Descent of Man, Ascent of Apes?
by Thomas Fleming
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade. Penguin 2006.
It has been many decades since I tried to read Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man. Like many other writers on human evolution, Darwin seems addicted to just-so stories, and, although he was a patient and careful naturalist and an often brilliant commentator on what we would today call eco-systems, his basic account–apart from his theory of natural selection (and that is admittedly a big “apart from”)–is no more advanced or more probable than what we find in Lucretius, who borrowed it from Epicurus, who took much of it from the Fifth Century philosopher-poet Empedocles. Basically, men once lived like beasts, fighting and stealing, feeding, fornicating, and killing until, driven by necessity, they made non-aggression pacts with each other. Necessity also inspired language and culture–an early version of B.F. Skinner’s equally unsubstantiated theory of human development.
For Epicurus and his disciples, it did not matter too much whether or not a scientific account of thunder or language was true, because the real point was to discredit non-materialist explanations and thus religion. It is no accident that when Western science began to take off, Epicurean theories came back into vogue, stimulated in part by the discovery of a ms. of Lucretius. Nicholas Wade’s foray into science-journalism is only the most recent popular account in a long line of Darwinian just-so storytellers that includes Thomas Henry Huxley, Julian Huxley, and Richard Dawkins. Wade is not a science but a science reporter. Nonetheless, his book has been blurbed by James D. Watson and E.O. Wilson. One may well regard Watson as something of a hustler and Wilson as philosophically naif, but both are important scientists who have made valuable contributions to our understanding of life on earth, whether of termites or the mythical Tasaday.
I have chosen to discuss this book two reasons: first, because it provides a lucid and readable survey of recent developments in genetics and archeology that help us gain a more detailed picture of the gap between baboons and Babylonians; second, because Wade illustrates the failure of scientists to think coherently and avoid drawing unjustified conclusions from partial evidence. Intellectually, he and the scientists from whom he draws his material are a giant step backward from Epicurus, who knew, consciously, when he was making up a scientific myth and for what reason.
I am only going to go into a few interesting details but am happy to discuss anything in the book that strikes the fancy of a reader. I do want to avoid some of the pitfalls of earlier discussions. I am, therefore, stipulating from the beginning that this is to be a rational, not a theological discussion. First, there are to be no givens, whether materialist or Christian, though naturally we are all free to express what we believe. What I wish to avoid are arguments over whether or not the Bible or the Pope contradicts evolutionary theory; second, we are going to apply Cato’s formula, rem tene or “stick to the point.” I do not at all object to diversions that are relevant or even tangential, but responses that are personal, irrelevant, personal, or long and rambling will be removed. Please do not take a removal personally and please do not write in to apologize.
Chapter I: Genetics & Genesis
Wade states his general theme: to study human history from roughly 3000 BC, when written records first appear, back to roughly 50,000 years ago when a recognizably human species first appears. “If this is the point at which the modern human story begins, then written records exist for ust the last 10% of it; 90% of human history seems irretrievably lost.” It is a minor point but indicative. History does not mean whatever has happened to human beings but a rational inquiry, set down in writing, into human events. This is an important distinction because Wade is not aware that his material is not history and that his speculations do not have the status of historical inquiry.
In general, I am going to skip over his little stories, so dear to the hearts of cheap journalists today, but his story of the louse is, again, indicative. The interesting point is the notion that the evolution of headlice into body lice probably coincides with the invention of clothing. (When we were hairy apes, lice could roam the entire body but as we lost hair they were confined only to our tufts.) He drags in Genesis, only to make a silly joke, but the conjectural dating for the invention of clothing–about 70,000 BC is potentially useful if true. However, by his own principles, body lice might have evolved by accident and hung around, barely surviving, for some time until the invention of clothing gave them a selective advantage. I think the research is interesting and valuable, but, at least as he presents it, far from conclusive.
