Ancient climate and progressive-archaic populations

[bioblitzkrieg]

otherwise known as progressiveness or continuing hominisation, in regard to physical adaptation in environments that were favorable for agriculture and later metal working, implying the potential for a general gracilizing of the human being from forms seen in the upper paleolithic, a continued state of hominisation from an earlier and more physically demanding environment. In effect, the climate allows a technological breakthrough to occur in a group's lifestyle such as sedentary farming and domestication of livestock, over time the benefits of a civilization begin to domesticate the human body from an earlier and more robust/archaic design, so phenotypes are primarily dependant on climate, the climate that allows technological/cultural advancement to occur, which then further modifies a population's physical attributes.

The Holocene marks the end of the last Ice age and the beginning of a relatively stable and warmer period. Sea levels rose and regions with long growing seasons shifted from small tropical pockets areas northward to the middle east and corresponding lattitutes around the world. Forests also spread out to former tundra zones.


The early centers of the neolithic and thier agricultural contribution to modern domesticated species is such. Quoted from Botanist Nikolai Vavilov
*Mediterranean climate areas of the Middle East - Wheat, barley, oats, rye, grapes, apples, onions, lentils, vetch, garlic, chickpeas, dates, fig, pomegranate, pistachio
Loess region of Northern China - Japanese millet, buckwheat, soyabean, apricot, peach, plum, cherry, apple
Monsoon forests from Southern China to Bangladesh - Rice, oranges & citrus, pigeon pea, yams, water chestnut, star fruit, durian, lychee
Tropical rain forests of New Guinea and adjacent regions - Bread-fruit, banana, plantain, mango, sago, coconuts, taro, sugar cane, pit-pit
Ethiopia, the Sudan and the Sahel - Teff, sesame, ensete, sorghum, coffee, pearl millet, Guinea millet, African rice, okra, watermelons, oil palm, cottonseed
Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) Maize, beans, capsicum, chili, tomatoes, cocoa, squash, sweet potato
Andes (Ecuador to Northern Chile) - Potato, cotton and peanuts
Central America and Amazonia - Amaranth, cassava, pineapple
Mississippi Prairie - Sunflower seeds*
this is roughly the fertile belt of the earlier stages in the neolithic. It would continue to spread northwest into Europe as time progressed.


these chronological gradients for the spread of agriculture also coincide with spread of metal working millenia later , in both cases the direction that these skills gradually expanded toward is evident, primarily outward in all directions, stopping at the polar regions/inner eurasia, sub saharan africa and Oceana.


Notice in the second map and chart the drying out of portions of the middle east, north africa and asia, coinciding with the neolithic march northwest toward the atlantic ocean.


compare to this chronological chart for the Areas of northern Europe, notice how much later both the neolithic and metal working begin compared to regions further to the south and east, this is how I hope to explain that neolithic and bronze age phenotypes formed at different stages, at different times, in different regions, usually in an incremental manner as the skills of neolithic society moved ever deeper into former paleolithic and mesolithic regions.


2,000BC Neolithic has expanded over most of Europe, Bronze working is still largely limited to the balkans and areas bordering.

At this stage you will find contemporary Orientalid meds in the Middle east who themselves had an ethnogenesis around the red sea at the beginning of the Holocene, the nordic phenotype does not even exist yet at this time or is in its proto infancy, the gracilized west med/med proper is at this time the newest formed group, occuring in the Agean and Italian Peninsula, where as the nordid might be in its developemental stages along the frontier of bronze age expansion running up the Danube and on the Pontic Steppes from the black sea, where neolithic mediteraneans "corded iranids" are interacting with Upper paleolithic form Cro-magnon, ethnogenesis in action.
1,000BC, Iron age epicenter around anatolia and parts of the middle east, larger bronze age region by this point, having spread out to large portions of asia and most of Europe, less advanced regions still lagging behind in agriculture or metalworking, some regions both are absent still. There is now a nordid phenotype in northern Europe.

Notice Japan at this stage, prior to sinid expansion from Korea, still home to Paleo-malaysian/Ainu like peoples, who like those in parts of Oceana, sub saharan africa, and north eurasia are still without Agriculture or metal working, still in the Paleolithic effectively.


Now compare these faces and morphological tendencies, one group of peoples will be from areas that underwent an agricultural revolution and metal working, the other group exemplifies a general isolation in the paleolithic era until modern times.
peoples indigenous to regions favorable for neolithic transition and metal working, generally progressive








now peoples indigenous to regions unable to enter the neolithic, or age of metal, still paleolithic/more primitive in form.

[Cirrus]

There are exceptions, I think.

For exemple, Northern American Hunters (Silvid, Pacifid...) are generally considered physically progressive, whereas Southern Indians Weddid or Papuan farmers are rather primitive.

[bioblitzkrieg]

I agree completely, the new world and oceania have thier own scales and determiners since they were both more isolated, but the generally progressive types were in temperate regions such as the northwest, midwest, and northeast united states, these peoples had optimal nutritional intake due to large numbers of herd animals and a favorable environment in general, while peoples in the far south had to deal with lower protien in thier diet with the majority of intake coming from agriculture, to compound the situation the climate in Oceania as in central america is horribly hot and humid, the jungle is a place for overspecialization/retention of archaic traits to deal with such a harsh environment, both the climate and diet in this region would induce the reduction of hieght, thickening of the trunk and shortening of the limbs, some new world version of alpinisation or armenoidisation combined with the problems encounted in the Congo for homo sapiens.

[Agrippa]

Large parts of Eurasia were racially progressive - though less gracile - long before the Neolithic revolution and it can't be explained by the Neolithic change. A more gracile bone structure and reduction in temperate zones can be partly explained by effects of the agricultural subsistence patterns, but not the racially progressive tendencies as such, which are much closer related to climate and intraspecific competition.
Its just that those areas with a more favourable climate and stronger intraspecific competition on a higher level were also those which adopted agriculture earlier in most but not all cases.

[bioblitzkrieg]

agreed completly, my thread was not aimed at paleolithic populations or origins, but the climate zones and zone fluctuations in the late Upper Paleolithic leading through into the neolithic and later still , then comparing which technologies followed in those zones most favorable for progressive populations to have formed in or migrated toward. So populations exempt from this comparison surely do exist, but in a general sense the favorable conditions for progressive forms to arise would later be a location where advanced cultural abilities would also have a good opportunity to arise or be incorporated. Inner Eurasia as north America would be regions most distant to the cross cultural exchanges of less isolated regions, and have a higher likelyhood of being the exception to my thread as thier forms would be progressive due to climate alone without the neolithic or metalworking.