Origins

From Real Time to the Future

To write of the probability of Homo sapiens L. being dead as a dodo is truly significant because the term "dead as a dodo" implies not the death of an individual but the death of an entire species. The phrase rings of finality, complete oblivion, the ultimate demise.

The dodo is extinct. Along with the woolly mammoth, the saber tooth tiger, the mastodon, Tyrannosaurus Rex, the lepidodendron, the Pennsylvania bison, the passenger pigeon, and legions of plants and animals, not to mention bacteria, protozoans, and viruses, the dodo is gone forever. However, neither the ginkgo nor coelocanth is extinct, although eons old as species, and the common ant appears to be unchanged morphologically after 40 million years. What is going on here?

A compelling principle of biology is evolution. The range of differences and diversity among living things, the dynamism of biological change and stability, the underlying biochemistry of genes are all concepts wrapped up in the single idea of evolution, and evolution is the great guiding principle that unites, in our minds, both causality and prediction in the biological world. Because of logic, there is great appeal in the notion of evolution within the frame work of the great expanse of time in which living organisms have existed upon the earth; the idea almost has become a testament to life. The system at work almost seems 'wise' in its ability to select genes and gene combinations that have the greatest potentiality for survival, while ruthlessly culling the unfit.

The message of evolution, primitively stated, is that species are created and species are destroyed. Like individuals, species come and go in the broad arena of life. Genetic mechanisms, in concert with environmental forces, have exerted selective pressures for eons, and the result is the array of species nows living whose complexity has increased with time. Darwinism and its more refined genetic derivatives point with great clarity to a process that selects only those capable of surviving and reproducing in the environmental circumstances at any given time.

If evolution is the great principle of biology, the text of biological faith, then surely both aspects of speciation must be considered in order to understand the whole. Life and death is the name of the game—creation and survival or extinction of species. Regardless of the details of creation, life essentially begins, develops, and matures, then ages until senility arrives and death ensues. Before humans ever considered the question of plain biology, let alone evolution, the question of death and the extinction of the group loomed as a large, dark cloud on every day's horizon.

Plagues, other diseases, starvation, floods, insect hordes, wild beasts, droughts, hurricanes, the bleakness of winters, the cruelty of parched summers, and wars—all things that tended to keep life expectancy short—made up the dominant theme of human life. Whole families and tribes perished, whole villages were destroyed. Entire nations were enslaved, armies sacrificed, children slaughtered or killed by beasts. Large numbers of people were fed to carnivores for sport. What could be more obvious than the evanescence and frailty of life? Or more to be expected than that humans could not possibly survive the viscissitudes of the seemingly wrathful natural world that, without a doubt, ultimately would produce cataclysm and extinction? The earliest ideas about immortality seem to have come simply because humans realized that their children and grandchildren outlived them; their offspring became part of whatever future laid out there. Having as many children as possible be came vitally important to a man and his wife/wives, not only because it meant more hands to help with the work of the family, or made it more likely that at least a few individuals grew to maturity and could reproduce, but because it ensured a continuance of the family's or clan's line. Sturdy sons and beautiful, healthy daughters were the reason for living.

Humans from earliest times, however, seem to have been optimists, although it's highly doubtful that they realized it. Even with imminent dangers all about them all the time, they pursued life with vigor, and with the passage of hundreds of thousands of years, they painted over life's gray uncertainty with rituals wrapped in rhythms and colors. Loving life and its bonds so much despite its harshness they hoped to escape the fears of finality of personal and clan extinction, at least for the brief times of clan celebration. Security within the family/clan identification became deeply entrenched, internalized truths for early humans. But, if such a thing as ritualistic celebration could remove fears temporarily, why shouldn't there be something that could, if not remove, at least soothe the fears all the time? Out of that hope, a few among those earliest humans—obviously gifted in the eyes of the rest of the group and, therefore, cherished—probably were the ones who gave rise to the idea of an afterlife. Perhaps these were the dreamers, healers, and artists within the clans. In one clan, the individual with the ability to whittle wood that looked like the forest animals, or the individual who learned how to blow a hollow reed from the marsh and make a sweet sound, in another clan, the person who always ran forward to bind up wounds and spoke encouragingly to the feverish, or the one who could turn his/her night dreams into pleasing stories about the changing of the seasons and the attractions between men and women. It probably seemed to those early homo sapiens (modern) not so much a matter of wishful thinking but very logical to start believing that any of the beautiful aspects of life belonged to the aura of the earth and were always going to be there.

It was not a long stride to cross over to believing in a blissful eternity after biological death, where each person's inner self, his/her immortal soul—the imperishable essence, or more specifically, the nonbiological and nondegradable spirit— resided in a safe place away from earth forever. Such a belief was not only the ontological alternative to finiteness and the imminent threat of species extinction, it elicited beauty from the people. And beauty added to their hopes.

