Q
4th July 2009, 13:08
A common argument you hear is that humans are egoistic by nature and that therefore communism is impossible. This article in the Weekly Worker (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/776/evolutions.php) argues that this far from the case and that change, the need to create and solidarity are very much interwoven into our species. Enjoy the read.
Evolution’s revolution
Mike Belbin looks at the emergence of human culture and the vital role of symbolism
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/776/images/evolutions.jpg “Do materialists really think that language just ‘evolved’, like finches’ beaks ...?” - AN Wilson, ‘Why I believe again’ New Statesman April 6 2009
“We are annoying to the leopard because our ancestor stole fire from theirs” - South Amerindian story
What kind of animal are humans? To the crude materialist we are, according to taste, chiefly animal; bundles of needs, habits and reactions; savage or simple. To the spiritual believer, animal matter required something extra, something originally separate, to become human. Is human culture then just another kind of animal behaviour? What does it mean to trace humanity’s development from nature to society? What is the ‘missing link’ between natural history and anthropology? If animals communicate, and they do, is there anything special about human language?
Darwin’s dog
In the Descent of man, Charles Darwin argues that many capacities of human beings have their origin in the basic abilities of animals - to communicate, to feel affection for one’s young, entailing self-sacrifice, and to appraise the immediate environment.
He takes as an example something close to home: “My dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had anyone stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked.” No doubt, the dog was confused, understanding that the movement, as Darwin puts it, “indicated the presence of some strange living agent”. The dog had learnt that the movement was linked to a presence, perhaps a member of Darwin’s family, the sound being similar to a woman’s crinoline skirts. Yet the cause of the noise was invisible.
Darwin adds that this presumption of invisible life may be the animal source of ancient people’s belief in spiritual agencies: that is, attributing agitation in the world to a human-like presence with “the same passions, the same love of vengeance or simplest form of justice, and the same affections they themselves experienced”.1
The human then starts with the same capabilities as other animals. Frederick Engels, in his classic Origin of the family, sketches out human development in terms of the freeing of hands. At one time, certain apes began walking upright, so freeing their hands to grasp - not only in gathering food, but also in the use of tools. Human groups fished, then hunted, following rivers then stalking prey. Another stage produced the bow and arrow and the beginnings in some areas of settlement.²
In the century since Engels wrote, conjecture about these developments has been greatly refined and the role of sexuality and language acknowledged as part of the process.
Between 4.5 million and 2 million years ago, evidence has been found in Africa of small-brained apes walking upright. These are assumed to have come down from the trees permanently, perhaps in response to climate change and a search for food. Their teeth were stronger, useful for chewing tougher foods, such as meat. These apes were classified as Australopithecines. During the Pleistocene period - one million years ago - they became homo erectus, early human. These primates from the Middle Pleistocene had skulls that were like a narrow dishpan turned upside down, while a later branch - homo sapiens - had skulls like an inverted bowl. Remains of this round-headed creature have been found in Java, China, east and north Africa. Another branch of hominids found from this period are the Neanderthals, who later died out (see below).
From the late Lower Pleistocene, simple tools are found with animal bones. These were sticks shaped to dig up roots and stalk small game animals. They had been cut by sharpened flint pieces, which were later tied to the sticks and became hand axes. Spears appear later that can bring down a horse, ox or deer. Similar tools though have been found that were not worn away by use. These could be sacred objects. Meanwhile, the skulls found near them indicate a brain of modern size. Dated 100,000 to 60,000 years ago, these skulls are found among evidence of practices such as the burying of the dead and the building of boats.
Hunting large animals with spears implies teamwork, while the use of sacred symbolic objects indicates myth-making, the passing on of knowledge. Somehow, the upright ape had developed the custom of working in groups, using tools and passing on an understanding of the world.
How had this change occurred?
Sex and sociability
Most species reproduce enough offspring to ensure survival of their genes because the male is alerted as to when the female is ovulating and ready to conceive. Chimps and baboons, for example, have an obvious reddening of the sexual parts.
Like other primates, our animal ancestors could have lived either in promiscuous groups or in subgroups or ‘harems’ controlled by a dominant male. The ape ancestor of humans was probably clear about when the female was ovulating. It has recently been suggested, however, that at some point a female must have been born that had the signs of ovulation concealed. Mating with these females, males in promiscuous groups could not be sure which offspring were theirs. One effect of this would be to stop the usual practice of primates, which is to kill off the children of other males.
