Guess Who? Part Two

Humans share 98% of their DNA with their closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees. That 2% difference however was enough to put man on the moon while the chimps still frolic in and around the forest trees. So, humans should pat themselves on the back, right? We’re king of the mountain; top of the tops, lord and master over all we survey. But what else has that 2% difference bestowed upon us? Perhaps a closer comparison to the rest of the species inhabiting Planet Earth should deflate our massive egos a might.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Sex and all that Jazz

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Nudity or appearing in the nude. Why is this important? Is this really important at all, full-stop? No.

* Some of their members engaging in homosexuality. Why is this important? Is this really important at all? Not unless every human were gay, then the birth rate would tend to go down the gurgler, but clearly that’s not happening.

* Practicing birth control, which upsets other members of that species no end. Why is this important? Is this really important at all? Not unless each and every potential pregnancy is thwarted and the population plummets which again clearly isn’t happening.

* Practicing abortion, which upsets even a larger proportion of other members of that species. Why is this important? Is this really important at all? Not unless each and every pregnancy is aborted and the population plummets which yet again clearly isn’t happening.

* Those who practice abortion and not usually in an understanding way but rather by damning them, and often not just verbally. Since abortion isn’t important in the global scheme of things (i.e. – population), opponents are an irrelevancy.

* Pornography. Guess which species!

Fun and Games

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Sports, both as participants and/or as spectators. This is not important. This contributes bugger all to your health, education and welfare.

* Sports teams and their fate. This too contributes bugger all to your health, education and welfare. So why is this important?  

* The Olympic Games (winter or summer). This contributes absolutely nothing to your health, education and welfare. So is this really important at all? Not in the slightest.

Traits

Only one species on this entire planet:

* Pats themselves on the back and awards themselves with unearned honorary titles like “Saint” or “Sir”, “Honourable” or “Right Honourable”,  “Your Excellency” or “Your Highness” or “Your Honour”, etc.

* Is a racist species.

* Is a sexist species.

* Gives a damn about making things go ka-boom, blowing things up and reeking destructive havoc in general.

* Makes it their business to butt into the affairs and business of other members of that same species. Curiosity is one thing but this species goes way, way, way beyond that.

* Needs a sense of history.

* Feels a need to shave or have haircuts.

* Feels a need for privacy when going to the bathroom.

* Rationalizes their idiocy.

* Tends not to learn from their mistakes.

* Has the highest rate of obesity which is ever increasing.

* Has the ways and means of driving themselves to extinction.

* Needs to use an alarm clock.

* Thinks they know how to manage an entire planet and the only species who has stuffed everything completely up.

* Deliberately fouls their very own nest.

* Engages in self-harming activities like using drugs, alcohol, tobacco, playing excessively loud music, speeding, over-eating, eating foods extremely high in sugar and salt, suicide, etc.

* Litters, does graffiti and engages in deliberate acts of vandalism.

* Kills his own and other species too just for fun.

* Kills for fashion, like for fur coats.

* Engages in acts of terrorism.

* Engages in acts of torture both of their own kind and other species.

* Builds and used weapons of mass destruction.

* Is totally obsessed with being in constant communication 24/7/52 with other members of that same species.

* Drives around the car park for five minutes just to avoid walking an extra 100 feet.

Economics

Only one species on this entire planet:

* Imposes and cheats on taxes (boo, hiss).

* Will use and misuse money (the root of all evil?).

Legal Matters

Only one species on this entire planet:

* Has a need for a Ten Commandments, a constitution, a Bill of Rights, and an entire legal system, and guess what, it’s not your average puppy dog.

* Needs to utilize policemen.

* Needs to utilize prisons.

Conclusions

Now, should humans continue to pat themselves on the back as lords and masters of life, the universe and everything, or perhaps pat themselves on the back as being the lone idiot species inhabiting the Planet Earth?

Guess Who? Part One

Humans share 98% of their DNA with their closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees. That 2% difference however was enough to put man on the moon while the chimps still frolic in and around the forest trees. So, humans should pat themselves on the back, right? We’re king of the mountain; top of the tops, lord and master over all we survey. But what else has that 2% difference bestowed upon us? Perhaps a closer comparison to the rest of the species inhabiting Planet Earth should deflate our massive egos a might.

There are millions of species living on Planet Earth right now (and untold millions that have lived on Planet Earth but have gone extinct). Humans are just one of those millions of here and now species, so you’d think other species would mirror our traits, or vice versa. Alas, humans are unique, and it’s not something to pat ourselves on the back about.

When it comes to what is important, for all practical purposes it boils down to filling what’s empty; emptying what’s full; scratching where it itches. A good night’s sleep doesn’t go astray either or a good role in the hay (though that might qualify under the ‘empty what’s full’ criteria). In fact to be honest, there’s only one thing that’s really important and that’s your own health and personal well being. All else, with the exception I guess of the health and wellbeing of family, is irrelevant.

