The Trouble with Human Evolution: Part One

When it comes to the standard model of how modern humans evolved from our primate ancestors, especially apparently the chimpanzee, you should be prepared to ask the tough questions and see if they get answered to your satisfaction. Questions like can you really go from chimpanzee stock to what makes you, the reader, you, via natural selection in 6 to 7 million years? That’s not just a little change, but a massive change and on several broad physiological, anatomical and behavioural fronts. Contrast your society, lifestyle and body-plan with that of the chimpanzee. So, if you think the standard model is unlikely, and you reject any supernatural explanation, that leaves but two alternatives, an artificial selection by ancient aliens, or we’re akin to characters in a video game – we are simulated beings.

Modern humans have evolved over the past six to seven million years a number of traits that make us, Homo sapiens, a very unique species indeed. We alone of all the mammals (as well as all invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles) have a bipedal gait. We alone of all of our primate cousins are for all practical purposes hairless. Of all the animals that are, or have ever been, we’re top of the pops with respect to brain size as a function of body size, and in terms of intelligence, king of the hill full stop. And while animals can communicate via vocalizations and body language, none can communicate the extremely wide range of practical and especially abstract concepts that we can. Last, but not least, humans are nearly unique in making and using external tools, tools unique in terms of their sophistication.

All five major traits noted above, and a lot more that’s related besides, don’t seem to be a requirement for basic survival, since other species survive and thrive without them, and in fact all these major five defining traits (and more) seem to have some actual evolutionary drawbacks, not the least of which require very serious modifications to basic primate anatomy for apparently no increase in that Darwinian phrase “survival of the fittest”. The proof of that pudding is that our ultimate primate ancestor still survives – the chimpanzee; their ultimate descendent survives – the modern human; yet all those in-betweens hominids who were presumably adapting via natural selection resulting in all those evolutionary changing improvements, went kaput – over twenty species of them. If these “survival of the fittest” evolutionary adaptations were all that crash hot and necessary, then why was their demise? Any ancestral hominoids that went extinct prior to 200,000 years ago can’t have Homo sapiens as the villain. Those 20 plus extinct hominid species aside, why aren’t many of those natural selection improvements really so crash hot for us modern humans either? Here’s the trouble with human evolution. But first consider this.

THE ROOT CAUSE & DRIVING FORCE

The current standard model of human evolution explains the ‘why’ question due to rapid and extreme shifts in climate in continental Africa over that six to seven million year period. The central problem there IMHO is why these shifts failed to drastically produce evolutionary changes in the rest of the animal populations like elephants, lions, hyenas, giraffes, zebras, wildebeests and other African landlubbers as the Dark Continent went from jungle to forest to savannah to arid deserts and back again.

Now of course environmental change is a major driving force behind biological evolution, at least when it comes to natural selection. But one has to look at the Big Picture, the entirety of the bio-realm and not just isolate one changing species and link the two and ignore all else. The environment changes and hominoids change but all the other species seemingly don’t change. That makes for an anomaly. 

One of the key phrases in evolution is that “there is a price to pay” for change – no free lunch or get out of jail card is authorized. That “no pain, no gain” price applies whether you’re dealing with natural or artificial selection. But I sometimes wonder whether one is getting a fifty-cent gain return on a dollar investment worth of pain. Consider the following. 

OUR BIPEDAL GAIT

* Is an anomaly in that human beings, alone of all the mammals, walk routinely on just two legs.

* It called for a complete redesign of our musculoskeletal system vis-à-vis our chimpanzee ancestors.

* That results in an increase in all our various painful bad back trials and tribulations.

* And it also requires a rearrangement of our internal organ attachments.

* A bipedal gait needs a harder working heart to pump blood up to our now higher upper reaches, like the head and neck, instead of mainly sideways. A bipedal gait means having to fight the better fight against gravity.

* A bipedal gait results in an increase in difficulties in maintaining an upright balance (especially as one grows older) because the centre of gravity has shifted dramatically. It’s much easier to push over a standing human than say a standing dog.

* A bipedal gait further results in a decrease in survival value due to the ever possible loss of or injury to a leg, foot, ankle, etc. Lose the use of a leg and in the wilderness, you’re nearly helpless.

* A bipedal gait has to the best of my knowledge only arisen once before, and that was in the theropod dinosaur branch, like T-Rex, etc. That was the branch that gave rise to the birds, therefore they are also bipedal, but it originated with an early, early ancestor of T-Rex. Some may argue that kangaroos and their relatives like the wallabies are bipedal, but they don’t put one leg in front of the other in a left-right-left-right-left-right fashion. They hop, which doesn’t quite put them in the same category as humans or even birds. Further, the theropod dinosaurs, the birds, and even the kangaroos all have tails to help keep their centre of balance, well, balanced. That’s cheating!!! Humans lack that support structure (a rather sad tale I’m sure), so I’ll argue that the human bipedal gait is still unique among all animals, past and present. Humans remain the one and only really bona-fide bipedal entity. Okay, a few tailless primates can ‘walk’ for brief intervals, but their normal locomotion is via their four limbs on the ground when not swinging in the trees.

C - A bipedal gait isn’t a lifestyle walk-the-walk gait that is commonly noted in cats – in fact it isn’t noted at all. Why cats? Why not cats? C is for Cat; C is for Comparison. So as a comparison, let’s take cats, who have a multitude of feline relatives (tigers, lions, etc.) and who have survived and thrived for quite some considerable time. Why cats? Firstly because I’m familiar with cats and secondly because they are an advanced multicellular relatively sophisticated mammalian species, much liken to us. Cats share a great deal with us humans apart from being warm-blooded mammals. Cats, like humans are curious, playful, tend to look after number one, are territorial, like to sleep, dream, have a good memory, show emotions, and like humans have colonized the globe – except Antarctica – either as domestics or as ferals or as wild animals, etc. But, they don’t walk-the-walk on just their two hind legs!

A LARGE HUMAN BRAIN

* Is an anomaly, along with that associated brain thingy high IQ or intelligence we have, relative to the rest of the animal kingdom, which collectively aren’t quite, by any stretch of the imagination, in Einstein’s league. Humans have the largest brain size as a function of body size in the entire animal kingdom, again, apparently both past and present. .

* A large human brain makes for an increasingly hazardous childbirth. The relatively large head of the foetus at childbirth, having to pass through the space available via the hip opening, has resulted in not just a rather painful experience for the mother (and presumably the infant too) but has often led to the premature death of a lot of said newborns and/or their mothers. Now another anomaly here is that if the human body has accommodated all the massive anatomical changes required for a bipedal lifestyle, you’d think an increase in the birth canal hip opening size would have been relatively evolutionary child’s play. 

* The human brain takes years to develop fully, nearly two decades worth in fact, leaving infants totally dependent on others for survival. Infants need care not just for a few weeks or months or seasons, but for many, many years, extending right through their teens, thus cramping the lifestyle of the parents. This length of time for brain development and associated acquiring of survival skills to fully develop is unprecedented in all other primates.

* A large human brain is a very energy-intensive organ. In fact 25% of our energy requirements are required to fuel our upstairs grey-matter wetware. That in turn puts additional pressures on hunting and/or gathering for that extra in food resources required to supply that energy need. Apparently the increase in those energy demands is what drove us to begin to hunt down and eat meat and invent cooking (to make the meat easier to digest). Well, maybe.

C - Cats, however endearing, are not a little feline version of Einstein.

A LACK OF FUR

* Is an anomaly since humans alone of nearly 200 species of our primate cousins are considered a “naked ape”.

* Our relative lack of fur makes us dependent on sweating for temperature regulation, also making us highly dependent on sources of freshwater and salt.