Concealed ovulation may have meant in effect that offspring belonged to everyone. Such ambiguity of parenting might make for closer groups all round - more sharing of food and more affection and solidarity between adults and children. These more sociable groups would have had a survival advantage. Flexible female mating might also have encouraged both females and male to copulate just for pleasure, mutual pleasure. The appearance then of mutual sexual pleasure and promiscuous parenting could be the source of human solidarity.3 Force would not have achieved the bonding necessary. Whatever practices of male dominance, incest taboos or monogamy conventions followed, in the beginning was sexual communism.
Intelligence agent
These sociable creatures began to develop something else: transmittable intelligence or language. In Prehistory of the mind, Steven Mithen allies the physical and social growth of early humans with the kind of intelligence he speculates developed at different times.4 The perceptiveness of post-erectus homo sapiens was in many ways indistinguishable from animals. As with other mammals, they were familiar with the appreciation of climate and danger. To this was added an expertise in hand tools like stone-cutting implements. For communication, it is likely that these early humans used a simple set of sounds, like animals, to give commands or warnings - ‘keep away’, ‘fruit here’, ‘large prey ahead’.
Animals use communication for many purposes: marking territory, warning adversaries, courtship. In his work on primate groups, anthropologist Robin Dunbar focuses on the purpose for apes of one particular form of physical communication.5 While living in groups, apes convey information to and about each other by grooming - picking out fleas and lice from each other’s bodies. Whom one chooses to give this attention to, for how long and whom you let watch - these function as social messages, affirming relationships, as well as getting rid of dirt.
Dunbar reckons that any one primate spends 30% of their time grooming others. It is his proposition that, as group size increased, and relationships grew more complicated, spoken language developed as a supplement to physical interaction. Even simple ‘chattering’ speech communicates better and faster to others than massage: conveying liking, mood and defining a common enemy or rival.
In close-knit groups, the best at such grooming would be those sensitive to the moods of others, communicating when required, appealing to emotional states, sensing ‘bad moods’. Those who could infer ‘social knowledge’ about other minds and their intentions, as well as defining who to dislike and exclude, could have acquired an evolutionary advantage. ‘Reading’ and defining others may even have made some individuals leaders.
Furthermore, following Dunbar, it is Mithen’s contention that it was this rudimentary language, these particular sounds - words - that began to act as a ‘vehicle’ for mixing the different intelligences, technical and environmental, acquired in the life of the group. Once created, these names for interpersonal concepts - like/dislike, hostile/friendly - became transferable to other relations in the rest of the physical world. The sky, like a person, is treated as readable: signs of ‘discontent’ in the sky are not only comprehensible as climatic changes, but as a ‘bad mood’ or hostile other, contributing to a ‘cosmic analysis’ of a human-like presence that inhabits the sky.
This may have been followed by rituals to placate the sky, a sort of cosmic grooming - rituals which then bond members of the society together. These ‘modern humans’ can feel that little bit more confident with the world and each other - ‘knowledgeable’ - by using their special sounds that are applicable to the state of persons and applying them to the state of things. But why were these sounds transferable in this way? How, in other words, did they work as symbols?
Standing for something else
Charles Peirce defined a symbol or sign, which could be a word, a sentence or a picture, as something that stands in the comprehension of somebody for something else in some respect or capacity 6 The words ‘dog’ or ‘*****’ can thus equally stand for a canine. Peirce called the thing that stands for something, the representamen and what it stands for, the object or ground - its idea. The way it is understood in the mind of another was the interpretant- when you say ‘cheese’, you may be thinking Cheddar, while I may take it as Brie.
A representamen can be of three kinds. It can be an ‘icon’: that is, it resembles its object in some way - a cartoon or a photograph can both be a portrait. A sign can also be an ‘index’, physically connected with its object - no smoke without fire. Lastly, it can be a ‘conventional’ symbol, only understood within the interpreting mind as part of a particular code - ‘dog’ is part of English, while ‘un chien’ is French: they are part of different codes. Visual signs can belong to different codes, according to context: on the beach, a red flag may signal danger; on a demonstration, solidarity. Once you have a material representamen or sign, you have something that can be detached, transferred, applied.
