  The Sapient Paradox is the apparently unexplainable time delay of several ten
thousand years following the arrival of Homo sapiens in Asia and Europe and
before the introduction of impressive innovations with the agricultural
revolution. Renfrew (2007) has suggested that the solution of the paradox has
to do with changes in modes of thought that occurred with sedentism. According
to Renfrew, this is a subject of study for cognitive archaeology where the
final goal would be to understand the formation of the human mind. Several
scholars, however, affirm that climatic change was crucial to such a revolution
as it would have been very difficult to develop agriculture during the
Palaeolithic. In other words, sedentism was not justified during the ice age,
and that may be the solution to the paradox. It is widely accepted that climate
variations were due to so-called orbital forcing, the slow periodic changes of
orbital parameters of the Earth (known also as the Milankovitch theory). These
and other astronomical effects on the climate are discussed along with the
consequent impact on human evolution. The question then rises as to whether or
not it is possible to adopt an astronomical perspective instead of (or
complementary to) the cognitive archaeological one. Such would be possible by
adopting a different point of reference (that is, from outside), and a
non-anthropocentric approach.
