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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. In order to function, all members of a group must know each other intimately. Two chimpanzees who have never met, never fought, and never engaged in mutual grooming will not know whether they can trust one another, whether it would be worthwhile to help one another, and which of them ranks higher.
Under natural conditions, a typical chimpanzee troop consists of about twenty to fty individuals. As the number of chimpanzees in a troop increases, the social order destabilises, eventually leading to a rupture and the formation of a new troop by some of the animals.
Only in a handful of cases have zoologists observed groups larger than a hundred. Separate groups seldom cooperate, and tend to compete for territory and food. Humans, like chimps, have social instincts that enabled our ancestors to form friendships and hierarchies, and to hunt or ght together.
However, like the social instincts of chimps, those of humans were adapted only for small intimate groups. When the group grew too large, its social order destabilised and the band split. Even if a particularly fertile valley could feed archaic Sapiens, there was no way that so many strangers could live together.
How could they agree who should be leader, who should hunt where, or who should mate with whom? In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands.
But even gossip has its limits. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip e ectively about, more than human beings. Even today, a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number. Below this threshold, communities, businesses, social networks and military units can maintain themselves based mainly on intimate acquaintance and rumour-mongering. There is no need for formal ranks, titles and law books to keep order.
A small family business can survive and ourish without a board of directors, a CEO or an accounting department. But once the threshold of individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way.
You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust.
How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of ction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation — whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe — is rooted in common myths that exist only in peoples collective imagination.
Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human esh and allowed Himself to be cruci ed to redeem our sins.
States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian ag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine e orts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights — and the money paid out in fees.
Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.
What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis. Take for example the world of business corporations. Modern business-people and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers.
The principal di erence between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales. The legend of Peugeot affords us a good example.
An icon that somewhat resembles the Stadel lion-man appears today on cars, trucks and motorcycles from Paris to Sydney. Peugeot began as a small family business in the village of Valentigney, just kilometres from the Stadel Cave.
Today the company employs about , people worldwide, most of whom are complete strangers to each other. These strangers cooperate so e ectively that in Peugeot produced more than 1. There are many Peugeot vehicles, but these are obviously not the company. Even if every Peugeot in the world were simultaneously junked and sold for scrap metal, Peugeot SA would not disappear. It would continue to manufacture new cars and issue its annual report.
The company owns factories, machinery and showrooms, and employs mechanics, accountants and secretaries, but all these together do not comprise Peugeot.
Even then, the company could borrow money, hire new employees, build new factories and buy new machinery. Peugeot has managers and shareholders, but neither do they constitute the company. All the managers could be dismissed and all its shares sold, but the company itself would remain intact. If a judge were to mandate the dissolution of the company, its factories would remain standing and its workers, accountants, managers and shareholders would continue to live — but Peugeot SA would immediately vanish.
In short, Peugeot SA seems to have no essential connection to the physical world. Does it really exist? Peugeot is a gment of our collective imagination. But it exists as a legal entity.
Just like you or me, it is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates. It can open a bank account and own property. It pays taxes, and it can be sued and even prosecuted separately from any of the people who own or work for it. Hauts-de-Seine Ille-et-Vilaine Indre Indre-et-Loire Jura Landes Loire Loire-Atlantique Loiret Loir-et-Cher Lot-et-Garonne Maine-et-Loire Manche Marne Martinique Mayenne Mayotte Meurthe-et-Moselle Meuse Morbihan Moselle Nord Subvention de fonctionnement pour la mise en oeuvre des prestations de tourisme social "vacances enfants" et "vacances familles".
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