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For a very long geological time, we have all the modern achievements, from the Sistine Chapel to the special theory of relativity, from the Goldberg variation to the Goldbach conjecture, can be regarded as almost the same period and Venus Willendorf and Lascaux Holes all part of the Cultural Revolution at the same time, all part of the cultural boom in full bloom, low long-term success of the Paleolithic stagnation.           The Great Leap Forward       Archaeology suggests that something very special began to happen to our species around 40,000 years ago. Anatomically, our ancestors who lived before this watershed date were the same as those who came later. Humans sampled earlier than the watershed would be no more different from us than they were from their own contemporaries in other parts of the world, or indeed than we are from our contemporaries. That's if you look at their anatomy. If you look at their culture, there is a huge difference. Of course there are also huge differences between the cultures of different peoples across the world today, and probably then too. But this wasn't true if we go back much more than 40,000 years. Something happened then — many archaeologists regard it as sudden enough to be called an 'event'. I like Jared Diamond's name for it, the Great Leap Forward.   Earlier than the Great Leap Forward, man-made artefacts had hardly changed for a million years. The ones that survive for us are almost entirely stone tools and weapons, quite crudely shaped. Doubtless wood (or, in Asia, bamboo) was a more frequently worked material, but wooden relics don't easily survive. As far as we can tell, there were no paintings, no carvings, no figurines, no grave goods, no ornamentation. After the Leap, all these things suddenly appear in the archaeological record, together with musical instruments such as bone flutes, and it wasn't long before stunning creations like the Lascaux Cave murals were created by Cro-Magnon people. A disinterested observer taking the long view from another planet might see our modern culture, with its computers, supersonic planes and space exploration, as an afterthought to the Great Leap Forward. On the very long geological timescale, all our modern achievements, from the Sistine Chapel to Special Relativity, from the Goldberg Variations to the Goldbach Conjecture, could be seen as almost contemporaneous with the Venus of Willendorf and the Lascaux Caves, all part of the same cultural revolution, all part of the blooming cultural upsurge that succeeded the long Lower Palaeolithic stagnation.            — Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale – A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life             Indexes/02