More Profound Things: The Living

There are many things and concepts within the collective worldviews of humanity that are considered pretty mundane. However, there’s certainly a collection of things and ideas which rise to the top in profoundness when compared and contrasted with the ordinary everyday routine. These are the sorts of profound things and concepts which keep you awake at night, pondering the Big Issues. No two people will come up with identical lists. Without further ado, here are some more of mine. 

* Human Matter Matters: We are starstuff (and Big Bang stuff too). It’s pretty profound to realise that all the elements (except hydrogen) that makes you, you, once-upon-a-time resided in the interior of a massive star(s). Does that make you ‘hot’ stuff? Of course all that makes you, you - all of the fundamental bits and pieces like electrons and quarks – can be traced back to the Big Bang. That’s even more profound, though being ‘Big Bang stuff’ is probably not as poetic as being composed of ‘starstuff’.

* Spooky Observations at a Distance: When you look up at the night sky, a) is someone or something is looking back at you, or b) is no one or nothing is looking back at you? Either scenario is profound when you think of the implications.

* We Gotta Walk-That-Walk: That we have a totally upright bipedal gait, without benefit of a balancing tail, is something totally unique and therefore somewhat anomalous in the animal kingdom, despite all the obvious disadvantages. What disadvantages? For one, obviously, it’s a lot easier to fall down when you’re standing on two legs relative to four, six, eight or more. Falling over can result in serious consequences, especially if there isn’t anyone else around to come to your aid. Secondly, going bipedal called for a radical shift in our skeletal structure as well as in related musculature and organ attachment.  A bipedal gait must therefore be not only revolutionary but really of evolutionary importance. But that profound observation leads to another anomaly. If a bipedal gait without the encumbrance of a balancing tail is such a significant improvement, why haven’t more animals undergone that shift?   

* We Face Facts: Human facial features. Say you are shown a photograph of the face of a short, bald, chubby, 30-ish white male. Say you are shown a photograph of the face of a chimpanzee; the face of a lion; an Indian elephant; a grizzly bear, a koala bear, a brown rat; a German Shepard, a wallaby, a bottlenose dolphin, a pelican, an ostrich, a cobra snake; a Nile crocodile, a green tree frog; a tuna fish, a lobster, a German cockroach; a black ant; a house fly, a huntsman spider, even a flea. Now, here you stand in a police line-up looking at five short, bald, chubby 30-ish white males, five chimpanzees, five lions, etc. etc. Match the original facial photograph with one of the five suspects! While a match is likely in the case of the human males, it’s going to be on average pure guesswork with any other species or breed of species unless the individual in question had some very unique and atypical facial feature. Now, the profound question is, why do humans have unique facial features while the rest of the animal kingdom doesn’t. How do you tend to recognise a human? First and foremost by his or her face. This is all very odd because it is so very unique, yet very profound. 

Equally as profound, not only do we have unique facial features, but racial facial features. Take four ‘passport’ photos of a Caucasian, a Negro, an Asian, and an Australian Aboriginal 30-ish something male and photoshop them so that all are exactly the same shade of grey. It would still be easy to match the face to the race. What’s profound here is that those racial facial features evolved, for reason(s) unknown, within the time a small group of Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa just roughly 50,000 years ago.

  

* Memory, Creativity and Chemistry: Like a book or an LP, like a film strip or a DVD, like a painting/photograph or a CD, like computer software or a tape recording, the human mind houses a record of events which we call memory. Unlike these other physical media every time your mind does a replay, it can value-add to that memory. You may have a memory for how make pizza, but unlike the recipe in the cookbook, you can be creative and change the recipe. All of that memory/creativity is based in chemistry, specifically neurochemistry, which, unlike all other kinds of chemistry, makes that possible. How, I don’t begin to comprehend, but it is so, and it is rather profound upon reflection.

* Our Family Tree is Kaput: All our human ancestors are extinct. Something is screwy somewhere! I mean there have been dozens of separate and apart hominoid/hominid species that separate modern Homo sapiens from our closest still living ancestors, the chimpanzees. All those in-betweens have gone extinct, for reason(s) unknown. That all would have succumbed to, whatever, seems to defy probability. Clearly many of those hominoid/hominid species shared many of our survival traits like possessing a relatively high degree of intelligence, tool making, group cooperation when hunting-gathering, etc. There’s no rational explanation offered up by paleoanthropologists that explains this. There’s not even that ‘easy’ answer of Homo (‘shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later’) sapiens being the fall ‘guy’ here. ‘Modern’ humans hadn’t of been thought up yet in anyone’s evolutionary philosophy when most of these extinctions took place.