Guess Who?

Dress & Fashion

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Clothing fads and fashion. Why is this really important?

* Hairstyles. Is this really important?

* Wearing makeup. Why is this really important?

* Wearing high heels. Is this really important?

* Wearing a suit and tie. Why is this really important?

Special Calendar Dates

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Holidays and the need for them. Is this really important at all?

* Anniversaries. Is this too really important at all?

Some Personal Stuff

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Their family history. This is totally irrelevant to your health, education and welfare.

* What their neighbour thinks of them. This is also totally irrelevant to your health, education and welfare.

* Craving “Likes” on social media sites.

The Larger Context

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Deities. Unless you really believe and are convinced there’s any possible relationship between your invisible friend and your post-demise fate of which there’s not the slightest shred of evidence, far less proof, then this too is irrelevant.

* Their nationalism. “My country right or wrong” has not exactly been a philosophical key to the establishment of peace on earth, goodwill towards men (and women).

* Their race (or breed). The concept of all DNA is equal but some DNA is more equal than others is chemical claptrap.

* Philosophy or metaphysics or the meaning and purpose in life. It maybe interesting, but it’s hardly important.

Special People

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* Royalty. Why are they important? Are they really important? Absolutely not! You earn you position in life; you’re not born into it.

* Celebrities. Why are they important? Are they really important at all? Absolutely not! Everyone sits on the commoner’s throne in the exact same way and puts their leggings on one leg at a time.

Entertainment

Only one species on this entire planet gives a damn about:

* The Academy Awards (and the thousands of related entertainment awards). Why is this important? Is this really important at all? Apart from the recipient, does anyone else really give a damn? This too is totally irrelevant to your health, education and welfare.

* Reality TV. Why is this important? Is this really important at all? You only have a fixed amount of hours in your life – why waste them of this sort of drivel? 

* Rap, hip-hop and heavy metal and thinks this represents something known to that same species as music. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.

To be continued…

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…

My Top Human Anomalies: A List

It’s been said and cited again and again that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine. Whether or not that’s true, the universe, and all it contains, like us, is surely strange indeed. 

EXTINCT ANCESTORS: Modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved from other primates, most probably from chimpanzee stock in Africa when DNA relationships are analyzed. We have a 98% compatibility with chimpanzee DNA. However, there was a long chain of in-between hominoid species twixt chimpanzees and modern humans. Modern humans didn’t evolve willy-nilly in one jump from chimps. The interesting thing is that while all the numerous in-betweens have gone extinct, our ancestral primate chimpanzee stock didn’t. The anomaly is, why should ALL of our in-between ancestral species have gone extinct? We’re not talking one or two or three here, but dozens. It’s stretching credibility to the breaking point that one ancestral species should survive and thrive just long enough for the next in line ancestral species to evolve, and in turn survive and thrive, before going the way of the Dodo, and that this scenario was repeated again and again. There’s no real logical reason why some of our ancestral species couldn’t have survived to ultimately end up coexisting alongside modern humans to this very day.

HUMAN CULTURE & CIVILIZATION: There are two relatively unexplained turning points in the evolution of modern man when contrasted with our more primate-like ancestors. One is the acquisition of what we call culture. Culture (like art appreciation and abstract ideas like an afterlife) happened within a fairly narrow timeframe, roughly 50,000 years ago, wherever nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers gathered. Why the sudden transition? The second great leap forward, again, within a narrow timeframe, some 9000 years ago, was the transition from nomadic lifestyles to settlements – farming crops and herding now domesticated wildlife. Settlements rapidly became villages became towns became cities. While some nomadic hunter-gatherers still roamed the plains, like the Australian aboriginal, what was once that nomadic rule now became that exception to that rule. In both cases, culture and civilization, the observational evidence is rock-solid; theory can’t really explain the transition, or at least the relatively rapid transition, around the world, from the tried-and-true before-the-fact pre-cultural nomadic lifestyle to the unknown leap of an untested experiment with culture and settlements. 

CREATION, THE CONCEPT OF: One of the biggest mysteries to me is why anyone in their stark raving right mind would assume anything and everything had been created from scratch. You cannot make that assumption from first principles based on personal observations and human history. The anomaly is between what our ancient ancestors couldn’t have been expected to know, logically, with what they knew. Their knowledge, often expressed in their mythologies and religions, that there were in fact creations – the universe, stars, solar systems, life, and the human species - therefore must be based on information passed down from those with way more insight or knowledge than they could have possessed. Who passed that information on down the line?