It is with this power of detachability that language goes from being rudimentary communication to developed creation, to metaphor, where a word for one thing can stand for another. With this the sociable ape begins to construct what anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss called “the science of the concrete”7 - a perception of the world as being similar to the human being.
In this ‘science’, understanding of interpersonal relations, of intentions and actions, is applied to the events of the natural world. Like Darwin’s dog, we intuit an invisible presence. The cosmos is felt to be inhabited by something similar to people - spirits, the supernatural, gods - whose actions explain the world. For instance: why are leopards fierce towards humans? Because, says one South Amerindian tribe, they are annoyed at us. Our ancestor, the first human, was once the servant of the leopard, tending the fire that belonged to the beast. One day the ancestor stole the fire and ran off to start human society. There has been an understandable antagonism ever since.
Not only words, but also their combination in a sentence, suggest the action of people on others and the world. Noam Chomsky in his work on linguistics argues that causation and ‘embeddedness’ form the deep structure, the generative grammar,8 of all sentences. Though word order may differ in different societies, these ways of connecting noun and verb are universal: ‘We are annoying to the leopard because our ancestor stole fire from theirs’; ‘The Big Bang sent out various elements which became the universe and created water and hence life on this planet’; ‘Chimp 1 made chimp 2 feel friendly enough to allow them to go food-gathering together’.
According to Chomsky, 8 awareness of these ways of formulating things is a deep part of our memory - hard-wired in our brains, as it were - just as the skills of grasping are an inherent possibility of our hands. With the casual and connective relations in sentences, narrative becomes a tool for mapping the world. So began art and science: the fabrication of models to understand things. A general intelligence appears - first as superstitious knowledge, but still a cosmic analysis nevertheless, not just gestures between bodies.
Synthesis
This is a qualitative change, and, if you like, the missing link. However, it is no snapshot. Between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago, homo sapiens sapiens appears. With a detachable material manifestation - signs - their understanding of personal motivation is applied to things: the concept of annoyance applied to the leopard, the concept of anger to the sky. These were then embedded in narratives resulting in a universe filled with cause and motivation.
Lévi-Strauss comments that this form of thinking is mythical, but just as logical as later science, given the appreciation of other people and the behaviour of other parts of the cosmos. Relating to the spirits in things; placating them with ceremonies; imitating them in pictures and dances; contacting them in trances and intoxications; constructing narratives that explain and categorise - all rely on the characterisation of the world gained through analogy between things and people. Not only is the modern human born in Africa, but culture itself comes out of African animism. Once these ‘models’ of the universe begin to be made, humans then have the opportunity to differentiate between true and false. So begins belief, science, criticism.
This new technology of signs proved decisive. In the area now known as Europe, the most recent hypothesis about why Neanderthals declined and humans flourished is due to this difference.9 Between 35,000 and 24,000 years ago, the former were outbred by humans because humans maintained supportive cultural bonds connecting groups over a vast area, as evidenced by widely found artefacts like sculptures of lion-headed men and basic musical instruments. The Neanderthals may have had comparable tools and even hardier physiques, but the humans had a better form of solidarity, through words, art and music: ‘religion’ (from re + ligare: to bind).
If you want to celebrate our ancestors’ distinctive survival skills: beyond any knife or bowl, look to one of those chunky female statuettes, often called Venuses or earth goddesses, with their divine rolls of fat, carried from Asia into Europe as the Neanderthals became extinct. Humans survived, through drought and ice age, because they sang to the fat lady.
In summary then, one branch of primates due to natural conditions evolved an upright posture and efficient hands, which promoted improved tool use. At one point, these animals become promiscuous in childbearing, which encouraged teamwork. On the basis of these differences, the species homo, the sociable ape, acquired various techniques and knowledges, which were then combined in a general intelligence embedded in language. This communication by transferable symbols, starting from a rudimentary level, attained concepts of causation and connection - generative grammar - by making analogies between interpersonal understanding and natural events. Homo sapiens became a maker not only of things, but also of symbols: homo fabricator.
As Darwin commented, “If it be maintained that certain powers such as self-consciousness, abstraction, etc are peculiar to man, it may well be that these are the incidental results of other highly advanced intellectual facilities: and these again are the result of the continued use of a highly developed language.”10
Design issues
If we are just animals, then constructive change is an idle dream. Apes do not discuss what a good life is: they just live (often by force); apes do not discuss how one should treat apes. If we are mainly spirits, then maybe the superior spirits - the pure spirits, rather than us - should decide what the good society is, which is probably something that exists only where they live, in a realm that has no connection with the matter of which we are made.
