As the time line in the previous chapter shows, Homo erectus persons emerged in eastern Africa around 1.8 million years ago, so the events in Chapter 1 would have begun sometime after then and continued during the time that Homo erectus was becoming Homo sapiens.
At some point during that period they created the “First Human Paradise,” and apparently were able to maintain it, because by some 100 thousand years ago Homo sapiens in Africa had reached a population of around 50 thousand, and by some 40 thousand years ago the fourth brain had begun to emerge. So in this chapter we will continue to consider the elements which were involved in the creation of the First Paradise. In the foregoing pages we have identified several of the essential elements and as we continue to follow our Human Story we shall see that today we have identified all of them, and that this enables us to build, and to maintain, the Fourth Human Paradise.
To summarize, the basic elements forming the situation in which persons defeated the leopard were both natural and manmade:
The immediate natural elements were the killer leopards which threatened persons’ lives and hindered their ability to gather food, plus the survival tools which persons had inherited, including their new three-part brain structure and vocal equipment (which enabled them to create ideas, and to share them), plus upright stance and walking (which enabled persons to see farther, and freed their arms and hands to be used for purposes other than mobility, such as making tools and weapons).
The immediate manmade elements were the ability to think and reason, so as to create ideas, e.g. of the danger of the killer leopards, and of how to defend themselves by making plans for cooperative group actions, including the making and use of weapons. Experience taught them that for their group plan to be successful it was necessary for each of them to participate in forming it and carrying it out, and that was the origin of the element (idea) we call democracy. Another vital element was each person’s promise to do his or her part in carrying out the plan because this was also necessary to its success, and that was the beginning of the element (idea) of the human social contract, which included elements ( ideas) such as courage, commitment, duty, honor, and justice, which ideas are all basic in community.
For example, rather than competing with each other to create a hierarchy of individuals, inside their group, as animals do instinctively in order to try to dominate each other, persons used their new brains, minds, vocal language, and reason, to create a hierarchy of ideas, inside their group. That helped to minimize the instinctive rivalry for supremacy and maximize the instinctive proclivity to work together, in order to become able to dominate the animals which lived outside their group.
In addition to using reason to create a cooperative plan (idea) to overcome the leopard, they used it to create other ideas and plans for cooperative action, and added them to their culture, and passed them from one generation to the next, each generation adding to and improving them. Because each person in the group participated in creating and improving the plans and other ideas, together they were creating a “third-brain culture” which was benevolent, one which included, accepted, and helped each person, a joyous culture. Thus their invention of the evolving human culture as their vehicle to carry forward and improve their vital plans and ideas was another quantum jump.
It is crucial for us to recognize that, because each person knew that he or she desperately needed the help of the other persons, each person desired that the other persons develop to be as capable as possible, and helped them in this. A modern-day example of this practice is that each of the members of an athletic team desires to become as accomplished a player as he or she can, and desires also that the others become as accomplished players as possible and helps them in this so that the team can win. (If one can not learn to become a “team-player,” one is dismissed from the team.)
The culture was created in and existed only in the mind of each participating person, but at that time no one could recognize its existence. Nevertheless, the culture was brought into being in their individual minds, and in this sense was a part of each person. At the same time, because it was the product of all their minds, it had an existence separate from each person and in this sense had a life of its own... although at that time no one could recognize that either. As humans created their culture, it created them, in an ongoing, feedback relationship, and in this way they guided and became personally responsible for the course of their personal lives and their human destiny... although at that time no one could recognize that either.
This brings us to the point in our Story where we can begin to notice elements which initially led to their gaining, and then to their losing, of their successful course. We can begin with the fact that because they lived in the open under trees and sky, all early peoples were highly aware of the workings of their natural environment, both on the Earth’s surface around them, and in the heavens above them. They wondered about everything which was happening: the rising and setting of the sun and the moon, thunder and lightning, wind and rain, fire, and so on. Studies of modern “primitives” indicate that the early persons thought of these natural elements as being forces greater than themselves, were in awe of them, gave them names, and talked to each other about them in an effort to understand them.
We can not know exactly how their minds worked nor what they thought, but we can see that there are various possibilities, the most basic one being simply that they would respond in some way to the actions of the natural elements. Examples might be: it is cold during the night, but the sun warms me in the morning; the sun makes me hot in the afternoon, so I need some shade; the lightning is scary and dangerous, so I need to hide from it.
