Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

 

Table des matières

Abstract 2

Keywords: 2

Introduction.

I./ Who was Homo Sapiens?.

II./ the long-distance fast bipedal running mutations.

III./ Ritualization of Impregnation, Pregnancy, and Delivery.

IV./ The Representation of Women.

V./ Human Articulated Language.

FIRST ARTICULATION.

SECOND ARTICULATION.

THIRD ARTICULATION.

Summary.

Conclusion.

Bibliography of Direct References.

 

WOMEN’S ROLE AND POSITION

IN THE EMERGENCE OF HOMO SAPIENS

 

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU[1]

 

Abstract

Homo Sapiens (HS) started emerging around 300,000 BP. HS, a long-distance fast bipedal runner had a 29-year life expectancy. The ensuing physiological mutations caused the birth of long-dependent children. Their side-effect was enhanced vocal articulation. Linguistic phylogeny produced language with three time-ordered articulations: 1- rotation vowels-consonants into roots; 2- space- and time-categorization of roots into stems; 3- functional and temporal specifications of stems into fronds. Full communicational discursive syntax over 200,000 years and migrations out of Black Africa at each stage.

Between 13-29, women were pregnant every 18 months to raise at least three individuals to full procreational adult age. Women enjoyed a special division of labor to care for children for 3-5 years each.

This required observing menstrual and pregnancy cycles to guarantee impregnation, safe pregnancy, and delivery. These cycles are close to moon cycles: menstrual cycle = 1 moon cycle; pregnancy cycle = 10 moon cycles. Marshack rightly studied cycles but missed their menstrual dimension pinpointing fertility. Then we do have moon cycles till birth.

Women henceforth developed as spiritual members in their communities, hereinafter their place in the production of symbolic cave and mobiliary art. The spiritual dimension of such symbolism must heavily be centered on women.

Around 45,000 BCE all over the world, HS communities who had migrated out of Black Africa between 250,000 and 70,000 BP developed women-centered symbolism for the first time on durable media, though male-centered hunting weapons and tools had been produced even by previous Hominins.

 

Keywords: Linguistic Phylogeny; Homo Sapiens Emergence; Women’s Position; Menstrual Cycle; Durable Media; Symbolism.

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

I will only consider the place of women in the emergence of homo sapiens in this presentation keeping the sexual division of labor for the raising of children for the face-to-face presentation

 

“We are, however, here concerned only with that kind of selection, which I have called sexual selection. This depends on the advantage which certain individuals have over other individuals of the same sex and species, in exclusive relation to reproduction.”

 

But Darwin is centered on animal species, and a lot of insects and fish, not human species or higher mammal species, though he seems to approach the Homo Genus with the following quotation when envisaging this sexualized mate choice within the concept of pairs of partners (same reference, Part I, p. 263):

 

“Such pairs would have an advantage in rearing offspring, more especially if the male had the power to defend the female during the pairing-season, as occurs with some of the higher animals, or aided in providing for the young.”

 

This bipedal upright position is thus typical of the Homo species (plural) and that’s the difference with apes, including the top ones who are still able to use their grasping feet to climb in trees and who are able to run with the help of their arms and hands, which Hominins normally do not do, certainly from Homo Erectus onward.

But Homo Sapiens goes one stage further than all other Hominins: they became long-distance bipedal fast runners when they got out of the forest and the protection of trees to develop in the savanna, and their whole bodily structure was transformed by this fundamental evolution, first of all, brought to the species by the mutation of the foot, seen as follows.

 

Fig. 1. Salient features of the human foot, and the windlass mechanism in action. (A) A medial view of the human foot bones highlighting the pronounced longitudinal arch (LA, dashed line) and a schematic illustration  of the Cal-Met angle that we used as a measure of dynamic arch compression (the angle formed between the calcaneus and metatarsal segments of the foot model, as defined in ref. 43). (B) Superior view of the human foot bones with a depiction of how the human hallux (bold outline) is greatly adducted from the opposable hallux found in fossil remains of our hominin ancestors (e.g., dashed outline). (C) A plantar view of the human foot showing the largest superficial PIMs that span the LA and MTP joints: Abductor hallucis (AH) and FDB. The PIMs also include abductor digiti minimi, quadratus plantae, flexor hallucis brevis, the lumbricals, and adductor hallucis (17), which have not been included here for clarity. (D) Depicts the windlass mechanism in action from mid to late stance in human walking. From left to right, the foot rotates about the MTP joints, tensioning the plantar aponeurosis (PA) and raising the LA (decreasing the Cal-Met angle) before the toes are plantar-flexed as the PA recoils just before toe-off.

(“The functional importance of human foot muscles for bipedal locomotion” Dominic James Farris, Luke A. Kelly, Andrew G. Cresswell, and Glen A. Lichtwark, Published online January 17, 2019.)