Serene in the villages and communities of Kenya, a keen study at humans whose life is little influenced by modern standards, there is a clue to understanding man's past. What raises eyebrows is how long humanity has been around, too much history at the table and as if in a parallel universe, the presence of a people who, a majority being in Africa, appears to be waking up from a deep sleep – that those whom they were with on human expedition are back with info. He says wait I wash my face.
The grandmother of humanity is dated about 6 million years ago. She was born of an ape. She and her sibling, the Chimpanzee. Her relatives, distant in time but not so far away included the gorillas and orangutans. 3.5 million years later human had evolved to genus Homo and we are lucky that anthropology places the location to this milestone (largely biological than cognitive development) in East Africa. Man's ability to now support his body on hind limbs alone while fore limbs gathered different adaptation was courtesy of Savanna, the need to rise above grass and shrubs, survey his area for safety and food.
This early man, organized in bands/groups, started roaming freely, every after a few generations more others rising, breaking away and going ahead to occupy many other areas in the world.
As the modern Sapiens evolved about 200,000 years ago, there were already 'look-alikes', not easy to ignore and not willing to collaborate with. This recent man, history still placing him in East Africa, disliked this. His bestowed ability to organize in groups and command action leveraged him against 'simple minded' but biologically superior cousins like the Neanderthals. It was not lucky time for them. History places this forager man as largely mistrusting and furious. These community wars were genocidal if not absorbed into the latter race of primates. It is true that Europeans and Asians got 4 to 6 percent Neanderthal origin.
Top of the food chain now and with little biological advantages compared to others like Lions of the land and Sharks of the oceans, it was only cognitive revolution that would help. Man's rise to the top is compared to a child's yearn for a razor blade. Evolution did not favour the steps and so agitated and reactive, wanted the universe to centre on him. With fire he cheekily burnt grasslands and leisurely walked to pick and eat charcoaled meat. For many years, seasons and generations, man lived foraging. This is described as the most affluent moment in man's history.
Chimpanzees live in groups – we call them communities. An alpha male is in charge of the troop. The alpha male must be a physical dictator enough to make all other males cooperate. The females are largely his and he does his best to mate with as many as. Averagely the children are for the alpha chimpanzee. Interesting. Prior to agricultural revolution that made man 'pause' his foraging and settle, factors as childbearing affected his daily lifestyle. The woman, whose birth canal had been already constricted for the advancement of upright gait, she was not able to give birth to a fully developed human – the child. Time and adaptation 'released' this child, undeveloped to finish the process while out or else it would be hard to get out and cause double deaths. A woman was therefore not a man's possession. To get the favour and support of all, the sprinter to the most bold, the good looking to the humorous, she offered them sexual nicety. Various cultures did not believe in sperm-egg fertilization but the fusion of sperms in a woman's womb to form a child. An old adage goes that – a child belongs to the community.
Agricultural revolution favoured the woman than the man. She would not be forced to migrate as everyone else when she had just delivered and the foraging team thought they were at an insecure place. Domestication of crops and animals was in real view the domestication of humanity. Those who disagreed with this new mode of life snapped soon as, headed for the bush and caves. And forever lived there. With those that lived away from others developing their new accent and later different language. Ethnographers have reported protolanguages making it even easier to know which groups of people have recent relationships. Indo-European languages is one finding that where fossils might lack, language would inform. For tribes formed and identified with language as people added in numbers.
Yet children born in these started agricultural zones would propagate the lifestyle as indeed human bound. It was the start of many things – religion, astronomy, husbandry, politics, castes and to crown it all, conflicts. Alpha males sprout, to feed on another's sweat. It was a fraud, it was a lie to humanity. Man's own undoing. There was no going back as the rising population had to be fed readily by nothing in the wild but by just another season of millet – and another – and another. Trap. They would contract viruses from animals and suffer greatly from diseases as measles, small pox, tuberculosis, ebola and recently the game changer, corona virus.
To adjust to time and place, man kept on tasking his higher power – the brain – to get him solutions. A study on group dynamics reached a conclusion that at least 150 people can be enjoined together by a gossip. Not more than that. In other words, a kingdom is as perfect with 150 people, a city, a village, a school. Man would later implore imagination to build on trust with others and curb his weakness – agitation. He invented value for money. Empires sprung bound on trust for His Majesty. Some humans started believing others to be supernatural.
Reconstruction of these mental works, because they are not enshrined in the DNA but culture are easy to forego if none but the being born today is introduced to modern improvements as nanotechnology. Children are born with nothing in their brain but curiosity.
Community life offered security and immediate trust. This would be replaced by market and state. Asking upon individuals to be dependent to none. Youths to forget about what their parents have. Inheritance grew small and smaller. Women were opened up to their rights as individuals. Threatening further the marriage relationships. At present there are insurance companies, courts to sue anyone on almost anything, pensions to cushion one to death and goods to one's appetite. Restrictions as cultures would impose are now at the mercy of the state – a far detached imagined order that is more likely to exploit than benefit. Imagined communities as Facebook users and Chelsea club fans is as sugar is to the tongue but different from body cells. People should be aware of this for scientists who studied happiness did not conclude that it was for the wealthy but for those whose lives are worthwhile – with families informing this.
With communities and individuals still waking up to wonders of history and science, as diffusion is the movement of particles from a region of high concentration to a region of lower concentration, there soon shall be no poor and no rich, no believer and non-believer, no evil and no good, – for they are human makings which, by the strike of one discovery and another, close the gap between imagination and reality. Identities as Saniaga might mean too little to them. Biological facts shall further be dependent upon the will of man. What was so unfathomable as death keeps being dodged, save for the future? Anything can happen.
NB - Article inspired by Yuval Harari's book - Sapiens.
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