1Nicholas Phillipson’s, 2010, “Adam Smith: an enlightened life” is the deep source on Smith.

The populating of Earth

The genera that are members of humankind’s phylogeny are principally Australopithecus and Homo, which are members of the Great Apes and include three other living genera: Pongo [the Borneo and Sumatra Orangutans], Gorilla and Pan [the common chimpanzee or P. troglodytes, and the pygmy chimpanzee or P. paniscus - the Bonobo]. The living genera of the Great Apes comprise the sub-family Homininae¹. Recently, it has been suggested that Pan troglodytes more correctly belongs to Homo and should be re-assigned to our genus. The religious implications of such a move are immense!

I have consistently divided Homo sapiens’ cultural gamodemes into three overlapping divisions: Archaeosociety, where the basic group is a band of people; Protosociety, where the basic group is a tribe or chieftainate; and, Eusociety where the basic group is a State or regional cooperative. Agglomerations above the band level develop increasing levels of organization involving rules, regulations and the establishment of law: initially via religiosity but evolving into policy. Religiosity characterizes Protosociety; and, policy [political wisdom] characterizes Eusociety. Being adverse to political correctness I have no problem with recognizing that these three levels as definite stages in evolution of the cultural gamodeme; and, that each level represents a higher stage in the attainability of individual happiness – which I regard as the real goal of a cultural gamodeme.

THE GREAT APES: humankind’s kin.

The deep understanding of the evolution of humankind must involve knowledge of the genomes of both our evolutionary ancestors and our Great Ape kin. Using modern genetic technology a lot of information can be acquired from both the living representatives of the Great Apes and the sparse fossil material from earlier members of our lineage. It is unlikely that we will soon have adequate information from the latter source and we will continue to rely upon paleontological taxonomy, classification and systematics. Nevertheless, progress is being made in obtaining information on the genetics makeup of our ancestors e.g. H. neanderthalensis has had much of its genome analyzed.

The principle geological phenomenon associated with the evolution of the Great Apes was Continental Drift driven by Plate Tectonics. The initial fateful and geological change that was to influence the evolution of our lineage began in the Later Cretaceous Period with the origin of the Gramineae [grass],as part of the explosive evolutionary burst of the Angiosperms [flowering plants]. However, grass did not begin to spread over large areas of our Earth until the climatic cooling associated with the Middle Oligocene Epoch, and by the following Miocene Epoch grass was ubiquitous and played a very important roll in the evolution of the Mammalia. Numerous types of animals have adapted to eating grass as their main food source [the graminivores], and others as a secondary food source [including omnivores and some carnivores]. In Africa this spread of grasslands led to the evolutionary diversity, not only of the hoofed Mammalia such as the antelopes but also of the apes and monkeys, which by the beginning of the Pliocene Epoch had a widespread presence over much of our Earth. The advent of the Pleistocene Ice Age saw numerous Great Ape species inhabiting our Earth. Richard Leakey [1994] noted that around 15 mybp tropical forest occupied much of central and east Africa and within these forests ape species outnumbered monkey species.

The second consequence of plate tectonic activity during the Cenozoic Era was the rifting of the Red Sea. It was the intensification of the Red Sea Rift that initiated the vegetation change that altered the selection pressure and caused the adaptive evolution of the hominoids. As the continent began to split under the pressure of Plate Tectonics north-eastern Africa began to rise, forming higher land and new mountains. An important effect of the new mountain range was the creation of a rain-shadow to their east, and this disrupted the vegetative pattern into one of dense and open forest/shrub areas with interspersed patches of grassland. With time the drier grassland became more extensive leaving smaller areas of forest: the habitat of the ape and monkey. The rifting of the African continent led to the formation of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, and, by 12 mybp, the vegetative landscape was becoming increasingly disrupted.

Throughout the history of our Earth there has been close link between vegetation and land fauna. This is well seen in the evolution of the Vertebrata [see www.geol.lsu.edu/Hart/vertebrates] and the floral disruption that took place around 12 mybp in East Africa provided an increased vegetative diversity which promoted evolution and migration of faunal groups into areas of lower selection pressure. At the same time there was an increased selection pressure on many pre-existing species. If they could not adapt to the new environment they migrated or became extinct.

