Homo Techne: Orienting Human Success

Orienting Human Success

Homo Erectus

2 Million Years of Success

Walk out of Africa at a pace of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) a year. Just 15,000 years later, the full distance from Africa to eastern Asia is complete. Homo Erectus conquered the "Old World" from 1.3 mya up until just 50 kya - virtually concurrent with the emergence of anatomically modern human beings - a mere 600 generations ago.

I would say we are not a successful species, and are seemingly in danger of self-destruction by war, famine, disease, overpopulation, resultant poverty and the lack of response/adjustment to the threat of rapid climate change and complex globalized social dynamics. Intelligent: yes, if intelligence is the only measure of success. Neanderthals win that battle. With larger brains (minus our prefontal cortex), they existed twice as long as we have - making them the most technologically successful species to have roamed this planet.

But what is intelligence if it shortens life? What is technology if it provides neither ease nor harmony? Homo Erectus, Homo Florensiensis (the Hobbit), Denisovans and Homo Neanderthalensis shared this globe with us at the birth of Homo Sapiens. We are the end of the hominid line. We absorbed, killed, or out-competed all else.

Again, climate change was the dominant factor in the molding of us. Re: The First and Last of Us, there was climactic stability, outside of the precession and Milankovitch cycles, for nearly 2-3 million years before the emergence of our genus Homo.

Transition into this genus, out of Australopithecines like "Lucy," can be characterized by longer legs, thinner arms and larger brains. Australopithecines had crude stone tools circa 2.6mya. Their appearance was far more chimp-like, along with their brain size. Larger brain sizes emerged just after a major climate upheaval altered the African landscape nearly 2.3mya - a drying out. Homo Habilis (Handy Man) was born, smarter and obsessed with refining what was inherited from its immediate, at first co-existent, ancestors - just 300,000 years after the known discovery of tool use. Climate instability put pressure on other hominids, those that couldn't adapt due to brain size. Wet/dry/monsoon/dry climate changes happened suddenly, forcing rapid and unstable adaptation. Australopithecines, like "Lucy" (Afarensis) and her kind, died out.

For the next 1.5 million years, these dramatic climate upheavals consistently occurred. Curiously, refined stone tools appear just at the time of larger brain sizes. Larger brain sizes require more of the body's energy resources - altering a diet. A larger brain also requires longer adolescence. A chimp-like pelvis is too small to birth a larger brain (a deep crisis even Homo Sapiens would face), the offspring would need more time to develop its brain outside of the uterus.

Australopithecine diet (larger teeth, larger jaws, larger cranial/mandible muscles, smaller brain size):

"low quality" foods

seeds, nuts, fruits, tubers

Australopithecine lifestyle:

Tree dwellers, walkers
2-3km/day in search of food and water

Australopithecine environment:

rain forests, woodlands, grasslands

VS.

Homo diet (smaller teeth, smaller jaws, less cranial/mandible muscle, larger brain size):

"high quality" foods

meats, wild fruits, seeds, tubers, wild grains

Homo lifestyle:

Gatherers to scavengers (Rudolfis, Ergaster and Habilis) to hunter/gatherers (Erectus, Heidelbergensis, Neanderthalenses, Floriensis, Denisovans, Sapiens) to agriculturalists (Sapiens)
9-15km/day

Homo environment:

massive grassland expansion, the entire planet and all biomes

Homo Habilis, The Handy Man

Yet, for these 1.5 million years, Homo Habilis evolved no further. It's brain size stagnated, and the tools they created did not evolve beyond what they made at the outset of their species. It was not the hunter we came to be - but instead, still food for large predators. It's tool use was for scavenging, scraping meat from carrion. However, recent evidence suggests the Handy Man may have also used short range spears and clubs...

Enter, the most successful global conqueror known to date, Homo Erectus. Circa 1.4 mya, the first to immediately migrate out of Africa. Not by aim. But with climate shifting the landscape, large animals migrated atop grasslands out of North Africa into the Middle East via the Sinai into Eurasia. The first hunter/gather tracked game wherever they went.