Most of the sacred writings of the world describe one catastrophe that almost qualified for the extinction dealing blow to humankind, and make predictions about the catastrophe to come from which no animal or plant life will escape. Since there were survivors of the Great Flood—the first major catastrophe—(so the reasoning goes), fire is likely to be more effective and is predicted as the likely means for the next extinction attempt. Since species other than the humans survivors were reported to have been around after the Great Flood, these humans were credited with not only escaping their own extinction but also with saving all the animal creatures from that fate. (As no mention is made of plants, one wonders whether the surviving humans were to have believed that their plant seeds were safe beneath the soils under the flood waters.) The survivors concluded that, for a price, extinction could be escaped. The first requisite noted was a belief by an individual in the possibility of extinction. A second requirement was a belief in the desirability of escaping extinction. And finally, each individual was required to be willing to pay the price to get in the game. Rules depended then (and still do) upon the various umpires, who all work with essentially the same premises (with many fine differences, of course), and the same of essentially the same rewards, for essentially the same behaviors or comportment.

Actually, there may have been several floods, but since the early ones are known only in the geological records associated with glaciation and do not come to us in the written tradition, the sacred writings are silent about them. They are not silent about the flood that seemed to envelope the earth (or a very large portion of it) about 8,000 B.C. Should the glacial and sea ice melt today, sea level would rise about 300 feet and it would not be difficult to imagine the scurrying around as well as the prolific note and picture taking. The records would not be silent on a second such occurrence, unless it did accomplish the extinction of humans.

As for the prediction of the doom to come, fire is the usual choice of method, and those who interpret the sacred writing's predictions usually tout two candidates. Choice one is nuclear war. This threat seems real and fits very nicely with ancient prophecy because it not only would come about by the hand of humans, but it has direct reference to the avoidance price in most religions: goodness. (Goodness is opposed to evil in the extinction avoidance game.) It would please those who consider themselves secure much more if they could feel that extinction were to come about through an act of evil, (which nuclear war is, of course), than if it did not. The possibility of species extinction through an evil act cannot be surpassed as a way to establish the relevancy of evil, and such a possibility would go a long way in justifying the game in the first place.

The second choice and one that will not fail is a sharp increase in the amount of energy incident upon the earth from the sun through solar flaring, or through the evolution of the earth into a red giant. The latter would simply cause the earth's evaporation. However, as its occurrence date is not estimated for at least another 10 billion years, it does not influence current behavior.

With only the most primitive technology a few humans evaded the Great Flood. A number of humans would probably survive another time of great flood, even if most of the earth's dry land surface were to be submerged. There is great hope that large numbers of people can be convinced that nuclear war could cause the extermination of human kind simply to produce the desired extinction avoidance behavior, e.g., ban nuclear war. Unfortunately, more and more predictions indicate that humans, in all likelihood, would survive nuclear war, battered and covered with debris, but still recognizable their species. The fewer survivors in a nuclear war, the greater the store of finished goods per survivor to be mined while reestablishing a foothold on the earth.

Thinking the unthinkable is not to think of extinction from nuclear war; thinking the unthinkable is to think that survival is possible and that nuclear war, therefore is simply an extension of Clausewitz' ideas on protracted conflict.

Nuclear war would, in all probability, have considerable influence on our standard of living; undoubtedly would terminate existence for great numbers of animals and plants, including humans; and would produce great genetic damage in the survivors. Its consequences would constitute a new set of selection pressures that would attend human and biological evolution in ways different than if such a war had not occurred. However, it would seem unlikely to cause the extinction of humans.

In the first place, the probability is nuclear war will be largely confined to the northern hemisphere. Secondly, even though "the circulation of the atmospheric winds and ocean waters brings all air and all water to all places, the time span involved is long enough for considerable decay of radioactive materials, even long lived ones. The use of 'doomsday' machines could alter the picture to some degree, as cobalt, deuterium or sodium devices could wreak more devastation in the Northern Hemisphere, but they do not seem likely to sterilize life on the entire continent.

That life would be on a level more primitive than we can at present comprehend,, there is no doubt. But the survivors would have two advantages over early humans when they first came on the scene: They would not have to invent the basic aspects of technology, and—even through the loss of considerable more life through experimentation with the mechanical remains of the civilization—large segments of the technology would survive intact. These should provide for a fairly quick recovery of operating technology. The present civilization and culture may never be reestablished, technological, development may lead to other conclusions and solutions, but it seems unreasonable to assume that the minds of all survivors will become blank, that all understanding of surviving devices will vanish, that all books and the ability to read will vanish and that the survivors will simply resort to killing themselves over the few remaining scraps of food.