By naming the natural elements and subsequently making up and telling stories about them persons were trying to understand why each element acted as it did, in order to feel a degree of control over it, such as becoming able to predict its actions. Although their vocal language was rudimentary, added to it was the storyteller’s ability to evoke excitement through facial expressions and use of arms and hands and sometimes of the whole body, perhaps doing dance steps and/or singing, and probably the group would join in. Probably rhythms were made through hand clapping, and eventually hitting a stick against another stick or a hollow log, and much later making a drum and hitting it with a stick or their hands.
Lacking the information about the workings of Nature which it has taken their descendants many thousands of years to accumulate, it seems that the only way they could approach storytelling would be to assume that a natural element was like them, but much greater and more powerful, and yet did things for the same reasons that they would (an imagined force their descendants would call a “spirit”or a “god”). After sleeping all night the sun rose early in the morning, and after a long day was tired and again went to sleep. Then the night sneaked in, and probably they named and feared it, because of night time predators. The moon liked to visit different places, so sometimes would come up where they could see it, and sometimes not. In this way they unknowingly began the human “anthropomorphic” practice of assigning human form and/or attributes to non-human entities. (“Anthropo” comes from Greek anthropos, meaning “human being,” and “morphic” comes from Greek. morphic, meaning “form.”).
As the sun was the most consistently prominent force, perhaps they thought it had the most power. Perhaps they imagined that sometimes it became angry and made the sky dark and unleashed the wind, rain, lightning, and thunder. Next might have been: The sun makes me too hot, I wish today were cooler. Then: I wish I could make it cooler. Then: I will ask the sun to make the day cooler. Maybe a cloud came over the sun at that moment and the asker thought that he or she he had managed it. Eventually a dance to appeal to the sun was created, and also ones to appeal to the moon, night, clouds, rain, or whatever: the beginning of religion. (The word comes from the Latin religare, “to bind,” here meaning the mental/emotional bond between humans and the natural forces.)
They may or may not have formed a general concept of a single force or element greater than themselves which caused everything, and, if they did, they may or may not have named it. Or they may have thought only about the separate elements and named them. But it seems sure that at least they would have named each natural element and made up stories to explain its existence and actions.
It seems that eventually people came to think that the natural elements... sun, moon, and so on... were not themselves the gods; rather each element was controlled by a god, and these gods or spirits lived in a world outside theirs. (A much later example of this would be the early Greek pantheon in which Zeus was the head God, lived on Mt. Olympus, and threw lightning bolts; Neptune’s lower body was that of a t fish, and he carried a trident and lived in and ruled the waters; various goddesses ruled other vital areas of human activity including love, gardening, hunting, etc.) Thus, at some point the early humans created the idea that the gods and goddesses controlling the elements lived around them in the “Other World.” The person in a group who could tell the best stories, and/or make the most accurate predictions, sometimes seemed to be in touch with the Other World, so their task became to ask its dwellers (deities/spirits) for guidance or other help for the group. This person, the shaman, sometimes was also a healer for the group.
Of course there were various reasons for their telling stories. One was simply that they liked entertainment. Another probably was that the storyteller liked being the center of attention for a while and gaining in status as an important member of the group. Another reason was for adults to teach children the many things they wanted them to know, such as how to make and use tools and weapons, how not to lose contact with the group, how to cooperate with everyone, what to and what not to eat or drink, and so on. But there was a deeper reason for all this mental activity, which was that while developing the ability to reason and understand, they were developing a need to reason and understand.
What they were trying to understand through reasoning were the relationships between cause and effect (or effect and cause) in the workings of their surrounding natural environment. Sometimes they were able to, as by recognizing that smashing one rock against another may cause one or both to break into sharp splinters and that these could be used to cut things; that fire causes heat which can warm you but can also burn you; that standing together and using weapons against the leopard drove it away. In these examples they were using what we call “logical” thinking (based on observable evidence) to see actual relationships between cause and effect. But without the evidence about Nature which has since then been acquired they were frequently unable to discover real relationships. When they could not discover a real, natural cause for an event they would simply make up an imaginary, supernatural cause for it which to them seemed to be a logical one, as children do today. We can call that “illogical” or “imaginative” thinking. Naming things and finding causes for actions and events helped persons to feel less helpless and more in control, whether or not their reasoning was accurate.
