The Rise of Homo Sapiens - What’s so Special About Humanity?
John Krieg is a retired landscape architect and land planner who practiced in the Southwestern desert. He is also a retired licensed arborist, contractor, and engineer. He has written a college textbook entitled Desert Landscape Architecture (1999, CRC Press), as well as pieces published in numerous literary magazines. Mr. Krieg completed a two-part documentary film entitled Landscape Architecture: The Next Generation (2010), with filmmaker/photographer Charles Sappington. In some underground circles John is considered a master grower of marijuana with a lifelong goal to see marijuana federally legalized. To that end, he has two books coming out this year being published by Ribbonwood Press, Marijuana Tales and More Marijuana Tales.
Editors’ Comment: This is Part Two of John Krieg’s piece titled The Family of Man - From an American Perspective. We are presenting this in serial form. We published the last chapter, Chapter, Nine, last month and this month features Chapters One & Two.,
Chapter One
The Rise of Homo Sapiens – What’s so Special About Humanity?
Ever since we crawled out of the ocean / And stood upright on the land / There are some things that we just don't / Understand
Don Henley, “Building the Perfect Beast” (Copyright 1984)
How did humankind separate itself from the great apes, its closest genetic relatives? Two significant advantages were what allowed for the rise of Homo sapiens and their evolution into a recognizable form of civilization, those being opposable thumbs, and higher intelligence. Australopithecus arrived in Africa between four million and two million years ago, followed through the centuries by Homo rudolfensis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, and finally Homo sapiens (us).
Until recent decades, most texts delving into anthropology assumed these various renditions of the human animal occurred lineally with a more advanced species replacing an earlier model. Recent theory recognizes that the various species most likely experienced a parallel evolution, in particularly with neanderthalensis and sapiens literally fighting it out for supremacy. Neanderthalensis was bigger, hairier, and much stronger than any given individual of sapiens, but alas, they were less intelligent which led to their demise as sapiens merely banded together in greater numbers, fashioned more advanced weapons of war, and eventually completely eradicated them. With neanderthalensis out of the way, modern mankind was left with no other option than to turn on each other; and this we indulged in with a vengeance
Chapter Two
The Advent of Civilization(s) – Let the Killing Begin
Hammurabi’s Code…According to the code, people are divided into two genders and three classes: superior people, commoners, and slaves.
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Copyright 2015).
When Homo sapiens vanquished Homo neanderthalensis from the face of the earth they learned a lesson that would lead to their rise as the apex species on the planet, and what could well lead to their extinguishing themselves from the planet: that being that intelligence trumps brute strength, that there is safety in numbers, and that the advent of what we call “civilization” would enable the most cunning among us to rise to the position of the most powerful, entitled, and privileged amongst us. It’s a reasonable assumption that the shrewdest among prehistoric man found subtle ways to suggest to his clansmen that he should be nominated as leader/chief/king.
As humans evolved from hunting/gathering societies to agrarian societies the process of becoming progressively more civilized also evolved. This evolution was both boon and bane to our species in that life proved to be somewhat easier, at least superficially, but it also concurrently became much more complex. A case in point is the progressive reduction in the diversity of our diet that slowly led to many slow-killing diseases due to the lack of varied nutrition. Bellies were filled from massive monoculture crop harvests but oftentimes the overall general health of the farming society was compromised. Life spans increased due to safety in numbers, and the protection of the community/castle/city walls, but the freedom inherent in free roaming nomadic societies was greatly reduced. Quickly laws were enacted, and a system of punishments devised to bring the law breakers back into the will of the overall community.
Initially, if wrongdoers were not killed outright, they were severely punished to the point of being marked with scars by cutting, piercing, or burning, and then they were released back into the general population to live in damning shame for all the others to see. When this form of reprisal proved ineffective, or the numbers of wrongdoers proved too numerous, the concept of imprisonment came to the fore. Harsh punishment through public shaming now became barbaric punishment behind prison walls.
The upper crust of any given society was always in the minority, because once a measurement of wealth and privilege becomes established, there is never enough to go around. The higher ups soon grew to fear the more numerous lower downs and needed some recognizable system of protection from them. In other words, they needed to preserve their civilized life style, and to do this they needed some form of bodyguards to enforce the laws that they drew up to separate the haves from the have not’s. This gave rise to various forms of policing, and the necessity to identify what their tasks were and what could be utilized for them to accomplish these tasks. There was resistance, of course, as everyone in any given society would like to know what they can and cannot do. Throughout the history of civilization the lower downs were always to learn that the laws would define what was and was not acceptable behavior on their part, and concerning the police - they can do whatever want. The primary tool available to the police is the license to inflict violence, even the power to perpetrate death upon the policed. Isn’t it a paradox of all paradoxes that those most entrusted with protecting civilized society are the ones allowed to behave in a most uncivilized manner?
When societies grew to the size and status of nations they also began to recognize that some nations were more powerful than some other nations. Weakness in mankind invites attack from the more powerful for it is always easier for them to take than to earn. Greed is the scourge of our species only exceeded by one other phenomenon of our own making: that being the advent of religions which all seemed to have one thread of commonality. It wasn’t kindness, it wasn’t generosity, it wasn’t a high regard for humanity; it was superiority. All religions claimed to be the one true religion, and many allowed their believers to wage war upon the believers of the other religions. In cases where the outright aggression of warfare is avoided, religions turn to punishment as the fuel that they run on. This is true all over the world, and it’s just as true in democratic countries, in particularly in the United States of America. Writes author Anne-Marie Cusac in Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America (Copyright 2009) in Chapter 1: Where Punishment Is the Subject, Religion Is the Predicate: As I will argue, American punishment has with the possible exception of several decades in the twentieth century, been a religious and, more properly a Christian activity (p.19).
The basic inhumanity that any given man extends towards his fellow man initially stemmed from nothing more than greed and ill-gotten gain. Then it became all about religious superiority, and unless contained at this point, will soon become almost exclusively about the “us” versus the “other.” Anyone different than us is less than us, and beyond that deserving to be punished by us. They have to pay for being different. The fundamental belief of supposedly civilized societies that allow themselves to come to believe that they have the right to become an oppressive society is that someone has to pay – somebody always has to pay.