GIFT OF FIRE: In mythologies around the world, one common tale is that some junior deity nicked off with fire belonging to the senior gods, a hot technology that the senior gods had decreed humans shouldn’t have. These junior deities, Prometheus being the best known, in defiance of their superiors give the stolen fire to humans as a gift, usually at quite some considerable peril to their own life and limb. The anomaly here is exactly why presumably humans would come up with such a tall tale in the first place, not once but often and independently in cultures around the globe. The anomaly is because humans don’t need to receive fire as a gift from the gods; fire is a natural part of the human environment. It’s as logical as saying that the gods gave the gift of animals and plants for food, or air and water to humans and prior to that the human species didn’t eat or breathe or drink. At the time humans from many cultures invented the tale of fire from the gods, they had been using fire for tens of thousands of years! Perhaps the gift of “fire” wasn’t really “fire” at all but something more dangerous that the senior gods in their wisdom knew we shouldn’t have, like a parent knows better than to let their very young child play with matches. 

HUMAN UNIQUENESS: The anomaly here is that we humans are not just a different species to all others past and present, but vastly, vastly different. Four vastly different differences in particular strike me as odd.

We alone of all the mammals are bipedal. We alone of all the primates are ‘furless’ – the “Naked Ape” as Desmond Morris described us.  We alone of all species that are and have ever been, are top of the pops in IQ; king of the hill by an extraordinary wide margin in intelligence or the ability to figure things out, call it what you will, plus the use of tools and technology way above that of any other species. Lastly, humans have very distinct facial features – it’s usually how we recognize the identity of another human we’ve seen before. With all other animal species, you’re hard pressed to tell one individual from another based on facial features. You see one sheep’s face, you’ve seen them all. You tend to recognize individuals of other species by size, color and colored patterns, some sort of deformity or abnormality, not by their distinctive facial features which don’t really exist.

If it suits all the other mammals to adopt a four-legged gait and be quadrupeds; if it suited our nearly 200 other primate cousins to retain their fur; if all other species can exist, survive, even thrive without screwdrivers, the automobile, plastics, central heating, the dishwasher, the Internet and the atomic bomb then we have an anomaly here. Every animal species is different from every other animal species, obviously, but there are differences and then there are DIFFERENCES! The human species is so far out in left field as to be nearly out of the biodiversity ballpark.

MORE NAKED APE: Humans of all mammals are the species that sweat the most. The retrograde step of temperature control via sweating instead of fur imposed two additional restrictions on us. 1) We were forced to stay close to reliable sources of freshwater. 2) It also makes us way more dependent on supplies of salt since salt is excreted from the body via sweat. Salt supplies in the natural environment are rare – so rare that once upon a time salt was so extremely valuable and you got paid in salt. It’s where we get our word, salary from. It would appear that in this case, Mother Nature goofed! Not only did this backwards evolutionary step make us more highly dependent on freshwater and salt than would otherwise have been the case, but since we lost our hairy covering in order to sweat, we’ve been forced to replace that hairy covering with artificial coverings – clothes. If only we’d kept our fur, but then clothing manufacturers and the fashion industry wouldn’t have ever existed!

INTELLIGENT DESIGN: THE EYES HAVE IT: Presumably, in the wild, animals that are active in the daytime need as close to perfect eyesight as makes no odds. They need near perfect vision to find prey, to avoid predators, to navigate, especially those animals who navigate in all three dimensions like flying birds and other creatures (like monkeys) that have an up-and-down as well as a front-back and a left-right lifestyle.

I’m not aware that any of the great apes, and that includes chimpanzees (our closest living ancestral species), are often in need of corrective lenses – they exist perfectly well without glasses, or at least that would be the case with the vast majority. Yet the reverse seems to be the case with humans, their descendents. A very large percentage of the human species have problems with their vision yet require (if they want to read, drive a car, watch TV, sew or play video games) acute vision made possible by glasses, contact lenses, surgery, etc. Presumably, before the invention of corrective lenses, people employed for certain tasks had to undergo an eye exam – like those transcribing by hand onto parchment, say the Bible; an archer in medieval times; a chariot driver in pharaoh’s army. And if you were part of the Mayan emperor’s ball team and couldn’t see very well, well you wouldn’t live to have bad vision for long. 

So, why do many humans have less than 20/20 vision, yet wildlife, even domesticated animals, seem to be able to see with visual acuity for whatever passes for their 20/20?

SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION: The anomaly here is that, albeit very rare, the human body can spontaneously burst into flame, killing the victim and turning the body into ash. It’s anomalous in that 1) the human body is composed mainly of water which you don’t tend to associate with fire or spontaneous combustion; 2) the body’s temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is hardly scorching heat; 3) this anomaly isn’t noticed in animals; 4) the fire is localized to just the body and immediate surroundings despite the intense heat needed to consume a human body, and obvious sources of external fire, say a burning candle, are usually lacking. The closest theory is that perhaps the victim’s body was saturated with alcohol from excessive drinking, and alcohol of course can burn, but that rarely fitted the lifestyle of the victim and it would take one hell of a drinking binge to saturate bodily tissues with alcohol in high enough concentrations to cause the body to combust. Since animals don’t spontaneously combust, that tends to rule out body fat as a fuel source.  

Extraterrestrialism: Part Two

If asked the question about your ultimate origins, you might reply that you were of this or that nationality, perhaps with ancestry from this or that other place. Perhaps if you’re a bit more clued you’d say “Africa” as the birthplace of the human race. If you’re really cluey, you might say the oceans, the undoubted place where life itself got its start. But no doubt, no matter what, you’d say you were “terrestrial” – of this Planet Earth. Alas, you’re still not cluey enough. You’re extraterrestrial. We are the aliens, directly and indirectly.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Origin of Humanity

* Just about every religious mythology, and every culture has one, well you’ll find something along the line that the gods (or God) created human beings. Let’s take that at face value. Now ‘created’ doesn’t mean creating something from scratch. If you ‘create’ a plank of wood, you create it from an existing tree or log, not from your home chemistry set (though in theory you could do so since ultimately chemicals make up wood). You probably ‘create’ your meals from ingredients you got from the supermarket. Again, your home chemistry set had nothing to do with it, and even if you did grow your own vegetables and herbs and raise your own chickens and pigs, you still started from existing ingredients – seeds and other advanced biological products like eggs and baby pigs. That analogy equally applies to the case of the ‘gods’ creating humans. They didn’t start from clay and dust and the gods’ equivalent of a home chemistry set. They started work on pre-existing advanced ingredients.

* At this point of course, based on previous remarks, you realise that there are no gods. The ‘gods’ are of course just technologically advanced extraterrestrials with intellectual powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal humans.

The ‘Gods’ Create Humans

* What’s common in mythology is not only do the ‘gods’ create humans, but we (humans) were created in their (the ‘gods’) image. Alien genetic engineering assists in providing an explanation. Now the ‘gods’ have a choice. They can do the hard work here on their new Planet Earth, their home-away-from-home abode, or else they can employ the natives to do the hard work for them. Unfortunately, when they arrived, there were no suitable native life forms they could employ to do that work, so, it’s creation time – the ‘gods’ create, dada, the human species – all of them, one step at a time; there’s no immediate creation of modern Homo sapiens. Fortunately, the ‘gods’ have some promising genetic material to work with – the primates in general and the chimpanzees in particular. Now what clues do we have that we’re a part of this Planet, but at the same time apart from this Planet; that there’s something slightly screwy about human beings.

* One item more than slightly screwy is just that super, ultra, amazing, coincidence that each and every one of our more than 20-plus hominoid ancestral species went extinct – each and every one. All the in-betweens bracketing chimpanzees on one side to Homo sapiens on the other – kaput. That really defies the odds and the natural order of things. Could it be that once an ancestor had been genetically engineered and given rise to the next generation that that species was no longer of any use and cast off to fend for itself yet not having evolved naturally, being unable to do so?    

* The sudden arrival of culture about 50,000 years ago is puzzling. Around the parts of the world that were inhabited by various species of humans, culture arrived in a relatively short period of time. Things like cave art and petroglyphs; mother goddess ‘Venus’ statuettes; burials and grave goods (implying the concept of an afterlife). Why? Whenever something happens very suddenly, in diverse places to boot, one might look towards a guiding hand of outside intelligence. 

* The sudden arrival of civilization about 8,000 years ago is equally puzzling. Once upon a time all humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Some human bands still are. However, many human societies, around 8,000 years ago give or take (6,000 BC or thereabouts) underwent a career change and developed agriculture and animal husbandry and settled down. We became ‘civilized’. Small settlements became villages; some villages morphed into towns some of which in turn grew large enough to become cities. That transition happened in a relatively short period of time in various cultures that at that time had no cross-pollination. Why? The traditional nomadiviic to quasi-nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life, a way of life practiced by all other animal life forms (predators are the hunters; prey the gatherers) served us well too for millions of apparently natural evolutionary years. So what changed unless it was artificial manipulation from outside forces? It’s either that or coincidence stretched to the breaking point.

* Human societies have creation mythologies, and not just of humans, but by all rights shouldn’t since there’s no obvious first-cause creations that have transpired within individual human memories and overall histories. Some external power must have clued our remote ancestors that there were such things as first-cause creations.  

* Unique Human Traits

** Clues include the most obvious of the obvious that we come in breeds. We are one species but there are many racial/ethnic variations on the theme. How do we explain dog breeds and breeds of roses? - Human breeders. How do we explain human breeds? - Alien breeders!

