61 replies to this topic

[TVCasualty]

So this is an interesting discovery:
 
 

From: https://www.bbc.com/...onment-49486980
 

'All bets now off' on which ape was humanity's ancestor

 
Researchers have discovered a nearly complete 3.8-million-year-old skull of an early ape-like human ancestor in Ethiopia.
 
An analysis of the new specimen challenges ideas about how the first humans evolved from ape-like ancestors.
The current view that an ape named Lucy was among a species that gave rise to the first early humans may have to be reconsidered.
 
The discovery is reported in the journal Nature.
 
The skull was found by Prof Yohannes Haile-Selassie at a place called Miro Dora, which is in the Mille District of Ethiopia's Afar Regional State.
 
The scientist, who's affiliated to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, US, said he immediately recognised the significance of the fossil.
...
 
The reason for this likely elevated status is because we can now say that anamensis and afarensis actually overlapped in time. The former did not evolve directly into the latter in a neat linear manner, as previously supposed.
 
The realisation comes about through the reinterpretation that the new fossil brings to bear on a previously discovered 3.9-million-year-old skull fragment. That fragment had been assigned to anamensis. Scientists can now see it is actually the remains of an afarensis, pushing this species' origin deeper into the past.
 
It's apparent now the two species must have co-existed for at least 100,000 years.
 
What most likely happened was that a small group of anamensis isolated itself from the main population and over time evolved into afarensis because of adaptations to local conditions. The two types rubbed along for a while before the remnant anamensis died out.
 
The finding is important because it suggests that additional overlaps with other advanced ape-like species may also have occurred, increasing the number of potential evolutionary routes to the first humans.
 
In short, although this latest discovery does not disprove that Lucy's kind gave rise to the Homo group, it does bring other recently named species into contention. Prof Haile-Selassie agreed that "all bets are now off" as to which species is humanity's direct ancestor.

 
It made me think of a pattern that I've noticed, and led me to a hypothesis regarding why we are the way we are as a species.

 

Our evolutionary origins are a tangled web of interconnections among many hominid species, not a linear progression like those simplistic diagrams of an ape slowly standing up and walking. We currently don't know how we came to be from all the prior hominid species that existed, but the pattern that stands out to me is one of multiple hominid species overlapping in space and time until one ends up prevailing while the other goes extinct, and then the pattern is repeated, and that's been going on for the past 5-10 million years (give or take).

 

The last great inter-hominid conflict was apparently between Cro-Magnon/early modern humans and Neanderthals. They may have coexisted for a long time (millennia, even), but then a tipping-point was reached through some mechanism (climate change, population pressure, disease, etc.) and one hominid species actively finishes off the other in a mass-slaughter. Hominids like the little "hobbit" people didn't stand a chance.

 

This is even going on in other primate genera; consider chimpanzees vs. bonobos. They're overlapping in space and time, for now. At some point, if they were put into intense enough conflict, the chimps would probably end up slaughtering all the bonobos.

 

Our evolution may be a series of those kinds of genocidal dichotomies, basically. Whichever species killed off the other passed on its DNA, and then the winner of the next conflict did the same, so we posses the genetic heritage of millions of years of rather brutal "selection pressures," i.e., we're expert as mass-killing other hominids because we had to be to survive.

 

And now that we've vanquished all competing hominid species and achieved unambiguous dominance, we've turned our evolutionary fight/flight responses towards other hominid species on each other, which I suspect is how racism came to be.

 

There was a time when to fear and mistrust other bipedal primates who didn't look like you was the correct and prudent thing to do since those "others" were literally not the same species as you and your kin.

 

I'm talking tens of thousands of years ago, and beyond. If those instincts have been hard-wired into our DNA for millions of years then it's not going to be easy to turn them off. Since there are no other species of hominid left to be wary of, we turn that instinct on each other by focusing on superficial differences. This is my hypothesis, anyway. It does seem to explain the otherwise baffling resilience of racism, and our propensity for mass murder.

 

I'm still baffled as to what to do about things like racism or our propensity for mass-murder. Maybe gene therapy? (I'm joking, probably)

 

 

And in other news, this aside mentioned in the article was a surprise since I'd never heard it before:

 

The discovery of the first afarensis skeleton in 1974 caused a sensation. She was nicknamed Lucy by researchers after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, which was playing at the excavation site.

 

So the fossil that became a household name around the world and revealed one of our earliest upright ancestors was named after LSD. That is freakin' awesome, lol. And what a trip that must've been...

Edited by TVCasualty, 29 August 2019 - 12:46 PM.