The Great Rift Valley of Africa became an extensive north-south barrier to east-west migration and the changing vegetation pattern provided the stimulus to evolutionary changes in both the apes and monkeys as the growth of this barrier began to isolate their physical gamodemes. The eventual result was the reduction of the ape species to the three genera Homo, Gorilla and Pan.

Homo sapiens came out of an environment where other species of Great Apes were in competition with our species for local resources. A critical factor in the eventual dominance of Homo was the development of logic. Our knowledge of the modern Great Apes indicate that intelligence was probably an incipient part of all of the ape populations. The past 50 years has seen a vast increase in our knowledge of the mind of our fellow Great Apes. Not only can chimpanzee’s fashion and use simple tools but they have the ability to logically communicate using sign language. Even though our Great Ape cousins lack the vocal structure to develop advanced speech and can vocally communicate only with gestures and grunts, we now understand that they can reason using grammatical rules and many words that they can independently use to construct meaningful sentences. They have learned and communicated with human beings using American Sign Language [ASL] in projects at the University of Nevada and the Institute for Primate Studies, in Oklahoma. Indeed the Great Ape named Washoe, who died recently, was the pioneer user of the ASL. This method of communication has been extended to other Chimpanzees and more recently to Gorillas and Orangutans! Other experiments with Ape communication have individuals communicating on a computer using the invented language ‘Yerkish’, from the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. In addition to the research into our fellow apes ability to communicate there is a large amount of knowledge on Primate societies. Even a casual read of “A complete Guide to Monkeys, Apes and other Primates” [Kavanagh, 1984], should convince most that the origin of human society and culture began prior to the split of the apes from the monkey lineage over 20 million years ago.

It is generally accepted that one characteristic that Homo possesses and other modern Great Apes do not is the ability to craft tools: not simply use tools as when a chimp picks up a rock and cracks nuts, or puts a stick down an anthill to extract ants, but the actually flaking of rock to produce an edge [a knife or an ax]. Homo does this and the association of tools with fossil skeletal remains is used as an indicator that the specimens belong to our genus. Clearly during the transition time, around some 2.5 mybp, Australopithecus and Homo could not be distinguishable but increased cranial capacity began to give Homo an advantage and eventually tools [including weapons] became a major individual resource for Homo as the mind evolved a greater understanding of tool making. Simultaneously, this ensued the demise of the competitor genus: Australopithecus.

AUSTRALOPITHECUS: humankind’s ancestor

One of my interesting experiences as a paleontologist was in mid-1961 when I first met Ray Dart. We were about to be colleagues and he invited me to his room in the Anatomy Department at the University of Witwatersrand for a cup of tea. Tea at 4.15 pm became a ritual that Ray and I, along with Edna Plumstead the palaeobotanist, engaged in for the next six years as we worked together in the Bernard Price Institute of Palaeontological Research. That first tea produced an amazing feeling for the first thing Ray did was open a safe and handed me the ‘Taung Child’. I was very hesitant, as the missing parts had been added with plaster but Ray encouraged me with a grin and said “stroke the head of your ancestor!”. I examined the head for many minutes whilst Ray looked on in silence – finally I said “if we could only go back in time and watch how this creature lived. It was a biped – look at the foramen” – Ray put the skull back and we went to lunch where he asked me to try and give a better date for the Sterkfontein, and Swartkrans sites and to write a paper on “Palynology – the key to stratigraphy” – his title! Later we were to go into the field together to collect material for palynological analysis but unfortunately I was not able to recover any good palynofloras to date the samples.

Australopithecus was named by Raymond Dart in 1925 when he announced the finding of the incomplete skull of a young australopithecine [Australopithecus africanus] from the Taung Limestone of southern Africa. Thus began the modern study of Homo sapiens’ ancestors. In 1959 Mary Leakey, the wife of Louis², and the mother of Richard and Jonathan found the first East African australopithecine fossil in the Olduvai Gorge. Originally named Zinjanthropus boisei it was eventually transferred to the genus Australopithecus. Later, in 1960, Jonathan found the first fossil representative of Homo in Africa [which his father named Homo habilis]. Other discoveries followed from eastern Africa with the finds of Australopithecus afarensis [originally known by the small female australopithecine ‘Lucy’] and by the 1980’s a reasonable lineage could be determined for the African hominids commencing with A. afarensis, which evolved into A. africanus and A. boisei. Our ancestor Homo habilis evolved from these australopithecines.