The perishable commodities on had are sufficient, in the United States, to feed a population of 200,000,000 for about a week. The non-perishable food commodities are sufficient for from six months to a year. 70,000,000 cattle and about 50,000,000 hogs are scattered on the hoof all over the landscape, not counting other domestic animals like cats, dogs, etc. The hard goods in warehouses, and homes and factories and places of business, the vast amounts of fuel in above surface storage, in filling and tank fields, in underground facilities everywhere, the power grid, the telephone grid, not useable in their entirety will be useable locally. The number of portable sending and receiving sets, the number of battery transistors, the miles and miles of roadways, and highways, makes it seem impossible that technology will disappear, or that its use will be forgotten. The first animal ashore on the Island of Krakatowa when it reappeared from the sea was a pregnant cobra. The island was instantly populated with cobras, there is no reason to suppose that through the non-randomness of biology that the people with skills needed will appear when the demand for those skills is high. The fewer survivors (within limits) of a nuclear holocaust, the greater in proportion the mine of finished products and food to utilize on a per capita basis by the survivors. Contact with the outside world (i.e.) outside the devastated area would probably be established by radio within hours after the fact.

There is no limit to misery that mankind can inflict upon himself through nuclear war, but his extinction will always remain in doubt. For those that survive a nuclear holocaust life will be precious indeed. The will to live will be so great that a new barbarism is predicted. But no mass suicide is predicted, misery and early death yes, mental derangement yes, the destruction of the social fabric to be sure, but with all likelihood of the establishment of a new one. The extinction of man will not occur through nuclear war for the simple reason that man will survive such a trial, and man has given no indication yet (or at least only the most minor one in another area) that he is willing to participate in a long term process of voluntary suicide. Voluntary suicide not to the extent that he consciously courts his death, but voluntary in that he refuses to avoid behavior that results in his death and finally self-inflected genocide. Man as a barbarian has greater survival powers in all likelihood than modern man, with respect to coping with environmental change and should barbarism result from nuclear war, the survival of man would seem to be assured. It would seem that man's attitude toward life itself must alter significantly and over a long time to induce the behavior that would ultimately bring man to the point where neither his intellect nor his power to produce could meet the depredations of the environment and assure his extinction. The survivors of a nuclear war will not have entered the conflict voluntarily, the plunge to devastation and desperation will be sudden, the reactions to it will be violent, the recovery time may be long, (especially in terms of what maybe the new life span) but recovery as is assured as the inexorable dynamics of biology. Nuclear war may literally be as miserable as hell, but it will not cause the extinction of man. Its too much to ask of it.

Species have been assimilated into other species through interbreeding where the resultant a 'new species' that resulted from the hybridization had characteristics that promoted its survival as a new species.

The genus of tobacco (Nicotiana) has several such species. The new species can be shown clearly to share chromosomes. (not just genes but entire chromosomes) with other members of the (genus) species. One species recognized as such is made up of chromosomes of the other species i.e. it has no chromosomes that don't match ones that exist in other species. The search for the progenitors of corn (Zea mays) revealed that corn had chromosomes in common with several other species of grasses in several genera, indicating that there must have been a good deal of intermixing genetically. A new genus of plants was created when a members of the radish and cabbage families were crossed. The offspring were not fertile and the genus was doomed to the life span of the plants crossed or those that could be propagated from it vegetatively through cuttings. The basis of the sterility was the fact that the chromosomes donated by the two plants were not in pairs as they normally are and the plants could not go through meiosis, the cell division necessary for sexual reproduction. Treatment with' colchicine, however, a material that causes the chromosomes to be slightly sticky, caused chromosomes that would otherwise separate and go to separate cells, to stay together resulting in the chromosome pairs necessary for the cell division peculiar to sexual reproduction. The progeny of the colchicine treated plants in contrast to the spindliness and thriftlessness of the parents are vigorous, healthy, stout and produce an abundance of fertile seed. They are truly a new genus that can perpetuate itself and that is subject to speciation like any other species.

