The Neolithic Revolution and the Evolution of the Human Brain In my paper titled: Tide Gates and the Neolithic Revolution – or - Tide Gates - The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, I briefly mention the evolution of the human brain: By the end of the last Ice Age (13,000 years ago) the evolution of the human brain had progressed to such a degree that when the climate warmed sufficiently, a particularly gifted individual in the right place had the mental capacity, imagination, and communication skills to change their environment in a profound and unprecedented way. This paper contains my musings and opinions regarding evolution and the evolution of the human brain.
Evolution and the Human Brain Evolution is often described as “the survival of the fittest”, or, to quote the cover of the first edition of Darwin’s landmark book – The Origin Of Species - By Means of Natural Selection - or the “preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life”.1 “Survival of the fittest” is a perfect tautology: A race survives because it is favored, and thus the favored race, by definition, is the one that survives. According to Charles Darwin, evolution is a matter of “races” within a species, struggling to survive. Some races are “favoured” and others… not so much.
1
I have actually touched one of the copies of the first edition of The Origin of Species (…) that is in the rare book collection of the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The image on this page is accurate.
If Darwin’s theory applies to humans (Darwin only hinted at this in The Origin of Species), there are troubling ramifications: How can a person believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution without being a racist? Was humanity created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights? Or am I either a member of a more evolved favored race that should be preserved, or a less evolved dispensable race? Darwin’s landmark book did not specifically say that humans evolved from monkeys or that some races of humanity are more evolved than others. That conclusion was left to the reader to extrapolate for themselves – and many of them did.2 This resulted in mass murder and gross injustice on an immense scale over the past 150 years.
The Evolution of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution The more recent editions of The Origin of Species do not include the phrase “the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” on the title page. Nazism caused the notion of “Preservation of Favoured Races” to fall out of style. The cover of the first edition of The Origin of Species is blank – like virtually every book published in 1859. The cover of the modern edition shown to the right is unambiguous regarding the notion that man evolved from an ape-like precursor. I copied the cover to the right from Amazon.com. An on-line review for this very book said:
There is still controversy over this book (usually from evangelical christians). If one has never read it, they should. I hate the age old argument from the religious who claim Darwin believes we all came from monkeys. I seriously doubt they have ever bothered to read this.
2
The Eugenics Movement was promoted by Francis Galton, “to save society from inferior minds”. Galton was Charles Darwin’s cousin (What an amazing coincidence!)
I seriously doubt that the reviewer somehow failed to notice the illustration on the cover of the book he was reviewing. I also seriously doubt that the reviewer ever read Darwin’s The Decent of Man, they should. It is important to note that Darwin doesn’t believe in anything, now – unless he is presently conscious in some sort of after-life. What Darwin believed before he met his maker – so to speak - is relevant. In 1871, Darwin authored The Descent of man and Selection in Relation to Sex. This book includes the following prediction: “the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.” (What a humanitarian!) It is immaterial whether or not Charles Darwin believed that man evolved from monkeys. It is an obvious and undeniable fact that Darwin’s works made racism a scientific endeavor and a very acceptable and pervasive attitude. For example: 19th Century Scientific Racism (circa 1891) was the theme for some of the ornamentation used during the construction of the Library of Congress in Washington DC:
The first-story window keystones are accented by a series of ethnological heads (33 in all), from Arab to Zulu; they’re based on a Smithsonian Institution collection. On the second story level, busts of nine great men grace the front entrance pavilion: Demosthenes, Emerson, Irving, Goethe, Franklin, Macaulay, Hawthorne, Scott and Dante.3 Thirty-three keystones, each in the shape of a male head, are installed above the arched windows all around the second story of the building. Each keystone head represents a different (stereotype of an) ethnic group. The races4 represented are, from north end of the Entrance Pavillion, continuing south, and round the building to the Northwest Pavilion: Russian Slav, Blond European, Brunette European, Modern Greek, Persian, Circassian, Hindu, Hungarian, Semite (or Jew), Arab (Bedouin), Turk, Modern Egyptian (Hamite), Abyssian, Malay, Polynesian, Australian, Negrito, Zulu, Papuan, Sudan Negro, Akka, Fuegian, Botocudo, Pueblo Indian, Esquimaux, Plains Indian, Samoyede, Korean, Japanese, Ainu, Burmese, Tibetan, and Chinese.5 The busts of eight of the nine great men gracing the front entrance were blonde or brunette Europeans Demosthenes was an ancient Greek6. In the USA in 1891, guess which race of humanity was considered the favored race?
