Homo heidelbergensis, sound it out phonetically, like the city in Germany. These archaic hominids are generally accepted as the predecessors of Neanderthals and of course, to human beings. Their fossil record suggests an active time line about (give or take a bunch) 400,000 years ago. Keep in mind, the absence of evidence does not prove anything so you go with your best stuff and continue to pursue new, better stuff. But for sure, once upon a time, about the time our ancestors learned to control fire; I think it a safe bet they sat around a fire wondering, “. . . what the f#_k!” Why: and how does that work? I consider them to be the two most important questions ever asked: not the ‘What the f…’ but the ‘Why & How?’
Recently, from 1675 comes Isaac Newton’s famous quote; “If I see farther than others it is that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants who came before me.” Those long extinct, primitive, proto-humans would be in that column of thinkers Newton alluded to, stacked feet on shoulders, shoulders to feet, giants in their own rite as we examine the human pedigree. I am more interested than most in the long evolutionary stretch that began in the treetops, eating raw fruit and evolved to living in loft apartments, eating chicken fried rice. It took a while to stretch my comfort zone, to comprehend and imagine the mind boggling time span, millions of earth years. But I did and the payoff is grasping an undeniable reality. If the data were available, there is a continuous, unbroken, link to link chain that connects all of us with those giants, sitting together 'round the fire, making meaning.
Genealogy is big business. Trace your bloodline back 7 or 8 generations, you get serious and want to know more. ‘Why?’, and ‘How does that work?’ becomes a personal challenge. Who am I and how did I get here? Send in a swab with some cheek cells and a check for a few hundred $$ and you get back an interesting story, maybe accurate, maybe not so much but good story none the less. Still, I don’t need ancestry.com, I know that an unbroken sequence of DNA donors has to exist. It goes back a thousand generations, nearly 20,000 years, to the middle of the last Ice Age. My one thousandth great grandmother had a name. She was born, grew up, replicated, gave birth and died. The fact that I can’t produce a photograph or certificate, that she has no documentation does not diminish her place in time or the significance of her being.
Twenty thousand years is just an arbitrary number. Our paleolithic ancestors stretch back many thousands of generations and they all modeled the same legacy. No credit cards or smart phones but they were born, grew up, replicated, bore children and died. Their DNA may have been culled out of the gene pool by now but their link in the line is both profoundly inescapable and critically necessary.
So I imagine a time when glaciers were melting back from the last Ice Age. Modern humans were crossing the Siberian land bridge, immigrants looking for better lives. They sat around their fires too, like their ancestors the Homo heidelbergensis, keeping warm, philosophizing, making meaning. They would all be blood related, suspicious if not hostile toward strangers. That predisposition was necessary. Strangers were few and far between and you would be competing with them for the animals you depended on for food, clothing, etc. Cooperation between strangers would have been unprecedented.
Fast forward those 20,000 years: We pause here in the 21st Century to hold doors open, wait our turn together in line, invest in the stock market, all with people we don’t know. But there is the presumption that they are like us in some significant way. Not a great shift in human nature, just a lot more of us in the in-group with fewer commonalities. But it doesn't work if there isn't something shared; it fosters not only tolerance but also accommodation. Even at that, one simple divergence can upend the balance and create conflict.
I keep asking why, and how does that work? I can’t take credit for the research or its meaning but neither can I reject the premiss. Civilization has evolved exponentially faster than species Homo sapiens itself. Are humans out front, stretching the envelope to a shape a better world or are we being dragged along behind, kicking and screaming? I think the latter. We (humans) really don't like change, a Stone Age attribute that we can't seem to let go. I can imagine those 3 or 4 paleolithic dudes sitting 'round the fire, trying to make meaning from what they see and what they believe. We in the here and now, we are standing on shoulders, on top of shoulders, on top of their shoulders like Isaac Newton, seeing farther than any of them could have ever imagined. Certainly, sooner or later, one of those Stone Age thinkers would do the math. Concerning the threat they perceived from strangers they had seen at a distance, one of them would have experienced a revelation: “Why don’t we build a wall?”
Recently, from 1675 comes Isaac Newton’s famous quote; “If I see farther than others it is that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants who came before me.” Those long extinct, primitive, proto-humans would be in that column of thinkers Newton alluded to, stacked feet on shoulders, shoulders to feet, giants in their own rite as we examine the human pedigree. I am more interested than most in the long evolutionary stretch that began in the treetops, eating raw fruit and evolved to living in loft apartments, eating chicken fried rice. It took a while to stretch my comfort zone, to comprehend and imagine the mind boggling time span, millions of earth years. But I did and the payoff is grasping an undeniable reality. If the data were available, there is a continuous, unbroken, link to link chain that connects all of us with those giants, sitting together 'round the fire, making meaning.
Genealogy is big business. Trace your bloodline back 7 or 8 generations, you get serious and want to know more. ‘Why?’, and ‘How does that work?’ becomes a personal challenge. Who am I and how did I get here? Send in a swab with some cheek cells and a check for a few hundred $$ and you get back an interesting story, maybe accurate, maybe not so much but good story none the less. Still, I don’t need ancestry.com, I know that an unbroken sequence of DNA donors has to exist. It goes back a thousand generations, nearly 20,000 years, to the middle of the last Ice Age. My one thousandth great grandmother had a name. She was born, grew up, replicated, gave birth and died. The fact that I can’t produce a photograph or certificate, that she has no documentation does not diminish her place in time or the significance of her being.
Twenty thousand years is just an arbitrary number. Our paleolithic ancestors stretch back many thousands of generations and they all modeled the same legacy. No credit cards or smart phones but they were born, grew up, replicated, bore children and died. Their DNA may have been culled out of the gene pool by now but their link in the line is both profoundly inescapable and critically necessary.
So I imagine a time when glaciers were melting back from the last Ice Age. Modern humans were crossing the Siberian land bridge, immigrants looking for better lives. They sat around their fires too, like their ancestors the Homo heidelbergensis, keeping warm, philosophizing, making meaning. They would all be blood related, suspicious if not hostile toward strangers. That predisposition was necessary. Strangers were few and far between and you would be competing with them for the animals you depended on for food, clothing, etc. Cooperation between strangers would have been unprecedented.
Fast forward those 20,000 years: We pause here in the 21st Century to hold doors open, wait our turn together in line, invest in the stock market, all with people we don’t know. But there is the presumption that they are like us in some significant way. Not a great shift in human nature, just a lot more of us in the in-group with fewer commonalities. But it doesn't work if there isn't something shared; it fosters not only tolerance but also accommodation. Even at that, one simple divergence can upend the balance and create conflict.
I keep asking why, and how does that work? I can’t take credit for the research or its meaning but neither can I reject the premiss. Civilization has evolved exponentially faster than species Homo sapiens itself. Are humans out front, stretching the envelope to a shape a better world or are we being dragged along behind, kicking and screaming? I think the latter. We (humans) really don't like change, a Stone Age attribute that we can't seem to let go. I can imagine those 3 or 4 paleolithic dudes sitting 'round the fire, trying to make meaning from what they see and what they believe. We in the here and now, we are standing on shoulders, on top of shoulders, on top of their shoulders like Isaac Newton, seeing farther than any of them could have ever imagined. Certainly, sooner or later, one of those Stone Age thinkers would do the math. Concerning the threat they perceived from strangers they had seen at a distance, one of them would have experienced a revelation: “Why don’t we build a wall?”
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