Both logical thinking and imaginative thinking were necessary to human mental development, and they worked together, because imaginative thinking was able to think of a cause for an effect which logical thinking was not yet able to. Then, eventually, new evidence would enable logical thinking to provide a natural cause and it would be used to replace the imagined supernatural cause provided by imaginative/illogical thinking. In this way our early ancestors invented what I call a progressive, balanced, self-correcting "Human Learning System" through use of which the brain/mind could solve persons’ problems as these were presented to it, and at the same time advance human thought and knowledge generally by adding new, logical ideas to the culture: a crucially important step, but of which they probably were not consciously aware.
Thus was created what I call the “Cultural Process,” and the mechanism through which it functioned was (and is) the Human Learning System, HLS for short. (Some time later I realized that the self- correcting workings of the HLS were actually the self-correcting, and in this way evolving, workings of the Triune brain... long before persons became consciously aware of them.) Let us now begin to focus on the first step which led to the loss of the successful course.
For a long time their HLS, and therefore both their Cultural Process and the Human Experiment, were successful, and their continuing creation of ideas served persons well. So they continued to add them to their culture, and to pass it on to each new generation who updated it by creating new ideas to keep up with their changing and evolving survival situation, and this system, process, and evolving culture served them well. Then at a certain point their human descendants took a step which, in the following way, began to alter their HLS.
As long as the early humans lived in and were guided by the evolving workings of their natural environment, while they were growing up their three brains continued to develop and to integrate properly, and to function together cooperatively, and to create cooperative ideas for persons to live by in their small groups, which contributed to the survival and well-being of all. Their third brain (new mammalian or neocortex) had brought vital new survival tools for persons to develop and put to use, including the ability to think of new survival ideas and to create the sign and vocal language to communicate them to each other. This third brain was quick and clever, and was able to lead their thinking and actions appropriately, including to create and carry out group plans for cooperative actions... as long as its functioning could be guided by the workings and pressures of the evolving natural environment.
However as stated, it seems that eventually people came to think that the natural elements... sun, moon, etc... were not themselves the gods; rather each element was controlled by an invisible god (some kind of superhuman entity) who lived in a world outside theirs and, though much more powerful than them, thought like them (anthropomorphism), and therefore could in some degree be controlled by humans praising them and asking for help. Thus “god worship” was becoming popular because of the idea that it gave persons more control over their personal lives. All of this was illogical thinking, and began to alter the Human Learning System by causing persons to focus less and less of their attention on logical thinking, and more and more of their attention on illogical\ imaginative thinking. Thus they gradually stopped using the functioning of their HLS to advance, and put all their hope for improving their personal lives on building an imaginary structure that they thought was real. The result was that their third-brain culture stopped evolving, and got stuck where it was, and became corrupted by power-seeking persons.
To emphasize the point we can recall that previously their neocortex (third brain) was being guided by the natural forces and was doing a great job of using their self-correcting, and thereby evolving, HLS to study cause and effect in the workings of their surrounding, evolving natural environment, which produced new, logical ideas to add to their evolving culture. Now, however, humans had built an artificial environment of illusory ideas (which they thought was real and pro-human), and had made their thinking and actions more interested in its workings, and less interested in the workings of the natural environment. This meant that humans were breaking away from being guided by the evolving workings of the natural environment, and instead were being guided by the workings of a devolving, imaginary system that was creating a self-destructive, anti-human culture, because the third brain had stopped evolving and had let its leadership be influenced by the less capable second and first brains.
(At the same time, it must be emphasized that this supposed altering apparently did not have the force to stop the continuation of the First Human Paradise, because it seems to have continued through the transition in Africa from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens. Presumably this was because they still lived in small, naturally democratic groups in the natural environment, and the existing HLS and Cultural Process had become so strongly established as to continue as before, partly through “habit,” in spite of the lure of the imaginative thinking prompted by the worship of imaginary anthropomorphic gods, led by devolving, power-seeking persons. Perhaps they split their culture into two sections, just as we have done today, one being scientific, and one being religious.)
We will consider the second... and decisive... step toward the loss of the successful course at the time it appears in our Story (Chapter 5).
To continue our Story from this point, in addition to being aware of the non-living things around them, persons were highly aware of the living things and gave them names. By watching animals they learned much from them such as how they hunted, which plants they ate or did not eat, where to find water, etc., and in each case this was logical thinking. However, in order to tell stories about animals they had to ascribe human attributes to them too (anthropomorphism), which was partly logical and partly illogical (imaginative) thinking.