* Our relative lack of fur has the apparent advantage of enabling humans to become long distance endurance runners since we can continually keep cool, even while running, by sweating, yet what we are running after (prey), or from (predators), don’t sweat and therefore are quickly overcome by heat exhaustion. We get a meal, or escape from being one. Well that’s the standard scenario. I think it would have made more sense to have used our social group numbers, increasing IQ and tool making abilities to hunt and ambush game rather than running them down. As for escaping predators, perhaps we should have retained our tree climbing abilities, and if no trees were available, there are always rocks to throw and sticks to club predators with. I’m not convinced loss of fur in order to sweat in order to run marathons in order to eat or avoid being eaten are related in a cause-and-effect way. In any event running is also very energy consuming and it isn’t normally sound practice to expend more energy than you have to, especially when you don’t know where and when your next meal is coming from. And if it is advantageous for evolving hominoids to lose fur, take up sweating, take up jogging, and run to exhaustion large prey animals, then it should also be advantageous for other predators, like the lion, to do the same. But that hasn’t happened. Why not?  

* Our relative lack of fur requires the need, as a substitution, for clothing in cooler environments. Why a human, originating in and adapted to a tropical climate without need of fur, therefore without need of clothing, would migrate into cooler, even cold habitats where fur, or now a clothing substitute instead, is a near requirement, is itself an anomaly. You swap fur for clothing, but clothing in itself requires a whole lot of special skills to produce – fur doesn’t.

C – Cats, as well as their wildlife big cat cousins, do not lack a natural covering of fur. 

To be continued…

Whodunit: What Killed Off Our Ancestors? Part Two

“Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?” was one of those top-notch mystery comedies from 1978. Who killed the ancestors of modern day humans isn’t quite so funny, but it’s still a top-notch mystery. I propose one rather unconventional answer, our creator ‘gods’, the extraterrestrials.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved from other primates, most probably from chimpanzee stock in Africa when DNA relationships are analysed. We have a 98% compatibility with chimpanzee DNA. However, there was a long chain of in-betweens twixt chimpanzees and modern humans, the two key transitions being a bipedal gait (Australopithecus) and tool use (Homo). The interesting things are that while all the in-betweens have gone extinct, the ancestral primate stock didn’t; the transition to modern humans was so fast that it reeks of artificial selection, not natural. Are the in-between extinctions and the extremely rapid transition to modern humans linked? 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Conveniently enough each species of Australopithecus and Homo lasted long enough to give rise to the next species of Australopithecus or Homo before going ‘poof’. Now to paraphrase Ian Fleming’s James Bond adversary Goldfinger, ‘Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times [or more] is enemy action’. Now one or two, even three in-betweens – those in-between ancient chimpanzees stock (roughly 8 to 6 million years ago) and modern man - that went the way of the dodo might be explainable. That EVERY such in-between species went ‘poof’ is begging for a natural explanation, an explanation that I find lacking.

Over an up to eight million year period, from initial evolution to eventual extinction, all those parental links in our ancestral chain and kissing cousin branches has had that eventual going kaput scenario happen to them. As far as any one of them is concerned, that cradle to grave history was over a fairly short timeframe as geological eras go. I mean many species exist for millions of years; some for tens of millions; even some for hundreds of millions.

Lots of species, say of ants, tuna, frogs, snakes, bears, felines, monkeys, etc. coexist, share common territory, yet of all the hominoid species, Australopithecus and Homo, there remains now just one. Only one currently exists as that lone species, that of course being Homo sapiens – how very odd. Why should modern humans, and modern humans alone, having this long chain of in-betweens leading up to us, yet which no longer exist, be the ‘last man standing’ as it were?

If any and all links in the chimp – modern human chain evolved naturally (the standard model), then you’d expect those adaptations that evolved in the first place to last a spell. The African continent (action city and ground zero for the most part) and African environment wasn’t fluctuating that drastically that no sooner had you evolved to fit in with that environment than it did a total flip-flop and rapidly somersaulted back and forth again and again causing endless extinctions (no species could survive for long under such circumstances) and new opportunities for our next generation of ancestors (soon to go extinct in turn). Alas, that doesn’t wash since other animal species made it continuously through that up to eight million year period, in that same environment, without a care in the world, including, other primates, like the chimpanzees, while apparently a dozen or so of their naturally evolved descendent species were in constant strife! That’s all the more puzzling because all of these links in the chain leading to Homo sapiens were “smarter than the average bear” and chimpanzee too. Even if Africa were a killing zone, how come the same scenarios played out in Asia and Europe too?

Clearly modern humans, responsible for what’s been termed the most recent mass extinction event (of modern flora and fauna), didn’t exterminate their ancestors since modern humans weren’t around for most of that transition period. All Australopithecus and most Homo species went extinct before modern humans came on the scene. Did the next generation in the line of descent kill off the previous generation, in a manner akin to speculation that modern humans exterminated their kissing cousins, the Neanderthals? 

Something’s fishy. In fact physical anthropology texts just note that hominoid species W, X, Y & Z have gone extinct since they are clearly nowhere to be found alive on Earth today, but they can only speculate as to why – they don’t know. They have not the foggiest clue why the Neanderthals don’t walk the Earth today, so they just guesstimate possibilities. 

Perhaps it’s time to scrap the standard model for an alternative and highly un-standard scenario. Might there be a third party behind things? The key is that while modern humans are but one species, there are many breeds.

Once upon a time, a very, very long time ago, an extraterrestrial intelligence, by design (they detected Earth’s bio-signatures like an oxygen atmosphere) or accident, discovered and arrived on Terra Firma, and for some reason(s) or other set up shop. Maybe it was for scientific purposes; maybe a good spot for R&R; maybe as an outpost or home away from home; maybe as a colony.

Now being a high-tech sort of culture (well they did get from there to here after all), and of a curious and scientific yet practical bent, thought it a grand long-term idea to get the native earthlings to serve them, in much the same way we get some animals to serve us – horses, camels or donkeys/mules for transport; seeing-eye dogs for the visually handicapped; guard dogs to, well guard things; canaries in the mines as an early warning system for toxic gases; cats to rid the farm of grain-eating mice; birds to eat the insects; and so on. Of course, in order to get animals to serve us, it not only helps to domesticate or quasi-domesticate them, but to artificially improve on their natural abilities or looks. And so guard dogs become larger and fiercer; horses for racing purposes are bread to become faster; and aesthetics aren’t overlooked either so we breed animals to look this way or that way just because it pleases us to do so; etc. And so many a domesticated animal now comes in breeds; just like humans come in breeds – see the connection? 

One trait we employ animals for is labour – oxen pull the plough, etc. Well, perhaps our extraterrestrials had the same thoughts way back then. But of course the basic stock with which they had to work with could always be improved, like humans breeding faster horses.

The most useful traits aliens would work on or with would be things like intelligence; dexterity; a free pair of appendages with which to manipulate objects; binocular vision; all useful things masters want in their slaves. You don’t employ horses or dogs or cats or even monkeys to plant and harvest cotton – you ‘employ’ Negroes back in the golden pre Civil War days of the Deep American South. Ditto the British Navy – you shanghaied the great unwashed to serve as your basic lowest-of-the-low seamen.

Alas, way back then, the best of the best on offer were the primates. To get them up to the required standard demanded by the aliens required a bit of not natural, but artificial selection. Call it bio-engineering; genetic engineering, the goal was to engineer a life form of greater use to them.

So you start with the original best prime stock available (chimpanzees) and artificially breed and manipulate and select and alter them until you arrive at the modified next or second generation. The original stock, in this case the chimps have served their prime purpose and are of no further use, but since they were already in existence and well adapted to their surroundings and natural environment, their stock continued on, as it does to this day.

