Among the super
family of Great Apes, the Hominini emerged
from the Orangutans about 14 million years ago and then emerged from the
Gorillas about 8 million years ago. This evolutionary strain still contained Chimpanzees
and Australopithecines as well as our
human ancestors. The particular theme of evolutionary development was
bipedalism. Humans emerged from this group about 2.8 million years ago as Homo Habilis. In the next million years,
passing through Homo Erectus and Homo Ergaster, a remarkable enlargement
of the brain developed. While Habilis
probably used primitive stone tools, Erectus
and Ergaster were using fire and complex
tools. These early humans were also leaving Africa, where they had evolved, and
were spreading out throughout the contiguous continents.
Anatomically
modern humans developed between 250,000 and 400,000 years ago in Africa and
behaviorally modern humans developed about 50,000 years ago. Emerging from
Africa, Homo Sapiens soon replaced
other emerging species although they may have cross bred with some of them,
such as the Neanderthals. What seems
clear is that, by 50,000 years ago, Homo
Sapiens had physically and mentally developed to a point where it could
dominate over similar groups in the natural environment. Sapiens had complex tools, language, social organization, and
physical strength. In a significant sense, this is the beginning of a very
amazing experiment in nature. The question: Would this experiment be beneficial
to nature?
Using the word ‘dominate’
is more than a little misleading since humans were definitely threatened by
larger mammals and had a very tough existence. I use the term only in that
sense that Homo Sapiens did dominate
over other human-like ancestors and emerged as the sole form of human-like
evolution. In the Americas, paleo-Indians still risked their lives on a daily
basis engaging in big game hunting up to 8000 years ago. In the Western US,
archaic Indians survived almost into present time only by moving with the
seasons, taking advantage of plants and animals in diverse micro-climates.
Nevertheless, as
early as 5000 years ago, in North Africa and the Middle East, we can already
see human behavior moving in an unnatural direction. While virtually all
animals survive by killing and eating other animals (the so-called “food chain”),
humans began killing one another in the name of conquest. It is speculated that
this phenomenon was enabled by the development of agriculture, which allowed
people to settle in one place and develop more complex technologies. Human
technology had already developed weapons of various kinds for hunting, but
weapons could now be made more sophisticated. Extremely important in these
developments was the step beyond stone tools through the manufacture of metals.
Copper, bronze, and iron developed over a period of centuries and spread from
the Middle East into all neighboring lands. But with these developments also
came more lethal weapons. Between the 9th and 11th
centuries, the Chinese developed black powder and this explosive was not long
in reaching Europe and the Middle East. The Greeks had already developed Greek
Fire as a lethal incendiary but black powder was soon used in making firearms.
The concept of a “military” was firmly established by this time, and humans
were killing other humans, not for food but for conquest, jealousy, and simple
rage.
This, in my
opinion, is the first sign of failure in the evolution of human life. Other
animals can exhibit hostile behavior toward other members of their own species,
but these rarely lead to death and are almost always skirmishes related to
territory or mating. They do not organize into killing bands or militaries.
But there is a
second area in which humans have failed as a natural experiment. As vulnerable
as humans were for the main part of their development, they are now completely
dominant in the world. They can live wherever they want; they can push out any
other life form; and they are rapidly destroying other life forms. Only micro-organisms
loom today as a potential threat to human life. But will human domination turn
back on itself and become its own greatest threat? Nature is a balanced
process. In a way, it is an enormous system of equilibria which diverge in
different directions but are always called back toward the equilibrium point.
Nature achieves this because natural phenomena are “sensitive” to the
environment as a whole. Humans, on the other hand, guide their actions through
their own “intelligence” and mostly hide environmental factors from themselves.
Thus, we charge onward killing off species at a record rate, destroying the
earth’s resources at an alarming pace, and polluting our atmosphere so as to
increase the earth’s average temperatures and surely bring about major changes
in climates. I count this as a failure because I believe that a natural
organism succeeds only by being a functional part of the natural community.
In the early 19th
Century Malthus predicted that human population would outstrip the earth’s
ability to provide. In the 21st Century, it would appear that human
tampering with the environment will cause large scale damage to traditional
habitations. This upset in living habits combined with the nascent militarism
of most human societies may cause devastating wars. Human technology now
includes nuclear weapons in the military arsenals and these, if they come to be
used, may very well bring the epoch of human life to an end.
Nature and the
earth, of course, will survive all of this. What is saddening is the fact that
such a beautiful experiment as human intelligence has been so badly wasted.
