BLUEPRINT FOR A COMPETITIVE AGE
Evolution, in our own age of profit, has granted us a subliminal charter for exploitation, privilege, and discrimination. The standard word for a species’ use of the environment (the ecological niche) is exploit. Animals and men are routinely described as “colonizing” their habitats (even if they’ve always been there, see chapter 11).
A foundation myth, to give a quick definition, is a story or legend that legitimizes a social custom or value system. The Darwinian struggle for existence, conceived as the war of nature, helps us to understand and justify our own warlike age. Richard Dawkins, Darwin’s principal sharpshooter today, uses the arms race as an analogy for survival of the fittest and, by inference, makes it quite normal for one race to dominate another. In a personal letter, Darwin once wrote that the more civilized races have “beaten [the others] in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”50 Regarding this outlook, I am reminded of an Oahspen verse: “Now, behold, I have left savages at your door, and ye raise them not up, but destroy them. Showing you, that even your wisest and most learned have no power in resurrection [upliftment].”51
Capitalists have long used social Darwinism to justify unfettered market competition, on the plea that competition is crucial for progress and for weeding out those who don’t keep up. Progress, in such a scheme, is only possible by eliminating imperfections from humanity—best accomplished through competition. The complete title of Darwin’s famous book was The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Buttressed by such ideas of the favored or fittest nations, expansionist policies have only thrived on survival of the fittest and the belief in Manifest Destiny, all cloaked in the garment of science and enlightenment. “In prim Victorian England,” noted Jeffrey Goodman in The Genesis Mystery, “Darwin’s thoughts about dark-skinned natives prevailed, providing a footing for racism and . . . imperialism.”52 This idea of survival of the fittest, of the favored, which nicely lends itself to a master race theory, finds Darwin, in chapter 2 of The Descent of Man, accounting for animal and plant migrations according to the “dominating power” of those favored species in a “higher state of perfection.” Well, no wonder: Darwin’s father always told him that “the race is for the strong.”
Not a few have taken exception to the competition model, which seems to rationalize one group (the fittest) monopolizing the niche. American politician William Jennings Bryan, in the 1920s, believed that the Darwinian law of competition was just the sort of ideology that allowed such evils as robber baron capitalism and German militarism. Hitler, a convinced Darwinist, leaned on the evolutionary biology of Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel, Germany’s best-known Darwinian propagandist, judged the different human races to be as distinct from one another as different animal species, with the Teutonic/Nordic people, of course, as the pinnacle of evolution. Consider the devastating results of this racial-state idea and predatory nationalism.
A recent writer, chronicling the words of a Holocaust survivor, quotes him as stating: “If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as . . . a mind-machine . . . as a pawn of drives and reactions . . . we feed the nihilism to which modern man is prone. . . . The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment.” The chronicler then makes mention of “the famous German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel . . . [who] blasted Christianity for advancing an anthropocentric . . . view of humanity. . . . Today the atheistic Darwinian biologist Richard Dawkins argues that, based on the Darwinian understanding of human origins, we need to desanctify human life, divesting ourselves of any notion that humans are created in the image of God and thus uniquely valuable.”53
The central mechanism of evolution, natural selection, always seems to entail one group holding the advantage over another. In evolutionary thinking, someone always has the advantage. It is obvious, at least to Ian Tattersall, why H. sapiens, “intolerant of competition . . . and able to do something about it,” came to be the only human species on Earth. When they arrived in Europe, supposedly from Africa, and found Neanderthals, within ten thousand short years, the Neanderthals were gone, presumably as a result of failing in competition with the newcomers. Known as the replacement model, this idea of conquest or subjugation or even genocide is just one spinoff of the misguided and self-condoning theory of competition. It is likewise assumed that Homo habilis went extinct because “he could no longer compete.”54 In some circles, australopiths are regarded as “failed” humans. We often find this word failure (as well as success) in the literature: “The successful development of one group spells doom for another,” said C. Loring Brace. But even if Darwin and his followers were right about competition, so what? It does not follow that a different species resulted from it, and it cannot be used successfully to explain species disappearance or extinction. The idea that poorer species are replaced by better ones remains unproven. Through the evolutionary lens, even extinction is a failure (failure to adapt), which is not only “impossible to prove”55 but actually circular—extinction is the failure to survive!
