After De immortalitate animae , Augustine never returned to his proof. But neither did he disown it; as late as De trinitate He also sticks to his conviction that immortality is a necessary condition of happiness but insists that it is not a sufficient condition, given that immortality and misery are compatible cf.
De civitate dei 9. Resurrection, however, is not susceptible of rational proof; it is a promise of God that must be believed on Scriptural authority De trinitate ib. Together with an essentially Platonic notion of the soul, Augustine inherits the classical problems of Platonic soul-body dualism. De quantitate animae 22 if it is incorporeal itself?
And how are corporeal and psychic aspects related to each other in phenomena that involve both body and soul, especially if, like passions and desires, these are morally relevant?
These problems are further complicated by the Platonic axiom that incorporeal entities, being ontologically prior to corporeal ones, cannot be causally affected by them.
With Plotinus, he insists that sense perception is not an affection which the soul passively undergoes as Stoic materialism would have it, where sensory perception was interpreted as a kind of imprint in the soul but its active awareness of affections undergone by the body De quantitate animae 41; 48; De Genesi ad litteram 7.
In De musica 6. In addition to the usual five senses, Augustine identifies a sensory faculty that relates the data of the senses to each other and judges them aesthetically but not morally; De musica 6. In Neoplatonism it was disputed how soul, being immortal, immaterial and ontologically superior to body, came to be incorporated nevertheless. Augustine addresses the issue in the horizon of his doctrine of creation and, in the period of the Pelagian Controversy, of the debate about the transmission of original sin see 9.
Gender, Women and Sexuality. In De libero arbitrio 3. After all these options come to the fore again Letters Augustine discards none of them officially except for the notion, wrongly associated with Origenism, which was considered a heresy at the time, that incorporation was a punishment for a sin committed by the pre-existent soul De civitate dei In practice, he narrows the debate down to the alternative between creationism and traducianism, which appear to have been the only options taken seriously by his Christian contemporaries.
Augustine deploys what we may call his philosophy of the mind most fully in his great work on Nicene Trinitarian theology, De trinitate. Having removed apparent Scriptural obstacles to the equality and consubstantiality of the three divine persons bks. The basis for this move is, of course, Genesis — Augustine follows a long-standing Jewish and Patristic tradition, familiar to him from Ambrose, according to which the biblical qualification of the human being as an image of God referred not to the living body a literalist reading vulnerable to the Manichean charge of anthropomorphism, cf.
Confessiones 6. The general pattern of his argument is the Augustinian ascent from the external to the internal and from the senses to God; but since human reason is, whether by nature or due to its fallen state, hardly capable of knowing God, Augustine this time is obliged to interrupt and re-start the ascent several times. The final book shows that the exercise of analyzing the human mind does have preparatory value for our thinking about the Trinity but does not yield insight into the divine by being simply transferred to it De trinitate The last element ensures the active character of perception and intellection but also gives weight to the idea that we do not cognize an object unless we consciously direct our attention to it MacDonald b.
Augustine begins by arguing in a manner reminiscent of his cogito-like argument; see 5. This pre-reflexive self-awareness is presupposed by every act of conscious cognition. As the mind in its fallen state is deeply immersed in sensible reality, it tends to forget what it really is and what it knows it is and confounds itself with the things it attaches the greatest importance to, i.
The result are materialist theories about the soul, which thus derive from flawed morality De trinitate If it follows the Delphic command, however, the mind will realize that it knows with certainty that it exists, thinks, wills etc.
And as the substance or essence of the mind cannot be anything other than what it knows with certainty about itself, it follows that nothing material is essential to the mind and that its essence must be sought in its mental acts ib. Again, the ethical side of the theory should not be overlooked. As a strong voluntary element is present in and necessary for an act of cognition, what objects imaginations, thoughts we cognize is morally relevant and indicative of our loves and desires.
And while the triadic structure of the mind is its very essence and hence inalienable, Augustine insists that the mind is created in the image of God, not because it is capable of self-knowledge, but because it has the potential to become wise, i.
