In my previous article about Evolution, I described how life evolved from aquatic form that were only able to live in water, into something that instead lived entirely outside of water. This time I will not only explain how we came from roaming the surface to being humans, but also what this whole path can tell us about true human nature. Because its decisions that our ancestors made back then led to the outcome we are witnessing now.
So back when there were still no humans, but mammals already roamed the earth. They ate various insects and plants, bred like no tomorrow and eventually became very numerous, so numerous it became hard to actually find any uneaten blade of grass or a leaf and make it there before someone else makes there first and eat it right before one's very eyes. Would not you want a kill this cunt who stole that shrub from your very eyes?
In this changing world, some animals came to just that conclusion, so they started fighting over ever dwindling resources. Some switched to alternative forms of food. For some of these animals, this alternative food became the very fellow animals, they used to compete for leaves with. From a happy world of abundance and roaming, it gradually became a deadly hell of struggle for food and survival.
So how did our ancestors survive all that. Rather smooth actually. In fact, in this rat race for survival, they were one of the chilliest animas out there, the Sloth. Yes, we evolved from Sloth and yes, he was chilling among all that hell down below. Why do you think that was the case?
From first glance, slow, clumsy and lazy Sloth is antithesis of survivability, but that is rather shortsighted conclusion. Sloth prospered when others suffered, because figured a very big brain move to beat the system. It climbed up the tree and made itself comfortable up there. From safety of its height's sloth did not need to worry about being killed by predators, even if a tree climbing feline predator will manage to kill it, its claws will prevent its corpse from falling to the ground where a predator can actually eat it, making killing Sloth utterly pointless. Meanwhile its ability to climb trees allowed it access to leaves that were out of reach of surface roamers.
Already a brainy creature, Sloth and other arboreal creatures became even smarter up there in the tree crones. Unlike simple to roam surface, navigating tree crones are challenging, one should estimate if the branch is sturdy enough to support one's weight. To navigate the branches a palm that can grab and hold a branch, swing on it to propel one further. That required bigger brains and more dexterous arms. That is something we humans too even further later. That is also why monkeys are actually much more intelligent and capable compared to surface roaming animals, even if humans do not like to think of monkeys as that smart.
If you think of antithesis to Sloth, an animal that took polar opposite approach to life and evolved in the most unlike us way, then it has to be horse. Horse is all muscles and no brain. Instead of developing dexterous arms, horse went of endurance, its limbs now end with bony hoofs that are numb to pain and allow horse to roam around longer. Despite its size and strength, it failed to become a predator. Eventually humans ended up using horse in various capacities.
Generally, animals we domesticate and use or eat are of the kind that not only most unlike us, but also typically most dumb and least adapted. A smarter animal will figure out how to throw away a yoke; a dumb one will pull it instead. That is why we are not using monkeys to type anything. Dog learns all these tricks not because its smart, but because its dumb, fails in life, but wants to survive. A dog that prefers freedom to survival is called wolf and one cannot find one in a circus for that very reason.
If you want a human example of those who take the horse's backward path of evolution, then you can find them in your local gym.
If you think about it, you can even find parallels between Sloth situation and that of the lungfish. In both cases, the path to success and further evolution was not to compete for dwindling resources with ever increasing competition, but to make big brain move towards new and untested outside of the box way of life. For doing that Lungfish and newt were rewarded with abundance of food on the surface. Sloth was similarly rewarded with safety of arboreal life and abundance of uncontested food up there. This is the big brain move.
Once Sloth made its way up there, it managed to eat a lot, multiplied and eventually branched out into multitude of various arboreal animals: lemurs, monkeys, tarsiers. This path eventually led towards great apes and finally to us humans.
Last step of the evolution is the most famous one, chimpanzee into human. Its best knows and gets mocked a lot too. How monkey became human? Why humans evolved, but monkeys are still there?
It happened much like the last time. At first arboreal life was chill and easy but eventually monkeys and other arboreal animals multiplied so much that even high crones of trees became too crowded and food too scarce. That again necessitated a yet another big brain moves, however this time there was nowhere else to climb. What did our ancestors do in such situation?
We learned to hunt. Precisely to hunt mammoth. Our bigger than average brains allowed us to figure out this rather outside of the box solution. Normally predators are bigger than their pray, otherwise they will not be able to kill their prey. Yet in this case mammoth is much larger than monkeys that managed to hunt them in extinction. In fact, mammoth was only able to survive this long despite being so slow and clumsy only because it was too large for any predator to hunt it.
