Did Art Save Homo Sapiens? – Prof. Dr. Nicholas Conard
Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives in a simple way.
My name is Jennifer, and I’m your host.
In today's episode we meet Professor Nicholas Conard.
Prof. Conard:
If you are going to be an archaeologist, you have to put in the work. And if you are smart about doing the work, the reward will come.
Host:
He is the Director of the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology and the founding Director of the Institute of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Tübingen. And he is a specialist in the study of Paleolithic archaeology.
Prof. Conard:
Every group of human beings we know today, well, they have speech, they have song, they have dance, they have music, they tell stories, and they have art. So, these characteristics that we can identify 40,000 years ago are universal.
I'm very much of a field archaeologist, and there are plenty of projects where, where it's difficult, I remember once my daughter came with me to South Africa, we had to go across a river, climb a cliff, and do these things that were, I don't want to say, extremely dangerous, but a little bit dangerous, and she said, "Wow, I didn't know you'd do something such as I can. This is how you get to the site." And I can think of many, many sites where just getting there is very difficult.
Host:
Professor Conard's field of research is diverse. It includes various Stone Age epochs, the development, and spread of modern humanity, environmental reconstruction, the settlement history of western Eurasia and Southern Africa, and the origins of agriculture and sedentism.
The goal of his research is to create a new framework for the study of human origins to replace the current fragmentary study of fossils and archaeological finds. But one epoch in particular is very important to Conard.
Prof. Conard:
Almost all of human history has been in the Paleolithic, and that's a period where humans lived through hunting and gathering, and collecting all sorts of foods, fishing, many other things, but without any real systematic agriculture, in most cases without serious storage for long periods of time, and people did live primarily on what they were personally able to collect or kill, process and eat themselves, and I would say today we're so removed from all of that, right? We just go to the store, we go to the market and tubing or wherever we are, and most of us don't do any serious agricultural work. Most of us don't have that much to do with the fish or animals or any of the products we have, and so we're just consumers, and for almost all of human history, people are much more engaged with subsistence and all of the technology you need to do that. We're things that most people could do, and that's what shapes who we are anatomically, mentally, and what most people consider normal today is really highly abnormal when we consider human history.
Host:
So when it comes to understanding early modern humans, Professor Conard takes a rather unconventional approach.
Prof. Conard:
I feel very close to these people, through all the stages. I'm not saying that I've got all the answers, and certainly I would learn a lot by being able to go back and see how, let's say, Homo erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthal, societies interacted with one another, and to what extent, for instance, fully developed communication about the past, present, future. If there were, for instance, artistic expression, song, dance, things like this before modern humans, things like that, I could probably figure out just by participant observation using cultural and anthropological terms and keeping my eyes open. That would be super interesting.
Host:
Professor Conard doesn't like to generalize modern humans or early modern humans. But in some ways, our world today is very different from the world twenty to forty thousand years ago.
Prof. Conard:
The modern world is characterized by everybody's in a big hurry. Everybody's got appointments, time is money, everybody's stressed out about everything. Back then, I really don't think it was like that. I think there was a lot of time just to engage with the world around you, the people around you. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there were times where things got rough. You could also have complex social interaction and many other things, but in general, this hectic life that we have today would be very different.
Host:
Perhaps this preoccupation led to early art such as Professor Conard found in the Swabian Alps. At the Hohlefels site, he found a six-centimeter figure that is about forty thousand years old.
Prof. Conard:
It's about 10,000 years older than any other figurine of this kind. It's from the Org nation period, the first period of modern humans and are part of Germany and southwestern Germany along the upper Danube. Furthermore, it was found at the base of the Org nation layer, would have an age of approximately 40,000 years. What's also fascinating is the left shoulder and arm are missing and just 70 centimeters from where we found most of the figurine, we were looking for the left shoulder and arm and the most complete flute made of a Griffin Vulture radius, a wing bone came out right next to it. That's like, "Oh my God." These are all things that were pretty much considered close to unimaginable. Female figurines typically come from the next period quite a bit later called the Armenian, which might be somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 years, depending on where you are.
Host:
So what is it that people have found so fascinating about the creation of art? For Professor Conard, it has to do with spiritual or early religious rituals.
Prof. Conard:
I personally would say any modern human, whether it's 40,000 years ago or today, especially in a hunter-gathering environment, definitely had religious beliefs, myths, an ideology, a way of looking at the world. I think that is very, very close to universal. I don't think there were many atheists, right? But some people wouldn't accept the religions of hunter-gatherers as even being formal religions. I personally would. When it comes to art, I think art's a very fluid term. I think in our own lives it is. And I personally don't feel any need to put it in a small box and say, "This is art and this isn't art." More importantly, in my own field, all of these kinds of depictions, what we see in Grotchevais, Lascaux, and many other sites, we call that in my field art. And no one would question that the focal-haired figurines are art. And for us, that's true.
Host:
Professor Conard also suggests linking early art to Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest.
Prof. Conard:
Every group of human beings we know today, well, they have speech, they have song, they have dance, they have music, they tell stories, and they have art. So, these characteristics that we can identify 40,000 years ago are universal, which suggests very strongly that people who have these capabilities made it and the people who didn't, did not make it. Otherwise, we obviously wouldn't be on podcasts because none of that stuff would exist, right? So, there must have been an advantage in terms of survival, fitness, reproduction, in comparison to the hominins who didn't have it. And Neanderthals, Denisovans, Flores, people, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, these are all groups that had very little, or there was very little evidence of symbolic artifacts.
Host:
To really dive into this kind of research, Professor Conard needs a good environment. And for him, the University of Tübingen is the best place to do his research.
Prof. Conard:
I live in the old city; I walk up the hill to the castle every day. And literally every single day when I walk to work, which is really just a few hundred meters, I look over the Neckar to the Swabian Jura and I think: This is breathtakingly beautiful. And one reason I?m very productive is, that I just loose no time. I just walk to work, on my way home I go shopping, and everything is so easy today. You know, and all of these things are just so easy. Coming here on my bike just takes really just a few minutes and thats typical of everything I do. And I notice, when I go away, even to fabulous academic institutes, my work environment always gets worse. And so, speeking from myself, there?s no better place that I could be for my field and I had occasions, I have job offers from elsewhere, but I never even considered it.
Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Conard. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends.
Authors: Chris Veit and, Joti Fotiadis.
Special thanks to: Professor Nicholas Conard, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.
My name is Jennifer and I’m your host. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
