A List of 5 Hominid Evolutionary Dead Ends or Kissing Cousins

In order to jump the line with your “fast pass” and enjoy the ride you'll need to check your intelligent design preconceptions with the hat check attendants. This bumpy ride is a headlong plunge into the evolutionary underbelly of the taxonomical hominid. This classification of the hominid, codified by the Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus, groups humans (homo) with the great apes in the same category. Since that time hominid has come to be reclaimed by anthropologists, primatologists, evolutionary biologists and paleontologists to mean, in a stricter sense, humans who aren't homo sapiens but closer to us than chimpanzees. Until now no missing link type of Rosetta Stone bone fragment or DNA sequence has been found which can delineate conclusively how modern homo sapiens arrived at the top of the food chain. Scientists, therefore, still have a multitude of erudite coffee klatch to bicker over in their quest to explain whence we homos came. A couple of the hominids on the list of evolutionary dead ends were in a Darwinistic sense predestined to ossify into the annals of prehistory. They were either out competed for resources or unable to adapt to climate changes or succumbed to a hitherto unknown disease. These hypotheses are affectionately called the “Kill, Chill or Ill” theories. Recently new DNA evidence has revealed that some ethnic populations around the world have residual DNA from these dead end hominids. The logical conclusion for those traces of extinct DNA must be an alarming rate of sexual interbreeding. In other words, sex, sex and more sex is the key understanding some of the evolutionary dead ends which helped get us on top of the modern food chain.

Homo floresiensis (hobbit)

Era:     95,000 – 17,000 years ago

Habitat:     Island of Flores, Indonesia

Major find:    Near complete female skeleton dating back about 18,000 years ago—in Liang Bua cave       on the island of Flores, Indonesia.

Sex or dead end:   No DNA has been extracted from floresiensis so sex is still an unknown. Best guess now is either kill or chill

Gigantopithecus

Era:     9 million years ago until roughly 100 thousand years ago

Habitat:     Primarily China, India and Vietnam

Major find:    German anthropologist Ralph von Koenigswald found petrified teeth in a Chinese medicine apothecary in 1935

Sex or dead end:   No DNA has been extracted from Gigantopithecus so sex is unlikely. However, sex has been informally postulated because some forensic anthropologists claim Gigantopithecus to be the modern hominid mistaken for global bigfoot sightings.

Ardipithecus Ramidus

Era:     About 4.4 million years ago

Habitat:     Eastern Africa (Middle Awash and Gona, Ethiopia)

Major find:    First fossil remains were found in the Middle Awash area of Ethiopia between 1992 and 1994

Sex or dead end:   The pelvis seems to be designed for bipedalism which would suggest sex. Ardipithecus Ramidus is disinguished from the other Ardipitheci in this fact.

Paranthropus Aethiopicus

Era:     About 2.7 to 2.3 million years ago

Habitat:     Eastern Africa (Turkana basin of northern Kenya, southern Ethiopia)

Major find:    The “Black Skull" west of Lake Turkana in Kenya

Sex or dead end:   Too little is known about Paranthropus Aethiopicus to guess but sex seems to be the best fit. It is closely related to Australopithecus afarensis because it shares many attributes, or the other “robust” australopithecines like P. boisei, which many scientists claim might be a direct descendant of P. aethiopicus

Denisovan

Era:     41,000 years ago to present?

Habitat:     Central Asia, Siberia, Indonesia, Australia, Melanesia

Major find:    finger bone fragment of a juvenile female found in Denisova caves in Siberia

Sex or dead end:   Sex, Sex and more Sex. Much like the residual genes of Neanderthal which homo sapiens carry (e.g. red hair)so too Denisovan gene markers have been found in modern ethnic populations of Indonesia, Australia and Melanesia.

The Evolution of Language: Chatty Cathy 2,000,000 years B.C.