The next or second (now slightly modified) generation in turn is artificially manipulated to produce the third generation. Once the second generation has served its purpose its cast adrift and left to fend for themselves but they are NOT well adapted to their surroundings and natural environment, and their stock did NOT continue on but whether quickly or slowly but surely, went extinct.

The third generation gives rise to the fourth generation and thus the third generation go kaput as well, an artificial creation unadapted to the natural world. And so on and so on it goes until you hit the Nth generations – Homo erectus (good, but not great) and modern humans (ideal). Homo sapiens finally possessed nearly all the required attributes the extraterrestrials required, intelligence, opposable digits, bipedal gait that freed up those digits, etc. Even so, the aliens had to give modern humans a boost – the sudden arrival of human culture; the sudden transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer to settler and city dweller.

Clearly Homo erectus and Homo sapiens were the two success stories, but did they migrate out of Africa or were they transported out to selected sites by their creators, the aliens. If the former, you might expect a clear-cut fossil trail outlining and along the migration routes, especially as undirected nomadic wanderings only make progress in terms of steady distances covered over many generations. Alas, the fossil trail that should clearly delineate migration routes just isn’t. The fossil sites are so few and far between that actual migration routes have to be inferred. Transport of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens to these sites would be just as compatible with the actual fossil evidence. The aliens, having achieved artificially selected/genetically engineered species that suited their needs would clearly transport them to where they could be put to good use.

One more clue to the reality of this scenario is the extremely wide and anomalous gap between modern humans and our now nearest chimpanzee ancestors when it comes to rather basic traits. In just eight million years: we’re ‘civilized’; they’re not. We’re bipedal; they’re not; we’re a ‘naked ape’; they’re a ‘hairy ape’ (as are the rest of the primates). We’re very high up in IQ; they’re not. We come in breeds (races); they don’t. We have a sense of, as well as a culture; they don’t. Those are gigantic differences, and all in eight million years, probably less. Eight million years is just 0.2 % of Earth’s geological time – actually slightly less than that. Those are BIG differences compressed into a tiny timeframe.

In other supporting ‘evidence’ I offer up the fact that in mythologies around the world, the ‘gods’ (i.e. – aliens) created humans, including, obviously, Biblical mythology.

The ‘gods’ in nearly all mythologies ultimately give the gifts of civilization or those required for civilization in the accepted use of the term. This also helps to explain the relative sudden transition of many peoples and cultures from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to fixed settlements and agriculture. Nearly every culture has a deity of agriculture who gave that skill to that culture.

Mythologies around the globe speak of and illustrate all manner of hybrid creatures, both animal-animal (like the dragon or griffin) and animal-human (like the centaur or sphinx). Such creatures, if real, are either extraterrestrial, or genetically engineered from terrestrial species.

In modern times we have both the animal mutilation and the UFO abduction phenomena, both linked with ongoing alien genetic manipulation of all things terrestrial and maybe extraterrestrial too.  

Now I know what some of you must be thinking – what about all those sightings of Bigfoot or Sasquatch, the Yeti and similar hairy hominoid bipeds of unknown origin? The answer for the here and now to that is when and if these reported beasties acquire the same sort of documentation as reality-based animals, like lions and elephants, then revision will be in order. Until then speculation remains just that, speculation.

Another objection would be if aliens needed domestic manual labour why not just construct and use robots! Ah, it’s not just labour and getting others to do the work. When you think of, for example, the Biblical creation, what does God want? A prime goal of God and all those other gods is being worshiped, sort of like what we expect and take pleasure from in our pets’ adoration or their ‘worshiping’ of us – even if it’s only Fido the dog wagging his tail when you come home, or Fluffy the cat purring and rubbing against your leg. There’s no gain or self-satisfaction in programming a machine to bow and scrape unto you.

In summary, that’s my scenario as to who killed off the great ancestors of modern humans and why. It wasn’t deliberate genocide on the part of the creators, just Mother Nature culling those species that weren’t suited to their natural environment. Why they weren’t suited is, again, because our ancestors were artificially created, so when cast adrift, well the rest as they say is history.

Whodunit: What Killed Off Our Ancestors? Part One

“Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?” was one of those top-notch mystery comedies from 1978. Who killed the ancestors of modern day humans isn’t quite so funny, but it’s still a top-notch mystery. I propose one rather unconventional answer, our creator ‘gods’, the extraterrestrials.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved from other primates, most probably from chimpanzee stock in Africa when DNA relationships are analysed. We have a 98% compatibility with chimpanzee DNA. However, there was a long chain of in-betweens twixt chimpanzees and modern humans, the two key transitions being a bipedal gait (Australopithecus) and tool use (Homo). The interesting things are that while all the in-betweens have gone extinct, the ancestral primate stock didn’t; the transition to modern humans was so fast that it reeks of artificial selection, not natural. Are the in-between extinctions and the extremely rapid transition to modern humans linked? 

Review: 4.5 billion to 5 million years ago.

Divide the roughly 4.5 billion year history of Planet Earth into say five million year segments. Now imagine yourself 4.5 billion years ago jumping from one segment to the next. Even given a five million year leap, would you notice much change per leap? No, you wouldn’t. You’d notice a little change, yes, but hardly anything drastic or major. That applies as you jump from segment to segment – a little change, a little more change, even a little more change as you get further and further removed from your starting point. The composition of the atmosphere slowly, ever so slowly changes; life begins and single celled critters emerge. After many, many segment leaps, these evolve simple multi-celled critters, etc. But change is so gradual that it’s hardly perceptible from one segment to the next. The exception would be when there’s been a mass extinction event, so if you jump from 70 million years ago to 65 million years ago, yes you’d notice that, oops, where are the dinosaurs? Then things settle back down again to very slow but very sure rate of change.

Now about 90 leaps of five million years each will bring you to roughly a time five million years ago. Observe carefully the landscape, atmospheric composition, and the various life forms. If you’re in Africa you just might notice the early stirrings of the hominoid branch that will ultimately lead to us. Now do that final leap. Jump that final segment. Is the resulting change major or minor? If you answered yet again ‘minor’, put on your dunce cap. That change is the most major of all the incremental five million year leaps. Now doesn’t that strike you as odd? It’s always been a relatively slight incline of change, now all of the sudden the slope skyrockets.

Review: 5 million to 500,000 years ago.

Now divide that final five million year segment into say ten parts of 500,000 years each. Perform that same incremental jump. Not all that much changes from one 500,000 year block to the next one to the next one. But that last leap from 500,000 years ago to the present – well, there’s that exponential slope again. There a huge change from that final 500,000 years ago to the present. At the start, there were no Homo sapiens. At the end, well just look around you – billions of Homo sapiens all around you.

Review: 500,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Divide that final 500,000 year block into ten segments of 50,000 years each. By the time you reach the last of those 50,000 year blocks, a lot of Homo species have come and gone, with only a couple left - Homo neanderthalensis and of course Homo sapiens, and in isolated Java, Homo floresiensis.

Review: 50,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Consider that final 50,000 year block. At the start, Homo sapiens exist, but there’s no civilization to speak of. But we do have the first of two relative sudden advances. 50,000 years ago, give or take, modern humans ‘invented’ culture. Cave art and rock paintings appear; also carved figurines; humans began to bury the dead along with grave goods.

Now divide that final 50,000 block into five parts of 10,000 years each. At the end, with only 10,000 years left to go, we now have only one hominoid species left, Homo sapiens. In just that final 10,000 year period, you’ll see the transition, in that relative short period of time, in diverse parts of the world; humans go from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to domestic settlements.

Review: 10,000 to 1000 years ago.

If you divide that final 10,000 year block into ten parts, then you go from civilization to a technological civilization.

Review: 1000 to 200 years ago.

Divide that final 1000 block into say five parts, and you go from a technological civilization to a high-tech civilization, and the progress is still undergoing an exponential expansion.