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The Little Black Book of Washington DC, 2012 Edition: The Essential Guide to America's Capital by Harriet Edleson In 1891, Science had determined that there were 33 races of humanity. 5 Art Inventories Catalog, Smithsonian American Art Museums 6 How that differs from a Modern Greek is anyone’s guess. I would guess that the Ancient Greeks were less evolved? 4
Favored Races For most animals, the favored races7 of a particular species are the fittest. They are bigger, stronger and/or faster than races that are smaller, weaker, and slower. Bigger, stronger and faster is a gross simplification of natural selection. Any inherited characteristic that increases the probability of survival and/or reproduction will result in a favored race. For humans, the probability of reproduction is even more complex than the probability of survival. Identifying the right species and/or the right gender and knowing what goes where - is only the beginning. For an individual primitive Stone Age human, being bigger, stronger and/or faster would obviously be advantageous under many scenarios. Being more fertile and/or more attractive to the opposite sex obviously played a role. For a Stone Age woman, being able to run fast would help to avoid predation, but it was not advantageous for reproduction. This may explain why males generally have longer legs than females. It may also explain high-heeled shoes and Chinese foot-binding – which I suspect were invented by males who could not run very fast.8 The Stone Age was not particularly romantic – it was, in fact, brutal. (Like foot-binding and some high-heeled shoes.)
The Evolution of the Human Brain As human evolution progressed over the past seven million years, being smarter became increasingly important for survival. As evidence of this, anthropologists note that modern Homo sapiens’ skeletons are generally lighter than earlier hominids.9 Over time, stronger became less vital than being smart – or fast, or any of the other attributes that improved the odds of survival. It is generally agreed that the most important aspect in the evolution of anthropoid apes to mankind was the evolution of the hominid brain. The brain is the most important organ in the human animal.10 “The struggle for life” has increasingly been driven by mankind’s ability to use his brain to solve problems and constructively change his environment – especially during the more recent stages of human evolution. It is important to remember that the brains of the members of a “favored race” can also be used for duplicity, treachery, theft, sucker-punching, back-stabbing, murder, and genocide.11 This is what some refer to as Social Darwinism.
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The notion of “Favored Races” is scientific racism. I believe that categorizing humans by race is arbitrary and pointless. Humanity is not made up of races – it is made up of individuals. 8 He also may have been a sadist and/or a podiatrist. 9 This observation could also be evidence that as the Stone Age progressed - being heavy-set became less and less sexy. 10 “But look what’s telling me that.” (Emo Phillips) 11 All is fair in love, war, and evolution.
The favored race might not have been the smartest, but they made up for it by being adept at stealing other people’s ideas, lying, and plagiarizing. Human evolution was the net result of many googles12 of actions and interactions over millions of years. A handful of these events had profound repercussions. I propose that one of the most important events in human history involved a critical flash of genius – a primitive tide gate. This occurred during the centuries following the last Ice Age and this flash of genius made the Neolithic Revolution possible. The favorable environmental conditions following the most recent Ice Age were not the cause of the revolution. A reasonably warm climate with a sufficiently long growing season and a species of wild plant that could be successfully propagated were merely the prerequisites for an agricultural revolution.
So… What Made the Flash of Genius Take so Long? It took millions of years for evolving humans to develop the intelligence necessary to organize into large communities and establish civilization. Human intellectual evolution did not plod along at a constant rate for seven million years. A plot showing hominid cranial capacity vs. time has a very dramatic “J” shape.
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10100 equals one google. A very large number. One followed by 100 zeroes. (This is only an estimate.)