The first stage in the human journey is our differentiation from chimpanzees or chimp-like ancestors. We share 99% of our DNA with chimps, which should make us realize what a difference is made by that 1%. Since much of this chapter simply summarizes the contents of succeeding chapters–indeed, this book might have been half as long if it were not written for cretins–I shall not go into detail. The basic myth he tells is of ape-like creatures that took advantage of mutations that enabled them to communicate and avoid conflict. Though anatomically human creatures existed 100,000 years ago, language of some kind–and typically human behavior–would have evolved about 50,000 years ago. Evolution did not stop, but human groups, even after the exodus from Africa, evolved along different lines, physically and mentally.
He concedes that the compilers of Genesis did their best to explain human origins, we now know so much more and can give a much better explanation. Can we really? I postpone that discussion to the end except to say that Wade does not appear to understand Genesis at all, except in a Fundamentalist sense. Historic Christianity, however, is not fundamentalist and has always interpreted the Old Testament through the lens of the New and through the tradition. If we wish to take the OT seriously as a work of science and history, then the value of pi is 3 and the earth is flat and it is OK to slaughter innocent people just because they are occupying territory you think God has given you. What Genesis does teach us is man’s dependency on a God who created the universe and made man as a creature he loves. Man was seduced by his arrogance, his desire to know good and evil and make himself a god. So long as man walks in the footsteps of Adam, he will make himself miserable. It seems to me Genesis, for all its scientific inadequacy, gets many important things more right than Darwin and his disciples have understood.
In the end, it hardly matters whether behaviorally modern man, a descendant of chimp-like ancestors, emerged 50,000 or 20,000 years ago. As seekers of truth we naturally would like to know, but we should never confuse this information or speculation with wisdom that is grounded in human experience.
Chapter II: Metamorphosis
In Wade’s new version of genesis, 150 modern humans left Africa about 50,000 years ago, repeating an earlier human exodus of 1.8 million years ago. The earlier emigrants turned into the distinct species Homo erectus in Asia and Homo neanderthalensis in Europe and from time to time the Middle East. This entire human line descends from chimplike ancestors that evolved about 5 million years ago.
Wade emphasizes the impact of ecological stress on hominid evolution. A harsh global cooling and drying shrunk the arboreal apes’ woodland habitat, and, while conservative apes stayed in the trees and changed rather little, some specimens began spending more time on the ground and making use of genetic variation that adapted them to new conditions. One of the changes is bipedalism,which leaves the hands freer for food-getting and aggression.
The first walking apes were the australopithecines of about 4.4 million years ago. Their brains were only slightly larger than the apes whom they resembled.
Another cooling period, 3-2 million years back, shrunk the vegetable supply and encouraged meat-eating. The species that emerged, Homo habilis, benefited from the new diet and experienced an increase in brain size–up to twice that of the chimpanzees. Hh also develops use of primitive tools.
With the emergence of Hh’s descendant Homo ergaster (the workman) about 1.7 million years ago, the human form showed the effects of dietary change. He lost his Wisconsin-sized belly, needed to hold leaves, and his chest went from the shape of a cone to that of a barrel. With ergaster, sexual dimorphism decreased, in the sense that the size-difference between males and females was reduced, which may reflect the development of male-female bonding (how he does not say) as opposed to the separate male and female hierarchies of modern chimps. (By the way, he rarely makes it clear that the male hierarchy rules.) H.e. females also have a smaller birth canal. This coupled with larger brain size meant that H.e. infants and their descendants are born premature and require more attention than ape babies.
Ergaster also develops a humanoid nose and may lose his fur, at least according to Richard Klein, one of Wade’s favorite authorities. This development is variously explained as the result of the need to sweat in a hot climate (Klein) or of sex appeal (Darwin).
Loss of hair is related to the dark skin of Africa. Chimps today have pink skin, but they are protected by hair. The gene controlling skin color is more uniform in Africa, presumably, because lighter skin would have made the possessor more vulnerable to sun damage. Outside of Africa, dark skin was more a liability because it would have blocked vitamin D absorption, caused rickets, and made individuals less fit to thrive and reproduce. That presumably is why Africans in the US were unable to reproduce….