** Our nakedness relative to our furry primate ancestors and current primate ‘relatives’ is another clue – there are multi-dozens upon dozens of primates; only one ‘naked ape’ (humans). Why did we alone lose our fur? I mean when the outside temperature drops much below the comfort threshold, we require in no uncertain terms clothing. When it hits freezing point, we can’t survive without clothing, yet our furry animal cousins seem to manage A-OK. There’s many an image of a furry mammal surviving, even thriving in the snow. Quite apart from the fact that fur is a better regulator of temperature than just sweating (our main means of temperature regulation), loss of fur resulted in other highly negative evolutionary rock and hard place restrictions. We’ve exchanged temperature regulation via fur for control via sweating. Humans of all the mammals are the species that sweats the most. The retrograde step of temperature control via sweating instead of fur imposed two additional restrictions on us. We were forced to stay close to reliable sources of fresh water and it also makes us way more dependent on supplies of salt since salt is excreted from the body via sweat. Salt supplies in the natural environment are rare – so rare that once upon a time salt was extremely valuable and you got paid in salt. It’s were we get our word, salary from. If only we’d kept our fur. Now the relevant issue here is that Mother Nature doesn’t tend to select for traits that decrease survival value. Therefore, perhaps something other than Mother Nature is at work here, maybe like Mother ET.

** Then there’s our bipedal gait relative to the rest of the mammals. Name me one other mammal that routinely walks on two legs.  That’s probably because there are many negatives to a bipedal gait, like loss of stability and strife if you lose the ability to use one leg. Again, it’s not like Mother Nature to encourage evolutionary features that have more negative implications relative to alternatives. We should have evolved as a traditional quadruped but with two additional arms!

** We show way more signs of visible aging than our animal cousins. Our cats and dogs don’t tend to get grey hairs and wrinkles. Is this another sign of genetic tampering?

** Animals don’t seem to have the same sort of need for bathroom/sexual privacy that we have – animals are hard to embarrass. They do what they have to do and don’t give a damn who’s looking. Did we inherit a sense of embarrassment from our creators?

** On the other hand, we also have a sense of humour that even the ‘higher’ animals seem to lack.

** There’s our very high IQ relative to the rest of the animal kingdom, a comparison that’s not even remotely a close contest. While that’s not an evolutionary negative (well not so far at least), the awesome gap between us and our nearest intelligent rival species l is, well, just awesome.

* Why is the human species so vastly different in so many different ways from the rest of our animal kin? Might it be our extraterrestrial ‘gods’ that made it so? Then there’s our ability to mate with the ‘gods’ and produce viable offspring.

To be continued…

How Come Civilization? Why Creation? Part Two

Modern human beings went from a relatively simple hunter-gatherer existence over a rather long-term, in fact quite lengthy time frame, then, in a rather all-of-a-sudden time frame, we settled down and acquired what we’d all accept as living as a collective civilization or as civilized societies. Why did the transition happen and so suddenly after such a long incubation period. What makes us unique? Was it just good old Mother Nature, or was there a special guiding hand – or tentacle or claw as the case may be perhaps.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

There’s another puzzle. That puzzle involves the gods or ‘gods’ creating humans or humanity in the first place. Before I get to the puzzling bit, consider some examples:

The Near East: The creation of humanity, the first people, according to the ancient myths, were either born or formed by hand. Two deities were responsible for creating humankind. Often, the reason given for creating humankind was to provide workers so that the younger generation of gods could be relieved of the hard work. Kindly note that last sentence – humanity was created to do the hard work while, I guess, the ‘gods’ could eat, drink and make merry and enjoy the good life! That’s quite a common theme in mythology; gods create and rule; humans toil.

Greece: The Greek god Prometheus was a Titan who created people from clay.

Norse: Odin was the leader of the Norse gods and the creator of both the world and people.

Maya: The gods made people from corn. They used corn for the bodies, and corn meal for the arms and legs. The corn people were the ancestors of the Maya.

Australia: The supernatural creatures of the aboriginal Dreamtime created the empty world, followed by landscapes, lakes and rivers, plants, humans, and animals. As cultural heroes, they brought advances such as the power over fire, weapons, and hunting skills, as well as clan orders and wedding regulations to humanity.

Lastly, we all know about the Book of Genesis and the so-call creation of Adam and Eve from dust and ribs and probably from whatever else was handy.  

Now here’s the puzzle. It’s somewhat difficult to understand why humans would attribute the creation of humans (and plants and animals) to mythological gods. I mean, even to our earliest ancestors, it’s obvious that people come from people (or at least from females – the biological role of the father might not have been obvious nine months after the fact). In most cases it’s obvious that like comes from like (that’s why Siegfried, a student of nature in the Richard Wagner opera of the same name figured out he wasn’t really the son of the dwarf Mime).