This graph could be described as a “hockey-stick”.13 Note that based on ancient primate, pre-hominid and hominid fossil evidence, the capacity (volume) of the Homo erectus / Homo sapiens cranium has more than doubled over the last one million years. This could be due to a feedback loop: The more hominids rely on their brain for survival (rather than other traits) the more a larger brain is important for competition and natural selection; this favors larger brains which become even more relevant for survival. Like another famous hockey-stick graph, this graphic is actually something of a joke. Not every Homo sapiens sapiens had (or has) a 1490 cm3 capacity cranium. There is some average capacity and, presumably, a normal distribution that applies to the population of homo sapiens at any given point in time. Neanderthals who lived concurrently with modern Homo sapiens as recently as 30,000 years ago actually had a cranium capacity slightly larger than Homo sapiens sapiens. Were Neanderthals smarter than Homo sapiens sapiens? In my experience, nice guys do finish last. Maybe the Neanderthals were smarter, but they were also nicer, while the Homo sapiens sapiens were more devious and thus better at Social Darwinism. Note that I took the liberty of adding the Piltdown Man skull to the mix in this graphic. The “chemically fossilized” Piltdown Man skull was an important artifact for the “science of anthropology” beginning with its discovery in 1912 and into the 1950’s. In 1953 it was finally exposed as the obvious hoax that it was. (I hope that Al Gore’s obvious hoax doesn’t survive for 41 years! 1990 + 41 = 2031. I’ll be 70 years old!) The Piltdown Man skull was made up of fragments from a modern human skull and parts of half of a jawbone from an ape. One of the first scientists who examined the “find” declared that the brain volume was 2/3 that of a modern human. The Royal College of Surgeons reconstructed the skull using copies of the skull fragments and correctly determined that the brain size resembled a modern human. Measuring volume is not that complicated; detecting bias is, at times, very easy. A number of scientists who examined the Piltdown Man skull fragments, jawbone, and teeth were skeptical that they came from the same owner, however no one suggested that the find was a hoax.14 Henry Fairfield Osborn15 fell for it hook, line, and sinker. He even installed the Piltdown Man in his Hall of Man exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. The fact that “scientists” could fall for the Piltdown Man hoax is evidence that science should always be questioned. When bad science cannot be questioned, it can result in horrendous consequences. Like the 13
In Al Gore’s Inconvenient Pravda, he shows a graph that he refers to as a “hockey stick”. It shows 1,000 years of Northern Hemisphere departure in temperature (oC) from 1961-1990 average. It’s shaped like a hockey stick. Al Gore’s hockey stick has been completely discredited. 14 For contrast, Al Gore’s Global Warming and Sea Level Rise theory is considered to be a hoax by a large and rapidly growing number of scientists. 15 Dr. Osborne served as President of the American Museum of Natural History’s Board of Trustees from 1908 until 1933.
politicized science of “Global Warming and Sea Level Rise” which gradually evolved into the more nebulous “Climate Change”. The opportunity costs associated with the resulting war on CO 2 are an international tragedy. Opportunity costs are defined by The New Oxford Dictionary as “the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen". If atmospheric CO2 levels actually have a trivial effect on climate, the vast amount of resources that have been expended to date to produce a trivial reduction in global CO2 emissions could have otherwise been used to do something that actually provides benefits to the environment and humanity. Imagine what could have been done with the astronomical amounts of money that have been wasted! In light of the magnitude of the associated opportunity costs, I believe that the Global Warming hoax will someday be recognized as the economic crime of the century. On the other hand, it’s just money lots of money. Bad science can also produce tragic results at a human level. Messrs. Ota Benga and William Lanne are real-life case studies in what Darwin’s theory, anthropology, and scientific racism has produced.
Ota Benga Ota Benga was a pygmy from Central Africa who was brought to America and put on display at the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair as part of an anthropology exhibit. After the fair ended, he was moved to the Bronx Zoo where he was put on display in the primate house - living and breathing proof that humans evolved from monkeys. Ota Benga’s cranium ended up with a bullet in it when he committed suicide in 1916 at the age of 32.16 Being that Ota was a pygmy, he had every right to have had a small cranium. Measuring the volume of his cranium capacity would not have conclusively proved that Africans were less evolved than Europeans. It would have proved that a pygmy’s head was smaller than average. By a stroke of luck in 1912 – just a few years before Ota Benga’s skull became available for precise measurements - “scientists” discovered and Ota Benga – African Pygmy many embraced the Piltdown Man fossil. This was even better proof that humans evolved from lower primates!
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Why would Ota Benga want to commit suicide after all he had done to help promote science? It’s not like he had been forced to take a seat in the back of the bus - like poor little Rosa Parks.