The Auroch, the ancient cow of Europe, a until the mid-20th century was known only in pictures from the middle ages and before. Through the selection of living stocks, which had resemblances, to the Auroch, and by combining and recombining the genetic materials of the progeny, an animal was produced that had all the appearances of the Auroch. The Auroch had been recreated out of the genetic material that it had contributed to and had subsequently been scattered among a great number of other kinds of cow. Inasmuch as none could be found anywhere on the earth the Auroch was for all purposes extinct. Yet through judicious reconstitution of the genome (getting all the original chromosomes of the Auroch back into one animal) as it had been scattered through numerous other individuals the Auroch brought back from oblivion. One would have to posit a man much different than the man we know for the kind of breeding that caused the extinction of the Auroch, not to have taken place in his own development. How many men disappeared in the course of the development of man? No cow nor any primitive man could have been familiar with genetics and genome constitution; the business of genetics goes ahead when eggs and sperms containing compatible chromosomes are brought together in a cozy and favorable environment for growth, out of the wind and rain in the midst of nourishment and nutrition. The mechanism by which they are brought there makes little difference to the gametes as long as they are not damaged in the process. Of course a million things could go wrong, and no doubts millions of things do go wrong, but only one thing has to go right for the process to work; the chromosomes have to be compatible. And the more closely related the species the more likely the chromosomes will be compatible. It makes little difference at this stage how the born, and maturing organism will react to environmental stress, if the chromosomes are not compatible and if meiosis and mitosis can not occur the rest is moot.

A pollen count can be taken at any place on the face of the earth on any day of the year and some pollen will be found. At the height of the growing season the air maybe literally thick with pollen. A casual walk through a corn field on the days pollen is shed colors one yellow with the gametes of Zea mays, more than enough to pollinate all the flowers around and then some.

If there is one thing plants are good at making it is pollen. And for that matter animals are not too bad at making sperm. If sperm were adapted to existence outside the normal watery environment of seminal fluid (or water for that matter) and were able to withstand the rigors of the atmosphere, it would certainly be as feasible, to make an atmospheric sperm count as a pollen of count. In essence it is quite reasonable to think of air borne dispersal of plant pollens as the basis a for variation in plants, but no such casual mechanism can be postulated for animals, at least not the higher ones.

If the behavior of modern man however, could be extrapolated to his primitive progenitors and if a dollop of barbarism, together with and fewer moral restraints, living in low population densities could be added, as they reasonably can, then there is no necessity to postulate any other mechanism than man's predilection to have sexual intercourse with any and all kinds of things and animals with which the act can be accomplished.

This particular aspect of man's behavior is certainly not restricted to either one of the sexes. The lonely sheep herder and Leda and the Swan were cut from the same cloth. Man may have in reality bred his competitors out of existence with the sanctions against murdering man versus slaughtering animals coming before the fact and in fact being the first and most deadly form of discrimination.

This dilemma has been posed in a modern novel, but it is really of absolutely no concern now. That is to say supremacy has been established and the offspring of a human and a nonhuman, (anything) would be considered to abhorrent to tolerate. I would presume therefore since the injunctions against murder so ancient, the toleration of animal slaughter so universally accepted that only those hybrids that matched the predisposed criterion of humanness were tolerated or allowed to live.

The latter difficulty in distinguishing the real non-human from the recent hybrid must have given man of any given locality fits, and it was of probably considered better to consider nonlocals as nonhuman and therefore slaughterable, as opposed to taking a chance that they might be human and therefore tolerable at least under the murder injunctions. Since competition for sex partners is always a life and death dominance submission behavior mode, the stresses among animal populations where interspecfic breeding was occurring must have been severe indeed. History is cluttered with examples of of two breeding populations fighting it out to the finish with the victors slaughtering all the males, and taking captive all the females and offspring, or forcing the males of the losing side into slavery (essentially removing them from the breeding population except to breed more slaves) and establishing the dominance of the victors.

The farm kid with a pig in a rain barrel no doubt had a progenitor who thought nothing of messing around with a fire ape in the bush, or maybe even a pekinensis, heidelbergensis or equivalent. Breeding in interspecific competition certainly does not have a farsighted goal like extinction of the competitor. It must be more simply based upon the sex act itself as the primary goal oriented accomplishment, with the rejection of off spring whether consciously associated with any act of sex or not, upon the basis of dissimilarity. Look alikes accepted those not alike being-excepted from the murder injunction. The recognition need not be a conscious act and in all probability is not one.

Infant recognition of its own species occurs at a very early age in higher animals must compound the mental anguish and anxiety of the hybrid in a non-accepting population.

The female Mallard duck has certain dark green and blue feather markings on its wings. A variety of Mallard has been bred which is more uniformly brown, white and tan with these conspicuous blue and of green markings absent. Ducklings born to the plain variety will imprint with the female with the blue and green markings in preference to its own mother. They will imprint to the brown and tan mother only when no blue and green females are present. (If a no suitable object is available the ducklings have been known to imprint to a dog.) This is at a time in the of life span of the animal when by percentage, very little of its life has elapsed and with the full consequences of imprinting to have its influence all during the remainder of the animals life. Instances of human imprinting are just as salient, the consequences for the human animal just as influential. The notion of 'misprinting' humans and the consequence emotional disaster is not a little heard of rarity. The ducks imprinted to the dog had no easy time either nor did the dog. The problem of racism has its roots in the struggle for dominance of the human species over other humanoid species. The actors in the racist strife act as though each race is a different species, with the reference species under the full force of the murder injunction and all others outside it in the animal slaughter province. Derogatory epitaphs to describe the enemy in mankind's several wars merely underline the basis of the conflict.