* Not a Ghost of a Chance: It’s also pretty profound when you have every human culture and society from across all time frames believe in the reality of a phenomena that modern science rejects as pseudoscience or supernatural and paranormal nonsense, and it isn’t just life-after-death or an afterlife but an actual apparent manifestation of same. Some call them ghosts, wraiths, spirits, and phantoms – whatever. Actually I view (not that I actually have) ghosts, etc. as further evidence that we ‘exist’ in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, but that’s another story for another time.



Humanity: The Cosmic Connection

There are various enigmas that cry out for resolution, like the Fermi Paradox regarding ET, “Where is everybody?” Then there are enigmas surrounding human origins, evolution and characteristics, extinctions, migrations and colonizations, and the rise to civilization. Finally, much that’s in our global mythologies is anomalous. In modern times we have UFOs and alien abductions. It’s time to wrap all this up in one neat little package, tied up with a nice little ribbon and bow. 

Let’s start off briefly with the Fermi Paradox. In essence, it suggests that if you accept that there has to be one or more extraterrestrial highly advanced technological civilizations out there in the galaxy, in interstellar space, with interstellar space travelling capabilities, then the odds are as close to 100% as anyone would care to bet, that Planet Earth has been discovered and visited. The time it takes to explore the galaxy, every nook and cranny, even without resorting to Star Trek type faster-than-light velocities, is but a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy. The Fermi Paradox is only a paradox if one tries to argue that ET has never visited our humble planetary abode. So, let’s solve the Fermi Paradox and accept that once upon a time, ET paid Planet Earth a visit – at least one.

About eight or so million years ago, Planet Earth witnessed the arrival of a rather loose federation of extraterrestrials (ET) with a quasi social/religious/missionary goal of assisting in the development and spread of intelligent civilizations across the galaxy and the cosmos while simultaneously creating intelligent, civilized beings who will worship them as their superiors, even perhaps as gods. Since there were no such intelligent, civilized beings on Planet Earth eight million years ago, ET had to work what Mother Nature provided them.

Now eight million years ago is very recent relative to the age of Planet Earth, and extremely recent relative to the age of our galaxy and the cosmos at large. Therefore, this may not have been an ET first visit, but the one which finally yielded up a promising candidate from which they could manipulate to achieve their goal.

That most suitable candidate species to work with, or on, would have been the chimpanzee or a close ancestor to the chimp, found in Africa. And so ET set up shop and laboratory in Africa to start the long process of assisting Mother Nature in the development (creation or origin)and spread (migration) of another (soon to be engineered) intelligent civilization.

Over the next eight or so million years – no great rush; lots of time on their hands; these are an extremely long-lived ET – ET bioengineered, genetically engineered, or otherwise artificially bred and selected our initial primate stock into over twenty initial primate-to-ultimate-hominid species, each species slightly more advanced in IQ, dexterity, bipedal gait, speech, abstract reasoning ability (something other than just food, sex, danger), etc. than the one before.

For starters, individual groupings of each species in their own time and turn would be released by ET into the Africa’s wild environment to see how they coped, just like we humans will artificially breed up populations of endangered species and release them into the wild and hope for the best. Of those hominid species released into the wild, most didn’t – cope that is. Back to the drawing board and more genetics and breeding and artificial selection and on to the next advancement.

A few hominid species that did adapt reasonable to the outside backyard of Africa proper would then be transported to non-African locations and a wider variety of terrestrial environments. There were more failures, but some initial successes with out-of-Africa environments. Homo erectus just about fit the bill – just about, but it too ultimately went the way of the Dodo.

Finally, about 200,000 years ago, the latest in this twenty-plus long line of primate-to-hominid creations were created on the slab in the ET lab in Africa – Homo sapiens. They proved successful in adapting to the natural African environment. Further experiments with transporting and transplanting groups of them to various environments around the globe (except Antarctica) for the most part yielded positives in the Middle East, the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia, etc. If ET transplanted groups of Homo sapiens to Oceania that was a failure as there are no archaeological sites that verify hominids in Oceania until only relatively recent historical (not prehistorically) times.

Once Homo sapiens became established globally, two things happened. Firstly, individual units of ET headed by a Supreme ET were assigned to oversee the various geographical regions that Homo sapiens had adapted to. For example, ET Yahweh and crew were assigned to the eastern coastline and seaboard region of the Mediterranean. Secondly, these units then assisted these nomadic bands of Homo sapiens in each region in the transition from being wandering hunter-gatherers living by their wits into becoming civilized agricultural-based settlements or rural communities that put down roots - assuming the region in question was suitable to settlements, and not all were, like Australia.   