We would recognize its body type - as we evolved almost directly from them. While Homo Habilis was half the size of modern humans, Homo Erectus ("Upright Man") could grow to over 6ft in height. A skeleton of an 8yr old boy was 5'3" - only 17% of modern humans are taller.

Here, in Homo Erectus, we see the chimpanzee-like fur being to thin into the appearance of modern human nakedness. Widely overlooked, modern humans have as much hair on their bodies as chimpanzees. Yet, due to the persistence hunting strategy employed by these hunter/gatherers (still in use today by the Kalahari Bushmen), ours has thinned, lightened and shortened as a result. Persistence hunting is why Homo Erectus, and modern human, have subdued the game of the Earth.

A brain larger than that of Homo Habilis required more energy to sustain. Daniel Lieberman, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, has closely studied the Bushmen strategy. Physical features have evolved to release the energy constraints on the brain - increasing its size. Large glut muscles in the buttocks compliment long distance running - and plays on our sexual attraction to mates. Since Homo Erectus, we've adapted specialized ears to sense the proper balance and pitching motions in our heads during running. Sweat glands, more than any other animal, cool our naked skin. A larger brain, and long thin limbs, have made humans, from the time of Homo Erectus, the single best long distance runners on the planet. Persistence.

It's the middle of the day - in peak heat. Quadruped game (four legged animals) seek out shade in the midday, avoiding the heat. They cannot sweat and must pant to cool down. Within 15 minutes of sprinting, they would overheat, and lose energy. So, with Persistence Hunting, the object is to first disturb the resting game. At the outset, Homo Erectus sprint and get the animal to attempt an escape at its highest pace. Yet, while the animal is sprinting to escape, Homo Erectus slows down - walking or jogging - all the while tracking its prey. Upon sight - they run it to exhaustion again, sprinting to catch up, sweating, cooling their skin, then pacing. As the animal reaches its final stage of overheating and collapsing from exhaustion - what energy is left to fight? A long spear finishes the job.

This method of hunting survived into Homo Sapiens until the invention of the bow and arrow.

The Khoi San language (clicking sounds) has recently been confirmed as the oldest known language on earth. The clicking can actually obscure the tonality of the language of these bushmen on the hunt - making it subdued, easier to communicate, without alerting prey.

Homo Erectus was the first to use fire over 1.4 mya. As the first hominid species to completely live on ground and lose its climbing adaptation, its speculated they could not have done so without the use of fire to ward off predation.

They were the first to cook their food. As a result, they evolved smaller teeth, due to softer foods, and a smaller gut as the energy costs of digestion were reduced - a similarly modern human torso. This, also, rapidly increased energy resources for the brain, and its size.

With the "Upright Man," our modern social structures begin to take shape around the fire. Awaiting food to cook, we became more social in camp. Homo Erectus is our Prometheus. The only animal to illuminate the dark and fearlessly conquer the night - up to then, roamed and ruled by nighttime predators.

The division of labor associated with hunter/gatherers finds its origins here. Females continued to forage and gather, children helped, grandmothers assisted deep into old age and passed on knowledge. Though children were adept, elderly women took on the more complicated tasks than the women of child bearing age. So, grandmothers also made up for the shortcomings of the children of women occupied by newborns. As a result, more robust females gave birth, and were living longer, to become grandmothers.

In our genes lies the story of grandmothers. The genes GPER, a protein receptor for estrogen, DHEA and DHEAS have the highest serum concentration of any hormone. They are the source of 75% of estrogens before menopause, and 100% after menopause. It is highest in primates, more so than any other mammal. Humans foremost.

The Homo Erectus male was up to 25% larger than the female. This, still seen today in us anatomically modern humans, is called sexual dimorphism. It is found in animals, mostly, where females must be fertilized internally. As a result, she must select a mate, typically the winner of a brute contest. Female sexuality has shaped human evolution. It is why there are alpha males among chimps, gorillas, etc. As it was with earlier, more chimp-like hominids, and so it is today. Females select large athletic, risk-taking males - in hopes their offspring would be just as robust and successful. (More on how modern technology is rapidly altering that dynamic - with the Sexy Geek Theory - in later posts).

We can find the beginnings of two distinctively human female traits around this period of human awakening - the loss of estrus(heat) and the coordination of menses.

