The Difference Between You And A Cave Man

One of my favorite reading subjects is cultural anthropology because I like to learn about our human roots. How we are similar and how we differ from our distant relatives.

As we look back and see all the differences between people, many of these can be accounted for by environment.

When we look back and see things are the similar with people, then we can assume these are human nature.

It’s important to differentiate between human nature and environmental variables. This gets us closer to the true nature of man.

The first signs of ritual human burial were about 90,000 years ago. Which shows that early man was conscious of his own death.

The first recorded art was about 30,000 years ago, which shows man thinking in abstract terms.

People started gathering in stationary groups and forming the roots of modern civilization about 5 or 6,000 years ago.

Our lives are build on a foundation of over 100,000 years of human consciousness. This is an amazing thought. That we are now at the forefront of human evolution. Both physical and cultural.

The main difference between us and a cave man is what we know, our knowledge.

I can see myself wandering around the forest hunting for roots and small game and not knowing what I know now. Physical evolution is coming at only a fraction of the pace of cultural evolution. We are currently seeing and experiencing things that have never existed in the past.

And at the forefront of human evolution is the individual person. Many people are firmly entrinched in their cultural past. But it’s the person, the individual who can consciously escape their cultural influences who is at the head of and leads the way in human evolution.

This is the next step in human evolution; to become fully independent thinkers. You want to learn from the past, but not be a product of it. We must escape the differences in culture to arrive at our true human nature.

This person can stand on the shoulders of the past and be a new person, have new thoughts and live life to the fullest. This is the person you want to strive to be. Fully aware of the influences of your past but not encumbered by it.

You want your thoughts and actions to be independent of the cultural variables that aren’t important. Because they are just that, superficial variables. What is important is fundamental human nature. That is what got us where we are today. That is our true nature.