Homo Erectus a.k.a Homo Garrulus

     The dawn of man is perhaps the most bankrupt and simplified clichés used to envisage where the tipping point was in the evolution of modern man. Paleoanthropologists have been locked in debate over how the base and the trunk of the homo sapien tree should look. That seems to me to be the academic equivalent to a judicial kangaroo court. In situ remains and artifacts belie the hard empirical evidence and point to crazy, spurious and evidentiary anomalies which bemuddle the need for a relative framework, as baseline, from which we can extrapolate an overall trend. Of course, classifying and cataloguing the minutiae by detailing each branch and twig of the hominids is a necessary aspect of the study of the evolution of modern man; too often it emerges as pettifogging or scientific megalomania. The branch of the hominid tree which is truly magical is the emergence of Homo Erectus. 

 

     Homo Erectus gives rise to the philosophical and physiological concepts of what is means to be divergent from animals. The evidence displays a skilled and calculated manipulation of the their environment through the use of fire and tool technologies; primarily Oldowan and Acheulean technologies. A less tangible but titillating development is that of cognition and a sense of abstraction through communication which are intrinsic building blocks for language. The appearance of Homo Erectus brought with it the physiological evolutionary features like a brain size in proportion to body mass and a pronounced Broca's area. Both of these qualities are intractably necessary for language. The language of the Homo Erectus may have made use of simplistic vocalizations but was more plausibly transmitted through the use of gestures. This proto-language quite possibly was the flywheel for religion and art and symbolic representation. The academic jury is still deliberating on this point and the fact is that it may never be conclusively answered. Nonetheless, it appears reasonable that the manipulation of ideas which are done by an ordering process of giving a name (labeling) to specific things would lead to a process of categorizing these things. This learned method of categorizing in turn promotes the labeling of concepts in an abstract form. Pointing is as rudimentary as it gets when it comes to communication in a gesture driving proto-language. The need for complex syntax and semantics is a priori redundant. The act of pointing makes apparent that the “thing” of discernment is the object of the contextual information. When pointing to the object no abstraction is taking place; it is purely mundane and concrete.

     Imagine a hunting party (by the time of Homo Erectus the classic assemblage of a hunter-gatherer society is starting to emerge), skulking about on the Savannah stalking animals all day, they then point to a herd of buffalo. Those in the hunting party know exactly what is being pointed to and subsequently know that the buffalo's could soon be dinner. No extra gesturing is needed. The contextual information is self contained. Suppose again that the hunters have for the last week been entirely unlucky in providing protein to the clan for any number of reasons. For instance, a particularly arid summer has forced animals to stay congregated around sparsely located watering holes which are further away than the traditional nomadic range of the clan. Or perhaps a large pride of lions has converged on the same hunting territory of the clan making competition futile. Whatever the reason may be, some senior male member of the clan would certainly advise a different tactic; choosing a path of least resistance to acquiring a fresh kill. Remembering that the buffalo's were especially easy the previous time they set out on a hunt, this senior male member gestures to the other males that they should hunt buffalo again. How does he communicate this idea through abstraction? Let's surmise that the clan have a gesture whereby two hands are made flat with the thumbs sticking out and the thumbs are touching the temples on either side of the head. This rudimentary gesture symbolizes buffalo as a category; as an abstraction; as language. If we can take a another leap of scientific faith then we could also argue that the gestural lexicon might include many more types of abstractions.

     Indeed, the case can securely be made that gestures are the linchpin in the origin of language. Oliver Sacks points out in his book “Seeing Voices” that “...isolated deaf adults...will invent gestural systems, with a very simple syntax and morphology, by which they can communicate basic needs and feelings to their neighbors...”. As we touched on earlier the cranial capacity of Homo Erectus was certainly robust enough for proto-language and possessed a defined Broca's area which is the epicenter for language orchestration in the brain. However, Sacks asserts, rightly, that without a group to share these gestures with and have that sharing extended over at least two generation the gestures wouldn't evolve into a rich and full language. Although Sacks is spot on with his assessment of a full and rich grammatically savvy language with vibrant syntax, it does overstate the fact that not all languages need necessarily be as robust to be effective in conveying concepts and contextual abstractions. A pidgin is a contraction of languages and symbols which is germinated out of a need to communicate basal ideas and concepts and by that very nature might never achieve a robust structure as Sacks espouses. Regardless, these fundamental gestures as conveyers of abstraction gave rise to verbal language much like the manufacture and use of tools in emerging technologies aided the development and manipulation of their environment.