He takes it as axiomatic that happiness is the ultimate goal pursued by all human beings e. Confessiones Wetzel , 42— This structure Augustine inscribes into his Neoplatonically inspired three-tiered ontological hierarchy Letter The Supreme Being is also the greatest good; the desire of created being for happiness can only be satisfied by the creator. If we turn away from him and direct our attention and love to the bodies—which are not per se bad, as in Manicheism, but an infinitely lesser good than God—or to ourselves, who are a great good but still subordinate to God, we become miserable, foolish and wicked Letter Just as after the Fall all human beings are inevitably tainted by sin, we need to be purified through faith in order to live well and to restore our ability to know and love God De diversis quaestionibus We love absolutely only what we enjoy, whereas our love for things we use is relative and even instrumental De doctrina christiana 1.
The only proper object of enjoyment is God cf. Wickedness and confusion of the moral order results from a reversal of use and enjoyment, when we want to enjoy what we ought to use all created things, e. An obvious problem of this system is the categorization of the biblically prescribed love of the neighbor. Are we to enjoy our neighbor or to use her? The problem is inherited from ancient eudaimonism, where it takes some philosophical effort to reconcile the intuition that concern for others is morally relevant with the assumption that ethics is primarily about the virtue and happiness of the individual.
Augustine is aware of the problem and gives a differentiated answer. In De doctrina christiana 1. Love of the neighbor thus means to desire his true happiness in the same way as we desire our own.
Confessiones 4. In principle Augustine follows the view of the ancient eudaimonists that virtue is sufficient or at least relevant for happiness. There are however several important modifications. True virtue guarantees true happiness, but there is no true virtue that is not a gift of grace. The perfect inner tranquility virtue strives for will only be achieved in the afterlife. Virtue is an inner disposition or motivational habit that enables us to perform every action we perform out of right love.
There are several catalogues of the traditional four cardinal virtues prudence, justice, courage and temperance that redefine these as varieties of the love of God either in this life or in the eschaton De moribus 1.
This does not mean that virtue becomes non-rational for Augustine love and will are essential features of the rational mind; see 6. The criterion of true virtue is that it is oriented toward God. Even if Augustine occasionally talks as if the four cardinal virtues could be added to the Pauline or theological virtues of love, faith and hope to make a sum of seven Letter A.
These modifications have several interesting consequences. Even though Augustine postpones the happiness that is the reward of virtue to the afterlife, he does not make virtue a means to an end in the sense that virtue becomes superfluous when happiness is reached.
To the contrary, he insists that virtue will persist in the eschaton where it will be transformed into eternal unimpeded fruition of God and of the neighbor in God. Then it will indeed be its own reward and identical with happiness Letter Both eschatological virtue and virtue in this life are thus love of God; they only differ in that the latter is subject to hindrances and temptation.
For this reason, those who have true love of God—e. When analyzing virtue in this life, Augustine takes up the Stoic distinction, familiar to him from Cicero De officiis 1. Augustine therefore distinguishes between true i. Among other things, this distinction underpins his solution of the so-called problem of pagan virtue Harding ; Tornau b; Dodaro a: 27—71; Rist — because it permits ascribing virtue in a meaningful sense to pagan and pre-Christian paradigms of virtue like Socrates without having to admit that they were eligible for salvation.
From this point of view, Socrates is closer to Paul than to Nero, even though his virtue will not bring him happiness, i. It is closely related to virtue and often used synonymously with will e. De civitate dei As in the Symposium and in Plotinus Enneads I. In a more general way, love means the overall direction of our will positively toward God or negatively toward ourselves or corporeal creature De civitate dei The former is called love in a good sense caritas , the latter cupidity or concupiscence cupiditas , i.
The root of sin is excessive self-love that wants to put the self in the position of God and is equivalent with pride De civitate dei In his earlier work, Augustine has some difficulties incorporating love of neighbor into the Platonic and eudaimonist framework of his thinking De doctrina christiana 1.
After , in the context of his reflections on the Trinity and his exegesis of the First Epistle of John esp. In loving our neighbors, we of necessity love that love which enables us to do so itself, which is none other than God; love of God and love of neighbor are, accordingly, co-extensive and, ultimately, identical De trinitate 8. He keenly insists that each and every action, even if it is externally good and impressive, can be motivated either by a good or an evil intention, by right or perverse love, by charity or pride.
