From: Kenneth Van Oost (Kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Wed 13 Nov 2002 - 21:47:33 GMT
This is part 3
People, in a very early stage of their development were able to intervene,
(on an instinctive level) in their own livingconditions, so that antropogenetic
changes were due, like groupselection is one.
But initial those changes were individualistic. ( Everyone was ' solitair ' )
One of the reasons why the brains of the early hominids stayed so small
is that " individuality " doesn 't need organisation.
In the beginning there was only power and adaptation, instinctive responses
as you wish. There was no reflective knowledge needed to understand that
the/ a stronger one had all of the food !
As natural selection stipulates_ all what was needed for the organisms to
survive was a certain ability to stay alive and to procreate.
And according to Goulds proposal, the only way not to die of hunger was
to move away in search of food. And those early emigrations were not con-
ducted by groups, but by ' solitary ' hominids intervening with their own con-
ditions.
Those conditions were/ are extrememly dependent of, what can be presumed,
the pre- formed diversity between ( groups of) people.
Human history ( according to William Mc Neil [ 1986/ 2001] ) is strongly
determinated by mutual contact and communication.
Each contact forces us to a reaction. One of the answers by which people
respond to undesirable contact is fleeing into isolation.
What Mc Neil formulates as ' figuration ' can stand for what may have happe-
ned in those early years of our existence:- the mutual relationships between
parts [ individuals ] work to such an extent upon the characteristics of the
parts that those characteristics became inclosed in the part itself.
How deep such a mentality and even the motions of the parts has been
determinated can be read in Alexander Rüstow Ursprung der Herrshaft 1950.
Only when in a later stage of their development cooperation was needed,
early hominids began to from groups. From there on brainsize co- evolved.
The find of yet another small skull near Dmanisi can thus be explained by
the fact that those hominids were separate individuals, maybe on the blink
to move into clusters, but nevertheless they didn 't needed a big brain.
In search of food, maybe scaveging the plains, stalking herds, hungry
individuals headed north.
Their primary instinct of survival moved them away from other individuals
of their own species, or like the suggestion of Gould implies also_ that
other kinds of hominids than Homo Sapiens trigged certain amounts of
development whereby ' we ' were in an environmental disadvantage.
What its all about, is the fact that as well human as ape- like characteris-
tics emerged and disappeared again due as a reaction upon new and chan-
ging environmental conditions.
That one being had one or more human- like characteristics, isn 't enough
to entitle him as the missing link in our ancestory, moreover to give him the
credit to be a born team player.
If the distinguished characteristics between humans and ape- like beings
evolved independable from eachother, not once but several times, than IMO
the individualistic view can bear fruit.
Early, individualistic humans didn 't live long due to, 1_ their smaller brain
size ( advanced survival skills were missing) and 2_ because of the facts
written above, they were probably more pray than predator. (Maybe one
reason why don 't find many fossils outside Africa.)
Modern humans are the product of different beings with mixed qualities, who
in one way or another still not defined manner, contributed to the whole of
the picture.
Our environmental context changed and the only way to stay alive was to
intervene with our own livingconditions. And in a sense, moving out was the
only way up.
Our history holds the same way within of the over- reacted specialisation
which just one- celluar beings and later multiple celluar organisms has follo-
wed over the eons. The human ' need ' to forms groups was not a string
which was there just for the taking !
Groupselection, [ according to Freud] is just one disposition_ there is only
one enclosed causality:- is there one thing, how insignificant, how unex-
plainable it might be, where we can call upon what has happened outside
the framework of world history !?
No, therefor each and everyone is a symptom which points towards the
working of other (f )actors.
Like the latest find of a human- like skull ( in Chad 2002) indicates_ cha-
racteristics were not simply due to an ( lineair) evolutionary- process.
" Features and other characteristics don 't simply evolve, but come and
go. "
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