge in the cave of Shanidar.

Its rest - all they were squashed by a rock loosening were discovered in 1957 by a surprised Ralph Solecki, who had gone to the zone in search of evidences of the primitive man. What found was much more of which it hoped. As they were taken off rubbish, it was become evident that the cave had conserved a clear registry of the life of the Man in that zone between about 100,000 and 13,000 years before.

What showed east registry was as surprising as the same discovery. The human culture did not show any progress but, even, an evident regression. Beginning from certain level, the following generations
did not show to more advanced levels but inferior levels of civilized life. And between the 27,000 and the 11,000 a.C., the regression and the diminution of the population took to the point of the almost complete absence of inhabitants in the zone. One assumes that by climatic reasons, the Man almost disappeared of all this zone during 16,000 years.

And soon, around the 11,000 a.C, the “thinking Man” returned to appear with a new vigor and an inexplicably high cultural level.

He was as if an invisible trainer, seeing the vacillating party of the humanity, had made enter the field everything a refreshment equipment, trained well, to replace the exhausted equipment.
Throughout the many million years of his interminable beginning, the Man was the son of the nature; he survived collecting foods that grew of wild form, hunting wild animals, capturing wild birds and fish. But just when the slumses were almost disappearing, just when they were leaving his homes, when their material and artistic profits were disappearing, just then, suddenly, without reason pretends and, that know, without no previous period of gradual preparation, the Man becomes agriculturist.

Making a summary of the work of many eminent authorities in the matter, R.J. Braidwood and B. Howe {Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan) reached the conclusion that the genetic studies confirm the archaeological discoveries, and does not leave place to doubts that exactly agriculture began there where the thinking Man had emerged before with his first and coarse civilization: in Near East. Until the moment, doubt that does not exist agriculture extended to everybody from the arc of mountains and high territories of Near East.

Using falsified methods of dating by radiocarbon and genetics of the plants, many students of diverse scientific fields agree in which the first agricultural company of the Man was the culture of the wheat and the barley, probably through the domesticación of a wild variety of wheat, the Triticum dicoccum.

Accepting that, of some way, the Man happened through a gradual process of learning over how domesticating, letting grow and to cultivate a wild plant, the students follow disturbed by the profusion of other plants and basic cereals for the human survival and the progress that continued leaving Near East. Between eatable cereals, they appeared in fast succession mijo, the rye and escanda; the linen, that provided fibers and eatable oil; and an ample variety of shrubs and fruit trees.

In each one of these cases, the plant doubtlessly was domesticated in Near East during millenia before arriving at Europe. It was as if in Near East a species of genetic botanical laboratory had existed,
directed by an invisible hand, that from time to time produced a new domesticated plant.

The scholars who have studied the origins of the grapevine have reached the conclusion that its culture began in mountains of the north of Mesopotamia, and in Syria and Palestine. And he is not to surprise. The Old Testament says to us that Noah “planted a vine” (and that was even gotten to emborrachar with its wine) after the coffer settled on Monte Ararat, when the waters of Diluvio retired. The Bible, like the scholars, locates therefore the beginning of the culture of the grapevine in mountains of the north of Mesopotamia.

Apples, pears, olives, higos, almonds, pistachios, nuts; all had their origin in Near East, and thence they spread to Europe and to other parts of the world. Certainly, we cannot make another thing more than to remember than the Old Testament went ahead in several millennia to our scholars at the time of identifying this same zone like that in which the first orchard of the world settled down: “Soon a garden in Edén planted Yahveh God, to the east… Yahveh God made bring forth of the ground all class of trees delightful at sight and good to eat”.

The general location of the “Edén” was certainly well-known for the Biblical generations. It was “to the east” - to the Earth east of Israel. It was in a earth watered by four great rivers, two of which they were

the Tigris and the Euphrates. Doubt that does not fit Libro of the Génesis locates the first orchard in high earth where they have his origin these rivers, in the northeast of Mesopotamia. As much the Bible as science agrees completely.

In fact, if we read the Hebrew original text of Libro of the Génesis, not like a theological text but like a scientific text, we are whereupon also it accurately describes the process of domesticación of the plant.

Science says to us that the process was from the wild grass to wild cereals, soon to arrive until cultivated cereals and to follow with the shrubs and fruit trees. And this one is exactly the process that is

detailed in the first chapter of Libro of the Génesis.