This goes for the actions prescribed by the Sermon of the Mount and even for martyrdom In epistulam Iohannis tractatus decem 8. It is therefore impossible to give casuistic rules for external moral behavior. In a sense, his ideal agent is a successor of the Stoic and Neoplatonic sage, who always acts out of inner virtue or perfect rationality the latter Augustine replaces with true love but adapts his outward actions to the external circumstances cf.
Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos On the one hand, this limits the authority of other people—including those endowed with worldly power or an ecclesiastical office—to pass moral judgments. Augustine repeatedly recommends withholding judgment so as to preserve humility De civitate dei 1. On the other hand, Augustine makes our inner motivational and moral life opaque even to ourselves and fully transparent only to God Confessiones We can never be fully sure about the purity of our intentions, and even if we were, we could not be sure that we will persist in them.
All human beings are therefore called to constantly scrutinize the moral status of their inner selves in a prayerful dialogue with God as it is dramatized in the Confessiones. Such self-scrutiny may well be self-tormenting; the obsession of Western Christianity with inner latent guilt here has its Augustinian roots.
Catholic bishops are therefore obliged to compel heretics and schismatics to re-enter the Catholic church even forcibly, just as a father beats his children when he sees them playing with snakes or as we bind a madman who otherwise would fling himself down a precipice Letter Obviously, this is a paternalistic argument that presupposes superior insight in those who legitimately wield coercive power.
And as even the Church in this world is a mixed body of sinners and saints see 8. History and Political Philosophy , it may be asked how individual bishops can be sure of their good intentions when they use religious force Rist — Augustine does not address this problem, presumably because most of his relevant texts are propagandistic defenses of coercion against the Donatists.
Though other Latin philosophers, especially Seneca, had made use of the concept of will voluntas before Augustine, it has a much wider application in his ethics and moral psychology than in any predecessor and covers a broader range of phenomena than either Aristotelian boulesis roughly, rational choice or Stoic prohairesis roughly, the fundamental decision to lead a good life.
Augustine comes closer than any earlier philosopher to positing will as a faculty of choice that is reducible neither to reason nor to non-rational desire. Augustine admits both first-order and second-order volitions, the latter being acts of the liberum voluntatis arbitrium , the ability to choose between conflicting first-order volitions Stump ; Horn ; den Bok Like desires, first-order volitions are intentional or object-directed and operate on all levels of the soul.
Like memory and thought, will is a constitutive element of the mind see 6. It is closely related to love and, accordingly, the locus of moral evaluation. We act well or badly if and only if our actions spring from a good or evil will, which is equivalent to saying that they are motivated by right i. With this basic idea in view, Augustine defends the passions or emotions against their Stoic condemnation as malfunctions of rational judgment by redefining them more neutrally as volitions voluntates that may be good or bad depending on their intentional objects De civitate dei 9.
As in Stoicism, the will to act is triggered by an impression generated by an external object visum. To this the mind responds with an appetitive motion that urges us to pursue or to avoid the object e.
But only when we give our inner consent to this impulse or withhold it, does a will emerge that, circumstances permitting, results in a corresponding action. The will is the proper locus of our moral responsibility because it is neither in our power whether an object presents itself to our senses or intellect nor whether we take delight in it De libero arbitrio 3. The only element that is in our power is our will or inner consent, for which we are therefore fully responsible.
Thus, a person who has consented to adultery is guilty even if his attempt actually to commit it is unsuccessful, and a victim of rape who does not consent to the deed keeps her will free of sin even if she feels physical pleasure De civitate dei 1.
Temptations of this kind are, in Augustine, not personal sins but due to original sin, and they haunt even the saints. Our will must be freed by divine grace to resist them Contra Iulianum 6. In the s, opposing the dualistic fatalism of the Manicheans, he uses the cogito-like argument see 5. Harrison A contemporaneous definition of will as a movement of soul toward some object of desire emphasizes the absence of external constraint, and the ensuing definition of sin as an unjust volition see above seems to endorse the principle of alternative possibilities De duabus animabus 14— In De libero arbitrio , free will appears as the condition of possibility of moral goodness and hence as a great good itself; but as it is not an absolute good which is God alone but only an intermediate one, it is liable to misuse and, hence, also the source of moral evil De libero arbitrio 2.