With evolutionary patois set in the competitive mode, technology, it is argued, gave early man “an astonishing advantage” over other hominids, Tim White remarking that man now had “the ability to exploit a broader range of habitats, eventually enabling our ancestors to leave Africa and colonize most of the globe . . . [becoming] the ultimate victor [e.a.].”56
Using survival alone (self-preservation or even group preservation) as the measure of success sends the wrong message to students of life. With no morality or ethics or quality in the equation, life is sterile, stripped of purpose and meaning, trapped in the darkness of matter. Just survive, as if the end (survival) justifies the means, which are selfishness and competition. The implication is that aggression, outdoing the rival, is not only inherent but also the key to success.
NOT A DOG-EAT-DOG WORLD
Overlooked in all this is nature’s give and take, her symbiotic side—two species engaging in intimate, mutually beneficial behavior. Plants, for example, get phosphorus and other nutrients from fungi, which settle on their roots; while the fungi get carbohydrates from the plant. Plovers pick leeches from crocodile’s teeth, offering dental hygiene in return for food; just as the whale shark waits calmly as pilot fish swim in and out of its mouth—cleaning its teeth. Bees, while collecting nectar, pollinate dozens of species of flowers. “Symbiosis . . . pops up so frequently that it is safe to say it’s the rule, not the exception. . . . More than 90% of plant species are thought to engage in symbiotic couplings.”57 Neither could any of us humans exist without the bacteria that live in our gut, digesting food and producing vitamins. Evolutionists call all this coadaptation, but are at a loss to explain how this evolved in stages. How could two different species evolve separately, yet depend on each other in such intricate ways for survival?
As Richard Milton has pointed out, in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, “the overwhelming majority of creatures do not fight, do not kill for food and do not compete aggressively for space.” Food sharing, it is widely believed, is what made us human. We hear that the last common ancestor of hominids and African apes was characterized by relatively little aggression. We have not found much evidence of primate-versus-primate strife. Chimps, our “nearest” cousins, are quite peaceful; most apes are vegetarians. Altruism, it is further revealed, even between different species, is not uncommon. Dominance nonetheless remains a central theme of Darwinian evolution. Has it endured simply as a charter for Western opportunism and unrelenting hegemony over the Third World? For ours is a philosophy of winners and losers—what a dark view of man, making self-preservation at the cost of others the supreme law. Symbiosis/cooperation is called by Darwinists the
problem of altruism! But it is not a problem.
Within the same species, powerful . . . safeguards prevent serious fighting. . . . These inhibitory mechanisms . . . are as powerful in most animals as the drives of hunger, sex or fear. . . . The defense of territory is assured nearly always without bloodshed.
ARTHUR KOESTLER, THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE
Our ancestors were strongly cooperative creatures. . . . Social cooperation [w]as the key factor in the successful evolution of Homo sapiens. . . . We are a cooperative rather than an aggressive animal.
RICHARD LEAKEY AND ROGER LEWIN, ORIGINS
We will not be a “successful” species until we achieve harmony, trust, understanding, fellowship, self-discipline, and reciprocity, which are the keys to enlightenment. Science without a moral rudder, without the guidance of humane principles or the consideration of goodness itself, will run riot on the future of mankind. If man is to be a successful species, he will learn to overcome his competitive bent, seeking unity and common cause all the days of his life.
2
RETURN OF THE HOBBIT
Our Ancestors the Little People
“Our ancestor was much smaller than contemporary humans,” noted Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin in Origins. Who was that little ancestor? This chapter is about the real missing link in the fossil record: Homo sapiens pygmaeus, Ihin man, the little people, known in some places as the Old Ones, elsewhere as the Immortals.