Ergaster or his descendants broke out of their African prison less than 2 million years ago and the result was Homo erectus and the Neanderthals. Back in Africa, ergaster went on changing and growing a bigger brain but scarcely changed their way of life. By 100,000 years ago they looked like modern humans but acted much as they always had. Human behavior would not develop for another 55,000 years.
What happened. Archaeologists emphasize cultural development, while anthropologists are more hip to genes and favor genetic interpretation. Wade naturally favors genes, though he admits the paucity of evidence. Klein pins the cultural revolution that began some 50,000 years ago, roughly when the colonists left Africa, on a genetic change that permitted the development of language.
I’ll spare you the details of the quarrel over whether there is evidence of modern behavior–group cooperation, fishing, etc,–before the second exodus. As I understand it, part of the proof of the change is that the 150 must have been able to communicate in order to coordinate the departure. This seems highly speculative and not at all solidly based, especially considering the lack of evidence and the accidental nature of many paleoanthropoligical discoveries.
Wade following Klein has filled in many details, but the overall story is not too different from what it was 20-30 years ago when I was preparing to write The Politics of Human Nature. What I could not figure out then and cannot figure out now is who is who, that is, who are apes and who are humans. Australopithecenes are clearly apes and so, I believe, is Hh. But He or HN may not be less human than some of my neighbors. What is their presumed IQ–about 65-75?
Then there is the problem of descent vs. parallel development. It is not at all clear to me that we know enough to say that we are descended from australophithecines. There are so few specimens and they in such fragmentary condition. I look forward to your comments.
Chapter III: “First Words”
What is the cause of language? To be more precise and Aristotelian, what are the causes? That is, what are its material requirements, what form(s) does it take, who or what is the driving force, and what purpose or functions does it serve? These are ancient questions, taken up by Platonists, Stoics, and Epicureans. Epicureans naturally saw language as a response to or expression of necessity, while Plato tried to link words with reality, much as he regarded the arts as mimetic representations of a more real reality beyond the senses.
In modern times, philosophers have been joined by linguists and anthropologists, each with a particular theory unrelated to every other theory. The chaos and absurdity (matched only by the chaos and absurdity of professional metricians) reached a point that linguists agreed to ban discussions of the origins question from many conferences and journals. Wade knows none of this it seems, and repeats the absurd charge that Noam Chomsky is somehow responsible for the taboo.
Wade’s approach, in a nutshell, is to assume that there must be a straightforward Neo-Darwinist explanation for the origin of language. In other words, a genetic variant can be discovered which multiplied under advantageous circumstances. He does not make the mistake of treating human language as simply a more sophisticated form of monkey cries and gestures. Language is “a vibrant, fully developed facility in people, but is not possessed, even in rudimentary form, by another species.” This is virtually the only statement in the chapter that can be accepted without serious qualifications, though, please note that Wade does not know enough of his own language to know that a comma is used to separate two clauses but not a verbal phrase lacking a subject (as in, “but is not possessed.”) It is a small point but indicative.
The language mechanism, it has long been known, is sensitive to a person’s age, that is, if it is not kicked in at an early age, it will never properly develop. But even the primitive language of the deprived is a great advance over non-human forms of communication. As an example he cites “Shh!” which is interesting because it “requires a listener.” Apparently Wade thinks that “Shh” can be proved to be a primitive expression, an idea for which there is absolutely no evidence. “Shh” though a monosyllable sibilant is a command that quite possibly could only develop in languages where there is already a syntax for giving commands.
He also assumes that the way sign-languages spring up among deaf people can tell us something about the origin of language. But maybe, maybe not is the only answer a prudent man can give. Perhaps we are dealing with a Kluge Hans syndrome, that is, the deaf children grow up responding to people who communicate through language, and their response is to develop a parallel set of signs. I am oversimplifying terribly, but no more than Wade.
