PREY FOR US
The best part of aging is getting to know yourself. I like being 50.

I pretty much know how and what I think about issues (I try to look at all the angles) and why I think that way about them.

One of my goals in Life is to be able to respond, rather than just react,

to the ups and downs that Life throws at me.

It seems self evident that Mother Nature has 'raised us' to be more emotionally driven reactors than rational responders. Throughout most of our evolutionary path, before tool making and co-operative hunting techniques allowed us to kill everything in sight, we Humans were more of a prey item than a predator

This is also reflected by studying our natural, omnivorous, diet, which again would be slightly more of a herbivore/prey/react creature, than that of a carnivore/predator/respond animal.

As we all know, in a properly balanced habitat, there are always far more prey animals than predators.

It seems to me that prey animals are always watching for danger,

and predators are always looking for prey.

So Humans ended up being this weird combo of prey/predator and that partially explains why we are so bizarre. It is beneficial for prey to be a bit skittish and wary while it is advantageous for predators to be calm and confident.

Our closest relatives offer an invaluable glimpse into the evolution of our behaviour.

The Chimpanzees (98% of our DNA) "have an omnivorous diet, a troop hunting culture based on beta males led by an alpha male, and highly complex social, (primarily retaliatory) relationships.

Our other cousins, the Bonobos, have a mostly frugivorous diet and an egalitarian, non-violent, matriarchal, sexually receptive behaviour."

As expected Chimps are complex and according to Wiki;

"they engage in apparently altruistic behaviour, show evidence of spirituality, exhibit acts of mourning & romantic love, they do a little rain dance, seem to appreciate the natural beauty of sunsets, display curiosity, respect, even empathy, toward other species (such as feeding turtles) and pretend play by cradling and grooming rocks or sticks."

As one would expect, Chimps being so closely related to us, and aren't we special, are also very complex. Evidently the dynamics of Human social structure eerily mirrors the reactionary Chimpanzee troops, but deep down, and be honest, most of us would rather live responsively like Bonobos!

Perhaps juggling this uneasy balancing act is the price we pay for owning this ridiculously overdeveloped brain. History has proven, time and time again, that our emotions can be easily manipulated by war mongering selfish Alpha males and provoke us into reacting and engaging in incomprehensibly-violent, behaviour.

So we seem to be stuck within the parameters of this perplexing bipolarity.

While we may be ever-so-slightly more of a passive prey item, just below our whisper-thin psychological veneer, lurks our aggressive predator program..

simmering...

waiting to be unleashed.

How can we speed up our ascent and tilt our psychological scales into a living in a predominantly Bonoboistic Society?

My Dear Marcellus,
Something is NOT rotten in the state of Denmark!

Most of us had to study Hamlet, Shakespeare’s tragic tale of the melancholy Dane. The famous line about something being rotten in Denmark could not be further from the truth because according to a survey by the BBC HERE, Denmark has the happiest (most content) people on Earth.

I saw the story HERE here on CBS 60 minutes. Unlike most countries, the 5.5 Million Danes have a homogenous population, low crime rate, womb to tomb educational and medical coverage paid from a tax rate of 50%, 6 weeks of holidays, and their expectations are very modest..
basically the polar opposite of the American Dream of having it all and then some. Can you say good-clan-living. I will spare you my usual diatribe on how our brains have not evolved enough to cope with living in anything larger than a clan.
You're welcome.

This show coincided with a program HERE that I watched on NOVA about our closest cousins called Ape Genius. The other Apes are very smart but they apparently have trouble controlling their emotions and have serious impulse control issues. Unlike the Danes, who keep to themselves in public and consider it a “right NOT to be talked to.”

If you look at the Prison populations anywhere in the world, what percentage of the inmates would you suspect have serious impulse control issues? 100? When you watch the news and you see Religio-Political self flagellating, fanatics collecting in mobs, firing machine guns in the air while screaming like madmen, how many of them look like drama queens in full control of their emotional facilities?

This brings us back to the other Apes.

The Bonobos are a much happier lot than our doppleganger cousins the Chimpanzees (and us) because they use sex as a form of conflict resolution unlike the Chimps, (98% of our DNA), who use violence and intimidation to settle their interpersonal relationships.

Can you say Impulse Control, HELLO!

Some Anthropologists believe that somewhere along our evolutionary voyage, Homo Escapeons advanced because selective characteristics of cooperation and impulse control were passed on and gave us an edge..although I see scant evidence that this is a dominant trait.

Either way it gave rise to the two basic types of Humans that exist today.
Those that are Charming and those that are Tedious.

One could therefore logically assume that living in a country full of armed, raving, violent, male, nutjobs who act like two year olds having a temper tantrum, could easily be designated as the UNHAPPIEST places on Earth. No need to list those eh?

So in conclusion, the happiest place on Earth would be in a orgiastic, Bonobo colony in Denmark… moderate expectations notwithstanding.

I am sooo there!
Ooh-Ooh-A-HA!

UNHAND ME YOU BEAST!