With all this, Augustine is basically in harmony with the traditional view of early Christian theology and exegesis, which is still adopted in the s by Julian of Aeclanum when he blames Augustine for having fallen back into Manichean fatalism and quotes his early definitions against him Julian, Ad Florum , in Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 1. Things change with Ad Simplicianum 1. The optimistic-sounding claim in the first book of De libero arbitrio 1. But he never questions the principle that we have been created with the natural ability to freely and voluntarily choose the good, nor does he ever deny the applicability of the cogito argument to the will cf.
De civitate dei 5. What grace does is to restore our natural freedom; it does not compel us to act against our will. What this means is best illustrated by the narrative of Confessiones 8 for particularly lucid interpretations, see Wetzel —; J.
Though he identifies with the former, better will rather than with the latter that actually torments him, he is unable to opt for it because of his bad habits, which he once acquired voluntarily but which have by now transformed into a kind of addictive necessity ib.
Using medical metaphors reminiscent of Hellenistic moral philosophy, he argues that his will lacked the power of free choice because the disease of being divided between conflicting volitions had weakened it ib.
Before, when he had just continued his habitual way of life, this had been a non-choice rather than a choice, even though, as Augustine insists, he had done so voluntarily.
Where outsiders are hunted for ransom. And as you embark on a desperate quest to rescue your friends, you realize that the only way to escape this darkness… is to embrace it. Your mission: get the girl, kill the baddies, and save the world. And as you embark on a desperate quest to rescue your friends, you realize that the only way to escape this darkness… is to embrace it Included DLCs The Monkey Business Pack: Meet Hurk and his explosive bomb-carrying monkey in four heart-pounding missions and get two bonus ways to humiliate your friends in multiplayer.
ScummVM is continually improving, so check back often. Changelog 0. Queen: — Speech is played at the correct sample rate. It used to be pitched a bit too low. Therefore, on your SD card, you should have the following folders:. Tantric — added: cheats menu! You can open snes9xGX. If you have multiple versions of the same game, you can now have srams and freezes for each version.
A prompt to convert to the new naming is provided for sram only. It is saved in the background. This means no per-game configurations, but one global config per controller. It lists all the available WAD packages in a storage device so you can select which ones to un install. Copy all the WAD packages in the folder created in the step 1. Run the application with any method to load homebrew. ChangeLog Version 1. Version 1.
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You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. If I make a new one, you will find it here! For more than 2 million years, human neural networks kept growing and growing, but apart from some int knives and pointed sticks, humans had precious little to show for it. What then drove forward the evolution of the massive human brain during those 2 million years?
Another singular human trait is that we walk upright on two legs. The more things these hands could do, the more successful their owners were, so evolutionary pressure brought about an increasing concentration of nerves and nely tuned muscles in the palms and ngers.
As a result, humans can perform very intricate tasks with their hands. In particular, they can produce and use sophisticated tools. The rst evidence for tool production dates from about 2. Yet walking upright has its downside. The skeleton of our primate ancestors developed for millions of years to support a creature that walked on all fours and had a relatively small head.
Adjusting to an upright position was quite a challenge, especially when the sca olding had to support an extra-large cranium.
Humankind paid for its lofty vision and industrious hands with backaches and sti necks. Women paid extra. Death in childbirth became a major hazard for human females. Women who gave birth earlier, when the infants brain and head were still relatively small and supple, fared better and lived to have more children. Natural selection consequently favoured earlier births. And, indeed, compared to other animals, humans are born prematurely, when many of their vital systems are still under- developed.
A colt can trot shortly after birth; a kitten leaves its mother to forage on its own when it is just a few weeks old. Human babies are helpless, dependent for many years on their elders for sustenance, protection and education.