Wade cites a theorist who thinks that language evolved from gestures more than grunts and cries and another who relates it to grooming, in which case language begins as a bonding mechanism rather than as a communication tool. According to another, language is a peacock’s tail, that is, a hypertrophic development of a feature that is originally related to mating. But, as Wade notes, English has about 60,000 words in use. This seems more than a hypertrophic extension of “Nice pair!”. Then there is the equally trivial theory that as humans moved into information-rich ecological niches, they were forced to develop a means of communication.
Wade is more impressed with the idea that more sophisticated and diversified tools required words to describe them, citing a theorist who says “It’s as though Upper Paleolithic flint workers were saying , ‘This is an end-scraper: I use it as an end-scraper, I call it an end-scraper and it must therefore look line an end-scraper.” (Another theorist who hasn’t learned comma rules.) The operative words are “It’s as though,” words which should have been used to introduce the entire chapter.
The flint worker hypothesis allows Wade to assume that, once again, the key date is about 50,000, the eve of the human exodus from Africa. All that is needed is a gene involved with language that might have developed within a 10-20,000 years of the exodus, and, presto.
The gene is FOXP2, which, if is broken, produces people who have trouble with language. The genetic research is valuable to a point: FOXP2 is associated with fetal brain development in just those parts of the brain associated with language, and it probably developed its human form within the past 200,000 years (close enough). But who knows how many genes are required for successful language development, and, even if all were identified and studied, we would only know something about the material basis of language, much as studies of tongue and jaw help us to understand how people speak.
Is this the silliest chapter in the book or is it simply that I have thought enough about the subject to realize that he knows absolutely nothing of any use? Naturally he rejects teleology, but why is it inconceivable that the use of language by historical man (the past 5000 years) is reflects the origin and original function or purpose of language? In speaking of sign language, he neglected to mention something that is widely known about people born deaf: They tend not to develop a normal human affect toward other people. They are often observed to be cold, indifferent to human suffering, even cruel, whether or not they learn sign language. (I wonder if this explains part of the ridiculous behavior of Galaudet University students.) In that sense, sign-language then would be an entirely false scent to chase after—merely an inadequate substitute for a skill that is essential to our humanness.
Part of Wade’s problem is that he is a science journalist and has no way of weighing evidence and testimony. He’s been told that Chomsky is the greatest linguist of modern times, so he does his best to follow Chomsky. But Chomsky is simply a theorist, a very successful one if we measure him by where his disciples are placed, but his work is almost entirely theoretical. I do not know what languages Chomsky knows, but from his writings I should say he is not competent even in English. I once heard one of his more important disciples declare there was no difference between saying, “I like him playing the violin, and “I like his playing the violin,” citing this as an example of what he chose to call the sloppiness of language, that is, having multiple forms of expression available. When someone tried to straighten him out, the Chomskyist (a Yale prof.) smiled and responded, “We must be speaking different dialects.” I see absolutely no evidence that Chomsky or his followers have any understanding of real languages as opposed to the theories of generative and transformational grammar that they have used to ruin the teaching of English.
This will interest no one but I have observed a parallel to Chomskyite methods and their futility: the metrical theories applied to so-called Aeolic meters in Greek lyric poetry (e.g., Pindar, Bacchylides, Aeschylus). From a presumed core of –uu- to which various elements can be added, the theorists construct, through sequencing or through infixing [ as in –uu{-uu-} -] all the forms of Aeolic lyric verse. Just one thing: There is absolutely no evidence that Greek poet-musicians thought in this way or constructed verses in this fashion and no evidence of any poetic or musical rhythm of this type ever existing.
In sum, though he has provided some interesting tidbits, Wade is too ignorant of language even to begin to speculate on the origin of language, but confident in the Neo-Darwinist method, he trots out a series of unrelated absurdities and builds them into what he regards as a probable scenario. Later on, he will go even further down this road, discussing the development of historical language with even more recklessness. As one of the wisest poets of our language once said, “Though I’m anything but clever, I could talk like that forever.”
Two requests: First, let us take up this chapter before talking about anything else, and second, please do not ask me for my theory of the origin of language.
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