It’s fascinating to explore the deeper roots of our family
tree. They reveal a lot about the path
that led us to today. Homo sapiens
emerged in Africa, somewhere between 300,000 and 130,000 years ago, depending
on which expert you read. DNA
mapping asserts that the oldest surviving human group is the San people of
South Africa and Namibia (also known as Khoisan, Bushmen, or !Kung). Their genes are the closest to the ancient
female from whom all living humans descend (Mitochondrial Eve).
The San have been hunter-gatherers since the dawn of
humankind, enjoying a way of life that managed to survive into the 1970s. Eight hundred years ago, the San homeland
included all of southern Africa. Since
then, Bantu and European herders and farmers have displaced them from their
better lands. They now reside in the
Kalahari Desert, where they are being devastated by the dark juju of modernity
— missionaries, bureaucrats, booze pushers, and the money economy.
The Pygmies, who live in the rainforest of central Africa,
are the second oldest surviving group. They
also managed to live as hunter-gatherers into recent decades. The Pygmies and San coevolved in their
ecosystems, and their way of life was genuinely sustainable, like all other (normal)
animals. They did not live like
ecological firestorms. Prior to the
arrival of outsiders, they had no domesticated plants or livestock.
In the tropics of Mother Africa, meat spoiled quickly, and
yummy carcasses quickly attracted mobs of ravenous scavengers. When folks wanted a steak, they killed
something. Preserving and storing meat
was impractical and unnecessary, a stupid idea that never occurred to anyone. This limitation was a blessing, because it
made large-scale hunting impossible, keeping low limits on population. It was impossible for nomadic hunters in the
tropics to acquire and preserve surplus meat that could feed non-hunting specialists
like priests, technicians, warriors, or kings.
Somewhere between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, pioneers began
migrating out of Africa, into southwest Asia.
They discovered new species of big game, many of which had no
instinctive fear of small, smelly, goofy-looking tropical primates with sharp
sticks. In tropical regions like India,
Southeast Asia, and Australia, traditional lifestyles essentially continued,
because meat storage was impractical.
Pioneers who migrated into colder regions were confronted
with daunting new challenges. They were
something like moon explorers. Outside
the tropics, food was less available all year long. Surplus had to be carefully stored to ensure
winter survival. They needed
weatherproof shelters, warm hearths, and stylish wardrobes of fur clothing.
The San
and Pygmies
lived in sustainable, time-proven, low-tech ways. However, in chilly non-tropical regions,
where living was more complicated, ongoing innovation boosted the odds for survival. The clever ones invented sleds, canoes,
kayaks, lances, harpoons, nets, snares, and on and on. For the moon explorers, innovation became
insanely addictive, because cool gizmos reduced the odds of premature death. As centuries passed, innovation became
something like an endless arms race, a nightmare-inducing runaway train,
according to Alfred
Crosby.
Clive
Finlayson discussed the humans living in snowy Europe from 20 to 30
thousand years ago. The clever
Gravettian culture preserved surplus meat by freezing it in pits dug in the
permafrost. Finlayson perceived the
storage pit to be a wicked invention, because it radically changed the world. “They had found ways of producing surplus,
something almost impossible in tropical climates, and with it emerged an
unstoppable drive to increase rapidly in numbers.” Food storage infected the moon explorers with
a new and diabolical idea, “more is better.”
Around 10,000 years ago, in the Fertile Crescent, the genie
of domestication emerged from the magic lamp, and steered humankind into the
express lane to catastrophe. Jared
Diamond wrote a fascinating
essay on the emergence of domestication.
Obviously, it was impossible for the cunning conjurors to foresee the
unintended consequences of the monster they were creating. If a vision had revealed the dark
future to them, Diamond thought that they would have immediately ceased
their experiments, and made food production taboo. The shift to agriculture “was in many ways a
catastrophe from which we have never recovered.”
No matter how hard the control freaks tried, most plant and
animal species proved to be unsuitable for domestication. Of the 200,000 species of wild plants, only
100 have been enslaved. Of the 148
species of terrestrial herbivores and omnivores weighing more than 100 pounds
(45 kg), only 14 have been enslaved. Of
those 14 species, 13 were enslaved in Eurasia, including the big five: cattle,
sheep, goats, pigs, and horses.
None of the 14 species enslaved originally resided south of
the equator in Africa. Horses, donkeys,
and zebras are close relatives, and can interbreed. Horses and donkeys were enslaved in Eurasia,
but all four species of African zebras defiantly resisted 200 years of efforts
to destroy them — the older a zebra gets, the more vicious it becomes. Freedom is precious. No surrender!
In the homelands of the San and Pygmies, few wild plants were
suitable for domestication. Of the crop
plants domesticated in Africa, all originated north of the equator. In their ancient homelands, the San and
Pygmies had no domesticated plants or livestock, and zero need for long-term
food storage. Progress was not an option
for them, so they lived simply and sustainably, like their hominid ancestors
had for the last two million years.
Unfortunately, the moon explorers wandered into harsh
ecosystems where it was impossible to live like tropical hunter-gatherers. The way-too-clever oddballs eventually became
exotic invasive loose cannons. Large
game became scarce, then small game. The
dark and slippery path to agriculture was nicely described by Mark
Nathan Cohen.
Diana Muir noted how the process unfolded in prehistoric New
England. In the good old days, game was
abundant. Stuff like acorns and
shellfish were reserved for famine food.