Australopithecus and the osteodontokeratic culture

The idea of the osteodontokeratic culture is currently out of favor with western palaeo-anthropologists yet within the non-human primates we can see pointers to its origins. My late friend and colleague Jim Kitching³ firmly believed the origin of the bone-tooth-horn [osteodontokeratic] culture could be related to the simple concept of a ‘pounding stone’ as used by some primates. Skeletal material that is shattered makes excellent cutting and stabbing tools and the incorporation into Australopithecus’ culture of bones, teeth and horns as implements was a logical outcome of pounding: they are opportunistic tools.

One interesting aside in regard to tool making involving James Kitching is worth repeating, if only for the historical record.

Jim and Ray Dart were in the field with a visiting anthropologist, and an argument started regarding the use of tools by Australopithecus and the osteodontokeratic culture. The argument was about the fact that tools were not found at Australopithecus sites. James was a big believer in the bone-tooth-horn culture envisioned by Ray Dart. Finally, in desperation, James jumped up and grabbed the remains of the shoulder bone of an antelope that was laying around and proceeded to hack down a 3 inch diameter tree with it. Upon finishing the task he turned around with a very broad smile [Jim had a large head] and said “what did you say!]”. His point, and the fact is, that the first tools, and weapons, did not have to be manufactured – just like a chimp takes a stick and pokes it down an ant hole so an intelligent australopithecine could use bones to hack and cut game. Even though the idea of the osteodontokeratic culture is no longer in favor amongst palaeo-anthropologists it is a valid concept.

HOMO

Richard Leakey [1994: page 43.] noted “Until the appearance of Homo, all bipedal apes had small brains, large cheek teeth, and protruding jaws and pursued an apelike subsistence strategy. They ate mainly plant food and their social milieu probably resembled that of the modern savanna baboon.”

Homo habilis and the Oldowan Culture

The earliest cultural gamodeme associate Homo habilis and the Oldowan Culture. These are the tool making societies named after the Olduvai Gorge discoveries, characteristic of the species Homo habilis. The tools of the Oldowan culture grew out of those developed by accident [opportunistic tools] and were the first deliberate tools – albeit very simple in production. The culture existed in Africa for about a million years [2.5 to 1.4 mybp] and comprised predominantly of choppers, scrapers and discoids: there was no hand-ax. The intelligence of these creatures was probably little above that of the modern chimpanzee [Pan] and evidence is that they were predominantly scavengers when it came to meat eating – rather than hunters they were simply gatherers. There are suggestions that they built structures for shelter and protection.

Homo erectus and the Aucheulen Culture [1,800,000 – 250,000 ybp]

Around 1.76 mybp, a cultural gamodeme evolved around Lake Turtkana, Kenya, in which the tools were much more sophisticated, including oval and pear-shaped hand axes, characteristic of the species Homo erectus. The culture existed for little over a million and a half years [1.8 to 0.25 mybp] during the early and middle Pleistocene Epoch, and predominantly used choppers, scrapers and discoids [pounders]. These are called chopper-core and hand-ax industries and were produced by striking a solid core of rock and smashing off one or two large flakes. They used fire and possible knew how to make it, and their intelligence and knowledge pool was probably substantial – considerably more advanced than modern Pan. It is probable that the ‘Erectians’ were capable of little, if any, abstract thought and were not self aware.

Homo heidelburgensis culture

Evidence from Spain suggests that ceremonial burial customs were practiced by Homo heidelburgensis some 350,000 ybp. If this is correct then it implies that Homo had already developed intentionality to a level that encompassed religious belief. This certainly alters our concept of the cultural quality of early society in the Pleistocene Epoch.

