MAN. . .WE USED TO BELIEVE THAT. . .PART I

For more than forty years now I have been fascinated with anthropology; I have spent many hours searching and seeking to understand the insights that this amazing discipline offers us to consider.

Consider ‘MAN’ – We used to believe that at some point in time a large-brained upright primate arrived on the evolutionary scene, and that this large brain enabled him to learn to use tools, develop complex speech, see the difference between the way things are and the way they ought to be – and so, laugh and cry, carve and draw, and hold rituals to honor those who died and the ‘ancestors’ who have gone before [I have friends who believe that the Old Testament contains historical fact and so ‘evolution’ as I am thinking about it does not, could not, exist; they care about me and are supportive of who I am and they do find my taking the time to think about evolution in this way as a waste of my time].

Anthropologists have suggested, if not believed, that man’s large brain is a rather late development. They suggest that first we had an upright animal who learned how to use tools and to hunt, and this seems to have provided the stimulus for developing the brain [the ‘man-apes’ of Africa had a brain half the size of our brain]. The man-apes developed a taste for meat and as they sought out more meat to kill and eat, they had to develop more and more sophisticated hunting skills. Over time these gatherers, now hunters, began to take possession of their world; they became its ‘masters.’

It seems that in order to become truly efficient hunters these folks had to develop new forms of social organization – their increasing skill depended on new inventions of a social kind. There are some who believe that we humans share much in common with baboons: rugged individualism, indiscriminate sex, selfish grabbing of food and females, fighting for domination of the weak. As inviting as these analogies are, they are wrong. We humans developed away from the apes precisely because we had to hunt meat!

This is the idea that causes me to stop, step-back and reflect. If one wants to hunt in this sophisticated way one cannot be a baboon, or act like one. For one thing – a big thing it is – if males wanted to get larger game they needed to cooperate with others; the larger and more dangerous the game the more intimate the cooperative relationships were required. This also meant that you could not go back to the camp and fight over the kill or over the females. The group of individuals had to become an interdependent group – a tribe or a clan. These folks had to learn to function as an organized unit – one that prepared together, worked together for the common good, and hunted as ‘one.’ This required the emergence of agreed upon social relationships and rules that would support them. The social codes included the invention of sexual codes which established harmony and cooperation in mating units and these units formed the foundation for the group, the tribe, the clan, etc. [to be concluded in Part II]