Lone mothers could hardly forage enough food for their o spring and themselves with needy children in tow. Raising children required constant help from other family members and neighbours. It takes a tribe to raise a human. Evolution thus favoured those capable of forming strong social ties.
In addition, since humans are born underdeveloped, they can be educated and socialised to a far greater extent than any other animal. Most mammals emerge from the womb like glazed earthenware emerging from a kiln — any attempt at remoulding will scratch or break them. Humans emerge from the womb like molten glass from a furnace. They can be spun, stretched and shaped with a surprising degree of freedom. It seems self-evident that these have made humankind the most powerful animal on earth.
But humans enjoyed all of these advantages for a full 2 million years during which they remained weak and marginal creatures. Thus humans who lived a million years ago, despite their big brains and sharp stone tools, dwelt in constant fear of predators, rarely hunted large game, and subsisted mainly by gathering plants, scooping up insects, stalking small animals, and eating the carrion left behind by other more powerful carnivores.
One of the most common uses of early stone tools was to crack open bones in order to get to the marrow. Some researchers believe this was our original niche. Just as woodpeckers specialise in extracting insects from the trunks of trees, the rst humans specialised in extracting marrow from bones. Why marrow? Well, suppose you observe a pride of lions take down and devour a gira e.
Only then would you and your band dare approach the carcass, look cautiously left and right — and dig into the edible tissue that remained. This is a key to understanding our history and psychology. For millions of years, humans hunted smaller creatures and gathered what they could, all the while being hunted by larger predators. It was only , years ago that several species of man began to hunt large game on a regular basis, and only in the last , years — with the rise of Homo sapiens — that man jumped to the top of the food chain.
That spectacular leap from the middle to the top had enormous consequences. Other animals at the top of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into that position very gradually, over millions of years.
This enabled the ecosystem to develop checks and balances that prevent lions and sharks from wreaking too much havoc. As lions became deadlier, so gazelles evolved to run faster, hyenas to cooperate better, and rhinoceroses to be more bad-tempered.
In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have lled them with self-con dence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous.
Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump. A Race of Cooks A signi cant step on the way to the top was the domestication of re. Some human species may have made occasional use of re as early as , years ago.
By about , years ago, Homo erectus, Neanderthals and the forefathers of Homo sapiens were using re on a daily basis. Humans now had a dependable source of light and warmth, and a deadly weapon against prowling lions. Not long afterwards, humans may even have started deliberately to torch their neighbourhoods.
A carefully managed re could turn impassable barren thickets into prime grasslands teeming with game. In addition, once the re died down, Stone Age entrepreneurs could walk through the smoking remains and harvest charcoaled animals, nuts and tubers. But the best thing re did was cook. Foods that humans cannot digest in their natural forms — such as wheat, rice and potatoes — became staples of our diet thanks to cooking. Cooking killed germs and parasites that infested food. Humans also had a far easier time chewing and digesting old favourites such as fruits, nuts, insects and carrion if they were cooked.
Whereas chimpanzees spend ve hours a day chewing raw food, a single hour suffices for people eating cooked food. The advent of cooking enabled humans to eat more kinds of food, to devote less time to eating, and to make do with smaller teeth and shorter intestines.
Some scholars believe there is a direct link between the advent of cooking, the shortening of the human intestinal track, and the growth of the human brain. By shortening the intestines and decreasing their energy consumption, cooking inadvertently opened the way to the jumbo brains of Neanderthals and Sapiens. The power of almost all animals depends on their bodies: the strength of their muscles, the size of their teeth, the breadth of their wings. Though they may harness winds and currents, they are unable to control these natural forces, and are always constrained by their physical design.
Yet eagles cannot control the location of the columns, and their maximum carrying capacity is strictly proportional to their wingspan. When humans domesticated re, they gained control of an obedient and potentially limitless force. Unlike eagles, humans could choose when and where to ignite a ame, and they were able to exploit re for any number of tasks. Most importantly, the power of fire was not limited by the form, structure or strength of the human body.
