Nick Longrich, Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Bath, makes an interesting point about our heritage: Primates have long been violent species. This is the way he says it, “In fantasy and science fiction, we wonder what it might be like to meet other intelligent species, like us, but not us. It’s profoundly sad to think that we once did, and now, because of it, they’re gone.”* How so? Longrich notes that of the nine human species that inhabited the planet 300,000 years ago, only one, Homo sapiens, remains. Longrich then goes on to explain that after our species evolved about 260,000 to 350,000 years ago—give or take a week—in southern Africa, the other species gave way to our eventual dominance and sole ownership of the planet.
Is there built into our very being a competitiveness so pervasive that everywhere and at all times it makes peace only a fleeting reality but always a long-term dream? Longrich seems to make a good argument that we have practiced genocide on eight cousin species, including the Neanderthals with whom we apparently shared some genes. It’s difficult for any of us to conceive of the time over which this massive extinction occurred, given that in the West we really only started keeping track of years from first the founding of Rome and second from the birth of Christ (though we are probably off by four to six years, thank you, Dinoysius Exiguus). Christ lived just two millennia ago, but millennia themselves are difficult to comprehend.
Human species have been killing off one another even before our emergence 300 millennia ago, probably for some five or more million years, or five thousand millennia—remember, Christ lived “just” two millennia ago. That’s a long history of murder and war, a long history of suffering, and there’s apparently no end to the killing in sight. If we don’t nuke ourselves into instantaneous extinction, ensuing generations will likely see continuous genocide, or, at the very least, continuous murder.
Should we be surprised by the seething anger and continuous violence today’s news presents? Are there “good” humans out there “doing good”? Sure, there are many, and you might be one of them. But the job of “doing good,” is like keeping up with the dust on the coffee table. Regardless of anyone’s or any group’s efforts to make the world peaceful, the next generation has always faced the same task in the face of the same kinds of adversity. We all understand that surrendering to the conditions of violence and hate won’t make it subside, so “doing good” seems to be a reasonable option for lessening the historical and current drive toward extinction of individuals or groups. It’s a bit too late to save the other eight human species we’ve eliminated. Let’s hope it isn’t too late to save from extinction the one human species that remains.
Longrich, Nick. 21 Nov 2019. Were other humans the first victims of the sixth mass extinction? The Conversation. Online at https://theconversation.com/were-other-humans-the-first-victims-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction-126638
Is there built into our very being a competitiveness so pervasive that everywhere and at all times it makes peace only a fleeting reality but always a long-term dream? Longrich seems to make a good argument that we have practiced genocide on eight cousin species, including the Neanderthals with whom we apparently shared some genes. It’s difficult for any of us to conceive of the time over which this massive extinction occurred, given that in the West we really only started keeping track of years from first the founding of Rome and second from the birth of Christ (though we are probably off by four to six years, thank you, Dinoysius Exiguus). Christ lived just two millennia ago, but millennia themselves are difficult to comprehend.
Human species have been killing off one another even before our emergence 300 millennia ago, probably for some five or more million years, or five thousand millennia—remember, Christ lived “just” two millennia ago. That’s a long history of murder and war, a long history of suffering, and there’s apparently no end to the killing in sight. If we don’t nuke ourselves into instantaneous extinction, ensuing generations will likely see continuous genocide, or, at the very least, continuous murder.
Should we be surprised by the seething anger and continuous violence today’s news presents? Are there “good” humans out there “doing good”? Sure, there are many, and you might be one of them. But the job of “doing good,” is like keeping up with the dust on the coffee table. Regardless of anyone’s or any group’s efforts to make the world peaceful, the next generation has always faced the same task in the face of the same kinds of adversity. We all understand that surrendering to the conditions of violence and hate won’t make it subside, so “doing good” seems to be a reasonable option for lessening the historical and current drive toward extinction of individuals or groups. It’s a bit too late to save the other eight human species we’ve eliminated. Let’s hope it isn’t too late to save from extinction the one human species that remains.
Longrich, Nick. 21 Nov 2019. Were other humans the first victims of the sixth mass extinction? The Conversation. Online at https://theconversation.com/were-other-humans-the-first-victims-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction-126638
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