[Alder Logs]

There seems to be reason to think that the good folks at the Smithsonian have been hiding any bones that don't fit with the current academic company lines.  There have been news accounts of tiny and giant skeletons going back, it it seems too often, the physical evidence goes into a Smithsonian void of some kind.  Anyway, I personally have my doubts about any science that, as Max Planck said, "...changes, one funeral at a time."  I distrust the dating, and the theories, from folks, who despite their credentials, fall into those whom Velikovsky called, "stargazers and grave diggers." 

Edited by Alder Logs, 29 August 2019 - 01:19 PM.

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

I suspect its why many people grapple with accepting we came from apes. The time frame was just always off, like you said not so much a missing link as millions of years of evolution over multiple species. Just like all plants and animals came from fungi at one point. 

 

Also i like your theory of dominance to explain why only the homo sapien remains. It sort of reminds me of gladiator. The battle at the start, taking on the barbarian horde. How many times was this scene repeated in actual history over millions of years.  I had a guide in Guatemala say to me. Many people say that the mayans disappeared. He said it was quite simple actually. As famine set in the people had to move. They just migrated and integrated into the other populaces around them. Assimilating 

[Thacan]

@TVCasualty in the short time that I have had the pleasure to read your posts I have always found your words worth my time.  You are articulate and thoughtful, something that I admire.  Besides yourself, I truly think several of the people on mycotopia are potential best seller book authors.

 

Somewhere in my self-help reading I came across the notion of the primitive brain.  We are born survivalists, our goal is to multiply, while struggle in our survival to the last breath we compete for ‘territory’ and our ‘laws’, everyone but our family and tribe are potential enemies, and we are programmed to follow customs, religion, and the ‘law’ as we are taught by family and tribe.  Thats the primitive brain and I think it is a common denominator for most of us.

 

Wouldn’t it be a surprise to have somehow recorded history of these ancient species and that they somehow got along?  Imagine that!

 

Imagine that in the near future that we can reach a higher plane of consciousness, that duality dissolves and we harmonize with all life on earth.  Fantasy, maybe; a quantum leap, indeed.

Edited by Thacan, 29 August 2019 - 10:04 PM.

[Alder Logs]

Imagine that in the near future that we can reach a higher plane of consciousness, that duality dissolves and we harmonize with all life on earth.

 

Maybe it's happening now, and we just were assuming the road wouldn't seem to be quite this bumpy?  

[Alder Logs]

BTW, the current vehicle for the true being behind Alder Logs (and any other given name or alias) has little to do with who and what it is, as it appears in this form.  I could know just as much as a slug, and all the assumptions about that slug would mean just as little.   So, you guys evolve in any direction you can.  Enjoy the ride.

[TVCasualty]

There seems to be reason to think that the good folks at the Smithsonian have been hiding any bones that don't fit with the current academic company lines.  There have been news accounts of tiny and giant skeletons going back, it it seems too often, the physical evidence goes into a Smithsonian void of some kind.  Anyway, I personally have my doubts about any science that, as Max Planck said, "...changes, one funeral at a time."  I distrust the dating, and the theories, from folks, who despite their credentials, fall into those whom Velikovsky called, "stargazers and grave diggers." 

 

I don’t know how to respond to that.

 

I guess it requires choosing a context for discussion where such things are admissible/accepted (i.e., the existence of giants and the falsifiablity of current dating methods) vs. one where they are not (mainstream paleontology/anthropology).

I can engage in either, though in this case it might not matter so much because the problem of what happened to the extinct hominids and why we’re the ones that are on top at the moment is the same regardless of how big or small the others were.

So forgetting about the sizes of other hominids, and their relative time-lines of existence, and granting that there have been many hominid species throughout our evolutionary history and there were likely numerous instances of multiple species overlapping in time and place, does it seem plausible that we are the end result of a process of decisively settling inter-species conflicts among hominids and that such a genetic heritage might explain some of our modern civilization’s more problematic and intractable problems?

But even if there were once giants, our precocious little ancestors must’ve kicked their sorry oversized asses since we’re not exactly giants ourselves, so that DNA obviously didn’t pass the selection process on into what became us. When the time came I bet we killed them in their sleep.
 

[TVCasualty]

I suspect its why many people grapple with accepting we came from apes.

 

I think what many are grappling with is the fact that they/we are STILL apes.

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

 

I think what many are grappling with is the fact that they/we are STILL apes.

 

 

I find when one accepts that fact it can explain so much about the human condition. As intelligent as one can become, we are all  still victim to our subconscious minds

 

It's amazing how some people get so offend by the thought of it. Mans hubris

[prof_it_e]

..."we turn that instinct on each other by focusing on superficial differences. This is my hypothesis, anyway. It does seem to explain the otherwise baffling resilience of racism, and our propensity for mass murder."...