A single woman with a int or re stick could burn down an entire forest in a matter of hours. The domestication of re was a sign of things to come. They could now scare away lions, warm themselves during cold nights, and burn down the occasional forest. Yet counting all species together, there were still no more than perhaps a million humans living between the Indonesian archipelago and the Iberian peninsula, a mere blip on the ecological radar. Our own species, Homo sapiens, was already present on the world stage, but so far it was just minding its own business in a corner of Africa.
If one of them turned up in a modern morgue, the local pathologist would notice nothing peculiar. Thanks to the blessings of re, they had smaller teeth and jaws than their ancestors, whereas they had massive brains, equal in size to ours.
Scientists also agree that about 70, years ago, Sapiens from East Africa spread into the Arabian peninsula, and from there they quickly overran the entire Eurasian landmass. When Homo sapiens landed in Arabia, most of Eurasia was already settled by other humans. What happened to them? There are two con icting theories. As the African immigrants spread around the world, they bred with other human populations, and people today are the outcome of this interbreeding.
These humans were more muscular than Sapiens, had larger brains, and were better adapted to cold climes. They used tools and re, were good hunters, and apparently took care of their sick and in rm. According to the Interbreeding Theory, when Sapiens spread into Neanderthal lands, Sapiens bred with Neanderthals until the two populations merged. They are a mixture of Sapiens and Neanderthals.
According to this theory, Sapiens and other humans had di erent anatomies, and most likely di erent mating habits and even body odours. They would have had little sexual interest in one another. And even if a Neanderthal Romeo and a Sapiens Juliet fell in love, they could not produce fertile children, because the genetic gulf separating the two populations was already unbridgeable.
The two populations remained completely distinct, and when the Neanderthals died out, or were killed o , their genes died with them. According to this view, Sapiens replaced all the previous human populations without merging with them. If that is the case, the lineages of all contemporary humans can be traced back, exclusively, to East Africa, 70, years ago. Map 1. Homo sapiens conquers the globe. A lot hinges on this debate. From an evolutionary perspective, 70, years is a relatively short interval.
But if the Interbreeding Theory is right, there might well be genetic di erences between Africans, Europeans and Asians that go back hundreds of thousands of years. This is political dynamite, which could provide material for explosive racial theories. In recent decades the Replacement Theory has been the common wisdom in the eld. But that ended in , when the results of a four-year e ort to map the Neanderthal genome were published.
Geneticists were able to collect enough intact Neanderthal DNA from fossils to make a broad comparison between it and the DNA of contemporary humans. The results stunned the scientific community. A second shock came several months later, when DNA extracted from the fossilised nger from Denisova was mapped.
Although di erences between them were not large enough to completely prevent fertile intercourse, they were sufficient to make such contacts very rare. How then should we understand the biological relatedness of Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans?
Clearly, they were not completely di erent species like horses and donkeys. On the other hand, they were not just di erent populations of the same species, like bulldogs and spaniels. Biological reality is not black and white. There are also important grey areas. Every two species that evolved from a common ancestor, such as horses and donkeys, were at one time just two populations of the same species, like bulldogs and spaniels.
There must have been a point when the two populations were already quite di erent from one another, but still capable on rare occasions of having sex and producing fertile o spring.
Then another mutation severed this last connecting thread, and they went their separate evolutionary ways. It seems that about 50, years ago, Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans were at that borderline point.
They were almost, but not quite, entirely separate species. So the populations did not merge, but a few lucky Neanderthal genes did hitch a ride on the Sapiens Express. It is unsettling — and perhaps thrilling — to think that we Sapiens could at one time have sex with an animal from a di erent species, and produce children together.
A speculative reconstruction of a Neanderthal child. Genetic evidence hints that at least some Neanderthals may have had fair skin and hair. One possibility is that Homo sapiens drove them to extinction. Imagine a Sapiens band reaching a Balkan valley where Neanderthals had lived for hundreds of thousands of years. Sapiens were more pro cient hunters and gatherers — thanks to better technology and superior social skills — so they multiplied and spread.
The less resourceful Neanderthals found it increasingly di cult to feed themselves. Their population dwindled and they slowly died out, except perhaps for one or two members who joined their Sapiens neighbours.
Another possibility is that competition for resources ared up into violence and genocide. Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small di erence in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group.