The different philosophies and legends thrown up by class history show that fabrications need not be true, and benefit everyone, to be effective. Their hold on the minds of homo fabricator has been described as ‘fetishism’, similar to the worship of a fetish, a doll containing a spirit. “In that world,” Marx comments, “the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relations both with one another and the human race.” He applies this not only to early belief, but also to acceptance of the political and social present: “So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands.”11 We still take too many human creations, from economic relationships to constitutions, written and unwritten, for living necessities.
Yet the inadequate constructions of yesterday always exist on sufferance. The sociable ape’s urge to fabricate, to redesign, is still with us, if only as a survival skill. The growing interest in self-determination and justice heard in many forms today prevents any easy deference to the established. Many more people too are questioning the unforeseen effects, social and ecological, of our inventions. It remains to be seen whether this expanded awareness can go all the way to a full diagnosis of the problem rather than rest satisfied with treatment of symptoms.
Of course, there is a fear of ‘redesign’. We have the utopias of the 20th century, whether ‘communist’ or ‘free market’, to discomfort us. This is part of the caution about our constructions: that they may backfire on us. However, though we may no longer aspire to be gods, neither are we cattle. We may not ask people to be perfect, but we do ask them to be accountable. We must continue then to evaluate mistakes and test new proposals, asking the right questions, and construct a greater space for the very process of evaluation itself, all over the world. Criticism is sacred.
Why should the adventure of the fabricating ape be over? We have made our bed and we can change it.
Notes
C Darwin The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (1871), part 1, chapter 2.
F Engels The origin of the family, private property and the state (1884).
J Diamond Why is sex fun? The evolution of human sexuality London 1997.
S Mithen The prehistory of mind London 1996.
RIM Dunbar, ‘Co-evolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans’ Behavioural and Brain Sciences No16, 1993.
CS Peirce Peirce on signs: writings on semiotic (1991).
C Lévi-Strauss The savage mind 1966.
N Chomsky Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua lectures (1988).
BBC2 The incredible human journey May 24 2009.
C Darwin op cit p105.
K Marx Capital Vol 1, chapter 1, section 4, London 1954, p77.
Evolution’s revolution
Mike Belbin looks at the emergence of human culture and the vital role of symbolism
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/776/images/evolutions.jpg “Do materialists really think that language just ‘evolved’, like finches’ beaks ...?” - AN Wilson, ‘Why I believe again’ New Statesman April 6 2009
“We are annoying to the leopard because our ancestor stole fire from theirs” - South Amerindian story
What kind of animal are humans? To the crude materialist we are, according to taste, chiefly animal; bundles of needs, habits and reactions; savage or simple. To the spiritual believer, animal matter required something extra, something originally separate, to become human. Is human culture then just another kind of animal behaviour? What does it mean to trace humanity’s development from nature to society? What is the ‘missing link’ between natural history and anthropology? If animals communicate, and they do, is there anything special about human language?
Darwin’s dog
In the Descent of man, Charles Darwin argues that many capacities of human beings have their origin in the basic abilities of animals - to communicate, to feel affection for one’s young, entailing self-sacrifice, and to appraise the immediate environment.
He takes as an example something close to home: “My dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had anyone stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked.” No doubt, the dog was confused, understanding that the movement, as Darwin puts it, “indicated the presence of some strange living agent”. The dog had learnt that the movement was linked to a presence, perhaps a member of Darwin’s family, the sound being similar to a woman’s crinoline skirts. Yet the cause of the noise was invisible.
Darwin adds that this presumption of invisible life may be the animal source of ancient people’s belief in spiritual agencies: that is, attributing agitation in the world to a human-like presence with “the same passions, the same love of vengeance or simplest form of justice, and the same affections they themselves experienced”.1
The human then starts with the same capabilities as other animals. Frederick Engels, in his classic Origin of the family, sketches out human development in terms of the freeing of hands. At one time, certain apes began walking upright, so freeing their hands to grasp - not only in gathering food, but also in the use of tools. Human groups fished, then hunted, following rivers then stalking prey. Another stage produced the bow and arrow and the beginnings in some areas of settlement.²
In the century since Engels wrote, conjecture about these developments has been greatly refined and the role of sexuality and language acknowledged as part of the process.