"Beast," "gook," "hun," etc. serve clearly to identify the enemy as the outgroup, and outside the murder injunction. Civil and military law have been adjusted to recognize killing within the group as murder and killing outside the group, after it has been officially designated bestial by a declaration of war, as patriotism. Heros are similarly proclaimed when they kill animals that pose distinct threats to man. The killing of a lion, an elephant or a water buffalo is heroic and the animals head on a wall plaque is a trophy to the valorous incident. Even if the killing was done with a hand held cannon that could knock a diesel locomotive out of commission at a mile and a half. The pygmy practice of killing an elephant with a hand in held spear as a rite of passage is the obvious progenitor of the elephant hunt and the Masai practice of trying (in absentia usually) any lion accused of killing a man and passing judgement as to the number of lions that must pay the penalty for the death, (maybe up to four if the attack was unprovoked); and then ordering the execution of the requisite number to satisfy the blood debt is a perfect example of interspecific competition. Then there are the Jivara who fashion exquisite trophies of the slain enemy, through the ritualism of head-shrinking. The durability and economy of a collection of small heads and the satisfaction of doing it ones self certainly place this practice a little closer to the origin than having a professional taxidermist stuff a full size buffalo head for mounting on the study wall.

From the first emergence of the of species as man and its interaction with closely related but non-man species acceptance into the group as a member, must have depended upon acceptance in the group as a regular breeding member, and more over the offspring would have to be clearly identified as belonging to the group. Ostracizing mixed breeds and disowning bastards were of course later solutions to the problem. The early solutions might have included abandonment and/or infanticide.

Group recognition of the breeding pair, with the consequent recognition of the offspring of the pair, belonging through the breeding pair to the group on the face of it constituted a troop, herd, rookery, flock, pride, or family. In groups where only the dominant male has sexual intercourse with receptive females, fatherhood is not presumptive. In many animals the secondary male characteristics appear only in the dominant males, making them the only ones capable of the sex act, and in other hormonal regulation keeps them passive. Fatherhood and who belongs to whom poses few problems in such circumstances. Moose, Elk, Seals, Lions, Baboons, Gerbils, all have some variation of dominance behavior that makes fatherhood easily recognized. As the dominance influences become less constrained the distinction between the single dominant male providing all the male gametes, and free breeding groups becomes less discernable. In gerbils breeding seems to be directed solely at a dominant female, with only one other dominant male providing the male gametes. When the dominant female dies or is killed free breeding obtains, until a new dominant female emerges. In animals with well defined estrus patterns, strong dominance patterns may produce death inducing strife only at intervals. In populations where the females are continuously receptive, dominance patterns involving single dominant males could be achieved only by killing off the competitors, by rendering them impotent through castration or by making some arrangement for sharing females on a basis that may be equal or unequal, but in which all members could more or less be recognized members of the breeding group. Monogamous breeding arrangements would seem to reduce dominant conflicts to a minimum, especially in a species where submission may not completely inhibit testosterone-adrenalin induced behavior. With fatherhood being presumptive and therefore species purity in jeopardy, in potentially free breeding populations, the integrity of the group could be maintained only through careful attention to lineages. Whether arbitrarily or not, lineages had to be established to corroborate parentage and therefore membership in the group and what's more behavior had to be established that if possible would avoid the conflict of not really knowing the parentage of offspring. Ostracism, abandonment, execution etc. were no doubt among the biological controls regulating the mating procedures, and groups acceptance behavioral interactions.

The great diversity among human and humanoid breeding group arrangements would seem to stem not so much from the inventiveness of man, who might have been considered 'wise' to have made so many adjustments to the diversity of environmental circumstances, but more rather it would seem to indicate the vestiges of the many species and subspecies behavior patterns that were incorporated into an amalgamating new group that was emerging from the interbreeding patterns of the dominant species with all of its competitors. Cultural man has for centuries adopted the ways of his competitors, has had his conquerors ways imposed upon him, has imitated the customs of strangers to win their friendship or rewards. There is no reason not to believe that biological man did this of with respect to breeding patterns even before the speech-tool technology resulted in culture.

With man apparently in the process of still amalgamating the remnants of species and subspecies of humans and humanoids into a single well defined species, all of the vitality of hybrid vigor seems to preclude any possibility of his extinction through his amalgamation into yet another group. The problem of the missing link is not a problem, the missing link it would appear is everywhere among us. We all have his chromosomes and presumably if a breeding experiment could be set up it might be possible by the judicious selection of mating types to reconstitute one or several of them as was done with the Auroch.