HOBBIT HULLABALOO
Thanks to good old media hype, 2004 was dubbed “The Year of the Hobbit”: When a fossil woman in her tiniest dimensions was discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, anthropologists struck a pose of humility, averring “how much we still have to learn about human evolution.”1 But Flores woman (dubbed Flo or Lady Flo) goes more to helping us unlearn human evolution. As one website pegged the problems surrounding this diminutive race: “Little people raise big questions.”2 Hmm, they said about the same thing when Africa’s extremely short Lucy (Au. afarensis) was found in 1973: “This little midget . . . will mess up everything”3 on the family tree. Others said “these little remains could rewrite the story of modern human evolution.”4 Rewrite? Actually, it could kill it.
Figure 2.1. Australian little people as seen in two Wanjina figures fully clothed with the distinct anatomical features of foreign-looking beings, with pallid, triangular faces, big eyes, long narrow noses, and short arms. Courtesy of Vesna Tenodi.
Figure 2.2. Ihin man. Drawing by Ruth (Skorjenko) Wobschall.
The problem was that Flo, at three feet seven inches, seemed too little to be Homo/human. As for Africa’s Lucy, her primitive jaw was at least 500 kyr younger than a previously collected older, but more modern-shaped jaw: something more modern came before her, upsetting of course the evolutionary scheme of things.*17 But that’s where the little people come in, Homo sapiens pygmaeus, whose ancestry is Ihin, a race almost as old as Ardi/Asu and actually older than Lucy and her Au (australopith) family. At Hadar in East Africa, where Lucy was found, there was another larger hominid (Homo, thought Donald Johanson, if only because the molars are reduced and the front teeth rather modern). But again, these mod features were turning up too early in the record. Someone along the lines of modern man (AMH) must have existed in earliest times. But who?
Figure 2.3. Donald Johanson (left) and Tim White (right) in the halcyon days (1978), announcing Lucy, their wonderful discovery, to the world; fossils on the table are mostly Hadar specimens. Courtesy of Donald Johanson.
The origin of Homo sapiens must be sought for in a much more remote past than we could ever have supposed.
MARCELLIN BOULE, FOSSIL MEN
When England’s prestigious Nature magazine broke the hobbit story late in ’04, the media loved this prehistoric shrimp, following up with headlines like “Tiny-human find becomes huge news.” But then, as everything about the Flores hobbit stood to upset the evolutionary apple cart, news stories began to reflect the controversy: “The Hobbit Wars Heat Up,” “Hobbit Hullabaloo,” “Hobbit Bone Wars.”5
The first challenge was how to pigeonhole this pre-Neolithic creature who weighed little more than sixty pounds and was an astonishing composite of archaic and modern features. Overlooking the obvious race mixing, the binomial scientific name given her—Homo floresiensis—placed her in the human genus (Homo) but kept her at arm’s length from sapiens, the true human group, by assigning her to a separate species (floresiensis).
Also called LB1 after the caves (Liang Bua) in which these bones were found, this hobbit did not belong to any separate species, others argued, but was merely a pathologic version of our own species, the creature beset not only with “dwarfism,” but also, supposedly, with some brand of microcephalic disorder or cretinism, the brain being only one-third the size of us moderns. But let’s remember that pathology had also been pinned on the first-discovered Neanderthals, the first Homo erectus, and so on. All hominids,*18 as I understand the human family, are in the same species, the only differences being racial (subspecies).
Well, the pathologic argument was shot down soon enough: hobbit brains look nothing like those of microcephalics. Besides, the argument could hardly hold when thirteen additional specimens were found, all with the same chimpsize brain as LB1: 400 cc. Flores’s hobbit was certainly different from any other AMH (anatomically modern human); these people, in fact, rather resembled H. erectus: similar shape of crania, long arms, thick bones, hunched shoulders, short legs, large flat feet (see figure 2.4) not especially suited for running, bulging eyes, prominent brow, sloping forehead, and, the proverbial clincher, no real chin. As a matter of fact, H. erectus did coexist with H. sapiens in this region 60 kya.6 Indeed, the first-known abode of H. erectus was Java (Flores, east of Java, is situated between Bali and Timor). Now isn’t it pretty obvious Flo carried some of that Java Man’s (H. erectus) genes?