At this point one might expect “and they all lived happy ever after”. Not so; it was not to be.

It is often said that man was created in God’s image, or in more general parlance, in the image of the gods. If that’s the case, it should come as no surprise that the gods have human traits. Translated, anything humans were (or are) skilled at doing, you can bet the family farm equally that the ‘gods’ were skilled ditto, the good, the bad and the ugly. ET was not above squabbling among themselves over ways and means, and there were power grabs and coups and mutinies afoot, like when Yahweh was nearly toppled by Satan. Collectively, our mythologies lump these ancient ‘star wars’ as Wars in ‘Heaven’.

Humans of course also didn’t live long and prosper either. Like father (the gods), like son (Homo sapiens).

There’s one other mythological anomaly that supports the idea that not only was ET highly advanced in interstellar space travel (well they got here didn’t they), but especially highly skilled in genetic and bioengineering. The genetics experiments of ET were not just confined to building a better hominid species, but creating all sorts of genetically engineered ‘monsters’. If there is one universal above nearly all other universals in the mythologies of primitive ‘man’ it’s the reality of hybrids, both animal-animal hybrids (i.e. – Pegasus in Greek Mythology) and animal-human hybrids (i.e. – the Birdmen of Easter Island). 

Whether misinterpreted by primitive humans, or deliberately misled, ET became the ‘gods’ and interactions between the two became the basis of our global mythologies, which is to a greater or lesser extent really a collection of religiously-themed mythologies since primitive ‘man’ thought ‘he’ was dealing with supernatural deities. Deities of course are there to be worshiped, probably encouraged by ET. Why might ET wish to be worshiped? ET might want to be ‘worshiped’ probably as “thanks” for bringing Homo sapiens into the world and bestowing the gifts of civilization on Homo sapiens.  Every parent expects a “thank you” from their child for special gifts bestowed. ET might have encouraged this misinterpretation as being ‘gods’; it would have been a lot less awkward that explaining astrobiology to them.

Having completed at long last their objective – one more race primed to join the Galactic Club, ET left, albeit leaving behind a token observational team – UFOs – which are still undertaking some genetic modifications with respect to Homo sapiens – alien abductions, apparently an attempt to engineer yet another hybrid – a human-alien.

Now make of this what you will, but the scenario does fit the facts as we know them about human origins, evolution, extinctions, migrations, and ultimately civilization. It also jives with our mythologies, and, IMHO, behind every mountain of mythology resides a molehill of fact.

Prehistoric Migrations: Issues Arising: Part Two

Author’s Note: The scenarios within are those of a timeframe from roughly 13,000 to 200,000 years before the present, and thus way before the era of agricultural settlements. We’re dealing with our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors here. Key dates are: African origin of modern humans, Homo sapiens, at about 200,000 years ago; an Out-of-Africa migration started roughly 70,000 years ago; our global colonization (except for Antarctica and Oceania) was completed by 13,000 years ago.

Modern humans originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago – give or take. Further on down the timeline, some band(s) of African humans eventually migrated Out-of-Africa and ultimately colonized Planet Earth. That’s the standard anthropological model. However, within that standard scenario lie a lot of anomalous issues, some of which are explored here. An attempt to resolve these anomalies is presented.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Problem Three: Connect the Dots

There are two main types of clues that reveal our likely migration patterns. Firstly, there are those archaeological sites and from those trained professionals one can usually deduce what hominid species was present and from various dating methods, when. The problem is that such sites are all too few and far between. So, maybe you have an Australian Aboriginal site around the Perth area (S.W. coast) dated to say 30,000 years ago. Then say you have another site around the Sydney area (S.E. Coast) dated to 20,000 years ago. So the conclusion is that some Aborigines migrated from Perth to Sydney over the 10,000 year interval. But there is no sites in-between, so you don’t really know if they migrated in a straight line between the two areas or was it all just a total zigzag. Maybe neither if there is yet an undiscovered third site, say in Darwin (mid-North Coast) from 40,000 years ago, and some Darwin Aborigines followed the west coast route to Perth taking 10,000 years and some others the east coast trek to Sydney taking a span of 20,000 years. You can just about connect the dots anyway you damn well please if it gives evidence to your pet theory.

The second line of evidence is using mitochondrial DNA found in modern humans to try and work back migration routes. For example, if mitochondrial DNA in modern Australian Aborigines has a closer mitochondrial DNA match to modern Indonesians than to modern Fijians, then one might conclude that the Aborigines migrated to Australia from Indonesia and not from Fiji. I personally don’t like this sort of genetic evidence. Firstly, DNA mutates over time. Evolution would be screwed if it didn’t. Secondly, there’s been an awful lot of comings and goings since these initial Out-of-Africa migrations commenced. Thirdly, there’s been an awful lot of breeding between the races so that by now hardly anyone is ‘pure’ anything. Still, the experts put a lot of faith in the testing, so who am I to dispute their ways and means?