Man may face a problem in the dim vanishing point millennia of the distant future, when the species is fully formed, when the diversity among the individuals is slight and when all the individual genotypes of man tend toward one genotype, then man will have been placed on a biological base so narrow that even slight environmental changes could bring about his extinction. Worrying about this however, has some of the same characteristics as worrying about the sun evolving into a red giant. Man is in an especially strong position evolutionarily because of his diversity and because of his biological simplicity. Man is not complicated, man is essentially a simple animal, whose tools are complex, and perhaps one of the unsung virtues of tools is that they are the things that become obsolete much faster than man. (It's not so strange that man's simplest tools do not seem to become obsolete.) Man has essentially set up his tools to be his 'proxy' for evolutionary specialization and extinction. It seems unlikely that any other living being could bring about his demise, and as we become more sanguine about biology it will be come even less so. Of course man could bring about his own extinction if he chooses to do so. Man or more probably woman thought up the notion of extinction in the first place and it is not unreasonable that the notion could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It makes no sense to consider the concept of the extinction of the species, or more particularly the extinction of the species to which an individual belongs, without first having the concept of death. The concepts that seem to go so well together in Western Civilization (and in many others) is 'Life and Death' and 'Death and Resurrection.' Yet man is supposed to be the only higher animal that concerns himself with the thought of death. The question is why only man. Is the problem of death thinking in other species one of language, i.e. do we think that other animals do not think about death because they can not tell us about what they think or is there other evidence that they do not think about death? There can be not the slightest doubt that most higher animals and a lot of lower ones avoid environmental circumstances that would cause their death. The mouse running from the broom, the fly escaping from the fly swatter, the gnu fleeing from a pack of hunting dogs, the sparrow avoiding the sparrow hawk, the small fish eluding the large fish etc. etc. But the real question is, in the absence of a threat severe or mild do animals other than man think of death? Sheep being systematically slaughtered by a wolf ,evince excitement behavior only during the death bleats of the victim, becoming quiet when they stop, only to become excited again when another of the flock is being killed. A mother Gerbil will not interfere in submission behavior imposed upon her offspring by other members of the group even if it results in their death.

Cats, dogs and bears to name a few animals, are extremely dangerous to intruders who accidently or otherwise penetrate the sanctuary of the den, or stumble upon the female with young. Is the female particularly dangerous at this time because she is protecting her young, or is she particularly dangerous at this time because she has hormone balance (adrenalin-testosterone) that makes her extremely hostile to any intruder? That is her hormone balance such that signals that would otherwise induce evasive behavior are overridden with an extreme aggression mode wide open. All the animals named (and human mother included) will kill their offspring for reasons whatever. There is no doubt that mothers of higher animals show great intelligence in protecting their offspring, and show great ingenuity in training them to become adult members of the group, but it is not clear that the 'protective' behavior is to avoid previously considered death consequences of any given behavior. When the offspring of any of these animals is integrated into the group, no protective relationships seem to be directed individuals, while a great deal of it may be evinced in the protection of the group.

Female elephants forming a ring around young cows and calves, musk ox bulls forming ring around cows and calves etc. The concept of death that leads to the concept of extinction must a have been the concept of death as a future behavior mode. All higher animals avoid danger to themselves and to the group, and may even develop elaborate behavior modes to anticipate danger, (baboon troops) have a travel mode that anticipates danger, and an alternative travel mode with elephants, where they essentially provide a warning system in return for protection. But none of these animals seem exhibit a behavior mode which is essentially the preparation for death or the anticipation of death.

Animals may be driven from the group because they are sick, or lame, or they may simply have been deserted or abandoned because they could not keep up. Members of a group may be ostracized or isolated because they pose a threat to the dominance pattern. The graveyard of the elephants may have arisen from some aspect of isolation, ostracism or abandonment of individuals. Since it is not clear where the female elephant goes to have her baby it should not be more of an enigma where they go to die. The real question is do they struggle with the concept of death from their adolescence and make preparations for it, or is it simply that a sick elephant is isolated for any reason whatever from the group, wanders off and dies? Animals that read the environment with their 'gestalt' sensory perception thinking modes may develop excellent memories. As a matter of sheer information storage and retrieval, the smallest mammal with the smallest brain, can probably store and receive the same order of magnitude of gestalt messages. (e.g. images of landscapes, other members of the group, replays of action sequences of its life, the memory of muscle firing sequences that led to certain behavior sequences as man.) Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, these senses coordinated by a brain gives the animal a fantastic amount of information about his environment. All that is required for the animal to learn from the uses of its senses is simple feedback coupled with a storage and retrieval mechanism. There is no reason to suppose that animals do not dream. Why should not the brain of a dog be able to react to its own internal stimulation and 'replay' the activities of the day or of any past experiences with all the time-location and space substitutions and distortions that cause humans to puzzle about their subconscious dream mode thought patterns.