The initial migration of our phylogeny out of Africa was probably similar to what is known about the Khoisan of Southern Africa, and, was a consequence of a natural instinct to follow the migration pathways of game. Movement could have been rapid: a small band of individuals in which the basic individual resource needs are self-evident [food, protection, sexual partners and knowledge]. This kind of migration is not necessarily driven by an increased population pressure. Even today a common cause of migration into new geographic areas by Homo is either to exploit new resources, or, to seek a better living. Development of a cultural identity probably occurred as attempts to preserve basic needs: such as a religious ritual that demands worship of the fire-god immediately after awakening and immediately before going to bed which ensures the fire is stoked and not extinguished [Upanishads].

Judging by studies of other animals [Keddy, 2001] Archaeosociety was probably inherently egalitarian in most aspects of their interactions. Observations on the San Khoisan of the Kalahari suggest a small group is egalitarian by necessity. The best hunter leads the hunt, the best healer is the shaman and often the elder [male or female] is the keeper of the tribal wisdom but a single leader is not always apparent. In the Kalahari San the population density and group size was adapted to food supply. The general scarcity of food led to breastfeeding for extended periods of up to three years, which not only assures any infant offspring a constant and efficient food supply; but tends to stop a new pregnancy developing. As a result the San females were adapted to producing an offspring about every four years.

Once signs of cultural artifacts are seen in the archaeological stratigraphic record it is likely that religious myths already had become an important part of social control. At this point, ‘mental’ strength [cunning] can be assumed to have joined might as determining leadership. Once a hierarchical structure developed where some small subset of the population exerted power over the majority they gained access to the preponderance of resources and initiated a self perpetuating class system in which they controlled the distribution of the basic resource needs of the individual.

Homo neanderthalensis and the Mousterian Culture [200,000 – 30,000 ybp]

From 0.25 mybp a cultural gamodeme evolved in which the tools were much more sophisticated and of many types derived from prepared flakes. The Mousterian Culture was that of a hunter-gatherer. Unlike the earlier culture the tools and weapons included flake tools. The production of many sharp edged flakes from a single core indicates an advance in both knowledge but, perhaps also, reasoning. As the frigid zone advanced so the food sources changed into predominantly winter meat and summer fruit and meat. The Neanderthals understood how to make and preserve fire and the eating of cooked meat was presumably an acquired adaptive trait pressured by the increasing ice age [cooked meat has more absolute nutritional value]. The skin and fur of the large animals killed became part of the Neanderthalian culture: they dressed and made tents! The emergence of sophisticated humanity traits are evidenced by sites indicating deliberate burial: a ritual which implies an advanced in theoretical reasoning about the unknown and the construction of conceptual models.

The Mousterian culture existed for less than 0.2 million years before it developed into the amazingly sophistical tools of Homo sapiens’ Archaeosociety. Both Art and ritualistic burial by H. neanderthalensis from 100,000 ybp provides insight into the timing of the development of Homo’s consciousness and possibly the beginning of language as a significant means of communication. H. neanderthalensis became extinct around 30,000 ybp – possibly because it was hit by rapidly changing selection pressures. Initially, the advance of the northern Ice Mass reduced the habitable geographic area and pushed the game from Neanderthals territories. This was followed by rapid climatic warming which brought the Neanderthals into contact with H. sapiens, who were following the game as it occupied the newly ice-freed northern Europe.

Homo neanderthalensis was named from a specimen from the Neander Valley, near Düsseldorf, Germany. It was mainly a European species existing during the middle part of the Old Stone Age and coexisted with H. sapiens only for a short while, before succumbing to the ravages of the changing climate associated with the Ice ages. The Neanderthals were hunter-gatherers, like Homo sapiens and as the ice sheets advanced much of there food source migrated south or became extinct.

The DNA of the Neanderthals has been largely determined and it is almost certain that this a separate species that had at least partial genetic compatibility with H. sapiens. Certainly modern genetic thought does not believe H. neanderthalensis interbred extensively with H. sapiens and it is possible that H. sapiens itself exterminated H. neanderthalensis as a rival. Both H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens probably communicated with both gestures and language and their cerebral development is attested by the common use of paintings and engravings as a means of expressing thought.