So, if direct observation tells you that people create people, why not assume an infinite backwards regression (or in reverse, generation follows generation follows generation) and there was no beginning, no first creation of people. That makes logical sense. Why would humans not accept this as the natural order of things? Now of course if the ‘gods’ really did assist in the evolution of the modern human, and told humans as much, well that explains those creation tales.

But there are several other puzzles. The first is why did some cultures seemingly defy the ‘gods’ and reject settlement civilization (cities, towns, villages) and remain a nomadic hunter-gatherer society? The most obvious answer is that not all physical geographical environments are equally suitable for a sedentary existence of permanent settlements. The Australian aborigines and Australia a case in point - too dry, too hot, too wet, too constantly changing from drought to flood and back again, coupled with a lack of a suitable native agricultural crops (wheat, corn, rice) and/or native domesticated eatable animal, like sheep, pigs and cattle. There’s more to civilization than urban living. The aborigines have culture – art, music, language, and law, the ability to cook, even though they had no cities, towns or villages.

Yet another puzzle might seem unrelated, but I’ll present it anyway. All humans are one interbreeding species, yet we have one other unique feature (apart from top of the pops in IQ) – different races or breeds. Now skin colour is easily explained by resorting to environmental factors. But what evolutionary selection pressures accounts for other racial differences, which tend to be facial features? We all look pretty much the same from the neck down; at least after you separate the males from the females. That’s apart from fingerprints (or toe-prints?), but unless you’re into law enforcement we don’t tend to identify our family, friends and neighbours by examining their fingers! How do you tell people apart? - By their faces primarily. And it’s not just the broad spectrum racial facial features – it’s just as easy to distinguish an Asian from a Caucasian as it is to distinguish two separate Asians or two separate Caucasians (identical twins excepted perhaps). What is the survival value, the evolutionary selection pressure that makes nearly everyone facially unique? 

Take any other wild creature – one that humans haven’t domesticated and genetically tampered with. Say the great white shark or the common house fly or the blue-ringed octopus or cane toads. As is the case with elephants or zebras, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. You can’t tell them apart. In a police line-up, of say half a dozen German cockroaches, could you identify the one that you saw crawl across your kitchen floor? I feed and watch a lot of wild birds, but I’m damned if I can tell one sulphur-crested cockatoo from another. They all look the same! Perhaps that’s why wildlife biologists and medical researchers have to tag their wildlife or little white mice so as to be able to tell who’s who.

Even with our domesticated and artificially breeding of selected species, we usually tell them apart in the first instance via their size, behaviour pattern and most of all external colouration patterns.

So why our unique faces? Perhaps the ‘gods’ further genetically engineered us that way in order to help tell us apart.

Here’s another mystery.

Say you lived 8000 years ago at the dawn of the transition from ‘primitive’ hunter-gather to ‘sophisticated’ urban dweller (well maybe a farmer or herdsman in a small settlement). Now you have no knowledge of modern biological evolution, the origin of species, or physical geology or cosmology or astrophysics. Would you, in pondering life, the Universe and everything (in your spare time of course) come up with an ‘in the beginning’ or ‘as it is, so shall it have ever been so’? I would suggest the latter because in your world, your environment, your environmental world view, everything is cyclic – a seemingly endless repeat of events, of events, of events, of events (like a stuck record): Birth-death-birth-death; seasons come and seasons go, but always in the same order; the Sun rises-sets-rises-sets-rises-sets; ditto the stars, their patterns and movements are endlessly fixed (patterns) and cyclic (movements); you go from full Moon to quarter Moon to new Moon to quarter Moon to full-quarter-new-quarter, etc. You witness no Big Ticket newness – no acts of grand creation. You have no real reason to assume any grand scale ‘in the beginning’.

Why would you assume that the ground beneath your feet hadn’t always existed as that solid good earth? Wouldn’t such an idea seem rather alien? It would go against the grain of commonsense.

Day after day, year after year, you see the Sun rise and the Sun set. The exact same set of observations, the circumstances surrounding what the Sun does daily, has been passed down generation unto generation. Nobody has experienced anything different no matter how far back your ancestors go. Why would you not assume it has always been that way; that way forever and ever, amen? There seems no need to postulate that some natural event, or deity, created the Sun.

That’s not to suggest you wouldn’t invent deities in order to explain natural phenomena you had no understanding of, like the tides or volcanoes or earthquakes or eclipses or where does the Sun go at night and why rain, wind, thunder and lightning? It’s just there’s no need to invent creator deities, deities who did things ‘in the beginning’.

