Early Human Evolution
Those who tend to doubt such great species changes during the evolutionary process would do well to remember that humans themselves, through selective breeding of dogs, have achieved great changes. The wide variety of dog breeds that exist today are primarily through human manipulative breeding. Today we can actually insert a new gene into the genome through recombinant DNA and genetic engineering. What this all means is not certain, but certainly it is possible that undesirable genes will be removable and more desirable gens inserted. Maybe we will all order our babies from Amazon and of course that means all babies will look like you and I—the end product of perfection.
We know from fossils that humans started to exist around 2.5 million years ago, a rather late entry into the evolutionary scene. We know they existed, but what can we really say about how they lived? Not much, and at this early stage, humans had little more impact on their environment than other species. We were hunter/gatherers back then, had only small groups which constituted independent groups one from another. If humans stayed ‘stupid’, relatively speaking, until 70,000 to 30,000 years ago it was because with no written language they had to learn things all over again, essentially from start. It was the same simple things with every generation, like what kind of berries were safe to eat, where to find the best food, the best hunting, and how to hunt. Even watching film clips of interactions of modern man with those groups isolated from modern civilizations is hard to interpret, outside the fact that these primitive people know so little. With so little knowledge there must have been a lot of fear of just about everything. Life expectancy was short, at least for most humans back then, especially for the young. Maximum life expectancy has not really changed that much over time for humans; what has changed is that so many more people live relatively healthy lives longer. If we manage to locate the genes involved in aging, remove them or inactivate them, the consequences will be scary. We are already overpopulating the planet, let alone everyone live a lot longer.
All this fear, of just about everything around them, created Gods of some sort, usually many Gods. Nature was a big source of their fear. When famines, droughts, diseases, etc happened it was viewed as a case of the Gods being angry at them. Response was to try and placate the angry Gods. This started offerings of things humans thought valuable, and then animal sacrifices on alters, even humans. I have already realized the early stages of human existence, from 2.5 millions years ago to about 100,000 years ago will remain mostly mysterious because while we know humans existed from fossil evidence, we know little else about them simply because language and writing did not yet exist. .
Intelligent abstract communication requires anatomical capabilities to speak, as well as brain power to generate intelligent complicated thoughts. While we evolved originally from apes or chimpanzees, any understanding of what humans were really like functionally, back then, is imagination on our part. Scientists do seem to agree that humans were social but in groups of less than 150. Greater size groups than that were not feasible because humans don’t really have the capacity to relate personally to everyone in larger groups. The groups functioned isolated from each other because tolerance for strangers was non existence. This helps explain why their enemies, if captured, were often used as sacrificial lambs on the alter to gain the good will of the Gods. This lack of tolerance for humans strange to ourselves exists today for many humans. As a physiologist I wonder what kind of mental stress existed back then, and what role the stress hormones played, and to what extent the stress-response role played in their lives. It seems probable (but not provable) that back then humans reacted to sudden stressful situations much like animals do today. Even our domestic pets like dogs and cats, if suddenly stressed either run or fly into a rage (fight or flight) but then a short time later, when the threat is gone, they are usually quickly back to their old self. I reckon one could argue otherwise that early humans were so fearful of everything that they were under constant stress. I would doubt this though, as compared to today when we are often under constant stress from so many interactions with others and with endless matters important to ourselves. Back then life was much simpler. You got hungry, you hunted for food. You ate and were satisfied. You got tired, you slept. If food got scarce, your group packed up and moved on. No one was amassing a lot of personal property. If you needed a primitive tool that someone else had, you borrowed it. Shelter from the weather was a primitive hut or a cave or whatever.
Our species, homo sapiens, was only one of 6 human species. The others became extinct. Humans originated in Southern Africa and then, with time spread north and then east and west. How homo sapiens survived is guesswork but most likely we eliminated the competition. just like today our activities has created the 6th mass species extinction period in evolutionary history. I wonder what the status was of human brain power back then? Since nothing changed much with our species for millions of years, it seems maybe no further advancement could be made until enough brain power existed for consequent changes in behavior. But everything is guesswork. The answers are probably lost forever.
Lifespan was very short back then, especially for children. Death was common and so I wonder if they had more or less fear than we do today of death. I am going to guess they had less fear of death precisely because it was so common. For example, when terroristic acts first occurred in our present day situation, we were all appalled and shook up after 9/11 for quite some time. But terroristic acts are now common place occurring almost daily—and certainly weekly, so our reactions become dimmed. We can know little about the amount or nature of kindness, hate, sadness, laughter, personalities, work hours, sleep hours, entertainment, religious rituals, sex habits, marriage, and so on back then. It is hard to imagine, but surely back then it was a mystery to them as to where babies came from. Sex was likely not monogamous back then so becoming pregnant was likely thought to have come from something eaten, or a gift from one of the Gods etc. Today, on the internet, one can find porn relating to maybe 50 different kinds of human sex acts. I guess we will never know what kind of sex acts were engaged back in the early days of human existence. I am going to guess that some of it we would not now consider normal and yet normal would seem to be saved for what kind of sex acts came first. But we don’t know that. Most people today realize that whatever two people consider sexual turn-ons is normal for them. We scratch our heads and like the long ago lady in Britain said; “I don’t care what they do as long as they don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.”. Of course many people still feel otherwise. I wonder if some people can’t enjoy themselves in bed due to their worries about what other couples might be doing in bed. Given all the tensions sex can cause in a marriage maybe the lucky couples are the ones who have little interest in sex, considering it a messy, dirty, icky kind of activity. Actually, I don’t think I have ever met anyone who can turn the subject of sexual acts into any kind of logical, scientific, ethical discussion, and that includes those who insist the only reason for sex is to produce children. That isn’t even true anymore since we have sperm banks, and test tube babies carried to term by a surrogate pregnancy. Another one of those “stop the world, I want to get off” head spinning debates.
We know that in modern times, if a child is not taught how to speak or write during their formative years, that they will not be able to, or do so with little skill thereafter. Most actions by other animals, like bees and ants, parrots, birds, etc. are innate, there is little learning required. They are wired to behave in certain ways. Some parrots can speak human language well with amazing memories and the ability to actually sound like the person they are mimicking, but they have no idea what they are talking about. Humans learn language, some easier than others and some better than others. Thus, genetics is involved but we still have to learn the language. So how does that fit in with early humans who had no language to be learned? We can understand certain sounds may have been made when referring to a tree but that is not language really, just a name for something.
Many books have been written about life among the early humans, but I will simply jump to a period in time when we can really know something about how humans lived and behaved. I am not much into useless speculation unless it has to do with behavior by someone more modern who I can judge according to modernity.
I just sailed through the first 2 million years of human history in shorter time than a musing on some personal experience for one afternoon. The length will surely get longer as we get into human history after these humans had well developed languages and writing. Then again, shallow impressional observations make it clear enough that some real ‘dodos’ from the primitive past have surfaced—ever since tweeting became available to every such dodo from the swamps of ancient forest life. Smile. Maybe, after all, some sort of ‘DUH?’ species of human is still around, never became extinct, and requires genetic testing done to send them back to the swamps where they came from. Who let them in to begin with? Smile. I am not referring to you or I, but like Trump, this is
only for now. There is always next week. I might turn on you any minute. I am disappointed that he never uses my favorite put down (when facing my own ignorance or failures:) “When I want any shit out of you I will squeeze your head”. He prefers insulting adjectives as opposed to calm reasonable discussion of almost any topic.
