What Was It Like When The First Sentient Humans Arose?

As a species, we are sentient, or aware of our own existence. We can look in the mirror and proclaim, "hey, that's me!" We know the difference between ourselves and our environment. This is shared with a select few other animals, like dolphins, bonobo chimps and even parrots, but as far as we know, self-awareness is confined only to these.

The homo sapien species, in its current physical form, solidified around 100,000 years ago. Since then there have been subtle changes such as differences in skin color and height, but as far as I know, the last genetic mutation that defined us as a species occured some time around then. The first lives of this new species must have had an interesting time with life. If sentience arose spontaneously, they would have seen all the chaos going on around them in a new light, perhaps with more rational perspectives and novel ways to survive. What would it have been like to be the first true human, capable of analysis and critical thinking? It must have been stressful, seeing all these possibilities that nobody else can pick up on.

Language is another thing to think about. Communication has been evolving since the dawn of time, which makes me think this must have been a much slower transition, but as verbal language rose into sentience, we needed to have much more complex ways to express ourselves. So we evolved vocal cords to convey a much broader range of sounds to each other. This last thought makes me backpedal a bit on the whole "spontaneous" evolution of sentience, because we must have needed more time for our bodies to adapt to our more diversified language through subsequent mutations. But since evolution seems to take an exponential rate, perhaps the original mutation was still very sudden and our bodies simply adapted to it after that.

Who knows. Thoughts?

 

The question presupposes that there was once born a child that was sentient where all previous members of his species were not. This strikes me as fairly unlikely, what we would refer to as sentience seems more likely to me to have developed very slowly over time. (I think sentient may not be the correct word btw, as it means to be able to percieve or feel things which covers most animals. I think what your getting at is being the first to develop a sense of self.)

 

If we are granting bonobos and chimps self-awareness and sentience, then these traits were likely well established before homo sapiens sapiens (which I believe have been discovered back to about 200,000 years). In regards to the development of language and better analytical skills, I'd probably relate some of those that had superior skills in that realm early on to the Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

In regards to knowledge, Plato provides a scenario where there is a fire in a cave, people are prisoners trapped in the cave just seeing shadows cast on the wall, which is taken for reality. One prisoner escapes to see the world above, initially blinded and taking time to adjust he goes to experience this broader reality beyond the cave, however when he goes to tell the other prisoners about the reality, they do not understand him. Since the prisoners have no frame of reference or knowledge to the other reality, it doesn't make sense to them and they value their comfort in the cave.

 

yeah, it is.

 

the whole earth was a dangerous edin. it could bite you. but you could bit it too. and it wasn't all about biting either. but you were kind of bussy finding things to eat and finding or making shelter. but no one told you what kind of shelter you had to live in. and you didn't have to listen to some other asshole's television, because it hadn't been invented yet. and some people were assholes but most people helped each other, because if they hadn't, we wouldn't be here now.

 

Themnax, and for people to band together was key for survival to the species.
Now, we have an overpopulation problem and apathy and not caring.
Too many to care.... Overcrowded in many places. Over crowd any species and see what happens....wars, disease, famine....
I know you know all of this, though.

 

What Was It Like When The First Sentient Humans Arose?

Hmm, let me think.....
It was a nice morning, about 78 degrees, with a slight mist in the air. It was Thursday if I remember correctly, about 7:46 am.
There wasn't much going on in the political arena at the time and social media had just begun with the advent of fire as a central gathering point.
All in all it was a pleasant, ordinary day with nothing to distinguish it from any other except of course on that Thursday morning humans miraculously became self aware.

 

yes. and there are some things we could do differently, and if people don't want to, nature will take care of it for us. must of us won't survive if we leave it up to nature to do so.
people, prompted by ego, are always misquoting darwin and totally getting it wrong. fitness isn't about personal strength. its about a kind of constructive coexistence. even though that does also encompass painful and even deadly. the predator that kills off its prey to quickly, starves and becomes extinct. wolves know that, and even protect each other's young. so it isn't the exclusive provice of our creative brains.

figuring out how to make interesting, and dare i say, even beautiful, things, that was the big one.

there was a movie back in the 80s called quest for fire.

cave walls were once school room chalk boards and visual teaching aides.