But even more primitive than Homo erectus in some ways, Flores’s hobbit has been compared to one of our earliest ancestors, Au: “Maybe hobbits had descended from Au. afarensis—Lucy’s kin,” even though hobbit’s “face and teeth are all wrong for australopiths,” grappled William Jungers, who nonetheless noted that Flo’s “suite of primitive skeletal characteristics, such as her apelike wrist bones and her flaring pelvis, bears an uncanny resemblance to . . . Lucy.”7
Figure 2.4. Artist’s rendition of hobbit. Drawing by Karen Barry.
Others agreed that perhaps Flores’s hobbit descended from Au (both were so short). Or perhaps she was a dwarf form of H. erectus. Skeptics, though, pointed out that hobbit’s pea brain was way too small to be a dwarfed version of any Homo erectus (whose brains are twice the size). As Carleton Coon once said, “the racial dwarfs are a subrace . . . without known erectus ancestors.”8 And the reason is because the little people actually came before the Druks (H. erectus). They were, as we will soon see, essentially ancestors, not descendants, of the H. erectus race (and of the Au race as well).
Absolute size, it turns out, has little to do with mental powers. For example, despite Neanderthal’s impressive cc, his gray matter shows a want of convolutions, and he is back-brained and has skimpy frontal lobes. Although hobbit’s brain-body ratio was more like a chimp, her tiny brain was intricately folded and unusually complex; the temporal lobes were really wide, and convolutions were just in the regions associated with executive functions.
In the hobbit were combined Lucy-like (Au) genes with pithecanthropine (H. erectus) genes—and modern ones as well. Flo, a happy hybrid, was definitely “modern” in teeth, temporal lobes, and aspects of the skeleton. These little people were skilled hunters of the dwarf elephants (called stegodons). They made blades, perforators, points, and other sophisticated tools for the hunt, and they made fire for cooking. Though the brain was small, the organization of their frontal lobes and cerebellum—the way the neurons were connected—was humanlike, not apelike. Their brain, say experts, was actually highly evolved.
What is the point of arguing whether hobbit’s ance
stor was H. erectus or Au or H. sapiens when we find contributions from all these phenotypes combined in little Flo? The simple fact is that she is a marvelous hybrid, not a “freak born with a tiny brain.”9 These freaks, according to Australian paleoanthropologist Peter Brown, of the University of New England, who analyzed the hobbit remains, were “surprisingly human.” In fact, they were a lot more human than the preposterous chimp-faced reconstruction supplied by National Geographic.10 Who told the artist to draw in a gorilla face? Evolutionists, of course. Even Java Man, older than Flo, though rugged, did not look like an ape.
TABLE 2.1. ROUNDUP OF BRAIN CC’S (CUBIC CENTIMETERS)
Hominid/Primate Brain Size*19
Ar. ramidus (Asu) 350
Au 400–600
Au. robustus 500–550
chimpanzee 300–400
gorilla 460–550†20
H. erectus 700–1,200
H. ergaster 800–900
H. erectus pekinensis (Sinanthropus) 915–1,075
H. floresiensis (hobbit) 400
H. habilis 510–750
H. heidelbergensis 1,200–1,300
H. neanderthalensis (Amud) 1,200–1,740
H. neanderthalensis (Ehringsdorf) 1,480
H. neanderthalensis (La Chapelle) 1,620
H. neanderthalensis (Shanidar) 1,200–1,600
H. rudolfensis (Skull 1470) 800
H. sapiens (Cro-Magnon) 1,350–1660
H. sapiens (earliest) 1,250
H. sapiens (modern human; smallest, nonpathological) 790‡21
H. sapiens (modern human; world average) 1,350–1,450§22
H. sapiens (modern Tiwi and Andaman Islanders) 1,000
Mysterious Origins of Hybrid Man Page 7