So, how do you get from Point A to Point B tens of thousands of years ago when Points A and B are separated by vast ocean distances? Why do you go from Point A to Point B when Point B is relatively undesirable? How in fact do we really know that Points A and B are the be-all-and-end-all of start and finish?

Let’s say Point A is lovely Hawaii, and Point B is the vast arid desert of outback Central Australia. How do you get from A to B? You can’t walk and follow the coastline. You can’t drive or ride a horse. You could build a boat and sail but that’s a hell of a leap of courage you’ve got to master, and in any event you haven’t any idea what direction to head in or that Australia even exists. And even if you did, why would you want to leave Hawaii (Site A) for the Australian Outback; and if you did reach the Outback (Site B) why wouldn’t you turn right around and head back to Hawaii again?

Well, you could be flown non-stop from Hawaii to Central Australia. We crossed over ocean barriers because we were airlifted over them. You could be flown to Central Australia and stranded there. For the same reason, we didn’t voluntarily adopt the tundra as home – it was forced on us as an adapt do-or-die experiment. Flight would also explain the lack of relevant archaeological sites between A and B. If our ancient ancestors nomadically walked thousands of miles between Point A and Point B, you’d expect archaeological evidence to be found along the assumed connect-the-dots route. But if you fly, or are flown, then of course you wouldn’t find any in-between sites containing any relevant archaeological evidence.

Resolutions

Right about now every physical anthropologist reading this is sticking very long and very sharp pins in J.P. voodoo dolls and calling me all sorts of unprintable names. Of course our ancient ancestors didn’t have the technology at hand to fly, so of course no flying machines have been found in the prehistoric archaeological record either. My obvious suggestion here is that ancient astronauts, the ‘gods’ of old (and there’s some evidence that even 30,000-50,000 years ago our ancient ancestors had grasped the concept of the supernatural and of supernatural entities), genetically engineered all of the various Homo something or other from earlier hominids which in turn were artificially selected and bred from African primates, like the chimpanzee. We collectively, Homo something or other, were genetically engineered and given all those anomalous traits associated with Homo something or other, like a super-high IQ, bipedal gait, racial facial and individual facial uniqueness.

From their central African laboratory, Homo something or other was then dispersed over thousands of years as specific and individual experiments in colonization. We were transported here and there, left to our own devices to survive or not – sink or swim.  In most cases it was sink and extinction. But, now and again, it was survival – we floated and we swam. Ultimately nearly all of the Homo something or other went kaput, but Homo sapiens achieved a positive result. We were that robust species (us – modern humans) the end product of all of the engineering and colonization experimentation. At that stage, we were given or taught the gifts of civilization, especially agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago then left petty much alone and to our own devices, with only at-a-distance surveillance – modern UFOs – though some experimentation continues – alien abductions.

There are, IMHO, a couple of other anomalies supporting this wacky idea.

One other anomaly, if we are so crash-hot good to colonise the world (apart from Antarctica and Oceania) and cross some ocean barriers to get to some parts, hence completing the job in the Americas by 13,000 years ago, maybe even way earlier, why didn’t we colonize the Pacific Islands, Oceania east of Australia and west of South America, until really quite recently – starting only some roughly 4000 years before the present, finishing off with New Zealand (except for Antarctica), last cab off the rank way after the start of the Common Era, or A.D. to some. Australia was first populated 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, and New Zealand is just across the road and over the hill, at least compared to the distance back to our African point of origin. Depending on source, it took but 10,000 to 20,000 years to get from Africa to Australia, yet some 70,000 years to get from Africa to New Zealand. Something’s screwy somewhere, but that reinforces the idea that ocean voyages are a relatively recent ability of ours, and therefore, way back when, we didn’t sail across the oceans blue to Australia, Japan, Sri Lanka, etc. but were taken there.

Another apparent anomaly – while it takes but roughly 60,000 years to colonize the world once we’re Out-of-Africa (except Antarctica and Oceania), it took roughly 130,000 years just to get Out-of-Africa, as if something or someone was blocking our path until they were good and ready to release us into the global wild!