William Lanne William Lanne was the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine. He was fortunate in that he died of natural causes 17 in 1869 – just a few years after Darwin published his landmark book (in 1859). Around this point in time, aboriginal Tasmanian human specimens were coveted by anthropologists who were hard at work using science to prove that Europeans and/or Aryans were Darwin’s favoured race. Just a few days after William Lanne expired; his corpse was decapitated and his severed skull disappeared in a custody battle between the distinguished Royal College of Surgeons of England and the distinguished Royal Society of Tasmania. (Was there anything that scientific racists would not do to prove racial supremacy?) I have a hunch that William Lanne’s skull was “lost to science” in 1869 William Lanne - Tasmanian Aborigine because his cranium was just too darned big. It didn’t help the cause. The highly-evolved British elites had virtually exterminated the Aboriginal Tasmanians because they were obviously not a “favoured race” that had any right to be preserved. How would science explain it if it turned out that William Lanne had a larger brain than the average Englishman? Anything goes and the ends justified the means. Once again, the favored race survived in the struggle for life. In fairness, interpreting how evolved a person is by measuring cranium capacity and by observing and feeling the bumps on his skull – otherwise known as phrenology – has been completely discredited by science. The American Phrenological Journal – which began in 1838 - ceased publication in 1911. The British Phrenological Society held on a bit longer. It was disbanded in 1967. I wonder what other “science” is out there that should to be abandoned? (Al?) But I digress…
The Scopes Trial (1925) and the Piltdown Man Hoax (1912 through 1953) It’s unfortunate that the judge presiding over the famous 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton Tennessee didn’t allow the latest and best archeological evidence for human evolution to be presented at the trial. The trial was solely to determine whether or not a high school teacher named John Scopes had actually taught evolution in class – which was a violation of Tennessee’s Butler Act. Had the theory of human evolution been scrutinized at the Scope’s Trial, Clarence Darrow would have presented the Piltdown Man hoax as the key physical evidence for human evolution. What a legacy!
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Many of his fellow aborigines were not as fortunate.
Darrow’s defense of the theory of evolution would have relied on the work of the then distinguished anthropologist Dr. Henry Fairfax Osborne. Dr. Osborne served as President of the American Museum of Natural History’s Board of Trustees from 1908 until 1933. In 1922 (just three years prior to the Scopes Trial) Dr. Osborne concocted an anthropoid ape which came to be known as “Nebraska Man” from a single fossilized tooth found by a rancher in Nebraska.
After further investigation, in 1927 the “discovery” of Nebraska Man was retracted. The tooth, in fact, did not come from an anthropoid – it belonged to an extinct pig. The once-prominent Dr. Osborne was not only an over-reaching ambitious fool; he was also a racist and a eugenicist. In time, much of his life work would be discredited. Henry Fairfax Osborne was a third-rate scientist whose influence and position were primarily due to his family’s considerable wealth. Dr. Osborne was, in many respects, like Albert A.18 Gore Jr. – sans the political power associated with being a Senator’s son, a Senator, a comrade to a very wealthy and influential soviet agent, Vice President of the United States, and, in 2007, a Nobel prize-winning billionaire. I predict that history will discredit Albert A. Gore as it did Dr. Osborne. The truth ultimately prevails.
Size Matters Size matters, but intelligence is more complicated than simply having a large cranium. Crows are remarkably clever animals in spite of their tiny brains. When I meet a person with an unusually large head, I do not instinctively expect them to be a genius. If there was a correlation between hat size and smarts, I think that I would have noticed it by now. Measuring intelligence is a very inexact science with live humans – let alone with dried-up fossilized skull fragments. If left to fend for himself using Stone Age tools, Charles Darwin could not have survived for a
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When Al Gore Jr. was born, he was given the middle initial “A”. Rumor has it that the middle initial was in honor of the Gore family’s political benefactor - Armand Hammer, an active supporter of the USSR.
month in Patagonia or Tasmania. Does that make him less intelligent or less evolved than the “primitive peoples” who inhabited these lands? (I’d say yes.)
Opportunity is Everything Being intelligent is only relevant for human evolution if you have the opportunity (the context) and the courage to actually do something with your intelligence. Take the Vikings who engineered their amazing ships and them used them to pillage Europe and later to establish cities and trade and even sail to Greenland and Newfoundland. The Vikings changed the world and made history with their ships and with their daring. Viking ships would have been irrelevant if the Vikings were timid or if they had no good reason to leave Scandinavia. If crows had opposable thumbs, they’d probably take over the world in a matter of a few weeks. They are smart, fearless, and I suspect demonic. A brilliant introvert will have a difficult time changing the world. A genius “Slum Dog” living in the ghettos of Mumbai19 has little chance of success - unless given an opportunity to do something with their intellect. Intelligence alone is not enough. A race of Stone Age humans with unprecedented intellectual ability does not guarantee that civilization will happen. One hundred clones of Einstein plopped down somewhere in Tasmania 10,000 years ago would be hard-pressed to survive for a few months - let alone kick-start a civilization. The island did not have any large expansive flood plains; it had no viable native plants to grow on a primordial farm; and there were no mammals that were plausible for domestication. Tasmanians were smart enough to survive in a challenging environment for tens of thousands of years. The fact that they never left the Stone Age may have had more to do with where they lived than how smart they were. In some respect, they were a favored race – they could survive in Tasmania. That is not an easy thing to do! Some places on earth were simply more viable for an Agricultural Revolution than others. This is why I emphasize that the invention of the tide gate and the primordial farm happened at the right place. A technological breakthrough is useless if it does not materialize in the proper context. A tide gate in Tasmania would be as irrelevant as a Viking Ship in the Gobi Desert. Tide gates and levees were pointless if there weren’t native plants that could have been propagated on the primordial Neolithic farms. Maybe tide gates were to the Ancient Mesopotamians what Viking ships were to the Vikings: Technology that made great things happen - but without all the mayhem and violence.