 

 

Should replace the 10 Commandments with just this, or make it the basis of some all encompassing (spiritual?) discipline, would be nice if the world had a better understanding of why we do what we do, instead of dress it up as all sorts of complicated. We are hard wired to destroy each other, it's not because there's really an explanation involving sex, or sexual orientation, or what country your'e from, what language you speak, the color of your skin, choice of religion, choice of political party etc. Maybe if we understood that we almost have no choice but to destroy each other we'd be a little better at not doing it. Then again maybe there's a good reason for it to be that way, it almost seems built into the very fabric of reality, doesn't just involve people (animals), insects, plants... also involves planets. A good reason? Maybe something to do with natural selection, maybe something to do with creation, hinging on destruction... Hinging... Codependent..? Interconnected...

[Alder Logs]

Hard wired?  How about, "hard conditioned?"  I think we, as thinking beings, are not hard wired to do anything in particular.  If we want to take a view of history and make it our identity for all times, that's not good thinking.  

 

Think about what the word, "freedom," means.   Is it something someone else gives us?  I would say not.  In a conditioned view of our own potential, especially one where we are conditioned to think of ourselves as these bodies, with everything hinging on identifying as some evolved ape, will not our learned societal and cultural self-definition become a sort of mental prison?   Our true freedom would be to take the volition to step out of our cages of prejudice as to ourselves and our fellows.  

 

Maybe our plumbing and electrical are those of apes, but what of our mentality?   We could be gods in apes' clothing. 

 

Do we choose infinite potential, or the mental cages we've been sold from the time we took the story of culture as what is? 

 

 

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

~Henry Miller

 

 

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

~Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

Can we take it again from the top?

Edited by Alder Logs, 31 August 2019 - 10:35 AM.

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

Hard wired?  How about, "hard conditioned?"  I think we, as thinking beings, are not hard wired to do anything in particular.  If we want to take a view of history and make it our identity for all times, that's not good thinking.  

 

Think about what the word, "freedom," means.   Is it something someone else gives us?  I would say not.  In a conditioned view of our own potential, especially one where we are conditioned to think of ourselves as these bodies, with everything hinging on identifying as some evolved ape, will not our learned societal and cultural self-definition become a sort of mental prison?   Our true freedom would be to take the volition to step out of our cages of prejudice as to ourselves and our fellows.  

 

Maybe our plumbing and electrical are those of apes, but what of our mentality?   We could be gods in apes' clothing. 

 

Do we choose infinite potential, or the mental cages we've been sold from the time we took the story of culture as what is? 

 

 

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

~Henry Miller

 

 

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

~Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

Can we take it again from the top?

 

I would agree that much is conditioning from society. How ever I would like to believe that hard wiring does take a central role as well. Think of the common house cat, it has been domesticated for possibly thousands of years. Yet encoded in its DNA is the desire to hunt and kill things. Cat owners will know what I mean.. You would think over a century that this would have been conditioned out of the domesticated animal but it has not

 

One could certainly argue morality is just an illusion created by man? Does the House cat ever feel guilty for torturing an animal before killing it. Then I think of the drastic difference between bonobos and chimps. One is a caring sharing lover, the other a savage warrior. Bonobos are the only ape that willingly shares its food . Here I have two apples you take one. The bonobos do seem to exhibit some forms of morality.  Is it the hard coding in their DNA or the conditioning by shared experience that the family would carry on over generations? Hard to say but I would guess likely it is a combination of both

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

 

..."we turn that instinct on each other by focusing on superficial differences. This is my hypothesis, anyway. It does seem to explain the otherwise baffling resilience of racism, and our propensity for mass murder."...

 

 

Should replace the 10 Commandments with just this, or make it the basis of some all encompassing (spiritual?) discipline, would be nice if the world had a better understanding of why we do what we do, instead of dress it up as all sorts of complicated. We are hard wired to destroy each other, it's not because there's really an explanation involving sex, or sexual orientation, or what country your'e from, what language you speak, the color of your skin, choice of religion, choice of political party etc. Maybe if we understood that we almost have no choice but to destroy each other we'd be a little better at not doing it. Then again maybe there's a good reason for it to be that way, it almost seems built into the very fabric of reality, doesn't just involve people (animals), insects, plants... also involves planets. A good reason? Maybe something to do with natural selection, maybe something to do with creation, hinging on destruction... Hinging... Codependent..? Interconnected...

