a cause for the development of modern human culture...?

Question

It may be this simple: let's say, 200,000 years ago, there were individual homo sapiens who tended to get attacked by predators at night because they snored(!) so they banded together (safety in numbers). could this not be a cause for the early devopment of societies? Has anyone thought of this before that you people have heard of? thx, Tom

Answer 1

That in fact is the cause of the early development of societies. But not rather banded with strangers, they banded with their families, tribesmen, kinsmen. That is why different nations at present time originated from at least one single tribe.

Answer 2

More likely would be the time and resources involved in raising a child. Human children are almost completely dependent for the first few years.

Another fact could be that humans are sexually receptive most of the time. Other species have limited times when females may become pregnant. That's often the only time males are around.

Add the two together there's reason for the males to group with the females and a need for groups to raise the offspring

Answer 3

I would think that loud snoring would drive predators away.

But I think that man is by nature social. The length of time it takes to raise a child made it necessary to have at least two parents.

Extended families and tribes are still very common. Nuclear families only became common in the last couple of centuries due to advances in transportation. Previously, several generations would live under one roof.

Answer 4

I would think that individuals gathered together for that purpose long before homo sapiens hit the scene. In fact, depending on one's definition of society, groups of other apes and even monkeys and other animals are part of socieities - they have the same interests and goals and band together for the same purposes.

Answer 5

I agree that parental offspring is one of the largest causes of social groups in H. sapiens. Groups also better for exploiting many patchy resources. Especially in hunting meat, which is important since H. sapiens has an inordinately large sized brain.