 

Sentient is the ability to feel. Ducks are sentient.

Sapient is the word. Unlike say skin pigmentation, there isn't a clear awarness gene. It happened slowly and probably over millions of year with our hominid ancestors.

It was probably pretty cool realising we were smarter than other animals. Then we invented some nonsense about souls.

 

as lode just pointed out, there was no quantum leap, from pretty much everything with a cerebral cortex experiencing every emotional state as we do our selves, and yes, even being aware of doing so. the only thing that made us anything special, and still the only thing that does, is the fascination we began to find, in dreaming things up in our heads, and then figuring out ways to make them and the gratification of actually doing so.

and yes, some other species can and do use, and even, very rarely make, tools. a cat, is everything we are, except, for that interest in actually making things.
physiologically there is no such thing as a domestic cat in the same sense that a dog or a cow have physiologically evolved domestication.

sorry for the diversion off the subject. how the furst humans got along with other species is the same as how non-domesticated species get along with each other today.
mostly they avoid competators, but they do occasionally develop cooperation.

well furst you just need to go someplace where most of what you see isn't another human or something another human has made.
then you know, someplace where not so many people have been that everything has been picked over.

middens mark villages. find someplace where someone hasn't left a beer can and don't leave one yourself.
what was it like, just go for a walk by yourself. or with no more then two other persons who are content to not talk very much, or make jestures when they do.

this is the same as how you don't chase everything else away.
if you find a piece of charcoal from a fire, well people didn't at first start using fire, it was just as scarry to humans as other creatures,
but you take that piece of charcoal, or mix some bird shit and ashes, and or maybe some soft cley with brigth yellow, orange, red coloring,
and then you take only that charcoal or your bare hands, and finger paint something on a piece of rock somewhere.

learn the things that are there where you live that you can eat, gather and eat them. get creative with what you can make from them.

i mean these are what life what life would have been like.
get to know your local indiginous elders.

that was another thing, how we came to be, passing on from one generation to the next how things worked and what does and doesn't.

we're not even entirely unique in that. most species learn their survival skills by watching their own elders.
very little of what is called instinct is actually anything other then learned that way.

once you learn these things, how nature actually works, and not the fantasies people have put into words,
then you can know, what that live was actually like.

anyone can do most of it, but very few ever try.
and again, you know that thing of people cooperating, in many environments, one person alone would be extremely unlikely to survive,
but you get maybe a dozen or so people, sharing the work, each doing for all the others what they're best at and helping each other learn enough of how.

so you have this thing of people living in family groups, just like wolves, but also like other social creatures, you don't have this absolute boundry between what is blood kin and what is cognative kin, that is close friends and people who share your interests.

so then when there's more then a handful of you, you develop these things called moyaties and noyo.
well noyo is what you can do on your own and moyaties are about who you're not too closely related to to be incestuous.

 

If no one ever died, all of the resources would all probaby be used up by now.

 

probably long before even the greeks, let alone the industrial revolution. but if we could reduce the human birthrate to the same level as we die off, we could avoid the scenario of eventually doing so anyway.
and if there were fewer of us in total, then there were at the time steam and with it powered machinery started becoming part of everyday life, even our worst ways of doing things would be the non-problem 'conservatives' try to pretend they're not. if we were to combine a sustainably modest population level with 'cleaner'/more sustainable technologies, and we really do already have them, and its hard to tell whether most people realize that we do to any depth of understanding, then we could have both our paradise and our toys. its only that we can't expect that with our ways of doing things the dominant culture is most familiar with.

it is because there are so many of us, that there even is a problem with the kind of environment the future of our own species requires.

every thing comes back to this, the combination of how many we are and how we do infrastructure.