Archaeosociety

“The climatic effect at the time of the early migrations of Homo sapiens out of Africa and into the Middle East was dominated by the changes that were causing the opening and closing of potential migrational routes. These were associated with the varying glacial conditions of the Pleistocene Epoch and especially the commencement of the last glacial phase some 65,000 ybp. This was true, not only, in the north where the frigid conditions waxed and waned but also in the 30o north and south latitudes where aridity was and still is a major barrier to migration on foot [the Sahara and the Kalahari deserts]. It is generally held amongst paleontologists and anthropologists that the earliest migrations of Homo sapiens consisted of small bands of hunters and gathers that wandered out of Africa and into the Middle East some 100,000 years ago”. Hart, 2008 p74.

Homo sapiens and the Upper Paleolithic Culture.

The beginning of Archaeosociety is obscure but certainly by the Upper Paleolithic the cultural remains of H. sapiens show an innovative array of fine implements. That the human brain was developing quickly is attested by the more rapid development of more refined tools. Glynn Isaac [1976] argued the elaboration and proliferation of tools types was probably associated with the spread of a more sophisticated mode of communication, as language evolved. When H. sapiens became the only extant member of our genus some 30,000 ybp an explosive burst of population began as humankind migrated onto every continent and the human gamodeme began to split into the cultural gamodemes later seen in Protosociety. I believe that much of this expansion had to do with knowledge acquisition as understanding of the seasons, game habits and survival techniques became part of a band’s cultural heritage.

Throughout most of it’s history H. sapiens was a hunter-gatherer and expanded over the entire Earth, except Antarctica, as an opportunistic migratory predator following the movement of game, as new passageways opened with both within and between the continents. The end of the Ice Age reduced the selection pressure by allowing more game over a wider geographic area. Throughout evolution of life on our Earth it has been observed that the opening of new geographic areas, with abundant and available food supply, results in an explosive cladogenesis of a species. It is a period during which numerous new traits can survive and become incorporated into the physical gamodeme, because the selection pressure is low and even the weak [both physical and mental] can survive and pass on their traits to offspring. These traits then become part of the phylogenic genome. In the case of H. sapiens the advances of significance were those of mental reasoning and knowledge acquisition. Only since the end of the last glaciation has our species developed additional methods of producing food by domestication of animals and the growing of plants. These pastoral and agricultural innovations set the foundation for our species’ enormous development and growth during Protosociety.

During Archaeosociety Homo sapiens followed the migrating herds, hunted, gathered and scavenged. It is probable the bands began to domesticate some of the migratory and plains animals such as the pig and goat, which are adapted to scavenging and naturally associate with the leavings of human-beings. The sheep and the cow probably soon followed. Almost certainly the dog was the earliest truly domesticated beast, initially probably as a camp follower [scavenger] but rapidly becoming a camp guard with a symbiotic relationship with the human band. Genetic studies on DNA [Savolainen, 2002] suggest the domestic dog originated some 15,000 – 40,000 years ago from the East Asian wolf in the East China – Japan region. Because of the east-west orientation of Euro-Asia and the land bridge between East Asia and the Americas there were few geographic barriers to migration and probably a lot of band interaction and communication. The dog spread rapidly amongst the various regions occupied by Homo sapiens, presumably as a result of its utility, and migrated with humankind to the Americas around 12,000 to 14,000 ybp. The other domesticated animals [pig, goat, sheep and cow] were acquired and taken by the migrating human bands into all of the habitable regions of our Earth as Homo followed the migratory herds.

Humankind’s humanity traits.

Archaeosociety was the time during which our humanity traits developed.

“the genetic roots of most human attributes remain tantalizingly elusive. They will be uncovered, undoubtedly, but not perhaps for many years. As for complex measures such as personality, we are many, many decades away from defining them genetically. In the meantime, pinpointing those 50,000 to 100,000 genes, and deciphering their role and function is likely to bring unqualified benefits: new drugs, methods of diagnosis and methods for studying human behavior.” Bodmer and McKie, 1994, page 12.