A typical example of the latter thinking could be that hunters might see a certain kind of bird in a tree and then find an animal to kill. If this occurred again they might think that the presence of that kind of bird caused good hunting, and they would tell the story and people would ask the bird to help them to have success in hunting, and perhaps would wear its molted feathers in their hair.
We can see that from their beginning, humans, in their quest for survival and happiness, have made their speciality to create ideas and to live according to them. It could even be said that our Human Story is of (1) persons becoming able to create ideas, share them with others, make them into an evolving culture, live according to it, and pass it on to each new generation who updated it, and (2) the positive and negative effects this has had on their ability to survive and to enjoy life. It is clear that some of our ideas have helped us, and some have hurt us. For instance, before our ancestors developed weapons and plans it would have been a hurtful idea for them to try to fight the leopard, and after they developed weapons and plans it was a helpful idea for them to fight it. Crucial questions to keep in mind are: “Which ideas were (and are) helpful and which ideas were (and are) hurtful?”and “Do we control all of our ideas, or do some of them control us?” To find the answers we need to continue to follow our Story.
Humans kept improving their ability to talk and reason, make plans and weapons to defend themselves from predators, and to hunt, and because of these advances, and because their culture included and supported each person in the group, they were able to maintain their new safer and happier way of life, their Paradise, for a long time. (However, although we lack evidence, we must remain open to the possibility that in certain situations there were fights between groups, e.g. for territory having the best source of food, water, etc.)
They used fire for warmth, for cooking meat to make it tender, and to keep predators away at night, which worked especially well when they slept in a cave and built their fire at its entrance. Learning to use fire was a reasoning and experimental process which required several steps conducted probably over a long period of time. It began with their coming across a burning branch ignited by a lightning strike. Then they had to overcome their instinctive fear and form the idea of moving close to the burning branch, then form the idea of picking it up by grasping the end which was not burning. Next they had to create the idea of adding fuel to make the blaze bigger and keep the fire going. Then they formed the idea of taking a hot coal with them when they roamed, by containing it in something and later putting it in tinder and blowing on it to make a new fire.
As to learning how to start a fire, there are several possibilities, depending on geographical location and available natural materials. Someone was perhaps idly pushing a stick into the dirt by rotating it between their palms, and when it was removed they noticed that it had made a hole. Next perhaps they had the idea of rotating the stick in a piece of wood to make a hole and found that the friction caused smoke to appear, so they kept at it until a glowing coal formed which could be used to start a fire. Later someone had the idea of wrapping a leather thong around the fire-stick, tying the thong ends to the ends of a piece of branch to make a bow, and moving the bow back and forth to make the fire stick twirl faster. At some point someone noticed that when flint or pyrites are struck together a spark is produced which can be used to start a fire. At some point another discovery was that using a wooden piston to compress air in a tube (such as bamboo or cane) produced heat and fire. Ideas for maintaining naturally-created fire, and then for creating it, were more quantum jumps in human thinking and inventing. Thus humans gained the use of fire. At some later time, perhaps someone accidentally flipped the fire-stick with the bow, and began the idea of the bow and arrow, or the sling, or the spear-launcher, although more likely the ideas for the latter two came from rock-throwing. (In Greek mythology Prometheus stole fire from the gods, gave it to humans, and was severely punished by the gods.)
To have an idea of what their diet may have been we can turn to studies of the !Kung people of Botswana, the so-called bush people of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. (The ! in front of the word “Kung” is a pronunciation guide, indicating a clicking sound made with the tongue.) Until a few decades ago they were hunter/gatherers unaffected by the changing world around them. Although they lived in a wasteland that no one else wanted, an arid plateau with only 6 to 9 inches of rain per year, they seldom suffered from lack of food. Some 60 to 80 percent of their diet was of vegetable origin. Their single most important foodstuff was the hard-shelled, protein- rich mongongo nut, but they also ate 84 other vegetables. During the comparatively rainy summer they ate only the fruits, berries and melons they liked best. During the dry season they ate roots, shoots, bulbs and other less tasty though no less nutritious foods. The successful !Kung hunter earned prestige by bringing meat into camp, and a traditional sharing system distributed all of the food to everyone. No one worked regular hours, but a person could gather enough food in 6 hours to feed a family for 3 days. As these people lived this well in a wasteland it seems that the early humans would have lived as well or better, as in their environment plant and animal life were more abundant. An important point is that the !Kung people make decisions collectively with both women and men participating equally in the decision-making process. (This could be a continuation of early human government, and/or a new, fourth-brain effect.)