Would ancient Sapiens have been more tolerant towards an entirely di erent human species? Imagine how things might have turned out had the Neanderthals or Denisovans survived alongside Homo sapiens. What kind of cultures, societies and political structures would have emerged in a world where several di erent human species coexisted? How, for example, would religious faiths have unfolded? Would Neanderthals have been able to serve in the Roman legions, or in the sprawling bureaucracy of imperial China?
Would the American Declaration of Independence hold as a self-evident truth that all members of the genus Homo are created equal? Would Karl Marx have urged workers of all species to unite? Our lack of brothers and sisters makes it easier to imagine that we are the epitome of creation, and that a chasm separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
When Charles Darwin indicated that Homo sapiens was just another kind of animal, people were outraged. Even today many refuse to believe it. Had the Neanderthals survived, would we still imagine ourselves to be a creature apart? Perhaps this is exactly why our ancestors wiped out the Neanderthals. They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate. Whether Sapiens are to blame or not, no sooner had they arrived at a new location than the native population became extinct.
The last remains of Homo soloensis are dated to about 50, years ago. Homo denisova disappeared shortly thereafter. Neanderthals made their exit roughly 30, years ago. The last dwarf- like humans vanished from Flores Island about 12, years ago. They left behind some bones, stone tools, a few genes in our DNA and a lot of unanswered questions.
They also left behind us, Homo sapiens, the last human species. How did we manage to settle so rapidly in so many distant and ecologically di erent habitats?
How did we push all other human species into oblivion? The debate continues to rage. The most likely answer is the very thing that makes the debate possible: Homo sapiens conquered the world thanks above all to its unique language.
In the intervening millennia, even though these archaic Sapiens looked just like us and their brains were as big as ours, they did not enjoy any marked advantage over other human species, did not produce particularly sophisticated tools, and did not accomplish any other special feats. In fact, in the rst recorded encounter between Sapiens and Neanderthals, the Neanderthals won. About , years ago, some Sapiens groups migrated north to the Levant, which was Neanderthal territory, but failed to secure a rm footing.
It might have been due to nasty natives, an inclement climate, or unfamiliar local parasites. Whatever the reason, the Sapiens eventually retreated, leaving the Neanderthals as masters of the Middle East.
This poor record of achievement has led scholars to speculate that the internal structure of the brains of these Sapiens was probably di erent from ours. They looked like us, but their cognitive abilities — learning, remembering, communicating — were far more limited. Teaching such an ancient Sapiens English, persuading him of the truth of Christian dogma, or getting him to understand the theory of evolution would probably have been hopeless undertakings.
Conversely, we would have had a very hard time learning his language and understanding his way of thinking. But then, beginning about 70, years ago, Homo sapiens started doing very special things. Around that date Sapiens bands left Africa for a second time. This time they drove the Neanderthals and all other human species not only from the Middle East, but from the face of the earth. Within a remarkably short period, Sapiens reached Europe and East Asia.
About 45, years ago, they somehow crossed the open sea and landed in Australia — a continent hitherto untouched by humans. The period from about 70, years ago to about 30, years ago witnessed the invention of boats, oil lamps, bows and arrows and needles essential for sewing warm clothing. They maintain that the people who drove the Neanderthals to extinction, settled Australia, and carved the Stadel lion-man were as intelligent, creative and sensitive as we are.
If we were to come across the artists of the Stadel Cave, we could learn their language and they ours. The appearance of new ways of thinking and communicating, between 70, and 30, years ago, constitutes the Cognitive Revolution. What caused it? The most commonly believed theory argues that accidental genetic mutations changed the inner wiring of the brains of Sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using an altogether new type of language.
We might call it the Tree of Knowledge mutation. It was a matter of pure chance, as far as we can tell. What was so special about the new Sapiens language that it enabled us to conquer the world? Every animal has some kind of language. Even insects, such as bees and ants, know how to communicate in sophisticated ways, informing one another of the whereabouts of food. Neither was it the rst vocal language. Many animals, including all ape and monkey species, have vocal languages.