Now reports of aerial machines, flight technologies, are not unknown in the archaeological and/or historical record, albeit not prehistorically far back, rather in the era of recorded ancient history, say the last 10,000 years or so. From the ‘Star’ of Bethlehem, to the Wheel of Ezekiel, to the ‘Sun’ and ‘Moon’ that Joshua stood still (Biblical Mythology); the ‘flaming cross’ of Constantine, to Vimanas which are Hindu mythological flying machines (mythical self-moving aerial cars, a flying chariot of the gods) as related in various Sanskrit epics; to ‘airplane’ models discovered in both ancient Egypt (dated to about 200 BCE) and little gold model ‘airplanes’ from Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican and South American regions, dating from roughly 500 to 800 CE. Scaled-up replicas of these American and Egyptian ‘aircraft’ have found them to be aerodynamically flight worthy. There are also no shortages of art works from antiquity that at face value appear to show what today would be called Flying Saucers, or Daylight Discs, or just plain Unidentified Flying Objects. Finally, aerial ‘chariots’ and extremely large ‘birds’ that ferry the ‘gods’ around are more the norm than not in many mythologies. 

Prehistoric Migrations: Issues Arising: Part One

Author’s Note: The scenarios within are those of a timeframe from roughly 13,000 to 200,000 years before the present, and thus way before the era of agricultural settlements. We’re dealing with our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors here. Key dates are: African origin of modern humans, Homo sapiens, at about 200,000 years ago; an Out-of-Africa migration started roughly 70,000 years ago; our global colonization (except for Antarctica and Oceania) was completed by 13,000 years ago.

Modern humans originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago – give or take. Further on down the timeline, some band(s) of African humans eventually migrated Out-of-Africa and ultimately colonized Planet Earth. That’s the standard anthropological model. However, within that standard scenario lie a lot of anomalous issues, some of which are explored here. An attempt to resolve these anomalies is presented.

When it comes to humans, here defined as Homo something or other, not necessarily just Homo sapiens, colonizing the world from Ground Zero, that’s Africa, well several problems arise.

Humans (as in Homo sapiens) originated in Africa and some ultimately did, slowly, ever so slowly, migrate Out-of-Africa (not that they actually were aware of this), eventually spreading out and colonizing the world (apart from Antarctica and Oceania east of Australia and west of South America) by at least 13,000 years ago. Exactly how is not fully understood, least of all by me. The central, but not exclusive, issue I have is with respect to our ways and means of trading in being exclusively nomadic land-lubbers for acquiring sophisticated maritime abilities as well; abilities required if our global colonization scenario is to be believed.

Problem One: Boats Required but No Show-Boats Found

When it comes to human migrations, there are certain lands that have been colonized by both Homo sapiens and Homo erectus that involved crossing reasonably vast expanses of ocean – vast at least for those cultures that existed over 60,000 years ago, when, for example, Australia was colonized by what’s today known as the Australian Aborigine. Even earlier, Homo erectus island-hopped the numerous Indonesian islands as attested to by fossil evidence. In both cases, these ancient cultures had to have acquired rather extensive boat-making, sailing and navigation skills that would allow a large enough population to cross over the ocean waters, since even during Ice Age conditions, these Indonesian islands, and Australia, were still isolated by oceans.

Sailing the oceans blue: that’s a pretty big ask for primitive humans all those tens upon tens of thousands of years ago. But, there’s another way of crossing the ocean blue – we do it all the time today. We don’t sail, we fly. Perhaps our ancient ancestors were flown to Australia and the Indonesian isles! Since aerial technology is even more outlandish than maritime technology, well, perhaps the aerial technology belonged to advanced beings – ancient aliens or ancient astronauts. One other observation in favour – there are fossil finds of this or that hominid species at A, B & C. Alas, geographical points A, B, & C are separated by thousands upon thousands of miles. No fossils are found at any points in-between A & B, or B & C. An obvious explanation, they didn’t migrate between A & B and B & C at several tens of kilometres per generation; they were flown from A to B to C, thus explaining the lack of fossils in-between - but more about that shortly.

Sooner or later in your nomadic hunter-gatherer wanderings you’re going to intersect the seashore! Rivers and streams you can wade across or swim across, maybe use a buoyant log to hold on to if need be. Lakes can be walked around. But the ocean!!! The oceans offshore must have been terrifying to our very ancient ancestors, and rightly so. The ocean is nothing if not unpredictable and dangerous: from huge waves, gales, riptides, strong currents, razor-sharp rocks and shoals, sharks, jellyfish, hypothermia, and just all sorts of unknowns lurking beneath the surface to add to your terrors. The tides must have seemed to be a purely supernatural manifestation, without natural explanation, an unexplainable action of the gods somehow saying “this is our domain, keep away”.

Would you rather be high and dry 10 miles inland or 10 miles out to sea trying to keep your head above water and not ending up as fish-food? It takes way less effort sit on the beach than to swim or sail in or on the ocean, and it’s a lot safer too!