 

 

I would wager a few of you are fans of dostoyevsky. I always loved this paragraph from notes of the underground

 

Even if man were nothingbut a piano key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of sheer ingratitude, simply to have his own way…then, after all, perhaps only by his curse will he attain his object, that is, really convince himself that he is a man and not a piano key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated…then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and have this own way. 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground

[Alder Logs]

Maybe its clear to the cat that catting is its process, a process it in which it needs neither to judge nor reflect.  It seems clear to me that expressing here as the human being, as more than the animal form, temperately, we are called to wider potentialities.   But, anyone else's mileage may vary. 

 

 

However I would like to believe that hard wiring does take a central role as well.

 

In Richard Bach's playful short novel, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, there is a book within the book called, The Messiah's Handbook.  Occasionally this inner book is consulted throughout the outer book, falling open to a page that pertains at a given instant in the up-and-coming messiah's evolution into the job.  One of those pages says this: 

 

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours."

 

Edited by Alder Logs, 31 August 2019 - 02:48 PM.

[TVCasualty]

Hard wired?  How about, "hard conditioned?"  I think we, as thinking beings, are not hard wired to do anything in particular.  If we want to take a view of history and make it our identity for all times, that's not good thinking.  

 

Think about what the word, "freedom," means.   Is it something someone else gives us?  I would say not.  In a conditioned view of our own potential, especially one where we are conditioned to think of ourselves as these bodies, with everything hinging on identifying as some evolved ape, will not our learned societal and cultural self-definition become a sort of mental prison?   Our true freedom would be to take the volition to step out of our cages of prejudice as to ourselves and our fellows.  

 

Maybe our plumbing and electrical are those of apes, but what of our mentality?   We could be gods in apes' clothing. 

 

Do we choose infinite potential, or the mental cages we've been sold from the time we took the story of culture as what is? 

 

 

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

~Henry Miller

 

 

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

~Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

Can we take it again from the top?

 

 

Well, this is a thread about evolution, which is arguably an eternal work in progress.

 

It's pretty clear to me that quite a bit of our behavior is hard-wired, though the degree to which that initial genetic coding is reinforced by the brain's neural network can vary quite a bit. And it can be changed to varying degrees as well.

 

Some people can't restrain their fight-or-flight response at all when insulted and so they punch people in the face without a second thought (i.e., people who are "immature" even if they are technically adults). Others can restrain such impulses (i.e. people who are "mature"), and still others can learn how to prevent such impulses from reflexively manifesting altogether (the "mature" and "wise").

 

And like with our species itself, we evolve along that same track in life (ideally); children smack each other, adolescents insult each other, and mature adults communicate with each other. So IMO we're in the still-unfolding process of becoming whatever it is that we're becoming.

 

There was a "test" administered to Paul/Muad'Dib in the book Dune to see if he was truly human or not (by determining if he could transcend his instincts with his intellect in the context of severe pain). I thought that that was brilliant since such traits are clearly not yet possessed by all, so there really should be a way to determine who is whom among all the apes that wear shoes and walk upright.

 

That becomes especially important in the context of who holds the reins of political and corporate power, which is in turn directly related to why the world is currently being engulfed in both real and metaphorical fire. So the stakes are high, to put it mildly, and time is growing short. Humans can't evolve spiritually  any further if we're rendered extinct.

 

 

 

The frustrating thing about "freedom" is that there is no definition that is absolute. It's always a compromise because the act of making a choice precludes the ability to manifest the others (it's the old "You can't have your cake and eat it, too" problem).

 

Whichever choice we make in a given context will also posses a degree of inertia, which is a further restriction of freedom by virtue of the energy required to change a given course. For example, farmers have a hell of a time being able to go on road trips, and touring musicians have a hell of a time storing lots of stuff and growing their own food. Both have a degree of freedom the other lacks, so whether one feels "free" or not is apparently a function of aligning one's circumstances with one's temperament. And whether one truly "is" free or not is too abstract to meaningfully answer, at least for anyone but ourselves.

 

A lot of this stuff hinges on one's Cosmology, specifically whether one believes in the existence of a spirit world that is not accessible through our physical senses (there is an underlying Intent to the Universe) vs. a purely materialistic view of existence (everything is random chance). My experiences (and my very large "puzzling evidence" file) put me squarely in the former group, but that raises as many questions as it answers (understatement of the millennium, lol).

 

There's a significant physical aspect to our existence and evolution, obviously, so there must be a purpose for such a massive expenditure of energy. And the process through which this purpose is manifesting is a physical one, so there may be important lessons missed if we try to "transcend" our physical nature too quickly/soon. Which is to say if we're here for a reason (and if there is a spirit world then we must be) then we should probably try to make sure we get our physical to-do list checked off while we're here since we'll be spending considerably more of our existence as non-physical beings and we might not get a second chance for a while.