As game became scarce, shellfish became a mainstay. An adult male would need 100 oysters or
quahogs each day. Thousands were dug and
smoked for winter consumption, a tedious job.
In the lower layers of huge shell dumps are oyster shells 10 to 20
inches across (25 to 50 cm) — oysters 40 years old. In higher levels, the shells get smaller and
smaller.
Eventually, the seeds of corn (maize), squash, and beans
reached New England. If a region was
home to 100 tribes of hunter-gatherers, and just one tribe adopted corn,
helter-skelter followed. The farmers
produced more calories, and could feed more bambinos. With abundant stored foods, they had a much better
chance of surviving harsh winters when hunting was poor.
Eventually, farmers outnumbered hunters. Muir wrote, “Once any group in a region
decides to adopt agriculture, no neighboring group can afford not to.” Farming spread, population grew, conflicts
increased, and villages were surrounded by defensive wooden palisades. Soils were depleted, new fields displaced
forests, and stronger tribes trumped weaker ones. Progress!
In Mother Africa, the San continued their traditional way of
life (i.e., naked, illiterate, heathen savages). The folks who stumbled into Europe took a
different path. The turbo thrusters of
progress roared. In the Czech Republic
25,000 years ago, folks lived in mammoth
bone huts. A bit later, folks in
France were painting gorgeous graffiti in caves. A bit later, folks were whacking down
forests, living in filthy cities, and slaughtering each other in great numbers.
Pleistocene Europeans had heroically transformed from
“anatomically modern humans” (like the San), to “behaviorally modern humans”
(like the Trumps). Hooray! This miracle began maybe 50,000 years ago, an
event celebrated by the cult of human supremacy. They call it the Great Leap Forward — cave
paintings, complex language, ceramics, ornaments, rational thinking, and on and
on. It had a lot to do with migrating
out of Africa and adapting to exotic ecosystems via technological innovation.
The bottom line disturbs me.
Until recently, the San followed an ancient path, which didn’t wreck
their ecosystem. The folks who adapted
to non-tropical ecosystems eventually strayed away from a two million year
tradition of sustainability.
Consequently, after a relatively brief rocket ride of bad craziness, the
climate is trashed, the ocean is trashed, and seven-point-something billion primates
are painfully discovering the embarrassing side effects of great leaps.
It’s fun playing “what if?”
Imagine what the world would be like if our ancestors had remained in
sub-Saharan Africa, and continued living like wild tropical primates — and nothing was
domesticated. Would Europe and America
still be home to mammoths, rhinos, and saber-toothed cats? Is there something we might learn from our
bloody adventure?
Cohen, Mark Nathan, The
Food Crisis in Prehistory — Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture,
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1977.
Crosby, Alfred W., Throwing
Fire: Projectile Technology Through History, Cambridge University
Press, New York, 2010.
Diamond, Jared, “Evolution, consequences and future of plant
and animal domestication,” Nature, 418, 700-707 (8 August 2002) |
doi:10.1038/nature01019 Free
download.
Diamond, Jared, Guns,
Germs, and Steel, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1997.
Diamond, Jared, “The Worst Mistake In The History Of The
Human Race,” Discover, May 1987. Free
download.
Finlayson, Clive, The
Humans Who Went Extinct — Why Neanderthals Died Out And We Survived,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2009.
Muir, Diana, Reflections
in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England,
University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2000.
Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, The Harmless People, Vintage Books, New York, 1989.
Turnbull, Colin M., The
Forest People, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1961.
Wade, Nicolas, Before
the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors, Penguin
Books, New York, 2006.
4 comments:
Just a minor point.
All humans did not come from 'mitochondrial Eve'. It is a myth put on christians by reporters, because if there was Eve there had to be Adam too.
She is only one of a few thousand women lived during her time. It so happened that in the lineage of other women, either (1) all women died before procreating or (2) they had only sons. This is not unusual considering for most of our history women bore only two or three children.
Hello Venkataraman Amarnath! Thanks for the feedback. I’m not a geneticist, my main point was that the San seem to have the oldest culture and lifestyle among the folks who survived into recent times.
Wikipedia has a nice discussion of Mitochondrial Eve, including the controversies and caveats. It sounds like the main dispute is the estimated date of Eve, the “matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all currently living humans…” They explain the difference between Mitochondrial Eve and Eve of the Garden of Eden.
Sorry for the annoyance and confusion!
Hello,
Hopefully their original wisdom ways are spreading (re-membered)...
https://books.google.com/books?id=LlkoDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT86&lpg=PT86&dq=rope+to+animals++bushman+keeney&source=bl&ots=bD5UE8cgey&sig=b0H1L4UDMSczzMhNtxJiai55508&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo6M2cpo7VAhVT3mMKHUGKA0AQ6AEIRjAG#v=onepage&q=rope to animals bushman keeney&f=false
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICmpYrwhkUI
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-body-knows/201603/way-the-bushmen-dance-love-and-god-in-africa
warm regards
JL
Hello JL. Thanks for the info. I see that Bradford and Hillary Keeney have written several books on Bushmen spirituality and healing. Both are PhDs, he is a shaman, and they are ready to help you at their Sacred Ecstatics enterprise. YouTube offers a number of Bushmen videos, search for “TheKeeneyCenter”
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