And the Gentleman said:

“He produces the Earth grass;
cereals that by seeds produce seeds;
fruit trees that give fruit according to their species,
that they contain the seed in his interior”.

And thus it was:
The Earth produced grass;
cereals that by seeds produced seeds, according to its species;
and trees that give fruit, that contains
the seed in its interior, according to its species.

Libro of the Génesis continues saying to us that the Man, expelled from the garden of the Edén, had to work hard to let grow his food. “With the sweat of your face you will eat the bread”, said the Gentleman to him to Adam. And it was after that “she was Abel shepherd of ewes and farm Caín”. The Man, says the Bible to us, became shepherd shortly after becoming agriculturist.

The students are completely in agreement with this Biblical sequence of the facts. Analyzing the diverse theories on the domesticación of the animals. F.E. Zeuner (Domesíication of Animáis) remarca the idea that the Man could not “have acquired the habit of the domesticación or the young animals in captivity before reaching the stage of the life in social units of certain size”. These establishments or communities, a previous requirement for the domesticación of animals, followed the change that supposed agriculture.

The first animal in being domesticated was the dog, and not necessarily like better friend of the Man but also, probably, like food. One thinks that this could happen around the 9500 a.C. The first bony rest of dog have been in Iran, Iraq and Israel.

The ewe was domesticated more or less by the same time; in the cave of Shanidar were rest of ewes of around 9000 a.C, that demonstrated that great part of the young ewes of every year was sacrificed by their meat and its skins. The goats, that also give milk, did not take in following them; and the pigs, and the cattle with horns and without them was the following ones in being domesticated.

In all these cases, the domesticación began in Near East.

This steep change in happening of the human subjects, happened around the 11000 a.C in Near East (and around 2,000 years later in Europe) has taken to the students to mark this time like the one of the

aim of the Age of Old Stone (the Paleolítico) and the beginning of a new one was cultural, the Age of Average Stone (the Mesolítico).

The name is only appropriate if the main raw material of the Man is considered, who continues being the stone. Their dwellings in the mountainous zones continued being of stone, their communities protected with walls of stone and his first agricultural tool - the sickle was done of stone. It honored and it protected to his deads covering and adorning his tombs with stones, and used the stone to make images of the supreme beings, or “Gods”, whose benign intervention looked for. One of such images, found in the north of Israel and dated in the ninth millenium a.C, shows the carved head of a “God” covered by a lined helmet and carrying a species of “glasses”.

Nevertheless, observing the things as a whole, more it would be adapted to denominate to this was more that a.C like the Age of the Domesticación begins in the neighborhood of the 11000, than like the Age of Average Stone. In the lapse of not more than 3,600 years - one night, for the temporary lapses of that interminable beginning, the Man was made agriculturist, and he domesticated to the plants and the wild animals. Later, it could not be otherwise, it came a new era. The scholars call the Age of New Stone (Neolithic), but the term is completely inadequate, because the main change that took place

around the 7500 a.C was the one of the appearance of the ceramics.

For reasons that still elude our scholars - but who they will be clarified as we expose our story on prehistoric events, the march of the Man towards the civilization was confined, during the first millenia from the 11000 a.C, to high territories of Near East. The discovery of the multiple uses that could be given the clay at the same time took place that the Man let his dwellings in mountains to settle in fangosos valleys.

On the seventh millenium a.C, the arc of civilization of Near East was flooded of cultures of the clay or the ceramics, that elaborated a great number of utensils, ornamentos and statuettes. Towards the 5,000 a.C, in Near East clay objects and ceramics of excellent quality and design were being made.

But, once again, the progress slowed down and, towards the 4500 a.C, according to indicates the archaeological evidences, was a new regression. The ceramics became simpler, and the stone utensils

- a relic of the Age of Stone returned to predominate. The inhabited places reveal little rest. Some of the places that had been centers of the industry of the ceramics and the clay began to give in, and the

manufacture of the clay disappeared. “There was an impoverishment generalized of the culture”, according to James Melaart (Earliest Civilizations of the Near East), and some places take clearly

impronta of “a new time of necessities”.

The Man and his culture were, clearly, in declivity.

Later sudden, unexpectedly and inexplicably, the Near East was present at the blossoming of thegreater imaginable civilization, a civilization in which firmly we are taken root.

A mysterious hand removed, once again, to the Man of its declivity, and it elevated it until a level of culture, knowledge and still greater civilization.To return