Further, in most cases with no other land in sight, you haven’t a clue what’s on the other side of the ocean, if anything (maybe it goes on forever and forever), or how far across it is to the other side, and in any event you and your band of nomadic hunter-gatherers have more pressing needs, like finding today’s food and tonight’s shelter. The coastlines and seashores offers an abundance of food stuffs and resources: shellfish, crabs, turtles, seals, seabirds, fish, even seaweed (dried for fuel). Coastlines and seashores are good.

Are you really going to stop, make a raft and go sailing out into the pure unknown out of pure curiosity, though curiosity you probably have? No, in the daily hunt for survival you’ll probably ignore the ocean and just follow the coastline – which eventually will bring you to most places. If you come to an impassable barrier, it’s probably easier and far safer to trek inland for awhile than divert resources to swimming or rafting around the barrier with all the dangers that could entail. In any event, it’s not all that east building and sailing and navigating a seaworthy boat or raft from scratch without any handy-dandy how-to manual available. Further, you can’t drink the seawater so freshwater would have to be carried on any hypothetical voyage. Do you have leak-proof containers? If so, how much do you need to take? Who knows?

There are four possible or realistic routes out of Africa. Even during the Ice Ages when sea levels were lower, three involve an ocean crossing, which, I suggest our ancient ancestors would avoid. I think it is far easier, and safer, to just follow the coastline, so I opt for the sole land route, up the west coast of the Red Sea and on up either into the Levant, or back down the east coast of the Red Sea and on into Arabia. You can follow the African coastline ‘Out of Africa’ and eventually reach China, but not Australia, or Japan, or lots of S.E. Asian islands, the Channel Islands (off Southern California), Sri Lanka, etc. Yet you find ancient human and human artefact remains in these places, so our migrating nomadic ancestors obviously did build boats or rafts and sail the ocean blue and satisfy that curiosity, but the real why is unexplained – curiosity is not motive enough to put yourself in harms way. The fly in the ointment, in any event, and alas and alack, there are no boats or rafts to be found, actual remains or pictorial representations, in the prehistoric archaeological record. Boats and rafts are all probable boats and rafts; boats and rafts are assumed but not proven by any actual evidence. It’s a sort of ’Catch-22’. Boats and rafts must be, yet we can’t find them!

It must be said that because of the Ice Ages, ancient coastlines then are now underwater and presumably relevant telltale archaeology (as in remains of boats) is therefore also underwater. Even so, the issue remains that I find it difficult to believe our ancient ancestors would have been brave enough to stick their toes in the oceans without a damn good reason, yet, there were places colonized by early man that even at the height of the Ice Ages there existed no land bridges for them to cross over, say to Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, Japan, lots of S.E. Asian islands, and presumably lots of other islands, large and small. Conclusion: That’s a big anomaly that needs a resolution.

Problem Two: Paradise Lost

Crossing the oceans blue is just the start of anomalous migration issues. If money, language barriers, cultural differences, political systems, passports and visas, etc. were of no concern and you could travel to and live anywhere you wished, where would it be? Well, probably somewhere not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, nor too dry, a place where there are abundant natural resources of food, fresh water, wood, stone, and probably some sort of ascetically pleasing scenery, etc. With the exception of the scenery, all those other geographical and climatic factors would be even more pressing for our ancient ancestors with no access to supermarkets, hardware stores, air conditioning, central heating and tap water on demand. So the question arises, given a lack of population pressure way back when, a lack of pressure not driving migration away from paradise and toward hell, why did some of our ancient ancestors adopt a nomadic lifestyle in what we’d consider extreme environments, like arid regions, the tundra, etc.? 

Unlike today’s travellers, when our very remote ancestors roamed the plains of Africa, their nomadic wanderings or migrations were not geography directed. In an era where there was no radio and TV, newspapers and magazines, GPS and the Internet, encyclopaedias and travel agents, there was no knowledge of what was over the hill, beyond the horizon. Food availability directed your travels and migrations. You exhausted one patch of turf – you moved on to the next, and the next, and the next in a sort of random drunkards walk. Logic dictates that even so you didn’t wander out of paradise or a reason facsimile thereof. But eventually, like a drop of ink diffusing through a glass of water, the rest of the world, paradise, hell and points in-between, got invaded by our African out-of-towners – an invasive pest species that was to bring total death and destruction in their wake, but that’s another story. Anyway, why we colonized extremely hostile environments when more pleasant alternatives were available needs a resolution.

