A Failed Experiment

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 9^th and 11^th 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 19^th Century Malthus predicted that human population would outstrip the earth’s ability to provide. In the 21^st 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.