To return to the early humans in eastern Africa, once they had become able to use fire to cook meat and make it tender their interest in hunting may have increased. Also, cooked meat does not spoil as fast as raw meat. It is important to note that “to hunt” actually meant “to seek, find, and kill,” and as their development of weapons improved, their ability to do this improved, and they probably became more aggressive and more accustomed to killing and to working together quickly as a team to prevent their quarry from escaping. At first they were able to kill only the smaller kinds of animals, but even these were sometimes important to them as food. Gradually they became able to hunt and kill bigger, more dangerous animals. However, successful hunting was (and is) extremely difficult and can require great patience and skill, so usually most of their food came from gathering.
When a group became too large to be sufficiently mobile it continued to be necessary for some persons to form another group, and from time to time groups would meet to renew friendships, exchange news, and for their young persons to find mates.
During another short period of warmer weather 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, some Homo sapiens groups (presumably seeking new food sources) moved north out of Africa into southern Europe by going around the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and/or possibly across a land bridge to Sicily and Italy (if there was one). When cold weather returned, these Homo sapiens, now known as Cro-Magnons, adapted, not through physical changes as did the Neanderthals, but by using the advanced intellectual skills of their developing fourth brain to sew furs to make warm clothing, and to make use of the many caves to protect them from the cold. As noted, by 34,000 to 32,000 years ago Neanderthals had become extinct.
Some Homo sapiens hunter/gatherer groups continued to move northward through Africa and then out of it and around the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea into southwestern Asia. From there groups went west, north, and east. The groups which turned west went into the lands and islands of Europe, also possibly across a land bridge to Italy (if there was one). The groups which continued northward went into Siberia, and from there some crossed the then-existing land bridge to Alaska and reached North America about 20,000 years ago, and some of these found a way through the ice along the west coast and continued southward through North, Central, and South America. The groups which turned eastward went into the lands of Asia, and from there some went southeastward and across the land bridge of Indonesia, and by water to Australia and also to the islands of the Pacific Ocean. The land bridges resulted from the drop in water level of the Earth’s seas, which occurred because so much water was locked up in the great ice fields and glaciers covering much of the northern surface of Earth.
Remarkably, the rapid expansion of these humans over the planet took place at the peak of the Ice Age, when many parts of the planet were ice-covered. Yet, by their amazing ability to adapt to these severe conditions, human hunters had colonized nearly all of the ice-free parts of the globe by by the end of the second Ice Age. One of their most crucial inventions was the bone needle and strips of hide thread, to sew furs together to make warm clothing.
In Europe, graves dating from some 60,000 years ago have been found in which tools, weapons, and sometimes food had been buried with the body. It seems certain that the relatives and/or friends of the deceased did this as a gift to ease their grief, and/or as a token of respect, and/or the idea had been created that the deceased would go to the “Other World,” an afterlife in which these items would be useful. Perhaps the survivors missed their loved ones so much that for two reasons they created the idea of an afterlife: so that they could think of the deceased as being still alive, and so that when they themselves died they could join them. In any case, we can see that in gaining the higher level of conscious awareness which was so helpful to them, the grim price humans paid was that individual persons became consciously aware of their own inevitable death. So through one idea or another they were trying to offset the fear of it, the fear of “the unknown,” a fear which still haunts us today.
Around 35 thousand years ago persons got the idea of painting the walls and ceilings of caves in what are now France and Spain. Perhaps by creating a picture of an animal a shaman hoped to magically re-create it in the world outside for the hunters to find. Or perhaps they drew and painted as an appeal to the gods for protection, or “for art’s sake,” or to keep records, or for whatever reasons. In any case, it seems that the basic reason for creating pictures was to clarify their thinking, bring it more into their conscious awareness, and share and discuss it with other persons, by making physical representations of their thoughts and ideas. This seems to have been a manifestation of fourth brain development, integration, and function.
(To continue, click below on HOME, go to Blog Navigator, and click on Part Two: Chapter 4 - The Second Paradise.)
