Reading time: ~1 min read
The documentary, Evolution: The Mind's Big Bang, broadcast on The Discovery Channel, set out a number of Darwinist claims on the subject of human intelligence and culture. Considerable space was devoted to the views of such unrepentant Darwinist scientists as Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins. This paper examines these Darwinist views and sets out the distortions behind them.
At the beginning of the documentary there is talk of discoveries of ornaments and necklaces going back some 50,000 years. It is then suggested that there was a so-called evolutionary explosion in cultural terms at that time, and various adornments are put forward as evidence of this. These belong to the ancient human race called Cro Magnon. It is stated on The Discovery Channel that these adornments are guessed to have belonged to a pregnant Cro Magnon woman and to have been used to send a message to other people. After explaining that such behavior is an indication of social identity, it is then suggested that these people established social relationships that did not exist in nature.
The claims regarding these ornaments are not consistent, since such adornments are not "indispensable" indications of social identity. The social identity put forward by means of these ornaments could have been expressed by even earlier people in terms of other objects, or even in other ways making not use of objects at all (by gestures, for instance). So, there is no foundation to the idea that one can simply look at an ornament and infer that previously non-existent social identities had been established at the time of that adornment.