Quote:
Originally Posted by tore
What I am suggesting is that our common ancestors some 5 to 8 million years ago may have been self-aware. The reason I'm using Coco as an example is of course not because we come from gorillas, but to show that all the great apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas) are self-aware in mirror tests. The other great apes live lives which we assume are closer to what our common ancestors did. That indicates that our ancestors didn't have to crawl down from the trees, get up on two legs and shift diets before they could evolve to become self-aware. I'm guessing that our (chimps and humans) ancestor wasn't "dumber" or less able to be self-aware than chimpanzees are today. At least I can't think of a reason why that should be an immediate assumption.
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That assumption is just as naive as mine. Either argument is just as founded as the other. What proof do you have that it was simply a high protein diet of meat and the freeing of the hands that produced self awareness? It is an anthropological assumption, just as mine is. Not to mention modern primates have had thousands of years to evolve self awareness...there is absolutely no reason to assume that just because modern apes are self aware it means that their ancestors were as well. You said it yourself...you are "guessing" that our common ancestor wasn't less intelligent. Apes are also not nomadic in the way our early hominid ancestors were, so it is a stretch to say we lived exactly as they do now.
I also still can't see why it can't be a combination of the two. The freeing of our hands, a meat diet, and bountiful environment all combining to support the development of self awareness. At the very least, fossil records support that at some point a group of hominid ancestors ceased their nomadic activities and settled for a time, which would only have happened if the environment supported such an action.