Yet ancient mythologies nearly all adopt creator deities and an ‘in the beginning’. The Universe isn’t cyclic – it had a creation (the Big Bang event). Ditto the Sun and the Moon and the stars and the Earth (land, sea and sky) and plants and animals and humans. All were created ‘in the beginning’. Why? Maybe because there were ‘people’ around 8000 years ago who did have knowledge of biological evolution, the origin of species or physical geology or cosmology or astrophysics and were able to pass on that information to the human populace who (not fully grasping the technical fine print) incorporated those revelations into their world view: what has come down to us as mythology.

In conclusion, there are anomalies with respect to the origins of humans (Homo sapiens), some of our attributes like our intelligence and facial features, as well as our relatively rapid rise from hunter-gathers on the plains of Africa to hunter-gathers on the Lunar plains. Mythology explains much of this as acts of the gods (yet why creator gods), yet we reject the existence of the gods and thus gloss over the resulting anomalies. The compromise is to give short shrift to the supernatural gods, but credibility to the ‘gods’ as flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials who stumbled across Earth while exploring and colonizing the Milky Way Galaxy many hundreds of thousands of years ago. 

How Come Civilization? Why Creation? Part One

Modern human beings went from a relatively simple hunter-gatherer existence over a rather long-term, in fact quite lengthy time frame, then, in a rather all-of-a-sudden time frame, we settled down and acquired what we’d all accept as living as a collective civilization or as civilized societies. Why did the transition happen and so suddenly after such a long incubation period. What makes us unique? Was it just good old Mother Nature, or was there a special guiding hand – or tentacle or claw as the case may be perhaps.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) existed as an uncultured, uncivilized nomadic entity for most of humanity’s time on Earth. Then whoosh, within an incredible short period of time, apart from isolated pockets, our nomadic days were over and we settled down to a civilized and cultured existence, which continues right through to this 21^st Century. But there’s something very odd about that. Why did it take so long? Why then did the transition happen so quickly? Why do mythologies throughout the world tend to credit the gods for this transition when we all know the polytheistic gods don’t exist?

Modern humans, Homo sapiens (Latin for ‘wise man’ or ‘knowing man’) have existed as a separate species, originating in Africa, with all associated anatomical and related mental faculties in tact, for about 200,000 to 400,000 years. All modern behavioural characteristics have been evident in the fossil and archaeological records from about 50,000 years ago, like Palaeolithic cave art and the practice of burying the dead. 

Human culture or civilization blossomed not in the heart of Africa where modern humans evolved, but in the Middle East. Why not Africa? I would have thought that at first glance Africa was a more environmentally habitat than the Middle East. There was ample enough time, yet apart from ancient Egypt, Africa isn’t associated with early civilizations. Perhaps that’s just an historical mystery that’s bound to remain a mystery.

The earliest origin of what we’d call settlement civilization happened roughly 10,000 years ago, though the first real city-states didn’t come into their own, like Mesopotamia, Egypt’s Nile Valley and the Indus Valleys until about 6000 years ago. So, for most of our time on Earth, we were hunter-gatherers going wherever the flow took us. If civilization and established communities and domestication over plants and animals were such a good idea, why did it take so long for the ‘eureka’ moment to strike? If you have an hour to complete a maths exam with one question, ‘how much is 2 + 2?’, and you only figured it out after 50 minutes, then you hardly qualify as an Einstein. Well we figured out civilization 50 minutes after the one hour time limit start button was pushed, but to add to the mystery, at 49 minutes into the test, we still hadn’t a clue. It’s almost as if we received some outside help at nearly the last minute - but outside help from whom? 

According to mythologies around the world, the gods gave the gifts of culture and civilization to ancient human societies.

The Near East: There are various divine bringers of culture associated with Near East mythology. These divine gods were credited with cultural advancements, such as the development of agriculture and animal husbandry as well as the creation of sophisticated urban culture. Various myths suggested that cultural accomplishments were gifts from the gods.

The Egyptians: As a scribe of the gods, the ibis-headed god known as Thoth was viewed by the Egyptians as the inventor of all spoken and written languages.

The Greeks: The Greek goddess Demeter taught humankind agriculture. The Greek goddess Athena taught the Greeks how to cook and sew. Along with fire, the Greek god Prometheus gave people the mechanical arts, sciences, and wisdom.

China: At the centre of the world lay China, the ‘middle kingdom’ which was ruled by gods. These gods created China’s inhabitants and taught them arts and skills. The first heavenly rulers also provided their subjects with technologies essential to life. Each invention – such as cooking, writing, medicine, the wheel, the fishing net and the plow – was credited to a specific deity. The Chinese god Shennong invented the plow and taught people how to farm.