Between 4.5 million and 2 million years ago, evidence has been found in Africa of small-brained apes walking upright. These are assumed to have come down from the trees permanently, perhaps in response to climate change and a search for food. Their teeth were stronger, useful for chewing tougher foods, such as meat. These apes were classified as Australopithecines. During the Pleistocene period - one million years ago - they became homo erectus, early human. These primates from the Middle Pleistocene had skulls that were like a narrow dishpan turned upside down, while a later branch - homo sapiens - had skulls like an inverted bowl. Remains of this round-headed creature have been found in Java, China, east and north Africa. Another branch of hominids found from this period are the Neanderthals, who later died out (see below).
From the late Lower Pleistocene, simple tools are found with animal bones. These were sticks shaped to dig up roots and stalk small game animals. They had been cut by sharpened flint pieces, which were later tied to the sticks and became hand axes. Spears appear later that can bring down a horse, ox or deer. Similar tools though have been found that were not worn away by use. These could be sacred objects. Meanwhile, the skulls found near them indicate a brain of modern size. Dated 100,000 to 60,000 years ago, these skulls are found among evidence of practices such as the burying of the dead and the building of boats.
Hunting large animals with spears implies teamwork, while the use of sacred symbolic objects indicates myth-making, the passing on of knowledge. Somehow, the upright ape had developed the custom of working in groups, using tools and passing on an understanding of the world.
How had this change occurred?
Sex and sociability
Most species reproduce enough offspring to ensure survival of their genes because the male is alerted as to when the female is ovulating and ready to conceive. Chimps and baboons, for example, have an obvious reddening of the sexual parts.
Like other primates, our animal ancestors could have lived either in promiscuous groups or in subgroups or ‘harems’ controlled by a dominant male. The ape ancestor of humans was probably clear about when the female was ovulating. It has recently been suggested, however, that at some point a female must have been born that had the signs of ovulation concealed. Mating with these females, males in promiscuous groups could not be sure which offspring were theirs. One effect of this would be to stop the usual practice of primates, which is to kill off the children of other males.
Concealed ovulation may have meant in effect that offspring belonged to everyone. Such ambiguity of parenting might make for closer groups all round - more sharing of food and more affection and solidarity between adults and children. These more sociable groups would have had a survival advantage. Flexible female mating might also have encouraged both females and male to copulate just for pleasure, mutual pleasure. The appearance then of mutual sexual pleasure and promiscuous parenting could be the source of human solidarity.3 Force would not have achieved the bonding necessary. Whatever practices of male dominance, incest taboos or monogamy conventions followed, in the beginning was sexual communism.
Intelligence agent
These sociable creatures began to develop something else: transmittable intelligence or language. In Prehistory of the mind, Steven Mithen allies the physical and social growth of early humans with the kind of intelligence he speculates developed at different times.4 The perceptiveness of post-erectus homo sapiens was in many ways indistinguishable from animals. As with other mammals, they were familiar with the appreciation of climate and danger. To this was added an expertise in hand tools like stone-cutting implements. For communication, it is likely that these early humans used a simple set of sounds, like animals, to give commands or warnings - ‘keep away’, ‘fruit here’, ‘large prey ahead’.
Animals use communication for many purposes: marking territory, warning adversaries, courtship. In his work on primate groups, anthropologist Robin Dunbar focuses on the purpose for apes of one particular form of physical communication.5 While living in groups, apes convey information to and about each other by grooming - picking out fleas and lice from each other’s bodies. Whom one chooses to give this attention to, for how long and whom you let watch - these function as social messages, affirming relationships, as well as getting rid of dirt.
Dunbar reckons that any one primate spends 30% of their time grooming others. It is his proposition that, as group size increased, and relationships grew more complicated, spoken language developed as a supplement to physical interaction. Even simple ‘chattering’ speech communicates better and faster to others than massage: conveying liking, mood and defining a common enemy or rival.
In close-knit groups, the best at such grooming would be those sensitive to the moods of others, communicating when required, appealing to emotional states, sensing ‘bad moods’. Those who could infer ‘social knowledge’ about other minds and their intentions, as well as defining who to dislike and exclude, could have acquired an evolutionary advantage. ‘Reading’ and defining others may even have made some individuals leaders.