Okay, let’s return back to roughly 5 million or so years ago, perhaps a shade more.

Somewhere around 8 to 6 million years ago, our lineage split off from the chimpanzee lineage. Our lineage is composed of lots of links, about 20 species known so far, some direct (like your grandparents and parents); some just branches off the main and aren’t direct (like your cousins, aunts and uncles). 

Here are the starting links in that chain that we know about.

Sahelanthropus tchadensis came on the African scene about 7 to 6 million years ago. We’re not sure if this hominoid species was a parent or a cousin.

Orrorin tugenensis was slightly more recent, dating to roughly 5.8 million years ago. Again, parent or cousin isn’t clear.

Ardipithecus ramidus and Ardipithecus kadabba were known to strut their stuff 5.8 to 4.3 million years ago and are credited with being in a direct linear chain to ourselves.

Here are the next links in the chain starting with the advent of the bipedal gait.

AUSTRALOPITHECUS (hominoids with an undoubted bipedal gait) had their origins from roughly that 4 to 3 million years ago era, give or take.

*Australopithecus anamersis existed down Africa way some 4.2 to 3.8 million years ago, an apparent ancestor to Australopithecus afarensis.

*Australopithecus afarensis is well known thanks to Lucy (of “in the sky with diamonds” fame). Australopithecus afarensis were around from roughly 3.6 to 3 million years ago though it seems there’s a gap in the fossil evidence of some 200,000 years twixt Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus anamersis. When hominoid fossils are as few and far between as they are, such gaps aren’t surprising.

*Australopithecus bahrelghazali has been documented from about 3.5 million years before the present.

*Kenyanthropus (or Australopithecus) platyops (depending on who you talk to) was a contemporary of Australopithecus bahrelghazali and Australopithecus afarensis dated again to 3.5 million years ago.

*Australopithecus africanus: If Australopithecus afarensis faded out of the picture some 3 million years ago, they were replaced by this mob, who reigned from about 3 million to 2.5 million years ago.

*Australopithecus garhi comes upon the scene just as Australopithecus africanus fades away in turn at about 2.5 million years before today.

Our Paranthropus cousins branch off around that 2.5 million year mark. First up was Paranthropus aethiopicus at 2.5 million years ago. Now there is some dispute about names.

*Australopithecus boisei or Paranthropus boisei? Whether parent or cousin, they were around from about 2.3 to 1.4 million years ago, and thus evolved before, and went kaput after, Australopithecus robustus or Paranthropus robustus.

*Australopithecus robustus or Paranthropus robustus? What’s in a name anyway, The fact of the matter is that this African species is dated to 2 to 1.5 million years ago.

HOMO (tool makers) had their origin somewhere from 2.5 to 2 million years ago.

*Homo Rudolfensis (species akin to Homo habilis) inhabited Africa 2.5 to 1.9 million years ago.

*Homo habilis hit the scenes about 2.3 million years ago and lasted until roughly 1.6 million years ago.

*Homo ergaster: In one telling of the tale, Homo ergaster was post Homo habilis but pre Homo erectus and existed from about 2 million years ago to 1 million years ago. Other anthropologists assign the name Homo ergaster just to the African version of Homo erectus. That’s because a hominoid species was about to flee the coup!

*Homo erectus was that species that flew the African coup. It was the first such ancestor of ours to migrate out of Africa (though not all did of course). They ended up in western, eastern, and South-Eastern Asia. Fossil remains have been found in Java for example. Homo erectus survived and thrived more as an Asian species than an African one, surviving until roughly 200,000 years ago in Asia after their 2 million years ago origins in Africa, and as Homo ergaster, died out 800,000 years before their Asian equivalents.

*Homo floresiensis (Java only) was an isolated offshoot of Homo erectus who has the distinction of being our most recent ancestor to go extinct. Homo erectus did so 200,000 years ago, but that isolated community hung on until a very short 12,000 years ago. That’s nearly modern times!

*Homo heidelbergensis: Homo erectus also spawned another out-of-Africa species, Homo heidelbergensis who spread out over Europe from 700,000 to 300,000 years ago, presumably via migration from their ancestors in western Asia.  

*Homo antecessor is the Homo erectus species who colonized Europe, sometimes known as another European version of Homo heidelbergensis. Homo antecessor lived in Europe from about 1 million years ago to roughly 300,000 years ago.

*Homo rhodesiensis is the same as Homo heidelbergensis, only the African version. So, presumably Homo ergaster gave rise to Homo rhodesiensis just as the out-of-Africa version of Homo erectus gave rise to Homo heidelbergensis. Like Homo antecessor, Homo rhodesiensis hung around for only 700,000 years – 1 million years ago to 300,000 years past.

*Homo neanderthalensis, being a west Asian and European species is the obvious descendant of those other European hominoids, Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis. Of all our extinct ancestors (600,000 to 35,000 years ago), Neanderthals are the most famous, but we still don’t the exact degree of interaction, even breeding (if possible) between them and the last and final species on the list – us.

*Homo sapiens (takes shape 400,000 to 200,000 years ago, but probably closer to 200,000 than 400,000, at least that’s the consensus. Another consensus is that Homo sapiens were only the second African native to migrate out of Africa after Homo erectus, some 60,000 to 50,000 years ago.

There are probably still lots of undiscovered species that form additional links and branches in the chimp – modern human chain, but the above are enough to illustrate the point. A heck of a lot of our ancestors went extinct – cause or causes unknown.

To be continued…

Universals of the Human Condition 2: Part Two

It’s pretty obvious that all humans share with all other humans various but fundamental universals. We all have a biological mother and father for example. One normally however associates every human being and every human society as unique in terms of their worldview. Yet there remain certain universals (like mom and dad) seemingly shared across the board by the great majority of individuals comprising any and all cultures. Some of these universals were explored in an earlier essay. Now let’s explore several more universals common to the human condition, which are innate to our internal psychology and/or based around external realities. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Social Animal: Hermits are relatively few and far between. We voluntarily associate in large clusters usually like-with-like. That sometimes resulting in ghettos and/or ethnic neighbourhoods (like Chinatowns) which usually wasn’t quite the social issue in ancient history that it has tended to be in the latter three centuries. That the human species are a social animal is nowhere more dramatically brought to the fore than with the modern phenomena, something bordering a on pure obsession, of having to be in contact 24/7/52. People produce seemingly endless streams of emails; love the use of cams; blog the most trivial of trivia’s;  engage in so much text messaging that arthritis rates among the young are bound to skyrocket; engage in near endless mobile phone use; make posting after posting on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter (and similar sites), etc. We throw parties; dine together; attend all manner of functions with our peers, and on and on it goes. Such social activities aren’t confined to any one sex or age group or nationality. 

Sports: Contests, whether as harmless play, as a more formal and structured competition (be it amateur or professional) has been the case in all societies from the year dot through to the present day. The ancient Greeks had their Olympic Games; the Mesoamericans their ball-court contests where you just wouldn’t want to be on the losing side; Americans have their national pastime (baseball); other countries/cultures go fanatically mad over all manner of other sports be it rugby or soccer or ice hockey. One doesn’t even have to be a fan of or participate in team sports. Chess and wrestling just require one opponent; golf and tenpin bowling don’t even require that. Sporting contests have to rate as one of the most universal of human universals ever. 

Superstitions: This hardly requires any lengthy comment. From black cats, to walking under ladders, to Friday the 13^th, to breaking mirrors, avoiding stepping on sidewalk cracks, to Charlie Brown suiting up for his baseball games in a just so manner, etc. Every culture has had (and often still has) endless superstitions and rituals to ward them off, which we might shrug off as harmless nonsense today but which we’re not always taken with a proverbial grain of salt thrown over the shoulder. More than a few felines and women suffered the most horrible of tortures because of superstitions. 