Last night I watched Beastly Games on the History Channel. For Centuries the Roman Empire captured countless numbers of animals, especially the African predators at the top of the food chain, to be sacrificed for the entertainment of the great unwashed in the Arena. Homo Escapeons have always had a negative effect on the other animals on the planet.

It made me think about how we treat our Earthly cohabitants…

especially the other ‘Hominid’ Primates.

HERE is a great link to the Big Five.

From the oldest (16MYA) Orangutans to the newest, not us, Bonobos (3MYA), most will probably disappear from the wild thanks to our ignorance and insatiable quest to populate every inch of habitable land. It is estimated that there are only about 400,000 great apes, our closest relatives on the planet, and that there are over 6.5 Billion of us.

Far too many of the great apes live in war torn regions of the world, are captured for the exotic pet trade, and even harvested as Bush Meat to feed workers. Tick tock.

We are very ‘simian-lar’ to these creatures especially the Chimpanzees (Mock Man) who are male oriented omnivores who occasionally murder each other and start wars with their neighbours. The ubersexual Bonobos (Ancestor) or Boner-hos as I like to call them, use Sex as a conflict resolution and I write about them once a week so now we can finally start talking about SEX!

Scrotum size tells us a lot about a Primate’s reproductive behavior or in less scientificky terminology, their ‘Sexcapades’.

Male Gorillas, despite being the largest Ape, have a solitary dominant male who keeps a harem so they have small balls, they don’t need a lot of fertilizer. Male Chimps and especially Bonobos, have HUGE balls because they are promiscuous and need a lot of fertilizer. Male Homo Escapeons are in the middle but have a lot of sperm that is designed to kill and block other sperm..so that pretty much answers your question about monogamy.

According to condom maker Durex, the average Human Earthling has about 10 sexual partners during their lifetime. You can check out your National Statistics on their survey HERE .
I’m sure that it must be completely unbiased HA HA HA.

Do you believe their findings or are they just trying to validate our inner bonobo and sell more rubbers?

OUR STRIKING SIMIANLARITIES

I watched an interesting program called clever-monkeys on PBS the other night. Monkeys are our ancestral, blueprint, relatives and they have been monkeying around far longer than us.

Monkeys have very expressive, human-like, faces, 3D colour vision, hands with little opposable, thumbs which no doubt evolved to enable us to text message, but they also have highly intelligent problem solving brains, and distinct forms of communication.


That being said there are even more alarming simianlarities:








The young monkey around in protracted, overprotective, state of arrested development. Some Monkeys have learned how to self medicate with herbal remedies and most of them squander their brainpower on selfish endeavours such as stealing food and mates.

Does that remind you of another species?


More than any other simianlarity;

Monkeys live in stressful, violent, uber-competitive, societies that suffer from the effects of constant political turmoil predicated by the actions of highly, aggressive, dimorphically-dominant, males who fight with other males for supremecy on a daily basis but will call a truce and band together to lead attacks against outsiders.
I was quite alarmed to learn that more Capuchin Monkeys are killed by other Capuchins in their daily skirmishes than from predators.

Humans have always anthropomorphized these miniature replicant creatures and apparently we inherited lot of bad behavior and have more in common than we care to admit.

We apples didn't fall too far from the ancestral tree.

Humans are classified as Placental>Mammals>Primates in the family Hominidae and we certainly took our-own-sweet-time getting here.

Of course we've only recently started to figure out when we left our Family Tree.

Proto-mammals started out as refitted, reptilian, creatures who adapted to a safer more opportunistic, crepuscular, lifestyle sneaking around in the dawn (matutinal) and dusk (vespertine)and some species became nocturnal.

If we travel back in time, about 100 million years, we find the first evidence of Placental Mammals and by 65 mya Modern Primates arrive on the scene.

Somewhere around 40 mya we find evidence of the first Monkeys and when our modern climate began and Ice formed in the Antarctic 30 mya, Primates became extinct everywhere but Africa & Asia.

Now it starts to get complicated so hang on..

25 mya our Super-family: Hominoidea, the first Apes, start propping themselves up.


18 mya Gibbons, the lesser Apes, swing off the Family Tree and around 17 mya when early ancestors of the Hominids (great apes and humans) migrated to Eurasia from Africa just before these two continents were cut off from each other by an expansion of the Mediterranean Sea.


Recent fossil evidence found in Germany was determined to be about 16.5 million years old, some 1.5 million years older than similar species from East Africa.



Orangutans, members of our Great Ape



By 7 mya our rellies further speciate into our Sub-family: Homininae.




Our largest cousins put the GO in Gorilla, and off they GO.

Keep in mind that Gorillas & Chimps/Bonobos are genetically closer to Humans, than they are to Orangutans.

Chimpanzees, our kissin' cousins, really are a chimp off the old block, they share 98.4% of our DNA, and although Chimps divurge around 5 mya, they are considered members of our Tribe: Hominini.






The Chumps, our first recognisable proto-peeps show up about 2.6 mya when the first Hominids somehow removed their opposable thumbs off of their tool and started using sticks & stones & animal bones as tools.
Family: Hominidae, march off into the jungle around 14 mya.