All other great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans), aside from Bonobos, execute and experience rape. Orangutans being the worst offenders in the wild, and humans worst of all, considering ourselves civilized. Gorillas, on occasion, an outside male will enter the troop and assault an available mature female - though oftentimes, she is complicit and receptive - all the while the silver-back is occupied. The female may actually join with the new male, for he has signaled that alpha cannot protect her, she should join him instead.

Our closest living relative, the chimpanzee carries out this shameful, forceful act systematically. With a troop consisting of no more than 40 individuals, consisting of the Alpha, his allied adult subordinates, other subordinated males, adolescents and newborns and sexually mature females. Out of those sexually mature females, a very good portion have newborns or young ones attached to them. During this attachment period, there is lactation and breastfeeding - her estrus is shut off. Her estrus, her receptivity would not return for a period of up to 4-5 years while rearing. With few females sexually available to the adult males in the troop, they are, often times, randomly abused and raped by adult males to ensure her openness when estrus is actually signaled. Once mature, older females cannot produce enough estrogen to coordinate and enable healthy egg production, and signal estrus - she dies. There is no menopause in other hominins.

On the occasion that the adult chimpanzee males form a war party to battle the neighboring troop and protect the borders of their territory, or form a hunting party to go for meat, their absence has a price. Males from their enemy tribes can enter their territory and assault the females in this fashion. And like gorillas, the females may wind up seeking the acceptance of the foreign males troop.

But there is no hunter/gather division of labor in these other great apes. In Homo Erectus, with the male hunting band away, and the females banded together and gathering - as stated previously, often with offspring in tow - the female band is more vulnerable to an opposing war party of potentially violent foreign males. It would be beneficial, when separated from the protection of familiar males, to shut off her estrus and to coordinate menstruation. Especially the now nomadic Homo Erectus.

Menstrual coordination would allow females the time to recognize when it was safe for their female group to actually go and gather. With no protective males around, menses could alert both predators and usurpers. As estrus is seemingly more expendable, menses is not - it rejuvenates the uterus. And during menses, with significant blood loss, she also experiences a loss of iron in the blood, with affects hemoglobin levels - the molecule carrying oxygen. She would crave meat thereafter to replace her diminished iron levels. This could very well be the foundations of pair-bonding, and resultant marriage.

This coordination of menses, I will later argue, gave the human females an intellectual advantage. They would very soon discover the abstract phenomena of time.

Homo Erectus could speak, just as Homo Habilis before it. The Brocha's Area, where language is centered in the brain, is found in both. The FOX P2 gene is carried in us today - I speculate its origins in the early Pleistocene. It is the genetic basis for acquiring language. Homo Erectus, by the fireside, most likely incorporated co-speech gestures and diectics (pointing "here", "there", etc.). Some have postulated it is why our hands remain two-tonal, palms being lighter than the back of the hand, despite walking upright for more than 7 million years. It would have accentuated gesturing by the fireside.

Symmetry in tool-making emerges. No longer was a chafed stone sufficient - it had to be beautiful. A tool-making industry arose, further validating the use of language. Tools were made in one location, where a specific quality of stone was found. A factory-like camp was set-up on site, and finished product traded in a distant location.

Tool use denotes less anatomical specialization toward our environment. We co-evolve with the use of tools. Fingers are longer for better manipulation, wrists are more articulate, etc. Even today, with our tablets, cars, couches, homes, clothing - there is an evolving anatomical and technological interface. That is strong directional selection triggering a rapid evolutionary response.

Most importantly, larger brains, close to modern social structures, better and symmetrical tools, larger ecological niches and near-global expansion, fire, cooking, athleticism are all trumped by love and commitment. A Homo Erectus skull found of an elderly male, had lost all teeth some years before his death - indicating the group cared and fed him in his old age.

Homo Erectus: Upright Man

If we, as modern humans, manage to exist for an additional 1.2 million years....perhaps idealized capital, budgets, the bottom line, shareholder interests, and debt issues won't diminish the significance of our elders, and the future of our young. Then, with the most successful humans that ever roamed this planet, family was born, lovingly protected, maintained and certainly extended.

We must rediscover our priorities.