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Slum Dog Millionaire (2009) is a fictional story.
For the sake of argument I will accept as fact the idea that evolution applies to humanity and, on average, humans have grown smarter over the past million years. Opportunities arose as human intelligence evolved and increased. In the right context civilization happened.
For Love of Struggles Racists and bullies have an affinity for “struggles” and they demand submission: “There will be a struggle. I will win, and you will lose.” All is fair in love and war… and struggles. In a struggle, there are no rules. There is no concept of injustice – unless for some reason, the favored race doesn’t survive.20 Survival of the favored race or the favored group is all that matters. The advancement of the favored race and the improvement of the species is the ultimate justice at the macro level. Darwin and his apostles saw the world as being composed of struggling races with the favored race (by definition) always coming out on top. His seminal book did not explicitly discuss human races, but it wasn’t an unreasonable extrapolation to apply the preservation of favored races to humanity. Mohammed introduced the world to Islam & jihad. Islam means “submission” and jihad means “struggle”. The resulting atrocities in the following 1500 years should surprise no one. Karl Marx and his followers had an obsession with “Class Struggle”. This struggle has resulted in incredible human suffering and tens of millions of dead - just in the past century. Prior to becoming Führer, Hitler wrote his book, Mein Kaumpf - which literally translates to: “My Struggle”. The struggle between German National Socialism (Nazi-ism) and International Socialism (Communism) unleashed hell on earth at an unprecedented scale. It was a monumental struggle, and there were no rules – just death and destruction. All of these “struggles” encouraged man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. With a struggle, individual rights are irrelevant and anything goes. The advancement of human evolution, or Dar al-Islam21, or The International, or National Socialism superseded all else. Al Gore’s apostles are currently engaged in a massive struggle to Save the Planet. God help us!
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But this is, by definition, impossible! “Dar al- Islam” translates to the “world of peace” as opposed to “Dar al-Harb” – the world of war that has not yet submitted to Islam. 21
Conclusions The Neolithic Revolution resulted in some races of humanity progressing into the Bronze Age and eventually the Iron Age while other races and cultures languished in the Stone Age. Some people (all racists?) think that the various cultures of the world that languished in the Stone Age did so because of intellectual inferiority. That is possible, but it could simply be a matter of luck and geography. Some places on earth simply did not have the native plants, climate, geography, and/or hydrology necessary for a Neolithic Revolution. Surviving as a member of a primitive culture using only Stone Age tools is no small feat. It should be obvious that the evolution pressure for intelligence is greater for an individual living in a primitive culture than it is for the average present-day American. Darwin doesn’t mention this conjecture in any of his writings. I believe that it was inevitable that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution would result in racism, notions of racial supremacy, and Eugenics. These ideas were useful for marginalizing and bullying ethnic minorities at home, and they were wonderful for justifying colonialism abroad. It took a lot of courage for William Jennings Bryant to question Darwin’s theory of evolution on a national stage. It also took vision and courage for the owner of the Yankees to give Jackie Robinson the chance to play baseball for the Yankees. Prior to the latter half of the 20th century, few people had the courage to question the prevailing wisdom, or to oppose segregation and confront racism in the US. I admire the people who risked everything and fought the good fight. It takes courage to stand up to bullies. Likewise, Climate Change is a swindle and deeply flawed science. It is politicized science that is being used to promote international socialism. It should be exposed for what it is: A corruption of the scientific method and the intellectual bullying of any and all skeptics. It takes courage to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Do not be a slave to a lie! Question the conventional wisdom. Slavery to flawed science, scientific racism, and international socialism are antithetical to freedom.
I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. Howard Roark – In Praise of the Self – from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
(…or a racist society… or a socialist society.) Jeff Juel, PE
Recommended Reading: Bradford, Phillips Verner., and Harvey Blume. Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo. New York: St. Martin's, 1992. Print. Darwin, Charles, Frederick H. Bull, and Beer Gavin De. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. New York: D. Appleton and, 1860. Print. Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. New York: Basic, 1997. Print.