Furthermore, following Dunbar, it is Mithen’s contention that it was this rudimentary language, these particular sounds - words - that began to act as a ‘vehicle’ for mixing the different intelligences, technical and environmental, acquired in the life of the group. Once created, these names for interpersonal concepts - like/dislike, hostile/friendly - became transferable to other relations in the rest of the physical world. The sky, like a person, is treated as readable: signs of ‘discontent’ in the sky are not only comprehensible as climatic changes, but as a ‘bad mood’ or hostile other, contributing to a ‘cosmic analysis’ of a human-like presence that inhabits the sky.
This may have been followed by rituals to placate the sky, a sort of cosmic grooming - rituals which then bond members of the society together. These ‘modern humans’ can feel that little bit more confident with the world and each other - ‘knowledgeable’ - by using their special sounds that are applicable to the state of persons and applying them to the state of things. But why were these sounds transferable in this way? How, in other words, did they work as symbols?
Standing for something else
Charles Peirce defined a symbol or sign, which could be a word, a sentence or a picture, as something that stands in the comprehension of somebody for something else in some respect or capacity 6 The words ‘dog’ or ‘*****’ can thus equally stand for a canine. Peirce called the thing that stands for something, the representamen and what it stands for, the object or ground - its idea. The way it is understood in the mind of another was the interpretant- when you say ‘cheese’, you may be thinking Cheddar, while I may take it as Brie.
A representamen can be of three kinds. It can be an ‘icon’: that is, it resembles its object in some way - a cartoon or a photograph can both be a portrait. A sign can also be an ‘index’, physically connected with its object - no smoke without fire. Lastly, it can be a ‘conventional’ symbol, only understood within the interpreting mind as part of a particular code - ‘dog’ is part of English, while ‘un chien’ is French: they are part of different codes. Visual signs can belong to different codes, according to context: on the beach, a red flag may signal danger; on a demonstration, solidarity. Once you have a material representamen or sign, you have something that can be detached, transferred, applied.
It is with this power of detachability that language goes from being rudimentary communication to developed creation, to metaphor, where a word for one thing can stand for another. With this the sociable ape begins to construct what anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss called “the science of the concrete”7 - a perception of the world as being similar to the human being.
In this ‘science’, understanding of interpersonal relations, of intentions and actions, is applied to the events of the natural world. Like Darwin’s dog, we intuit an invisible presence. The cosmos is felt to be inhabited by something similar to people - spirits, the supernatural, gods - whose actions explain the world. For instance: why are leopards fierce towards humans? Because, says one South Amerindian tribe, they are annoyed at us. Our ancestor, the first human, was once the servant of the leopard, tending the fire that belonged to the beast. One day the ancestor stole the fire and ran off to start human society. There has been an understandable antagonism ever since.
Not only words, but also their combination in a sentence, suggest the action of people on others and the world. Noam Chomsky in his work on linguistics argues that causation and ‘embeddedness’ form the deep structure, the generative grammar,8 of all sentences. Though word order may differ in different societies, these ways of connecting noun and verb are universal: ‘We are annoying to the leopard because our ancestor stole fire from theirs’; ‘The Big Bang sent out various elements which became the universe and created water and hence life on this planet’; ‘Chimp 1 made chimp 2 feel friendly enough to allow them to go food-gathering together’.
According to Chomsky, 8 awareness of these ways of formulating things is a deep part of our memory - hard-wired in our brains, as it were - just as the skills of grasping are an inherent possibility of our hands. With the casual and connective relations in sentences, narrative becomes a tool for mapping the world. So began art and science: the fabrication of models to understand things. A general intelligence appears - first as superstitious knowledge, but still a cosmic analysis nevertheless, not just gestures between bodies.
Synthesis
This is a qualitative change, and, if you like, the missing link. However, it is no snapshot. Between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago, homo sapiens sapiens appears. With a detachable material manifestation - signs - their understanding of personal motivation is applied to things: the concept of annoyance applied to the leopard, the concept of anger to the sky. These were then embedded in narratives resulting in a universe filled with cause and motivation.
Lévi-Strauss comments that this form of thinking is mythical, but just as logical as later science, given the appreciation of other people and the behaviour of other parts of the cosmos. Relating to the spirits in things; placating them with ceremonies; imitating them in pictures and dances; contacting them in trances and intoxications; constructing narratives that explain and categorise - all rely on the characterisation of the world gained through analogy between things and people. Not only is the modern human born in Africa, but culture itself comes out of African animism. Once these ‘models’ of the universe begin to be made, humans then have the opportunity to differentiate between true and false. So begins belief, science, criticism.
