We made some critical intellectual and practical break throughs, most notably the invention of agriculture. Evolution is a marvellous mechanism for adaptive change but it is not a quick process. What is certain however is that our ancestors had to have been a very hardy bunch as well as capable of using their big brains to figure out more and more ways to do things more easily, efficiently and productively.Įventually, our species became the principal agent of change in the world, rapidly outpacing nature in this role.
The supposition is that our comparatively big brains, language skills and manual dexterity enabled us to figure out how to work together more effectively to survive things like climatic fluctuations. Competing species of humans were in some instances stronger and maybe better adapted to the conditions of the time. Why our particular species emerged at the top of the evolutionary pile remains something of a mystery. Our emergence as the dominant species probably occurred about 200,000 years ago somewhere in Africa but no-one can be entirely certain about the date. We appear to have either absorbed or displaced at least five different species of humans, maybe more, but the fossil record is incomplete so we don’t know for sure how many species of humans have existed. Clearly, there had not been a stampede towards modernity in the previous four million years.Ĭonsequently, an almost unimaginably long period of time elapsed before our own particular species ( homo sapiens sapiens) finally emerged as the dominant form of humanity on the planet. When our ancestors first tentatively ventured out of the trees some five to seven million years ago the process of change was so slow as to be imperceptible.įor example, it was not until 2.5 million years ago that our ancestors discovered how to make stone tools. Of course, change has been a constant feature of human life but its pace has varied strikingly over time. That story is, in many respects, an allegory for the broader impact of change upon the wider world, which over the last 150 years has been both deep and profound.
Hughes details a story of often sudden and dramatic changes in architecture, engineering, music, sculpture, painting, writing and artistic expression more generally. ‘The Shock of the New’ seeks to explain the factors underlying the emergence of what we call modern art.
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