Hi, welcome back to Way-finder.
In my opinion maps are at the centre of the art of navigation and I can imagine that throughout human history maps have always played a huge role in our lives- from romantic notions of hunter gatherers gathered around a campfire discussing hunting grounds and where they have seen migrating herds of animals to seafaring explorers seeking undiscovered lands and bringing home tales of faraway places.
Early hunter gatherers might have made models of the ground with dirt and rocks to help explain the landscape they were discussing, and it is certain that seafarers have always produced charts and mapped their travels.
I have heard it hypothesized that at a certain point in human evolution our brains doubled in size in a very short period of time and that this may have been brought about by us becoming very efficient hunters giving access to much larger quantities of protein than we could source before then.
There are various theories about how early humans managed this, one theory is that we did it by persistence hunting- that is pursuing our quarry until it was too exhausted to run anymore.
At first that sounds ridiculous right? I mean do you think you could run down a deer. Or a rabbit? Yeah probably not, but apparently, we can do it because of 2 things- walking on 2 legs and our imagination.
According to the theory becoming bipedal enabled 2 things that made persistence hunting possible. 1- it brought our eyes much higher off the ground making spotting prey easier and playing into our imagination which I’ll talk about shortly. And 2. Being bipedal uncouples our running gait from our breathing, let me explain- when a 4-legged animal runs their internal organs move back and forth with each stride making their lungs expand and contract with each stride. For us though because we are on 2 legs, we can regulate our breathing separately to our running stride meaning we can keep a much faster pace for a longer period.
And then our imagination gives us the ability to see the direction an animal is moving or read it’s tracks and then predict where it is going and where it is going to be even if we lose sight or sign of it for some time.
In short the theory is that we can keep an animal moving just a little faster than it can maintain by maintaining a consistent running pace and being able to guess where it is going thus being able to catch back up on the occasions when it sprints around a corner to hide in a bush.
I don’t know whether or not that theory is correct or even how realistic it is but, I have no doubt that being able to create a mental image of land that you cannot currently see and having ways to communicate that to other people is surely something that humans have been doing for millennia.
I know that when I’m in the field I am constantly relating what I see on the map to what I see on the ground around me and trying to imagine what I will see over the next hill based on what I am reading off the map.
And have you ever pored over a map fascinated by the depiction of the earth that it represents- I know I have.
Maps are a ubiquitous part of our lives, I mean they’re literally everywhere and in everything- road maps, site maps, mind maps, project maps, google maps.
So, there you have it- it’s all about the map.
I’d love to hear what you think, or if you just want to hear more about my bro science theories of human evolution- let me know, leave a comment or get in touch.
Whatever it is that you’re into I hope you’re getting after it.