There is no reason to postulate a learning mechanisms in these animals that is any different from man. As a matter of fact some of the most penetrating insights into the learning mechanisms of man have been derived from the use of animals (that could be slaughtered or maimed etc.). There is no question that animals read their environments, match what they perceive with similar messages stored in their brain and act accordingly. They make mistakes in judgement, and recognition and they apparently "see" what they want to see and 'hear' what they want to hear and draw conclusions that are true or erroneous, but act on them never the less. Little if any of this kind of information processing is future oriented because it depends mainly upon a current input of information to orient the storage-retrieval-action modes and is essentially a real time process. (Dream modes obviously give clues to non-real time modes and could conceivably provide a basis for ideas about time including future time, but the logic of them seems to confine them to past events not future ones, to 'dream' about the future, has the connotation of futuristic time modes but usually involve unattainable goals and it is the unreality of the 'dream' about the future that gives it its dreamlike quality, and is not associated with a time mode, i.e. dreaming about the future is not dreaming it is really wishing, a thought mechanism which is wholly framed in a futuristic time mode with speech tools) Thinking and subsequently acting in real time is obviously a very complicated process involving literally thousands of information acquiring and analyzing circuits and is only just now yielding to technical analysis.

The eye must transmit thousands upon thousands of messages per square inch of receptive surface. Informational analyses requiring millions of circuits must be involved. Sound perception may be even more complex than sight, for whereas the eye of man tends to see color in its primary tone and eye is to detect as such. While additive and subtractive aspects, the ear can detect its harmonics as well. The analogous function of the harmonics, with out distinguishing the primary wave lengths per se is simple indeed with respect to the array of detection possibilities, (only sweet, salt, bitter, and sour,) together with smell the range of detection and the variety of substances detected is staggering indeed. As marvelous as the senses are and as fantastically sensitive as they might be they function to orient our behavior toward the environment, now, in the present, in real time. Memory serves to match previous imagery and behavior with current input and action in the present is vastly more efficient. If present input does not match stored imagery or behavior modes, learning must take place or injury or death will ensue. Learning must take place through time, and if the situation encountered is not harmful, the learning process can be quite hit or miss, but should the circumstance pose a threat to the animals life the consequences are simple and direct.

Learning to hunt when one is a hungry carnivore, or learning to suckle if one is a hungry nurseling, or learning to perform coitus if one is a receptive female or a dominant male (or equivalent) are essentially real time initiated sequences. It would appear that a squirrel that carried nuts to a hollow tree trunk was really anticipating future events, namely a time of food scarcity in the winter. But it seems that these same squirrels can seldom remember where they hid their winter supplies and may starve with nuts nearby that they had sequestered. The concept of the future seems to be wholly related to the speech language tool, and moreover the concept of the future seems to be more logically associated with communications between individuals than in interaction with the immediate environment. Thinking about the future must have derived from language after appropriate speech symbolism was invented that could be erected stored and retrieved and reacted to. A sound that is associated with an action and which can be used to recall the action must be the most primitive kind of symbolism and it need not have represented an action necessary to the survival of the individual at all. As a matter of fact it seems axiomatic that speech would have survival value only in the most secondary of ways. Speech is not a sense and can not replace any of the senses. An organism without senses has no survival value. Organisms without speech abound. And in reality man of all the millions of living organisms is the only one with speech. It would seem to be impossible to posit biological survival on speech. The primary function of speech must be sought in another direction if in fact speech had a primary function at all. There can be no compelling reason for the necessity of the environment than he now has, but that has nothing to do with his success as an animal, or his survival.

With few exceptions, all kinds of animals make sounds. (Adult giraffes and gerbils are silent, except that a gerbil in extremis will make sounds like the young.) Why man of all the animals was able to put messages on that sound by a modulating it according to a convention will never be known. A good many theories have been advanced to attempt an explanation of the phenomenon. None appear to be very satisfactory. By sheer inference and by sheer inference alone, it would appear that speech was invented by women, that its early use was considered to have little or no significance, that only much latter was it discovered to have magical powers, and that it destroyed the immortality of man, forever.