Taboos: Every society everywhere at every time has had some set of taboos – some of which made sense like incest (inbreeding is bad from a Darwinian evolutionary perspective), but many that didn’t. For example, only the ancient Chinese emperor or empress was allowed to have the image of a dragon on their clothing; for everyone else that was taboo under penalty of death. Some foods are forbidden; some only forbidden or allowed on certain days – most illogical, unless for health reasons which usually wasn’t or isn’t the rational. And although all societies have or have had taboos, there’s often little consistency between them, or even within them. Royal families often engaged in incest even while being taboo among the commoners. But some societies allowed, even encouraged polygamy while others tabooed the practice. Go figure!

Territoriality: Animals usually stake out and defend a certain amount of territory, that amount of space required to sustain itself, space enough to find a mate in, sufficient territory to sustain and raise a family in. Animals rarely require more than that. They don’t grab territory just for the sake of grabbing territory and for bragging rights. Too large a space is indefensible anyway. You can only patrol so large a space with the resources at your command. Humans are obviously territorial. We defend our personal space. We’re uncomfortable if someone we don’t know gets within a certain distance of us. A man’s home is his castle, and we don’t care for trespassers. If foreign nations threaten or invade our country, we up the nationalistic fever and do our patriotic duty. And while the number of conflicts and wars have perhaps been given too much prominence in our history texts, it’s fair to say that many a nation has invaded many another nation(s) in order to acquire and expand their own territory. That’s usually for a practical purpose(s) – few go to war just for the hell of it. Often that reason(s) is obtaining required natural resources including human resources (slaves), or eliminating a potential threat before they eliminate you, or to provide more space for your expanding population to expand into. When it comes to expanding your territory, there are some less self-serving practical rationales with emphasis instead on more political, cultural, and/or religious reasons include unification – replacing say paganism with your brand of Christianity; communism vs. democracy.  

Treasure: Quite apart from pirates and buried treasure, bank robbers and stashed loot,  prospectors who keep losing the mother lode, or pharaoh’s grave goods (you can take it with you they thought) all societies have their cultural treasures, often in part composed of precious metals, jewels, pearls, jade, ivory, etc. but not always. Treasure to an entire culture or to an archaeologist does not always mean gold doubloons and X marks the spot! When societies are threatened by outside forces, an all too frequent occurrence in human history, they often hide or move those movable valuables comprising those cultural treasures. In the turmoil that follows, sometimes documentation becomes lost or destroyed, the items, scattered in diverse locations, also become lost as the mists of time thicken – and so you have lost treasure. If cultural treasures are looted by invaders, the fate is often the same – scattered to the four winds – some ending up in private collections; others stored/buried away and ultimately forgotten about. Valued objects are also lost by accident. There a lot of valuable cultural artefacts lost at sea when ships were sunk and there’s roughly three million shipwrecks worldwide; a lot of gold (and similar items) was lost in transport to the Old World from the New World including treasures of all sorts of interest only to archaeologists and historians. Some treasure ships (however you define them) have been uncovered and recorded; much more remains. The upshot is that there is an awful lot of treasure that remains unaccounted for, hidden, buried or just plain lost, and every culture can relate to that. But it’s not just treasure that’s universal in human civilizations. The whole concept of treasure is fascinating, even riveting to us as individuals, whether that treasure is modern or ancient; local or sited halfway around the world. And so it has been and probably forever will be.

Universals of the Human Condition 2: Part One

It’s pretty obvious that all humans share with all other humans various but fundamental universals. We all have a biological mother and father for example. One normally however associates every human being and every human society as unique in terms of their worldview. Yet there remain certain universals (like mom and dad) seemingly shared across the board by the great majority of individuals comprising any and all cultures. Some of these universals were explored in an earlier essay. Now let’s explore several more universals common to the human condition, which are innate to our internal psychology and/or based around external realities. 

Aliens: Humans have probably speculated about alien life ever since they looked up at those points of light in the night sky and wondered “what if”. Universal interest in and speculations about the reality of alien life, especially extraterrestrial intelligences has waxed and waned over several thousands of years. Naturally Christian religions have had to butt in and contribute their two cents worth – nothing positive came of those I can assure you. Religion should really keep its bloody nose out of scientific issues that have no moral or ethical implications. Anyway, though dating back to the ancient Greeks and probably before them, it’s only in the last 500 or so years that’s witnessed an order of magnitude increase in speculative interest about aliens and in the last 100 or so years an order of magnitude increase above that. There’s been a further exponential increase in interest just in the past couple of generations as speculation has turned to experiments such as the Viking space probes to Mars and SETI (the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence). That, coupled with the appearance of the UFO phenomenon and the rise of interest in possible ‘ancient astronauts’ has up the ante. A whole new science of astrobiology (nee exobiology) has risen within those last two generations and is now a well established discipline. However, as of this writing, we’re no wiser as to alien life than the ancient Greeks were. However, probably before many of you reading these worlds head up to that great radio telescope in the sky, you’ll have an answer – it might only be microbes on Mars, but that’s still an answer.

Creativity: Both humans and some animals can be innovatory creative – necessity being the mother of invention – such as employing tool use to further their odds of survival. The classic example is some animals using twigs to pry out insects from inside trees for their lunch. It’s snack time! Only humans however are artistically creative (with one possible exception – whale songs). We’re all artistically creative even if it’s just planning and cooking meals; deciding on furniture and its arrangement; ditto our wallpaper and/or paint schemes; our choice of carpets or tiles. Even writing a letter or an email is an artistic creation as is choosing ones wardrobe and hairstyle. Amateur photography is an artistic expression of course – an exercise in creativity. Animals do none of these things. And it’s obvious from the archaeological and anthropological record that our ancestors were of the same mind – artistically creative, perhaps designed with a purpose in mind like making pottery to store food in or perhaps creating something for religious purposes. Quite often however an artistic artefact was created just for the hell of it, or because it pleased the person to do so. The Mona Lisa might be considered to be a nice artistic work (though you’d have to pay me to hang it in my home) but it’s useless – just another dust collector. Okay, it might be useful dragging in a few tourist dollars, but 99.999% of all artistic creations just collect dust. Creating something with little hope of recognition is definitely a universal human trait. 

Exploration: Many animals explore, but not for theoretical academic reasons. Their exploration has a practical purpose in mind – a new and better home possibly; a possible food source that lurks inside that unexplored cupboard. Humans explore too, and often equally for practical reasons – finding the Northwest Passage; seeking the exotic spices of the Orient by heading west from Europe but bumping into the Americas instead; looking for new lands to add to your nation’s empire with a bit of personal glory tacked on as well. However, humans also explore just because they are curious and boldly go where no one has gone before just to satisfy that curiosity. Voyages to the Moon are at one extreme of that urge, but on another level, what’s beyond that distant hill? As it was in the past, so it still is. If you move into a new neighbourhood or city what’s just about the first thing you do? Explore and find out what’s what and where’s where. It’s the personal version of bolding going where you haven’t gone before. 

Hybrid Creatures 1: Human-Animal Hybrids: Our universal mythologies are loaded with human-animal hybrids. You name the animal and no doubt you’ll find either the body of that animal topped up with a human head & neck (sometimes including torso), or else the human body will be topped off with an animal’s head and neck (sometimes including it’s torso). You don’t have to dig too deeply to find examples: the Sphinx, the Minotaur, the Centaur, the Satyr, the Mermaid, the Harpies, and the Sirens are all well known examples.