To be continued…

The Trouble with Human Evolution: Part Two

When it comes to the standard model of how modern humans evolved from our primate ancestors, be prepared to ask the tough questions and see if they get answered to your satisfaction. Questions like can you really go from primates to what makes you, the reader, you, via natural selection in 6 to 7 million years. So, if you think the standard model is unlikely, and you reject any supernatural explanation that leaves but two alternatives: artificial selection or we’re 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. Here are some more of them.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

A VOCAL LANGUAGE

* Is an anomaly in that only humans vocalise not only everyday, routine, survival ‘language’ (all manner of animals do that) but abstract concepts (which no other animals do).

* A vocal or spoken language required to communicate abstract ideas, as apart from just making sounds, requires an evolutionary rearrangement of the relevant internal organs required; lips, teeth, tongue, hard and soft palate, larynx, etc.

C - Cats meow, lions roar, but their meow (or the lion’s roar) has nothing to do with communicating abstract concepts like basic mathematics.

TOOL USE

* Is an anomaly in that while a few other animals can make and use tools, that relative degree of sophistication relative to what humans have achieved is akin to comparing the survival skills of a day-old infant with that of an adult.

* Tool use requires an evolutionary rearrangement of the finger-hand-wrist-arm-shoulder configuration, as well as that extra-large brain thingy to figure out that a tool is required, what resources are required to make that tool, and how to manufacture the necessary implement from those resources. A lot of just-so conditions have to be met to accommodate even the most basic of tool technologies. 

* Tool use could ultimately prove our undoing as tool use, or technology, is a double-edged sword. A gun can put food on your table; it can also exterminate humans.

C - Cats are not adapted at using tools. If they could use a can opener and a spoon they could get their own meals! That would suit me just fine, but alas.

BREEDS or ETHNIC/RACIAL DISTINCTIONS

* Are anomalous in that when taking into consideration the rest of the animal and plant kingdom, breeds (groupings that look different but can still breed and produce non-sterile offspring) tend to be associated with artificial, not natural selection. Are human breeds therefore a product of artificial selection, and if so, by whom? 

* Human breeds cannot be adequately explained in the just 70,000 or some odd years since that one unique racial type of Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and spread throughout the globe diverging into numerous racial types. Even if there were several migrations out of Africa, a wave of migrations, all those migrant waves were of one race or breed. The 70,000 year time period is very short, the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, to achieve this uniqueness of going from a local African uni-race to a multiracial global society. Further, the evolutionary (survival of the fittest) advantage or reason(s) for ethnic distinctions are lacking any rational natural explanation, apart from in some selected races, skin colour.

C - Your standard pussycat comes in various breeds. That’s artificial selection at work, albeit the whodunit in this case is well known.

UNIQUE FACIAL FEATURES

* Are a relatively human anomaly. Apart from identical twins, no two humans from the neck up look the same, and thus this is how we tell human identities, once seen, apart. We tend to tell animals of the same species or breed (if applicable) apart by size, colour, skin/fur patterns, abnormalities, or else we don’t distinguish who’s who at all. To me, all magpie faces look the same. The question is, why humans have unique facial features and not the rest of the animal kingdom?

C - If you took 100 pure short-hair black cats, same size, same sex, same eye colour, could you tell them apart by looking at just their face? I doubt if I could.

THE WHITES-OF-YOUR-EYES

* Are anomalous in that apparently no other animal show them, and based on all the animals and birds I see around my local environment, that certainly seems to be the case.  So why do we show the whites-of-our-eyes? There would appear to be no rhyme or reason for this natural human evolutionary (if it was a natural selection) trait. The whites-of-our-eyes: how very, very odd.

C - Cats have whites-of-their-eyes, only you have to peel back the skin surrounding their eyeballs to see the whites-of-their-eyes. Looking at a standard cat, you’ll fail to see the whites-of-their-eyes.

EARLOBES

* Are anomalous in that apparently no other mammal (and certainly not any fish, amphibian, reptile or bird) have them. So why do we have them?

* Earlobes? WTF you ask? Well we all know that our earlobes serve a cultural purpose or function as a prime site as an accessory to fashion – pierced ears and earrings. However, earlobes serve no actual biological function. You could exist, survive and thrive without them. Because we alone have earlobes, and because they serve no biological purpose, they are anomalous.

* On the other hand, earlobes apparently don’t do us any harm. But, biological evolution tends to select for the positive benefit, not the neutral. Why would Mother Nature evolve them if they serve no biological purpose? WTF indeed!

C - Cats have ears; cats do not have earlobes.

RISK TAKING

* Is anomalous in that if done just for the sake of doing it, serves no positive evolutionary purpose or outcome while accenting a negative one, giving oneself a ‘Darwin Award’ for eliminating yourself from further contributions to the evolution of the human species. 