Africa: A cultural hero brings to a group of people the skills necessary for survival. Like in many cultures throughout the world, the cultural hero in African lore is a mythological figure who brings monumental change to his people, through invention and discovery. Gifts brought by these heroes were often the knowledge needed to farm, hunt, and build.

The gods are also the law givers. An obvious case in point is the monotheistic God and His Ten Commandments.

The gods gave humans all these things but we all know there are no gods (including God) so that must mean that humans came up with all these things all by themselves. But if that’s the case why doesn’t human history record this in the same way that history records Edison (for example) with lots of inventions instead of attributing human inventions, human culture, and human civilization to nonexistent gods? That makes no real sense at all.

However, while the gods might not be real, the ‘gods’ could be – ‘gods’ cleverly disguised as gods, but ultimately revealed as extraterrestrials. Extraterrestrials would just about automatically qualify as deities to primitive earthlings who had no concept of life on other planets.

Now all the extraterrestrial ‘gods’ really needed to do was just give us our first kindergarten lessons and that alone would have kick-started us on our way, eventually to land up on the Moon, hunting and gathering those rocks to take back to Earth. It’s like the child attending school. In the beginning the child is spoon-fed all knowledge, but pretty soon the ability to find things out by him (or her) self kicks in.  

The question is, what’s so special about us that we and we alone as a terrestrial species have actually reached out and touched the Moon? Homo sapiens alone as a terrestrial species have advanced intelligence, technology, and overall that nebulous concept called civilization. The evolution of technology isn’t inevitable and has a lot of just-so factors attached; ditto civilization. I’ve speculated that the latter two were kick-started by the ‘gods’, the extraterrestrials. What about our intelligence? Might our intellectual abilities ultimately prove to be another gift from the ‘gods’?

IMHO, intelligence, the ability to figure things out, has evolutionary survival value and will tend to be selected for, and thus over time, there will tend to have evolved life forms with ever higher IQ’s. Here on Earth, just about all mammals and birds, and some exceptional invertebrates (the cephalopods like squid and the octopus), have reasonable IQ’s at least when compared to bacteria, plants, insects, fish, etc. Of course just as some kinds of organisms are faster than others, or have keener senses of sight or smell or hearing, not all advanced organisms are going to end up equal in the IQ stakes. But, the fact remains, the ability to think, to figure things out, can only increase your odds of survival and leaving behind more offspring.

However, if the evolution of intelligence were the be-all-and-end-all to ensuring survival and being fruitful and multiplying, then your everyday household moggy would be catching mice through pure intellectual genius and setting down mousetraps – and the mice avoiding the cat by figuring out what the cat was planning!

No, there are many evolutionary pathways to success and survival and reproducing. In the case of the moggy, evolving faster reflexes, being able to run faster for longer durations, evolving ever more acute hearing and vision – well that’s probably going to ultimately catch more mice than pure brainpower.

So, yes, intelligence will be selected for, but that trait is in serious competition with other traits in terms of ensuring that you live long and prosper. Just like there are many roles or occupations humans play and work at in society, not all roles or occupations are equal in ensuring success and longevity, yet maximizing whatever abilities you have at least give you the maximum odds that whatever role or occupation you have will ensure you have the maximum chance of living long and living in prosperity. 

However, we’re not just slightly ahead in the IQ stakes, but proverbial light-years ahead. We’d be hard-pressed to imagine any other terrestrial species remotely accomplishing through sheer brain-power alone something akin to the most primitive of our cave art or even picking up and chucking rocks at an enemy.

In the time since the arrival of the ‘modern’ human, Homo sapiens, all our other primate relations, the great apes and monkeys, etc. haven’t moved one centimetre  closer to reaching the Moon, or for that matter, any of the other hundreds of thousands of ‘advanced’ or complex life forms currently inhabiting Planet Earth.

If Homo sapiens vanished off the face of the Earth today, what odds would you give that our closest evolutionary cousins, the chimps and/or baboons and/or gorillas and/or any of the old or new world monkeys would be the next terrestrial species to land on the Moon, however far into the future you’d care to speculate?

So we have puzzlement over why, of all the creatures on Earth, do Homo sapiens have not only the highest IQ, but relative to the next in line – well it’s not even a close contest. It’s sort of like pitting the professional baseball major league New York Yankees against a little league baseball team. Both play baseball, but the relative skills are again light-years apart.

Might I suggest that the ‘gods’, from the get-go, deliberately assisted by bioengineering or genetically engineering our advanced IQ levels? Our intelligence was indeed yet another gift from the ‘gods’.  It should come as no surprise that when it comes to creation myths, the gods created humans. I’d just replace the word ‘created’ with the phrase ‘assisted Mother Nature’s natural selection process by their artificial selection of various traits in selected primates’. The end product of the ‘gods’ bioengineering was humanity with all its glorious top of the pops intellect.

To be continued…