Hybrid Creatures 2: Animal-Animal Hybrids: Our universal mythologies are also loaded with animal-animal hybrids. There are combinations of two different animals; three different animals; sometimes four of more make up a composite hybrid. If you can imagine one; someone has beaten you to it and recorded it in one or more ancient mythology. While there are literally hundreds of examples from around the world, it’s easy to name the commoner ones: the Dragon, the Griffin, even Pegasus the winged horse.

Politicians: Politicians by any other name (royalty, ministers, senators, emperors, congressmen, presidents, pharaohs, etc.) are still politicians, near universally viewed by the ruled as among the lowest of the low, whether elected to rule, rule by divine right, or rule by force. Politicians are probably in that category of you can’t live without them; you can’t live (much as you’d like to anyway) with them. At best we have to conclude that politicians have been, are, and will continue to be a necessary evil from any and all societies that have, are, or will exist.

Recreational Drugs: There’s little doubt that recreational drug use (and probably abuse) dates back multi-thousands of years. The fermenting of gapes for wine and its use goes back at least from 8000 to 6000 BC, and was a very common drink in Ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome; the production and use of beer dates back even further to at least 9500 BC; smoking has been recorded from at least 5000 BC onwards, often as incense and for use in various religious/shamanistic rituals from the Middle East through to Asia and the Americas; and no doubt our ancient ancestors, via trial and error as to what was eatable and what wasn’t tasty, no doubt discovered ‘magic mushrooms’ and other similar natural plant materials that not only provided a few calories but a bit of a buzz too! For example, opium use goes back to roughly 4200 BC. The list could be massively extended but you get the gist. Drug use is one of those human universals – always has been; probably always will be. And while some species of animals can be induced artificially into becoming addicted to say alcohol, a wild animal can not afford to become addicted to any substance in its environment and become disoriented. A mouse nibbling on a magic mushroom is just asking for trouble.

Shape-Shifters and Were-Creatures: Shape-shifters and were-creatures are very popular in sci-fi (“The Thing from another World” or “Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country” and horror (those endless variations on the “Wolfman” classic). They are also popular in reality, if mythology be reality. Anytime within the field of mythology one comes across a theme which is universal, that is it cuts across all cultures, geographies, races, etc. then I believe one needs to pay extra heed, as universal themes are more likely to have some basis in reality. One such theme is that of the shape-shifter, including were-creatures. Almost every culture around the world has some type of transformation myth, and almost every commonly found animal (and some not-so-common ones) probably has had a shape-shifting myth attached to them somewhere along the line. With respect to humans, the most obvious explanation is that at some time or other we’d all like to have been an inconspicuous fly-on-the-ceiling observing and listening in to that which was not meant for our eyes and ears. Much as we’d like to at times, we can’t shape-shift into a fly. But that doesn’t really explain why we would attribute that ability to others – it doesn’t do us personally any good, now does it? The popular idea of a shape-shifter is of a human (or humanoid) being who turns into something else, or something else that turns into something human (or humanoid) and common examples include skin-walkers, the werewolf and vampire (though humans have been attributed to transform into just about any mammal or bird you can think of). Other common shape-shifters include fairies, wizards, witches, kelpies, and some, even most of the gods (like Odin, Loki and Zeus). Satan would have to be included too. However, though we can’t shape-shift (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde not withstanding), even though other humans can (or could), that ability has also been attributed to literally hundreds of creatures from time immemorial. There are numerous stories about animals that can transform themselves into other animal forms as well as the above mentioned human-animal transformations.

To be continued…

Universals of the Human Condition: Part Two

Every human is unique in terms of their worldview. Every society, every community, every suburb, every village, town, city, county, state, country has a unique identity. Every culture, race (ethnic grouping) also has a unique identity. Yet there are certain universals seemingly shared across the board by the great majority of individuals comprising any and all narrower divisions. Some of these universals are mysterious; some not so mysterious. Here are just a few of them.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Isms: We all feel more comfortable with our own kind. We tend to associate with others our own age, our own race, our own sex, our own religion, our own nationality, etc. Those who differ significantly from the standard ‘me’ get isms attached. Racism; sexism; nationalism, etc. are cases in point. It’s all discrimination on the grounds that someone else isn’t virtually your clone physically and/or in terms of worldviews (belief systems). 

Music: Music is an art form designed for the ears. There probably hasn’t, isn’t or will be anyone of any race, creed or culture, male or female, old or young, who hasn’t, doesn’t and won’t respond positively to music of one type of another. Exactly why however is a bit mysterious. Music, apart from bird calls and other animal ‘noises’ wasn’t part of our natural primate ancestral background. You could hardly call crashing surf, thunder and howling winds musical. And while bird vocalizations and animal sounds have survival value – species recognition or identification, warning/danger cries, use in mating rituals – ‘humans’ even multi-tens of thousands of years ago didn’t need to sing or strike rocks or blow across reeds to communicate. Though the saying “music sooths the savage beast” must have some significance, music appreciation seems to me to be more by design than by natural evolution. However, if we appreciate music by design, who was the designer and then what was the possible purpose behind that appreciation? If all music vanished from human society overnight, our life and civilization would still go on. Music is peripheral to our survival – then or now.  

My (fill in the blank) Right or Wrong: The blank could represent spouse, child, family, town, county, state, country or even planet if faced with an alien presence or threat. That applies equally to other belief systems like religion or sports team. The logic of course is faulty in the extreme, but that is beside the point when you’re engaging in your debate.

Mythical Creatures: There is no human culture on Earth that hasn’t stocked a make-believe zoo with all manner of fantastic creatures. From dragons to thunderbirds, griffins to the hydra, Grendel and Pegasus, unicorns to hellhounds, they’re all there and a whole lot more besides. Modern equivalents like Godzilla are clearly marketed as entertainment and fictional; not so marketed were the ancient beasts of ‘mythology’ according to our ancient ancestors. Why did they have a need to ‘invent’ so many weird beasties? Why did they believe these creatures existed? Perhaps the alternative explanation is that these mythical creatures weren’t quite so mythical.

Rank Has Its Privileges: Are all men (and women) created equal? Not on your Nellie! In very society, past and present, and no doubt future, there, have been, are and will be the haves and have nots. That’s nearly as universal and certain as death and taxes.

Rebellious: All humans tend to be rebellious. It’s just about as universal as it gets, and I don’t mean kids throwing temper tantrums or something confined to teenagers. ‘Thou shall not’ usually gets interpreted as ‘Thou shall’ if I can get away with it! I mean who hasn’t exceeded the speed limit now and again; parked in a ‘no parking’ area or overstayed their parking time limit; dropped that piece of litter when no one was looking; engaged in inappropriate Internet use at work or maybe nicking a few pens and paperclips; failed to return a borrowed library book on time; or told the occasional ‘little white lie’? What about fudging just a little bit on your tax return and declaration?

Resurrection: We’ve all seen the Sun ‘die’ at dusk only to be resurrected at dawn. The Moon ‘dies’ at New Moon, but then comes back gradually growing brighter each night until it’s Full Moon, then starts to slowly ‘die’ again until it does ‘dies’ again – death and resurrection. Some plants ‘die’ in the winter, but are resurrected in the spring. A lawn that’s been killed (mowed) usually survives to grow back again. A lizard can lose its tail but seemingly that tail is resurrected and grows back. So, viewing all these things, it’s not surprising that humans think that they too will be resurrected after death.

Symmetry: Humans love symmetry, which might tend to reflect nature as nature often exhibits symmetrical traits. A sphere has perfect symmetry; symmetry in two-out-of-three dimensions might be a cylinder; human’s exhibit symmetry in only one-out-of-three dimensions; left-right. But symmetry isn’t confined to just geometry though that’s probably the main kind of symmetry that one finds in nature apart from the biological like predator vs. prey or male vs. female. Humans apply symmetry to things that are relative and/or the more abstract – right vs. wrong; tall vs. short; black vs. white; heaven vs. hell; up vs. down; hot vs. cold; yin vs. yang – the list could be extended for quite a few more examples from politics to economics. However, as a general rule-of-thumb, for any concept humans conceive of, they will also conceive of an equal-and-opposite concept. Symmetry seems to be in our genes.  