The Hindu and the Hebrew concept of God, is the Nameless One the non-describable one, the being that can not be associated with language. To commune with the Hindu or Hebrew God it is first necessary to revert to a prelanguage thought mode (which may a rite of purification) and to commune with God with the gestaltness of ones being, i.e. directly without the intermediary of language, the speech-tool. A state of grace is attained in such a circumstance, or even the state of Nirvana, the living reality of the ecstacy of the unity of all nature, all things and all being. The speech mode of thought may even be thought of corrupting in such circumstances. The fact that yogis can come to control a great many aspects of the functioning of their autonomic nervous system in such cases is ample demonstration of the conscious mind, through the workings of the central nervous system; working back through the sensory connections as they are embedded in and affect the function of the metabolism of the body itself. By a supreme act of introspection man has used his central nervous system to control, his autonomic nervous system. Similarly these same individuals can produce under the control of their central nervous system, the great array of hallucinogenic reactions usually produced (in antiquity and today through chemical substances) that affect control centers of the storage mechanisms, making information available against the normal conditioning gradient so to speak. This effort and supreme sacrifice seem to be directed to establishing in the mind of the practitioner the prespeech, prelanguage conditions, when life was simple and when there were no cares, no worries, where life was pure, because in the prespeech and prelanguage condition there was no thought of death.

Death is a dirty word. But it is a word. It symbolizes the demise of the individual, his ultimate end. Without speech the word death could never have arisen. Without the concept of the future even death itself could have no meaning. But since language erected symbols that could be of used to think about thing or process, since life and death could easily be observed. It took only the invention of language with its potential for recalling the thing not there an especially important concept to establish futurity, to relate the demise of any individual with the future death of the individual. The first time the right combination of symbols were juxtaposed, with the suspension of real time information action information processing and with the thought processes in the what if...mode, stumble upon the notion of death must have been terrifying indeed. So terrifying in fact that the species to this day has not recovered from the shock.

And for a long time the idea was probably severely bottled up in the hapless brain of the female that thought of it and kept a dire dread secret. But she spilled the beans and her female descendents have suffered for it then and they continue to suffer for it today.

When Eve ate the apple she didn't get wise she found out she was mortal and Adam would have been immortally dumb and happy to this day but she told him. The myth refers to the tree of knowledge, but it doesn't mean the ultimate knowledge that would lead one to communicate directly with God, Adam and Eve already had that. The tree of knowledge was speech-language knowledge, the kind of knowledge that involves a response to symbols enabling an analysis of the future. That was the knowledge that Eve stumbled upon. Having stumbled upon the future she found what no man wants to find she found death. Man was immortal because it never occurred to him that he was going to die. Without language and without a future orientation animals come and go but since death could not be thought of man was immortal. It was when he could look forward to his death with all the vividness of being there that his immortality was gone forever. Immortality was a pretty precious thing to lose. It meant adjusting to the harsh realities instead of living each day to the fullest without care or worry. It meant doubting God, and incurring his wrath, (how would you feel if,the landlord had a trick clause in the lease he didn't tell you about), and it meant making preparations to die. There is no doubt that the population problem got its biggest stimulus about this time.

Another culprit was Pandora. If she just hadn't opened her big box (read mouth) everything would have been all right. She released all the woes and troubles of the world, which reduces simply to the fact that she told them they were going to die, and probably gave them a whole list of things that was going to do it, among which was worrying to death.

Then there was the White Goddess. She was quite a gal embodying all the powers of fertility, and with magic as well. The question is the of what. In a prespeech, prelanguage world, there can only be action reaction in real time. But with speech language and future orientation real magic through predictability is possible. If the owner of this magic keeps it a secret, it is powerful indeed. But alas the secret was discovered and the White Goddess overthrown by a male, using the same secrets to the same ends. Speech-language-knowledge as power was born but at the cost of immortality.

In the million or so year history of man on earth, the age of the written tradition must be considered of recent indeed. The myth of the flood is in all likelihood in reference to an actual occurrence dated at about 8,000 B.C. yet the oldest written records might be no more than 5,000 B.C. It is equally reasonable to accept that the tradition before 5,000 B.C. was oral, or that the written records before 5,000 B.C. were lost. There seems to be no trace of a written record before 10,000 B.C. and a probability of nearly 1.00 could probably be assigned to the non-existence of the written record before 20,000 B.C. The real question the appearance of Cro-Magnon man is what was man doing between roughly 1,000,000 B.C. and the year 20,000 B.C., a span of roughly 980,000 years. A length of time about 500 times longer than the time of history since the time of the beginning of the Christian era? Chances are that man was trying to learn to talk.

Before man said one word that could be construed in anyway as language he had all the biological mechanisms necessary for survival. Long before the first word was written, man's proclivity for breeding, the subsequent hybrid vigor, and his great intelligence cast him as a very successful species. Speech-language was not needed, and at first was probably thought to be useless and perhaps even unwanted and undesirable. Sentiments that are echoed to this day in man's futile search for the return to the simple, carefree, uncomplicated life. Speech when it arrived was not an unmixed blessing.

...Ted Sudia...
January 23, 1970

© Copyright 1993
Institute for domestic Tranquility