     If we fast forward to present day where robust languages are the norm we discover that gestures persist. Not only have they remained but they are distinct and unique to common cultures despite the apparent difference in language. Why have gestures persisted? What is the significance of the gesture? What do these gestures say about the need to gesticulate them and not verbalize them? These, I feel are intriguing questions but beyond the scope of this introduction to the evolution of gestures. Stay tuned.

Spinoza's Chutzpah

Synching up the profane and the sacred

 

     When I made the decision as an undergrad to pursue a minor in Anthropology instead of a double major along with History, my philosophical world view was disassembled, rearranged and pieced back together. But in a positive way. It galvanized the dissimilar and sometimes incongruent paradigms which oozed back and forth between the hard and soft science classes at the university. One of the prerequisite courses was an introduction to Anthropology of the Family. Although the course was as interesting as the professor could eek out in a 4 month stint, ultimately it proved to be underwhelming at best. By default I was able to enroll in this course but the course I really wanted to follow to satisfy my requirements was Medical Anthropology. At the time, youth was my driving force like a fire in the belly which spurred me on and didn't accept disappointment. I told myself that if I couldn't follow the lectures, so be it; but I was going to study the book and handouts which were listed. 
 

      The title of the book eludes me now but the contents of the book; its basic tenets, the gist of the narrative, fascinated me to the point of obsession. Primitive cultures, now abandoned for the p.c. Pre-literate moniker, was and still is the first stepping stone in American and European Anthropology education. The early 20^th century paradigm shift in Anthropology from the concept of “other” to “different” is still prevalent and woven seamlessly into today's curriculum. Pioneering anthropologists like Franz Boas taught a second generation of pioneering anthropologists to throw off the shackles of Social Darwinism and study indigenous cultures as unique and intrinsically equal cultures. Without being laden down in nominal conclusions of good and bad, anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead spearheaded the Relativism movement in the social sciences. Mead's seminal work on sexuality; “Coming of Age in Samoa”, shown a light on a sexually repressed Western Culture. Franz Boas, in his forward to her book, illuminates what Mead's work represented; “Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways." This was what the textbook from Medical Anthropology was espousing at its core; knowledge and wisdom are two separate concepts which are universal to all cultures but differ in meaning within various cultures. 
 
      The example which rattled my brain as most poignant and epiphanic was not from some far flung exotic Polynesian island; it was from New England USA. In the winter months when Northern climes are subject to but seldom reported epidemics of flu those areas utilize home spun remedies to combat and stave off the demoralizing secondary infections. One of those remedies is called Grog. Apparently the word grog stems from the British Vice Admiral Edward Vernon who was know as "Old Grog". The libation was formerly a mixture of alcohol and fruit juices and spices which rationed to sailors as a means of avoiding drinking stagnant water and preventing scurvy. Sailors being sailors the rations were often gulped down prematurely leaving them little recourse but to drink the algae ridden water. The solution was to dilute the mixture with water which stretched the rations for a longer duration. Initially a maritime drink it is found all over Europe and the Western world. It is documented to even have an equivalent in Fuji, no doubt unintentionally introduced by seamen on shore leave. Regardless, the New England variant was a combination of vinegar, honey and occasionally alcohol. The ratio of ingredients shows a dichotomy at work; bitter and sweet made palatable by a jigger of alcohol (exact amount may vary). Of course, the honey has a dearth of nutritional goodness and the alcohol can lull the sick and afflicted into a nice slumber. I believe the vinegar might give the illusion of a medicinal wheelhouse. If it doesn't taste bad then it's probably not helping. 
 