What did our ancestors do to beat this problem? They build trap. It was simple trap but effective, nonetheless. A group of still monkeys will dig out a big pit on the path that mammoth typically takes to the water. Then disguise it with leaves. Next time mammoth walks this path it steps into a trap falls down. Unable to make out, it will starve, but monkeys will not let it, instead they surround the pit and throw rocks at mammoth until its dead.
Just like that monkeys have their prey. It's not only very large and will keep them fed for a long time, but it's also meat. Before they learned to hunt, these arboreal animas sustained themselves on fruit and leaves. Now however they had meat. That alone will allow them to substantially change compared to their still vegetarian brethren. Why not all monkeys evolved, that is because not all of them hunted mammoth and ate meat. Those who did not are still monkeys. Meat made us humans; veganism is backward path back to monkeys.
Hunt gave us not only meat, but also other things that differentiate humans from animals, for example society. Yes, society only exist because of mammoth hunt. Digging a pit is a lot of work, that is too much effort for a single monkey, too much to bother. However, if a group works together, it becomes a much more feasible task. Thus, everyone can benefit if they work together on this one. The other reason for teamwork is the fact that mammoth is huge, there is too much meat for a single monkey, thus much can effectively be shared between many. Finally, to kill mammoth faster, a lot of rocks have to be thrown at it. The more monkeys doing it at the same time, the better the result is. All these factors favor teamwork over individual hunt.
Thus, to allow for a concerted and organised effort of hunting mammoth. Monkeys created society with things like collaboration, division of labor and more. All these things came to us from the mammoth hunt. A complex society with cohesive rules on work and spoils distribution was needed to keep the hunt party together.
Societies do not exist because we are naturally social and need companionship. Societies only exist because they serve our self-interest. That is why when people when people wonder why there was a crisis of the 3rd century BC when ancient societies collapsed, they overthink things. A simple reason is that society stopped benefiting their members and they simply moved on.
It's no different nowadays, society itself maybe endures but companies, friendships and families dissolve when they stop benefitting their members. That is the only way of life.
If in future a different organisation or solitary existence will be more beneficial than society, we will start living this way instead of how we do now.
Yet there is more. Since mammoth is not only meat, but also fur, we gradually learn to use it to fashion ourselves clothes.
Hunt also contributed towards other craft. Sharper stones make killing faster, so we learned to sharpen them. Sharp edges and pointy ends could help cut fur and meat into pieces, so we learned to make blades as well. At first these were fashioned from chipped away stones, but later we started making them out of metal and other modern materials. Modern knives do not look like those of mammoth hunters, but we came up with very idea of a knife all the way back then. As well as with idea that someone should manufacture these things for a party.
As you know there are no mammoth currently left roaming the earth, a few frozen ones were found by archeologists. Proto humans eventually hunted them all down and ate them. Afterwards the bunch of starving proto humans began exterminating each other for meat. We invented war and cannibalism.
Nowadays we see war as evil and cannibalism is unthinkable crime against humanity. Back then however it was the only way we could think of that would allow us to survive. An emergency measure, we might come back to again if we find ourselves in a similar situation. Current uncontrollable population grows may end up leading to just that kind of situation.
With each new group, destroyed by winners of the cannibalistic wars, firing other humans was becoming harder and harder, because survivors now knew human warfare and will not go down easily. Eventually it became safer to instead hunt for other animals, like deer, who maybe nimble and will not let one too close, but at the very least it cannot fight back.
However, things did not stay this way forever, eventually we figured how to grow crops, husband animals and more. After all, why hunt adult animal that can run away, when you can simply take its infants, raise them and then slaughter them for food. Why look for edible plants in the forests, when you can take their seeds and plant them on a big field, wait for them to grow and then just go there and eat anytime you want. All the big brain moves that required thinking outside of the box. Scientific observation and ability to analyse the information. These are the things that made us humans, not ethics religion or such.
In this, like in every other turn of evolution, it's the big brain moves, that carried the day and moved us ahead and above towards higher forms of existence. A lot of modern humans look down on monkeys and refuse to acknowledge them as related to us in any way.
Now that we again are at a point where old ways no longer work, we are in need of a big brain solution to this issue that will elevate humanity to the next level of existence. If we fail to come up with a big brain move, we will devolve back into war and cannibalism.
However, lets home that worst case scenario will not come to pass and we instead will manage to solve our problems with technology. I do not fancy trying human meat.