* No animal will engage in any hazardous activity that doesn’t have some connection towards its own, its immediate family brood, its community or its species survival. An animal doesn’t take risks just for the sake of taking risks and just for the thrill of it all. Humans however will often engage in extreme risky activities, without any benefit to anyone, including themselves, except to perhaps remove themselves from the gene pool. Risky behaviour might include right up to and including suicide which most decidedly removes you from the gene pool. Suicide is not a trait that tends to be shared by our animal relations, and apparent exceptions, like whales stranding themselves in shallow water, have a physiological explanation. 

C - Cats are not known to take risks above and beyond the call of their feline duty, even if they do occasionally get stuck up a tree!

PRIVACY AND EMBARRASSMENT

* Is anomalous in that no animal species, outside of the human species, seems to be the slightest bit concerned with privacy (not to be confused with territoriality or personal space, rather just privacy from being observed under certain conditions or in certain situations usually of a sexual or bodily function nature). Nor do animals, unlike humans, suffer any form of embarrassment. That suggests that there is no evolutionary or survival aspect to the need for privacy or the suffering of being embarrassed. Somehow, in humans alone (but not yet in babies or infants), these concepts have been imprinted onto our collective psyche. Imprinted by whom? What is the ultimate origin and how far back does it go? Why is it so? Who knows! But the upshot is that this has to be a cultural quirk; it’s certainly not a biological one.

* There are apparently two real taboo places in human society where intruders are not welcome: the bedroom and the bathroom, or put another way, sex and bodily functions, where privacy is paramount and when violated, embarrassment ensues. The latter especially is puzzling in that bodily functions are universal. Every human has to go to the bathroom, all women have ‘that time of the month’, so why these should be embarrassments if witnessed by others is anomalous. That’s also highlighted in that sex and bodily functions are not biological events which animals find requires privacy or causes embarrassment to them if witnessed by others.

* Nudity per se doesn’t seem to be the root cause, as people seem to be way less shy of appearing nude in fairly standard social situations than when engaged in more personal bedroom/bathroom matters that require exposure.

* Embarrassment in humans can be caused by many other oops events, maybe comical, like wearing mismatched socks, maybe somewhat more serious like splitting your pants in public. But if an equivalent event happens to an animal, no such reaction comes to the fore. For example, if you stumble and fall down, piss your pants, or vomit in public, you’re embarrassed. If an animal does the equivalent, it just picks itself up and acts like nothing unusual transpired. Animals don’t blush.

C - Cats don’t care if you or another cat sees them mate or go to the litter box. They don’t suffer embarrassment and they don’t blush.

CATS

C - Its only fair to ask in regards to my feline comparison, does a cat have any anatomical or physiological or behavioural feature unique to them and only them? The surprising answer is yes. Cats purr, and the reasons why and how are still not well understood. Humans don’t purr. No other animal purrs. Their big cat relatives don’t purr, but then again lions and tigers, etc. roar, and your pet pussy cat doesn’t. So perhaps the two vocalizations are related from way back when they all had a common ancestor! But purr or roar, there appears to be no evolutionary drawbacks, just positive survival benefits like warning off rival lions (my roar is louder than your roar) or mother/kitten bonding in cats.

CONCLUSIONS

* There are four possible explanations for the various anomalies associated with the existence of the modern human species relative to our alleged ancestral stock which goes right back to the chimpanzees. In descending order of probability, IMHO, there’s the simulated universe scenario inhabited by us as virtual entities (created by ‘persons’ or things unknown and probably forever unknowable); there’s artificial selection (the ancient astronaut theory); there’s natural selection (the Darwinian biological evolution concept); and way, way last, by a wide, wide margin, there’s supernatural creation (the dust-and-rib theory and variations thereof).

* Why this ordering of probabilities? There are many paths to a simulated universe, from wetware to software, via extraterrestrials or maybe a future ‘human’ society, that it borders on the near inevitable. There’s but one pathway to the artificial selection scenario, though that too is just about inevitable. There are many issues to be had with natural selection as this essay demonstrates, though that’s the standard model. Lastly, the concept of an all-perfect supernatural deity who would screw up things so royally is laughable – as is the concept of a supernatural deity in the first place.

* The interesting bit is that a virtual reality simulation could easily be a simulation of an ‘ancient astronaut’ generated artificial selection, or Darwinian natural selection, or even a supernatural creator deity! Truth be known, only the simulated universe scenario makes any real sense, IMHO, because therein, “anything goes”, and when it comes to the problems with human evolution, one needs an “anything goes” explanation.

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…