      This explanation is the HOW. This is what it would tell us empirically, scientifically. But to the those drinking the grog it is only the WHY which is important. The disparate properties jumbled together work because they work together well. This is maybe over simplified and tautological but it led me to continue to extrapolate on pre-literate societies and their ethnobotanical remedies. A healer or a shaman or a witchdoctor in a pre-literate community has a mind numbingly expansive knowledge of his or her immediate pharmacopeia. Much like the New England grog maker, the healer, shaman or witchdoctor mixes and blends a variety of plants, roots and herbs and often hallucinogens to aid in the recovery of a ailing tribesman. The chemistry, biology, and scientific underpinnings can be studied and understood giving us the HOW the remedy worked. That doesn't satiate a cosmology where the profane and sacred are inexorably intertwined. The need to complete the whole must have a WHY. Those pre-literate societies might assume that a deity is embodied in a plant or root and through a concisely dictated ritual resulting in drinking the liquid, a spirit is released which goes forth and heals. The WHY doesn't negate the HOW. It forms a set; an ethical circuit which satisfies the sacred and the profane and ipso facto brings structure. This allows for an individual within a society to experience moral cohesion below the surface tension of empirical reality. 
 
      How and Why are therefore cut from the same cloth but remain in the western world at odds with each other. For example, take the words demonstrate and inspire. Etymologically demonstrate is taken from Latin meaning “de = proove/monstrum = divine, sacred” but it has been bastardized into meaning empiricism: science. Inspire derives from the Latin word inspirationem which connotes breathing. At its root it incorporates the word spirare which is where we get the word spirit. The act of blowing and inhaling would allow us to ingest the sacred. So are science and mythology doomed to be at rivaling ends of our ethical world view? We can stoically marvel at the universe and proclaim that there must be some sort of intelligent design for such complex sequencing of DNA as proven in the multi-celluar life forms we call humans. There are, however, numerous flaws in the design which make me reluctant to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent greying old man perched on a cloud who's counting the number of fire ants who die in order to keep the biosphere in balance. The fact that life is sustained by killing seems to me to be a major flaw. Science supplies us with a progression of replicable hypotheses which allow us to comprehend the HOW of evolution. They tell us what mechanisms are at work selecting certain traits. Which of these traits may be helpful in the long run but also which ones are benign or antique but continue to be passed down from our homo sapiens ancestors who first interbred with Neanderthals. Like the archaic genes for small brains or the still valid but rapidly fading gene for red hair. 
 
      The total of nature's wonders in the vastness of diversity on this blue marble or the greater cosmos, either perceived or theorized like dark energy and dark matter, causes me to add credence to Spinoza's view God and the divine. Spinoza theorized a God who exists and is abstract and impersonal. The nutshell of Spinoza's believe in God is that the profane and the sacred are one in the same and exemplified by nature. All the cosmos and all the terrestrial beings are part of a God who is the sum of the universe and nature and not of a guardian overlording it. Spinoza was, uncharacteristically for the Jewish faith, excommunicated because of his heretical philosophy. Thankfully he was able to fused together the HOW and the WHY eloquently and holistically and in a neat and tidy philosophy; albeit posthumously. 
 
      If we accept the union of the sacred and the profane as being equally beneficial to our moral and ethical development we can begin to pose more stringent philosophical questions. When we ask ourselves one of the quintessential philosophical question : “what is death?” Intrinsically and by default the HOW alone becomes moot and irrelevant. The WHY usurps our self-reflective brain power and takes over the philosophical high ground. Will it be that the sacred provides us with solace not only in preparation for death but also moral support for those we leave behind? Science is not devoid of its WHY deliberation. Let's assume that most of the educated population believes in the Big Bang theory. In doing so we a priori concedes that we are all made from the same interstellar flotsam and jetsam that was spewed out over the universe at the moment of the Big Bang. If we agree to those two criteria then the WHY for science becomes easy. We humans just as all organic matter will return to the cosmic dust fragments from whence we came.

     Bridging the gab between the HOW and the WHY will make the derisive camps of the profane and sacred irrelevant and at the same time reduce a heap of metaphysical stress on all of us.