Three ‘R’s’: Humans can be both literate and numerate. My cats couldn’t read the most basic three-year-old primer, no matter how much instruction I gave them. No cat can read and understand the word C A T; their paws aren’t equipped to put pen to paper and ‘typing’ or pawing on a computer keyboard is going to create gibberish. Still, cats specifically, and the rest of the animal kingdom in general, get by thank you very much without any need to read or write or calculate/crunch numbers. In fact, many ancient human societies or cultures never developed writing at all, and therefore reading, though they probably did calculations for various purposes, even if just in their head. Still, the odds are pretty good that the human species would exist today even if none of us or our ancestors ever had developed an ability to read and write. Yet being literate and numerate is one of those universals of the current human condition.  

Time: All life forms on this planet, except those companion animals we’ve forced into adapting to our ways, set their biological clocks by natural time, usually the rising and elevation and setting of the Sun; the duration of daylight. To a lesser extent, the rising, setting and phases of the Moon play a role. All life forms on this planet, apart from those who live their entire life in eternal darkness – deep inside caves, deep underground, or in the abyssal depths – probably have the concept, assuming they have IQs high enough to have concepts, otherwise an awareness, of a day – sunrise to sunrise – or more likely half-days – sunrise to sunset, and sunset to sunrise. They certainly have no awareness or concept of, nor requirement to have any awareness or concept of, a second, minute, hour, week, month, year, decade or century. These are all manmade constructions of no use and of no interest to other living things. So, while nearly all living things are aware of ‘time’, only humans, universally, have turned natural time (night and day) into artificial time – like time zones. Every culture has had a go at forming a calendar – how many units per day; how many days per week; how many weeks per month; how many months per year, and finally what to do with the leftover residue. Even in terms of the ‘day, there’s nothing natural about midnight – one could take any point and call that the end of the old day and the start of the new day, as apparently we have some sort of need to label the days that other living things don’t need to do. Ditto that idea when it comes to the end of our labelled year. There’s nothing special about New Years Eve. It’s a totally artificial concept. Only humans attribute some sort of uniqueness to it. To everything else on this planet it’s just another ordinary moment in a lifetime of ordinary moments. And Daylight Savings is as artificially phoney as it gets even if it does have, or at least did have, some practical application. Birthdays are another artificial and phoney concept. If anniversaries have any meaning then your ‘birthday’ should be the anniversary of your conception, not when you were hatched. We may also observe the birthday of companion animals for various reasons, but to them, it’s a non-event that has no real significance to them even if the concept had occurred to them. They require neither birthday card nor birthday presents and don’t feel insulted when they don’t appear. 

Trade: Trade is a universal of the human condition. It’s just exchanging what you have (skills, money, goods, crops, etc.) for what you need or want (money, food, sex, other goods and services, etc.). That trait, bartering, buying and selling, exchanging goods and services has gone on seemingly as far back in history as records allow for. There are no parallels that I am aware of existing in the animal kingdom, not even among our closest primate ancestors. Animals often share, but they don’t engage in commerce.

Visual Art: Visual art are art forms designed for the eyes, though they could also be natural like scenery – sunsets, cloud forms, seascapes, etc. Art appreciation is universal, although it’s often a case of different strokes for different folks. Paintings obviously come to mind, even Playboy pinups; eye-catching or pleasing architecture qualifies; 3-D sculptures obviously; dancing, the theatre and in more modern times cinema. The issue here is why art appreciation like music appreciation is appreciated or has a resonance at all since art appreciation has no obvious survival value. There’s little to be gained standing around admiring the striped patterns on a hungry tiger that’s got an eye on you that has nothing to do with its art appreciation. However, it would be interesting to be able to communicate with some of the higher IQ animals (birds and mammals) to find out if they appreciate the beauty in a rainbow, those northern or southern lights (the Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis) or the stalagmites and stalactites that’s in their cave. Do flying birds have an abstract appreciation of their aerial view or is it just so much ho-hum? At least we suspect that pigeons in the park appreciate the statues they sit on!  

Worldviews: I’m right; you’re wrong, even if it’s just opinions at stake. Today, there are no doubt a zillion debates that go on, on Internet message boards around the world that X is better than Y or vice versa. At least, despite the vehemence, nobody gets physically hurt! That’s not of necessity in a face-to-face barroom encounter, or High Noon on the highway – road rage. Every day in every way, say over morning tea breaks at the office water cooler, over breakfast or dinner at home, differences of opinions make themselves known in no uncertain terms. The human trait of loving an argument; ever willing to engage in one at the drop of the proverbial hat, is a universal one. It’s perhaps another side to territoriality. You stake out not a physical territory, but a non-physical one, yet defend it just as passionately. It’s even been formalized in debating societies or in public debating forums and political institutions like Congress or parliaments. 

In conclusion, many of these human universals are pretty unique relative to our animal kin; many appear to have had little or no role to play in our evolutionary survival. Many are therefore somewhat anomalous. But let’s not forget about all those gifts from our alien ‘gods’. If true, that really would help explain a lot of these anomalies.

Universals of the Human Condition: Part One

Every human is unique in terms of their worldview. Every society, every community, every suburb, every village, town, city, county, state, country has a unique identity. Every culture, race (ethnic grouping) also has a unique identity. Yet there are certain universals seemingly shared across the board by the great majority of individuals comprising any and all narrower divisions. Some of these universals are mysterious; some not so mysterious. Here are just a few of them.

Well it’s obvious that all humans share various and fundamental universals – death and taxes! Quite apart from that famous observation about certainty, we’re all susceptible to diseases like cancer, the flu and the common cold. Also universal are heart disease and heart attacks. We all have at least one phobia and we share common emotions as well as a common anatomy and body plan. We all need to fill what’s empty; empty what’s full; and scratch where it itches. Are there any exceptions for the need to sleep, perchance to dream? Let’s explore several other universals, though this is not meant to be a universally exhaustive list, which are innate to our internal psychology and/or based around external realities.

Afterlife: Humans are probably unique as a species in having a before-the-fact awareness that we are going to kick-the-bucket. I doubt if any other animal has an awareness of the concept of their own death. However, relatively few of us probably want to die, though the alternative, if you stop and think about it, immortality either with or without eternal youth, isn’t very pretty either. Anyway, it’s not surprising that we have come up with the next best security blanket going – an afterlife. Alas, wishing for it doesn’t make it so. You’d really think that if an afterlife was reality then somehow some definite proof would have filtered back to us aging mortals, just to shore up our belief system.  

Bigger Is Better; Size Matters: If you ask any child or adult to name several dinosaurs, it’s a sure bet they won’t name the turkey-sized ones! Then there’s the Guinness Book of Records that accents things that are big, bigger, biggest. Men want larger private parts; women bustier busts. And ask any Texan what really matters! We’ve all heard of keeping up with (and surpassing) the Jones family! They’re not called ‘Tiny Macs’ but of course ‘Big Macs’ and we’ve all heard of super-sizing!

Civilization: There are universal mythologies that don’t credit humans with any smarts in our march towards civilization. Important knowledge wasn’t hard won by us; rather it was given to us by the gods. You name it; it was a sort-of from on-high Xmas gift. Fire is one example; agriculture another; weaving yet another. If it wasn’t for the gods, we’d still be in the Stone Age, primitive hunter gatherers.

