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The Ādam Paradox Hypothesis 40
Interlude — A Light Narrative Framing
The world narrowed before it widened. During the great swings of ice
and drought, humans survived in slivers—coastlines, river mouths, pockets
where food and water still held. These were not ages of abundance but of
precision: fewer people, tighter groups, long waiting seasons. In those
constrictions, habits sharpened and memories lengthened. Pressure doesn’t
write myths, but it prepares minds to need them.
Windows opened, then slammed shut. Intervals of green—brief humid
corridors across deserts—invited small expansions. People crossed
thresholds, then climates changed, and thresholds became walls again.
Knowledge learned on the move had to be carried in heads, not in houses.
This is the cadence the record hints at: advance, pause, retreat. Not failure
—tempering.
Bottlenecks prune; they don’t invent. Populations dipped to fragile
numbers; lineages thinned. Bottlenecks don’t create meaning, but they
concentrate it. After crisis, what survives is simpler, tighter, readier to
propagate when conditions improve. The orchestra is still tuning; the score
is not yet on the stands.
Roads out, not yet roads back. When climates softened, paths north and
east appeared: coastlines, isthmuses, highland routes. Groups fanned out,
often too thin to sustain new traditions. Sparks appear in the record—
marks, beads, pigments—and then go dark. Not because minds were empty,
but because networks were. Cumulative culture requires traffic.
What this chapter is (and isn’t). It is the setup, not the reveal. We are
naming the forces that made ignition possible—constraint, timing,
dispersion—without claiming the flame is already burning. The numbers,
maps, and sequences belong to the moment when we ask why the flame
finally stays lit. With that frame in mind, we turn to the evidence under each
strand.