The recognition of our humanity trait diversity is recognition of our very nature; and, the recognition of trait dominance in a cultural gamodeme is the recognition of that cultural gamodemes ethnicity. I have expressed earlier [Hart, 2008] that the overriding trait of humanity that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is our advanced logic. Humanity’s second dominant trait is ‘resource acquisition’ and, together with logic, this led to both weapon making and tool making. Resource acquisition encompasses much of human behavior, from hunter gathering of the !Kung San people of the Kalahari Desert to the development of future human colonies on Mars and Earth’s Moon.

A variety of characteristics comprise the humanity trait [or traits]. The vast majority of traits characterizing the various interbreeding populations [physical gamodemes] of modern humankind are shared amongst all groups. These attest to the unity of all people. Darwin and later Dart suggested that weapon making was important. In the 1940’s, Kenneth Oakley, of the Natural History Museum, London, hypothesized “Man the Toolmaker” was the key – not weapons. Actually Dart was more explicit and spoke of the “killer ape” and despite some contrary opinion I believe he was correct: and can be seen in the study of modern chimpanzee bands. The logical use of weapons was an evolutionary advantage that once recognized spread quickly and became a dominant trait. It has continued as a dominant trait throughout human history and remain so today. Indeed I see the primary mechanism pushing the evolution of society from the band, through the tribe to the State as rooted in violence: the evolution of the protector class and the use of the threat of force to enlarge the polity. However, the development of humanity traits is especially associated with the development of logic, reasoning and awareness and this it clearly connected with the evolution of mind which in turn is associated with the evolution of the brain.

Certainly anatomical changes occurring during the evolution of Homo, which were both necessary and instrumental in development of the humanity trait: the larger cranial capacity, bi-pedalism and the opposable thumb have been much discussed but these are precursor characteristics. Without their evolution Homo would not have succeeded as the dominant ape on Earth.

The adaptive value of an opposable thumb to a tree dwelling animal is obvious; and, Lovejoy’s [1981] postulate that the adaptation of bi-pedalism was partially a result of it allowing a greater efficiency for food gathering by the male is intriguing as he goes on to postulate that the male could then provided more food for the female and offspring – thus cutting off the need for extensive period of lactation and consequently resulting in an increased birth-rate. All apes naturally produce young every four years: the control is the period of lactation stimulated by breast feeding. In Homo this was naturally seen in the !Kung San of the Kalahari, which until recently was the last remaining example of pristine African hunter-gatherers. Today the way of life of the !Kung San is fundamentally the same as the rest of the world where food is readily obtainable and a long period of lactation is unnecessary. Certainly one of the more important aspect of humankind is its breeding cycle, which relates to population density and resource acquisition. The need for ‘breeding partner resources’ is one of the basic individual resource needs of humankind: it’s origin lies within the ‘sexual partner resource’ needs of Homo. It is common practice in both monkeys and apes for the male to provide food and security to the female in return for sexual favor, and is the same in our species. The real stimulus is not so much food gathering efficiency but male sex-drive.

My own view is that the primary adaptive value of bi-pedalism was one of defense. Bi-pedalism maximizes the senses of smell, hearing and sight by allowing the head to be held high – all land mammals tend to raise their head high – even many quadrupeds will stand upright on their hind legs at the first suspicion of danger. Whereas bi-pedalism is not a particularly efficient method of speed-running it does allow the upper limbs to become a means of climbing and thus move upwards out of dangers way. A further consequence is that permanent use of the hind limbs for walking can produce a very strong jumping capability. All of these characteristics are related to the ‘security resources’ of the individual [Hart, 2008].

The definition of humanity i.e. the sum of all relevant traits that makes us human, has vexed the minds of many but on a nominative scale it is related to cranial capacity of Homo, which is distinguished by a cranial capacity of greater than 700 cm3. I believe the development of a more extensive use of logic by H. sapiens is associated with the evolution of an increased cranial capacity. Bogin [1990] and later Leakey [1994] provided a key as to how an enlarged cranial capacity correlates with increased ability to use logic. Bogin’s and Leakey’s works suggest that the birth cranial capacity of Homo species gradually changed as the genus evolved. In apes the birth cranial capacity is about half the adult cranial capacity but in modern Homo is it about one-third. As the adult cranial capacity of Homo increased with evolution then the either the size of the pelvic opening had to increase or the gestation period had to decrease. If bi-pedalism imposes a mechanical limit on the size of the pelvic opening then decreased gestation time is a definite solution to evolving an increased cranial capacity. However, with decreased gestation time the offspring is born early and is more helpless at birth. Thus the evolutionary increase in cranial capacity necessitates a longer period of child care. A longer period of child care provides a longer period of learning – of training and social conditioning into how to survive in the band/tribal group. How to avoid dangerous situations, from predators to poisonous foods, how to cooperate to get added individual resources, how to communicate, and a host of other social mores gradually developed as part of the cultural gamodeme.

