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Human Story
Welcome to the Human Story
This is the collective story of how our species emerged from the rest of nature and how we progressed and grew in volume and complexity, up to today's breathtaking picture.
As with the other stories we are starting by sketching in the facts as we know them and from these then we will develop the storylines and flesh out the tale of Humankind.
Please feel welcome to contribute what you know in terms of facts, details, inspirations and suggestions. Please also feel welcome to join in the writing and creating of the Human Story as a Story that can be told and passed around.
Our starting point for this story is somewhat sketchier than the Universe and Earth stories so that leaves more room for contribution from you. Enjoy!
Human Story
We have something like 60% of our dna in common with plants and trees and progressively more with the insects, fish, reptiles and mammals. When we get to the monkeys we are in the high 90%'s and when we get to the apes and chimps it is something like 98-99%. When we look at the bonobo, those extraordinary peace loving, laid back citizens of the canopy to the north of the Congo river we find that the dna is virtually identical with our own.
To the best of our knowledge our species, speciated, from the apes in Africa. To speciate is to separate as a species or a version of one. It is thought that as a result of climate change the forest cover in central Africa started to recede and open savannah to develop. This encouraged our ancestors down from the trees and increasingly into hunting for food in the open. To do this it was obviously advantageous to stand upright so you could see prey and also see predators who might want to eat you. So this started the process of altering the physiology to an upright stance.
The earliest humans or hominids have been found in Central Africa of which Lucy is the earliest and most celebrated.
It is thought that the populations waxed and waned with climatic conditions but then a huge evolutionary advantage occurred. This was a sudden increase in brain size. The only thing that we know that can do this is the omega 3 complex of fatty oils that is found in fish. At that time the seas around Africa were shallow doe to the sea levels. It could well be that some early hominids took to fishing and living on the shoreline. The shoreline is an incredibly rich food resource and a diet of fish and shellfish could well have precipitated this.
Be that as it may our brains grew and this gave us an increasing ability to outsmart our prey and avoid capture ourselves. This resulted in population growth.
There were many hominid lines that flourished and ended as we tried out different models. Social skills and communications started to evolve in these early hunter gatherer societies.
The populations spilled out of Africa and some turned left and some turned right. The early Neanderthals spread up through the Middle East and Europe as well as down into India. They were expert hunter gathers and tool makers and occupied huge areas. These were followed by homo sapiens who evolved later and had more sophisticated abilities and physiology. They spread after the Neanderthals and as they went they succeeded and took over from them. Whether this was from warfare or disease we do not know. At all events the homo sapiens took over.
Populations spread in waves due to their expansion which in turn was related to climate and hence food availability.
As indicated some turned left and some turned right when they crossed out of Africa. Waves of people spread up into Europe and some spread down into India through Indonesia and to Australia. These were the Dravidians. Others went to Northern India and on into China and Mongolia and finally crossed over into Canada and the America's.
These populations went through Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age cycles as new technologies effected their ability to shape their environment and sadly kill their neighbours!
Human kind seems to have retained the sporadic chimpanzee inclination towards violence towards members of its own species, perhaps due to population pressures.
Of greatest significance was the discovery of agriculture in Mesopotamia. Through the discovery of the planting of seeds to create crops along with the domestication of animals greater food reserves became available. Greater food reserves enables larger populations and the early city states of Mespotamia rose and fell.
As civilizations rose and fell the discoveries of language and technology were passed on leading to a growing body of knowledge. However with the discovery of agriculture and food surplus, for the first time in our history a class of people evolved who were not directly involved with life and Nature. These people formed the ruling classes and started to evolve religions and systems of thought that were separated from Nature. All of a sudden the 'answer' was in the skies and if you wanted to know what it was you had to go through them. In this way power based upon separation came into the picture and from this evolved what we know as recent human history has grown. In a way we can see this as the symbolic 'fall from Eden' where we lived in balance with nature and hopefully each other to a state of separation that bred the desire for power and control over others.
In the West it went something like …… Neanderthals / Homo Sapiens stone age, bronze age, iron age, city states in Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Medieval, Modern
In the East the wandering Dravidians had made it down to Australia after populating Southern India, Indonesia and the far Earstern Archipelego. Their cousins the Aryans who had spread into Turkmenistan came down into northern India and on into China and Mongolia. Some 14,000 years ago they made it across what was then the Bearing land bridge and into the America's. There were three waves. The first wave went down to South America and Mexico giving us the tribal peoples and the Inca and Aztec civilizations. The second wave gave us the plains Indians of North America and the third wave gave us the Eskimo and Inuit peoples of the north.
To be continued .................................
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