Say hello to Homo Habilis, the handy-man;

"who can make our stock rise,
sprinkle it with tools,
wander the Savannah and start a miracle or two,
it's Habilis,

The Handy Man can 'cause he hooks us up with tools and makes evolution sound good"


OK, now we can include Homo Sapiens & our less fortunate extinct relatives.

We now have a classification known as the Sub-tribe Hominan.


Environmental factors may have also led to the isolation of the Chimpanzees we call Bonobos on or about 2 mya.







Bonerbos differ from the other Chimps in that their society is matriarchal and they settle disputes with SEX instead of violence..if only we could have stuck a little closer to this lot!

The much maligned Neanderthals (99.5% of our DNA) made their own way in this world around 350,000 years ago and lived alongside of Homo Erectus until the arrival of our ancestors, Homo Sapiens.

Erectus sprung up in Africa around 1.7 mya...

It's hard to miss the metaphorical rise of their ascension on this chart.

"The dominant view among scientists is the recent African origin of modern humans (RAO) that Homo Sapiens, our Common Ancestor, evolved in Africa and spread across the globe from Africa around 200,000 years ago, replacing populations of Homo Erectus and Homo Neanderthalensis."

The closest that anatomically modern Humans have come to finding a genetic EVE is a 140,000 year old individual who scientists refer to as Mitochondrial_Eve.
*all humans alive today have DNA traceable to Mitochondrial Eve

If you're looking for a Genetic Adam, there is a 60,000 year old fellow dubbed Y-chromosomal_Adam who has not been universally embraced.

Moving right along,

70,000 ya we lose our Erectus..

until the emergence of Homo Viagrus in the late 20th Century

50,000 Stone tools start to get fancy-schmancy

30,000 Neanderthals disappear
leaving US, Sapiens, alone to perfect the tools that will enable us to kill prey and other Humans.

Thanks to the miracle of Agriculture, Nomadic Hunter-Gatherer Clans soon fall victim to the creation of Civilization. A surplus of food results in Humans being stratified into Haves and Have-Nots.

The Haves; Priests, Generals. Land Owners, Celebrities and Politicians, force the Have-Nots, the rest, to obey their rules.

4,000 ya Writing, the most powerful weapon ever invented, helps to instill enough fear and bullsh*t into the hearts and minds of the Have-Nots, that they can be coerced, cajoled, and even volunteer, to sacrifice themselves (via Slave Labour or Military service) to help? the Haves expand their Civilization...

usually by taking over neighbouring Civilizations that they once traded with.

Civilization signals the birth of Homo Escapeons.

Once the majority of Humans had devalued themselves enough to become pawns subservient pawns, the defining trait of Civilization, the race to annihilate the other Escapeons began and we've never looked back.

We 've only just begun exploring our Family Tree and affirming what was once thought to be a ridiculous notion,that there only is one species of Human.

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a cross-roads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

Woody Allen

BONOBOS
one Swingin' Ape
Don't go this is about SEX!

As per my plan to be infrickinformative once and a while I will refresh and recycle past postings that are near and dear to my mandate.
This Tuesday redux investigates my fascination with Apes, not the human kind the ape kind, especially Chimpanzees, (our closest living relatives with 98% of our DNA) which will lead us to today's what if question.

But first a quick review:
there are two species of Chimps,
the familiar Pan Troglodytes and the out of this world
Bonobo, Pan Paniscus.
Both will probably be gone from the wild in our lifetime.

The Chimpanzee of Astronaut, Film and Circus fame is, unfortunately, very similar to us. They are a male dominated, warring omnivore with tool making abilities that live stressful lives avoiding violent unprovoked attacks from others.

The Bonobos on the other hand are a female oriented culture that uses sex instead of physical violence as a vehicle for conflict resolution. Although the sex is apparently more occasional than the mad free for all depicted in documentaries, it is still a wild orgy compared to the sedate bi-weekly poke in the whiskers that most of us humans enjoy. Except of course for the Satyrs and Nymphos and all the power to ya.

Bonobos, or Bonerbos as I call them, use sex as a form of greeting, for pure recreation, and for conflict management.
Sex regularly occurs on an as required basis between members of the opposite sex within the group but also includes female to female genital rubbing and males who enjoy penis fencing.

Scientists have documented that Bonobos actually experience orgasms!
Guess we humans aren't so special;

I'll have what she's ooh-ooh-ooh-aah-aah-having!
These orgasms occur at an alarmingly efficient rate since sexual encounters average 13 seconds. Thirteen seconds, as many women can testify, is unfortunately not outside the realm of many human males.


However girls rule and boys drool, because if a male Bonobo is pressuring an unwilling female to have sex
NO means NO even in Bo-No-bo!

the other females gang up on him and chase him off.
Status is achieved through maternal lines and all in all
it's basically the opposite of the society that the other apes (including us) have developed.

My question is,
what if homo escapeons had used sex as a method of conflict resolution instead of whacking the other guy over the head with a big f*cking rock?

What kind of world would we live in today?
And would we ever get anything done?