We have little useful information on the average pelvic capacity of extinct Homo species and in all probability there was a fairly large variation but we do have some reasonable figures for adult cranial capacity. If the average pelvic capacity of the species of Homo is approximately the same as H. sapiens [385 cm³] then the ratio might indicate available social conditioning time. Table One illustrates this point.

SPECIES	CRANIAL CAPACITY	RATIO
H. habilis	700 cm3	1.8
H. erectus	1000 cm3	2.6
H. heidelburgensis	1220 cm3	3.2
H. sapiens	1320 cm3	3.4
H. neanderthalensis	1500 cm3	3.9

One interesting question that arises is: ‘with it’s larger cranial capacity did the young Neanderthalian have a longer social conditioning period, or was the pelvic size larger?‘ Hopefully, we will soon be able to answer this question for each species of Homo, as details of average pelvic capacity become known from the palaeontological record.

The cranial capacity is not the only significant point about the development of the skull. The brain has a right and left hemisphere, each of which is divided into the frontal lobe, occipital lobe, the parietal lobe, and the temporal lobe. Amongst the apes Homo is differentiated by the frontal lobe being larger than the occipital lobe: in the other apes, and Australopithecus, the reverse is true.

Irrespective of the other features the distinguishing facet of humankind is the evolution of the brain and specifically its contained mind and within that the development of logical reasoning. The brain originated as a anterior swelling of the spinal cord that coordinated the major senses. In the fishes this swelling comprised a fore-brain, mid-brain and hind-brain which essential handled smell, vision and balance respectively, and, the larger reptile brains had similar functions. It is within the mammals that the brain became large and complex. The hind-brain became the cerebellum coordinating movement, the mid-brain became small, remained important in vision [controlling movement of the eye, the shape of the lens and the diameter of the pupil] and is the connection to the brain-stem that connects to the spinal cord; and, the fore-brain coordinated the senses and developed a huge cerebrum that handled memory, learning and reason. The increased brain complexity not only improved communication but tool making and tool use promoted hand-eye coordination that enhanced logical analysis. The prolonged infant care that was directly a result of enlarged cranial capacity increased the period that the mind was under the education of elders. The whole system of increased cranial capacity, brain evolution and environmental stimulus resulted in the evolution of Homo sapiens var sapiens the genus, species and variety to which humankind now belongs.

Increasingly, science is realizing that many, and perhaps most, aspects of intelligence are inherited through the genes. In the last decade it was determined that that the volume of both the brain’s grey matter [processing areas] and white matter [inter-connecting areas] are inheritable traits and partially correlates with IQ (Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn758; and, Journal of Neuroscience, vol 26, p 10235). More recently, it has been shown that the speed of nerve impulses, is genetically determined via the quality of myelin sheathing. This can be related to overall intelligence and abstract reasoning via intelligence score analyses [The Journal of Neuroscience, vol 29, p 2212]. This especially effects the integration of signals from the right and left sides of the body [corpus callosum region of the brain]; and, the visual and spatial rasoning and logic area of the brain [parietal lobes].⁴ The next decade should shed light on these more refined aspects of human evolution and perhaps even explain some of the differences between and amongst the extant human cultural gamodemes.

Protosociety

Development of archaeosociety into protosociety shows that the cultural gamodeme demands social control; moreover, as the population increased social control must become more pervasive. Increased social control is a necessary part of the evolution of the cultural gamodeme and the concept of social control is buried deep in our humanity. Hart, 2008, p77.

