The 10,000 year explosion

It is suggested that about 10,000 years ago an enormous increase in the rate of human evolution took place. Such changes include skin colour change, disease resistance, lactose tolerance, and more importantly personality and cognitive adaptations.

Perhaps this triggered the greater abstraction in thought leading to the development of written language, the wheel, scientific method (about 2,500 years ago), musical and mathematical notation (800 years ago), the bicycle, the internal-combustion engine, aircraft, photography (200 years ago), electrical and electronic technology (100~ years ago), the computer, class based programming languages, applications of quantum physics (50 years ago) ....

The world wide web was invented in 1989 and is one of the most profound developments in our history - yet most of us have no idea who invented it ... nor do we care.

"The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution" by anthropologists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending.



Digital pinhole photograph on Lumix GX1, pigment print on Hahnemuehle Baryta.

Text and images Copyright Geoff Chaplin 2002 -