[Alder Logs]

I see it hinging on identification as a body, or that which has a body.  My body/mind has had a lifetime of issues called, "learning disorders," which in another context, might have been considered evolutionary advantages, that being ADHD in a hunter/gatherer society, one especially suited to the hunter side.  But even if this current expression were in such a situation, would not a story arising from that context not be what that human was, granted some self-reflective capacity were there?  Am I the body/mind, or am I that which sees it?  Am I the mind's stories about being smarter than the average bear ape? 

 

Is not the profound insanity Krishnamurti addresses the fallout of a general species-wide false identification with our body/mind limitations?   Has not the human, in its totality, already evolved beyond the limits of its animal nature, should it choose?   

 

[TVCasualty]

I see it hinging on identification as a body, or that which has a body.  My body/mind has had a lifetime of issues called, "learning disorders," which in another context, might have been considered evolutionary advantages, that being ADHD in a hunter/gatherer society, one especially suited to the hunter side.  But even if this current expression were in such a situation, would not a story arising from that context not be what that human was, granted some self-reflective capacity were there?  Am I the body/mind, or am I that which sees it?  Am I the mind's stories about being smarter than the average bear ape? 

 

Is not the profound insanity Krishnamurti addresses the fallout of a general species-wide false identification with our body/mind limitations? Has not the human, in its totality, already evolved beyond the limits of its animal nature, should it choose? 

 

 

What appears to be happening to me is that we inhabit bodies that are dependent upon a functioning ecosystem to sustain, but that ecosystem is being destroyed by some of the very creatures that depend on it. Violence is an integral part of that, so many are still choosing to manifest their animal natures to the detriment of those who have moved on and become fully "human."

 

This might be because those who are still wallowing in their animal natures are only just beginning to grapple with self-awareness of their body/mind and its limitations. That is, there is no "species-wide" phenomenon occurring beyond what defines us as a species and our individual cognitive/spiritual evolution falls somewhere along a very wide spectrum. Or perhaps it's because they haven't begun to grapple with such self-awareness at all yet. But such bipedal primates still exist, and are really making a mess of things. If they make too much of a mess, the rest of us will see our bodies become dead meat too, regardless of our mind's level of awareness.

 

I guess what I don't get here is what your point is. It seems to be "just awaken and be enlightened." Judging by the current rate of species extinction (that is entirely our species' fault) I would say we have not collectively arrived at that point yet even if some number of individuals have.

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

 

 

 

 

 So IMO we're in the still-unfolding process of becoming whatever it is that we're becoming.

 

 

 One possibility is the eventual digitization of the mind. Technology has exploded at such an exponential rate who can really say what the future will hold. In the last 100 years we have seen horse and buggy to commercial space flight. What will the next 50 or 100 bring? Perhaps that truly is the only way to ascend into a higher consciousness. One must shed the hominid dna and become only thought? Or will we just invent an AI that takes our place, them becoming our next stage of evolution. Like our fungal overlords that spawned us oh so long ago

Edited by flashingrooster, 31 August 2019 - 04:38 PM.

[TVCasualty]

 

In Richard Bach's playful short novel, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, there is a book within the book called, The Messiah's Handbook.  Occasionally this inner book is consulted throughout the outer book, falling open to a page that pertains at a given instant in the up-and-coming messiah's evolution into the job.  One of those pages says this: 

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours."

 

I guess I could've just replied with "I'm not arguing for limitations, I'm trying to figure out and understand our point of departure."

Edited by TVCasualty, 31 August 2019 - 04:31 PM.

[FLASHINGROOSTER]

 

 

I guess what I don't get here is what your point is. It seems to be "just awaken and be enlightened." Judging by the current rate of species extinction (that is entirely our species' fault) I would say we have not collectively arrived at that point yet even if some number of individuals have.

 

 

Please don't take offense but I don't think anyone has truly gotten there. 

 To never experience, anger, jealousy, greed, fear, pain, loneliness. I think someone could pretend to feel that way, but not truly. Levels of control can certainly be achieved, but  I  like to take the dark, joker side look on things. I believe anyone can commit acts that in their wildest dreams, they can swear up and down they never would. You truly cannot know how you will react to to certain things until they happen to you. Like death, you mind has emotional barriers that prevent you from truly imagining what its like to lose a loved one. Because if you could imagine it, you would go insane

 What kind of a life would that really be anyway. To exist is to suffer . If you lose something or someone and it does not shock you emotionally. Did you ever really love it in the first place? Can there be love without loss?

 There is something very important to our flesh and blood existence, as it may be the only one we get.