For example, green monkeys use calls of various kinds to communicate. An eagle! A lion! When the same group heard a recording of the second call, the lion warning, they quickly scrambled up a tree. Sapiens can produce many more distinct sounds than green monkeys, but whales and elephants have equally impressive abilities. A parrot can say anything Albert Einstein could say, as well as mimicking the sounds of phones ringing, doors slamming and sirens wailing.
What, then, is so special about our language? The most common answer is that our language is amazingly supple. We can connect a limited number of sounds and signs to produce an in nite number of sentences, each with a distinct meaning.
We can thereby ingest, store and communicate a prodigious amount of information about the surrounding world. She can then describe the exact location, including the di erent paths leading to the area. With this information, the members of her band can put their heads together and discuss whether they ought to approach the river in order to chase away the lion and hunt the bison.
A second theory agrees that our unique language evolved as a means of sharing information about the world. But the most important information that needed to be conveyed was about humans, not about lions and bison. Our language evolved as a way of gossiping. According to this theory Homo sapiens is primarily a social animal. Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction. It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison.
The body is human, but the head is leonine. This is one of the first indisputable examples of art, and probably of religion, and of the ability of the human mind to imagine things that do not really exist.
The amount of information that one must obtain and store in order to track the ever-changing relationships of a few dozen individuals is staggering.
In a band of fty individuals, there are 1, one-on-one relationships, and countless more complex social combinations. All apes show a keen interest in such social information, but they have trouble gossiping e ectively. The new linguistic skills that modern Sapiens acquired about seventy millennia ago enabled them to gossip for hours on end.
Reliable information about who could be trusted meant that small bands could expand into larger bands, and Sapiens could develop tighter and more sophisticated types of cooperation. Even today the vast majority of human communication — whether in the form of emails, phone calls or newspaper columns — is gossip.
It comes so naturally to us that it seems as if our language evolved for this very purpose. Do you think that history professors chat about the reasons for World War One when they meet for lunch, or that nuclear physicists spend their co ee breaks at scienti c conferences talking about quarks? But more often, they gossip about the professor who caught her husband cheating, or the quarrel between the head of the department and the dean, or the rumours that a colleague used his research funds to buy a Lexus.
Gossip usually focuses on wrongdoings. Rumour-mongers are the original fourth estate, journalists who inform society about and thus protect it from cheats and freeloaders. Most likely, both the gossip theory and the there-is-a-lion-near-the-river theory are valid. Yet the truly unique feature of our language is not its ability to transmit information about men and lions. As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled.
Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the rst time with the Cognitive Revolution. But why is it important? After all, ction can be dangerously misleading or distracting. People who go to the forest looking for fairies and unicorns would seem to have less chance of survival than people who go looking for mushrooms and deer. But ction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states.
Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate exibly in large numbers. Ants and bees can also work together in huge numbers, but they do so in a very rigid manner and only with close relatives. Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more exibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of other individuals that they know intimately.
Sapiens can cooperate in extremely exible ways with countless numbers of strangers. The Legend of Peugeot Our chimpanzee cousins usually live in small troops of several dozen individuals.
They form close friendships, hunt together and ght shoulder to shoulder against baboons, cheetahs and enemy chimpanzees. Their social structure tends to be hierarchical. Other males and females exhibit their submission to the alpha male by bowing before him while making grunting sounds, not unlike human subjects kowtowing before a king. The alpha male strives to maintain social harmony within his troop. When two individuals ght, he will intervene and stop the violence.
Less benevolently, he might monopolise particularly coveted foods and prevent lower-ranking males from mating with the females. When two males are contesting the alpha position, they usually do so by forming extensive coalitions of supporters, both male and female, from within the group. Ties between coalition members are based on intimate daily contact — hugging, touching, kissing, grooming and mutual favours.
Just as human politicians on election campaigns go around shaking hands and kissing babies, so aspirants to the top position in a chimpanzee group spend much time hugging, back-slapping and kissing baby chimps. These coalitions play a central part not only during overt struggles for the alpha position, but in almost all day-to-day activities.
Members of a coalition spend more time together, share food, and help one another in times of trouble. There are clear limits to the size of groups that can be formed and maintained in such a way.
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