Homo-phobia or: The War that Everyone Forgot

                Homo sapiens, human beings, are a unique species in several ways. They are the dominant species on this planet, the only sentient species, the most intelligent species, and the only species who can truly appreciate good blogging. Creationism aside, the history of our species from our lower primate ancestors has been on the forefront of our curiosity, from anthropology and philosophy to genetics and evolutionary biology. Despite our fervor, however, the specifics of the unique journey which resulted in the pinnacle of evolution that is us are still very unclear. When thinking of the origins of man, the most common image is that of an ape slowly standing erect and morphing through a series of intermediates into man. This image is so iconic and so widely reproduced, so central to our understanding of ourselves and the connection that we as sentient beings still share with the natural world, that it is a crying shame how inaccurate of an image it really is.

This would be less funny if I weren't on my computer right now.

                Classical anthropology would suggest that the path from bestial ape to thinking man was, like that image, roughly linear. A lower primate slowly evolved more and more intelligent descendants until, eventually, the first hominid (one of those figures standing somewhere between Bobo and Bob.) came to be. Roughly 2 million years ago, a fellow named Homo ergaster originated somewhere in northeast Africa. He used tools, lived in more or less complex social groups, and was considerably more sophisticated than its predecessor, Homo habilis, whose anatomy and behavior more closely resembled that of modern-day apes. On the evolutionary timeline, ergaster marks the most definitive spot at which the primitive brain functions which would lead to self-awareness and sapience first began to develop (note: human prehistory is really messy and there is at least one highly respected anthropologist who will disagree with even the most widely-held theories that I reference here. Feel free to ignore them.)  Homo ergaster lived for roughly half a million years before splitting up into Homo erectus (in Asia) and Homo antecessor (in Europe and the Middle East). Homo antecessor would then go on to produce Homo rhodensis (half a million years ago), Homo heidelbergensis (400,000 years ago), Homo neanderthalensis (350,000 years ago) and Homo sapiens (still here). This evolutionary path is still pretty linear, since a few hundred thousand years ago erectus and neanderthalensis died off, leaving human beings as the winning product of evolution’s greatest experiment.

No joke this time. Just a helpful diagram.

                Except for the case of Homo floresiensis. This hominid’s remains were found in southeast Asia back in 2004, and it is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, its skull looks a lot like a human’s. Secondly, it’s pretty small, with much of its anatomy very similar to that of the chimpanzee. Thirdly, this species very likely was walking around and using tools less than 15,000 years ago, right around the time that we as a species were slowly spreading over the entire world. This means that, in all probability, Homo sapiens could have encountered floresiensis in the wild. There is further evidence to support the notion that human beings also coexisted with the Neanderthals and perhaps even Homo erectus, at least briefly. Recent breakthroughs in technology along with new fossil finds are showing us a very different image of our evolutionary history, with diversity anywhere you look. In all likelihood, human beings, or at least their most direct and recent ancestors, coexisted with several other species of hominids, all of them using tools and walking upright.

Homo floresiensis? It's a pretty obscure anthropological find.
You've probably never heard of it.

                We are the only sentient species on the planet and by far the most intelligent. Behind us are the chimpanzee (fairly restricted to a small part of western Africa), and the dolphin (a marine mammal), neither of which come close to our intelligence or even the intelligence of the hominids with which we once shared the world. Why such a gap? Why so geographically far apart? The answer, of course, is that intelligence has its drawbacks on the evolutionary stage. While it greatly increases an animal’s fitness, intelligence also carries with it a certain role to play within an ecological niche. And where there is a specific role and a specific niche, there is competition. We have no competition with the dolphin and hominids left the chimpanzee’s habitat a long time ago, but a few hundred thousand years ago, when Homo sapiens was walking the plains amongst its semi-sentient cousins, competition almost certainly existed. In nature, competition is almost always indirect. Two species of birds which eat the same kind of seed will compete for seeds, but they’re not fully aware that they are competing. The bird’s only thought is “get more seeds;” it never considers the possibility that actively removing the competition will free up all the seeds. It’s not smart enough. Homo sapiens, we know, are smart enough.

"Those seeds are all mine now!"

                At some point in time, multiple hominid species coexisted with us, and there is evidence to support the notion that all of these species would have been capable of evolving into a more sophisticated and perhaps even sapient species. Some were smaller, others larger, and when compared to the human’s most recent ancestor, some may have been just as smart or even smarter. The details of those millennia are shaky, vague, and uncertain. What we know is that at one point they were all in the same place at the same time and then, sometime later, only we remained to inherit the earth. There are two possibilities for how this occurred. Option one: homo sapiens were the most fit out of all these species and were able to in all cases survive where others could not and natural selection alone killed off all other hominids. Option two: these species did not coexist peacefully, and the competition for niche and for resources eventually led to homo sapiens, in the course of their spread across the world, killing off other hominids. There is some evidence to support this: Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis both died off around the same time that Homo sapiens are predicted to have migrated to their respective areas. If this is true, then it is possible that we survived not because we were smarter or more fit, but because we were the most violent.

Option 3: Aliens.

                This is all speculation, of course. Even if such a pre-historical genocide had occurred, no record would exist and there would be virtually no way of proving it and if there were, I doubt we’d really want to know. However, there is something in our nature which is unusually aggressive towards our own kind, especially towards humans who look differently. Racial violence predates even language, and humans have been warring with each other for as long as we’ve been around. It would seem that we picked up our aggressive tendencies somewhere down the evolutionary line. In many ways, because humans have no natural predators, war between different groups of humans has acted as a major factor in determining which groups of human beings have survived. And while intelligence factors heavily in an individual’s ability to kill others of its kind, aggression, strength, and size are other heritable factors which contribute to this sort of survival. Humans have grown tremendously since the earliest fossils, the largest surviving to pass on their genes, while highly isolated groups such as the pygymys remain much smaller. Competition, war, drives our evolution now.

               

Another isolated group. Note the height.

          Our evolution was not linear. We were not the only human experiment. From the first hominids, a family tree grew and branched off. Not so long ago, all but one branch either died or was cut off. How we came to be the lucky ones to inherit the earth I do not know, but it probably was not through meekness. We are a species which, more so than any other, has the capacity and drive to expand its territory from an original location to the entire world in a very short period of time. We do not adapt, we alter. We do not compete, we eliminate. We do not survive, we dominate. This is our history and our present. The Homo sapiens of a hundred thousand years ago, not unlike the other hominids, were crude and savage. We have evolved since then, in ways nature does not select for. We have learned to think and to feel and to believe. In this, we are unique in all the world. And while our past may be dark or violent or troubled, we are our own selection now. We control our own evolution. Just as we invented war, we as a species are capable of ending it and driving ourselves forward, ever further from our primitive beginnings and towards our bright future.

Or, you know, we could do it tomorrow.