This new technology of signs proved decisive. In the area now known as Europe, the most recent hypothesis about why Neanderthals declined and humans flourished is due to this difference.9 Between 35,000 and 24,000 years ago, the former were outbred by humans because humans maintained supportive cultural bonds connecting groups over a vast area, as evidenced by widely found artefacts like sculptures of lion-headed men and basic musical instruments. The Neanderthals may have had comparable tools and even hardier physiques, but the humans had a better form of solidarity, through words, art and music: ‘religion’ (from re + ligare: to bind).
If you want to celebrate our ancestors’ distinctive survival skills: beyond any knife or bowl, look to one of those chunky female statuettes, often called Venuses or earth goddesses, with their divine rolls of fat, carried from Asia into Europe as the Neanderthals became extinct. Humans survived, through drought and ice age, because they sang to the fat lady.
In summary then, one branch of primates due to natural conditions evolved an upright posture and efficient hands, which promoted improved tool use. At one point, these animals become promiscuous in childbearing, which encouraged teamwork. On the basis of these differences, the species homo, the sociable ape, acquired various techniques and knowledges, which were then combined in a general intelligence embedded in language. This communication by transferable symbols, starting from a rudimentary level, attained concepts of causation and connection - generative grammar - by making analogies between interpersonal understanding and natural events. Homo sapiens became a maker not only of things, but also of symbols: homo fabricator.
As Darwin commented, “If it be maintained that certain powers such as self-consciousness, abstraction, etc are peculiar to man, it may well be that these are the incidental results of other highly advanced intellectual facilities: and these again are the result of the continued use of a highly developed language.”10
Design issues
If we are just animals, then constructive change is an idle dream. Apes do not discuss what a good life is: they just live (often by force); apes do not discuss how one should treat apes. If we are mainly spirits, then maybe the superior spirits - the pure spirits, rather than us - should decide what the good society is, which is probably something that exists only where they live, in a realm that has no connection with the matter of which we are made.
The different philosophies and legends thrown up by class history show that fabrications need not be true, and benefit everyone, to be effective. Their hold on the minds of homo fabricator has been described as ‘fetishism’, similar to the worship of a fetish, a doll containing a spirit. “In that world,” Marx comments, “the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relations both with one another and the human race.” He applies this not only to early belief, but also to acceptance of the political and social present: “So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands.”11 We still take too many human creations, from economic relationships to constitutions, written and unwritten, for living necessities.
Yet the inadequate constructions of yesterday always exist on sufferance. The sociable ape’s urge to fabricate, to redesign, is still with us, if only as a survival skill. The growing interest in self-determination and justice heard in many forms today prevents any easy deference to the established. Many more people too are questioning the unforeseen effects, social and ecological, of our inventions. It remains to be seen whether this expanded awareness can go all the way to a full diagnosis of the problem rather than rest satisfied with treatment of symptoms.
Of course, there is a fear of ‘redesign’. We have the utopias of the 20th century, whether ‘communist’ or ‘free market’, to discomfort us. This is part of the caution about our constructions: that they may backfire on us. However, though we may no longer aspire to be gods, neither are we cattle. We may not ask people to be perfect, but we do ask them to be accountable. We must continue then to evaluate mistakes and test new proposals, asking the right questions, and construct a greater space for the very process of evaluation itself, all over the world. Criticism is sacred.
Why should the adventure of the fabricating ape be over? We have made our bed and we can change it.
Notes
C Darwin The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (1871), part 1, chapter 2.
F Engels The origin of the family, private property and the state (1884).
J Diamond Why is sex fun? The evolution of human sexuality London 1997.
S Mithen The prehistory of mind London 1996.
RIM Dunbar, ‘Co-evolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans’ Behavioural and Brain Sciences No16, 1993.
CS Peirce Peirce on signs: writings on semiotic (1991).
C Lévi-Strauss The savage mind 1966.
N Chomsky Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua lectures (1988).
BBC2 The incredible human journey May 24 2009.
C Darwin op cit p105.
K Marx Capital Vol 1, chapter 1, section 4, London 1954, p77.