Clothing: To a greater or lesser extent, the human species now covers itself with clothing. Sometimes this is for protection, for the sake of art (so-called ‘fashion’), for conformity, and because society says so. That wasn’t always the case and in terms of animal life on Earth we’re the lone exception in having that kind of nature of body covering.

Cooking: When you think about it, cooking food is somewhat anomalous. All other life forms are adapted to eat all their nutrition in the raw state, be it the flesh of plants or the flesh of animals. And so too must early humans been so adapted, and even today we do eat a lot of plant flesh uncooked. The central ingredient required for cooking was fire, but whether the use of fire for cooking was obvious to Blind Freddy is doubtful. Fire was useful for light; for heat; for keeping large dangerous wildlife at bay, but cooking? No doubt the first cooking experiences were accidental, but that art has spread through to all societies. Cooking is now one of those universals. And while we think nothing of eating cooked meat now, and usually avoid raw meat, it must have been quite the brave individual to actually try cooked meat, say a dead animal ‘cooked’ in a bushfire after a lifetime of eating nothing but the raw variety. 

Creations: This one stumps me, unless we were told by the ‘creators’ or those more in the know that there were creations. I doubt we could figure out that things get created from personal observations and historical records. Consider the Sun. Every day we see the Sun rise and set. We ask our parents and they say that in their lifetime everyday the Sun rose and set. They say that their parents said the same to them, and their parents before them. We consult historical texts from thousands of years ago, and what do we read, well Mr. Sun rose and Mr. Sun set, it rises and sets, rises and sets. There is no person or history we can consult who can suggest anything other than the Sun rising and setting forever and ever and ever no matter how far back you go. If you could ask the dinosaurs their observations, well they too would have to tell you about that rising and setting Sun. Why would you not assume that the Sun has always risen and set? Translated, based on all available evidence you would have to conclude that the Sun had no starting point and based on probability, won’t have an end point either. The Sun is infinite in time. The Sun had no creation. The same argument applies to the ground underneath your feet – Planet Earth is infinite in time. Since you can’t actually question the dinosaurs, you have no reason, no contrary evidence not to believe humans as a species didn’t always exist. So how come you have “In the beginning God created…”? Why does every mythology contain creation stories – for the cosmos, the Sun, Earth, plants and animals, even for humans? - Something’s screwy somewhere. 

Deities: We don’t like mysteries. Well actually we do like mysteries as long as we can solve them to our satisfaction. If we can’t explain a mystery, there’s a convenient ‘out’ or explanation at hand. We attribute that unknown to some power higher than our own; a supernatural deity in other words. Unknown forces become ‘acts of god’ or godly miracles or ‘god works in mysterious ways’, etc. And so the unknown is explained. Mystery solved. That satisfies our curiosity, at least in the short term. That doesn’t mean supernatural deities really exist, but since we’ve named so many thousands of them they probably do exist – as extraterrestrial flesh-and-blood ‘deities’ that is. Regardless of their reality, a deity is also very useful as a scapegoat to blame when things go wrong, instead of blaming yourself, which would probably be a better reflection of reality. Deities can in the popular imagination get up close and personal and if you piss one off – not all that hard to do apparently – that explains all your troubles from the insignificant to the minor to the major, even life-threatening. And it’s a very universal human trait to shift the blame and find a scapegoat.

Fiction: When animals communicate with each other they tell the truth. Bees communicate where a new food source is; animals cry out warning/danger sounds and there is no doubting by those in hearing range the truth behind the message; dogs bark for a positive reason and whatever that reason, it’s representing something about the animal’s perception of reality. Humans however universally invent stories; untruths; fictions; lies; which sets us apart from other animals. The purpose of these fictitious inventions are varied – entertainment value; make a moral/ethical point, etc. Some fiction goes under another name – advertising! However, storytelling is a universal human trait; a universally absent one in the rest of the animal kingdom.

Fire: One thing common in major mythologies is that fire was a gift from lesser gods even if they nicked it first from higher authority. Prometheus is the obvious example though there are numerous parallel examples from North American Indians, even Polynesia and referenced in the Books of Enoch. However, that’s rather odd. You’d of thought that the ‘discovery’ of fire; the ‘gift’ of fire, was universally a natural event – no gods, no gifts, required. It would be a rare environment that didn’t experience natural forest or bushfires due to lightning strikes, or via lava starting fires from active volcanoes. Such natural sources should have prevented any need of an unnatural source, which is one via a deity.

Future Happenings: Animals have way too much on their plates to concern them in the here and now to worry too much about tomorrow. Even if they do it’s probably a case of ‘whatever will be, will be’. That’s despite some animals squirreling or storing away food in the good times for when times are not so plentiful. That’s just pure instinct on their part, not an original foresight concept thought through and through. Humans on the other hand from all walks of life, then and now, are obsessed with tomorrow and beyond. Maybe that’s because we alone know that our demise looms in that future of tomorrows. And so there’s a flourishing industry in astrology and soothsaying, prophets and oracles, tea leaves and chicken entrails. It’s all nonsense of course except to true believers, and perhaps, for deeply embedded psychological reasons, that includes the majority of us, even if we won’t admit it.    

Ghosts: That reports of and beliefs in spirits or phantoms or more commonly ghosts are universal throughout all societies, past and present. They probably have origins in people latching on to any possible evidence that proves there’s an afterlife. If the concept of an afterlife is a security blanket for humans facing inevitable death, ghosts are a security blanket that supports an afterlife. But, how do you then account for phantom trains and buildings or ghost ships or other non-living objects that sometimes appear as ghostly images? Something’s screwy somewhere – yet again! Actually that screwy-ness might be evidence that we’re actually ‘living’ in a simulated universe; we’re just virtual reality not real reality and phantom trains say are just the residue of previously overwritten software.

Humans First: Actually that’s ‘humans first and foremost’ in all things where there’s a conflict between what humans want and what everything else needs. Translated, when it comes to the use of land, humans vs. the environment for biodiversity or endangered species, it is humans first and foremost. A typical case history is the Amazon Forest vs. humans – humans 1; forest 0. If humans want to use land that’s home to an endangered species – screw the endangered species. If farmers have crops attacked by wildlife – kill the bastards! Universally, it’s called ‘progress’ and nothing stands in the way of human progress – even other humans as the native Amerindians found out. Ditto that for the Aztecs, Incas, and the Australian Aborigines too. I recall here the Spencer Tracy narration for the film “How the West Was Won”, narration that’s not exactly something that’s politically correct in today’s society: “This land has a name today, and is marked on maps. But, the names and the marks and the land all had to be won, won from nature and from primitive man.” [Easterners heading westward would] “Look at a mountain and see a watershed; look at a forest and see timber for houses; look at a stony field and see a farm”.  That’s how the west was conquered. Actually it’s all God’s fault of course. We take direction from His Holy Words and He instructed us to be fruitful and multiply (like rabbits) and take dominion over the Earth, its lands, oceans and all its living inhabitants. He, being all knowing, realised we’d get carried away and go way over-the-top and stuff things up. That’s His secret agenda – instead of drowning us in another flood, He’ll let us exterminate ourselves into an extinct species! That way God doesn’t have a guilty conscious.

Humour: Humans alone and collectively within the animal kingdom have a sense of humour. We tell and play practical jokes; comedy shows on TV abound as well as feature length comedy films. It’s a rare work of literature that doesn’t contain at least a few lighter moments; ditto most other works of drama. However, the question is why? Humour has no survival value in any Darwinian sense. I mean do your odds of surviving a shark attack just happen to lie in your telling the shark a few dirty jokes thus distracting it while rapidly back-pedalling out of the water? In any event, the transmission of humour usually resides in language, and humans were on the road to civilization way before we had language. So humour and survival do not seem to be linked. So, how do we explain this human trait? It’s universal; it’s yet another example of something’s screwy somewhere. 

To be continued…