“Terrain and climate played an important part in all of the early migrations of Archaeosociety because it governed the presence of the biota [indigenous living flora and fauna]. However, the composition of the biocoenosis [actual species present] was a result of both migration and evolution. Mountains and rivers aided the development of a multi-gamodeme Earth but without the right kind of biocoenosis tribal society could not rise above the hunting and gathering stage. As Jared Diamond [1997] brilliantly suggests, without the right kind of plants and animals present within the biocoenosis agriculture and other forms of hierarchically structured societies [Protosociety] would never have developed where they did. To a large extent the location of early agricultural society was a result of evolutionary adaptations in the fauna and flora. Although about 7,000 plant species have been collected or cultivated for consumption only about 200 have been domesticated and today just 12 crops provide 75% of human calorific intake [banana, beans cassava, corn, millet, potatoes, rice, sorghum, soybeans, sugar cane, sweet potato and wheat]. The decreased severity of glacial conditions over the northern hemisphere some 11,500 ybp saw the beginning of the Mesolithic Period of humankind’s history. Agriculture started to develop in the earliest protosociety, probably first in the Middle East but rapidly spreading throughout all suitable regions of the world. Diamond [1997] well illustrates the reasons for the origin of agrarian society, in the locations it did develop, and provides adequate analysis of how and why agriculture spread. Because with agriculture came more reliable food production the first significant increase in population occurred. At this stage there is evidence that the social conditions changed. In agrarian society land is the primary resource and in Mediterranean and semi-arid climates within and around the Fertile Triangle the availability of water is part of that resource base. Both of these attributes lead to control by a relatively small group in the form of landowners and eventually administrators. As agriculture spread and more animals and plants were domesticated and became part of agriculture, primitive city-states evolved. Ernest Gellner [1985] argued that with the production of food by agriculture came the necessity for food storage, and consequently the need for food protection and food distribution. Food protection leads to violence and food distribution leads to power ^5. The power and violence forced organization upon protosociety. Hyden and Ryder [1991] have argued that the larger the resident group the more hierarchical society becomes. At the same time, larger numbers in the top levels of the hierarchy can better control the masses and make possible a more compartmentalized caste structure. Societies became distinctly geographically located under regional warlords. With warlords came the “Principle of pre-emptive violence”. Initially landowners generally acquired and kept their land by force and then embodied rules of Law and Order into social control, developing government that used administrators and a military class. This allowed them and their offspring to prosper. The remnants of this system are seen in the vast wealth of both the Monarchy in England and the Papacy of the Roman Catholic Church. Historically periods of absolute power are acceptable as temporary measures when used to destroy injustice and remove abuse but absolute power does corrupt and must be restrained by developing events. In the American Republic this is done by the separation of the branches of government and the use of liberal institutions. There are interactions and restrictions that exist in all cultural gamodemes and laws are based upon these. Adam Smith’s “Laissez Faire” was essentially one such law.

By the Neolithic Period true farming had expanded into many parts of the Earth. Sykes’ [page 144] evidence supported earlier archaeological evidence that farming arrived in Europe from the Middle East via two routes. One route:

“headed up from the Balkans across the Hungarian plain and along the river valleys of central Europe to the Baltic Sea. The other was confined to the Mediterranean coast as far as Spain, and then could be traced around the coast of Portugal and up the Atlantic coast to western Britain”.

This probably provided the means for the first major technology transfer because most of the European population was indigenous ^6. The earliest know pre-historic farmers of Europe were from the Linear-band-keramik Culture of approximately 9,000 ybp. Fixed farming requires the population to remain in one place, with only seasonal migration of domestic herds. Whereas the Hunter Gathering Cultures breed approximately once every 4 years [a consequence of extended breast-feeding of an infant because of a sparse food supply], the agriculturalists breed about once every 2 years [a consequence of the better food supply and the early termination of breast feeding]. This is the primary reason agricultural societies underwent a population boom [more food = curtailment of a natural birth-control system i.e. breast feeding].

Although the use of copper is know from Turkey some 9,000 ybp it was not until Protosociety was well developed around 6,500 ybp, that furnace smelting of copper began developing and defined the Bronze Age around 5,000 ybp. As a metal that is easier to cast and harder than copper, bronze consisting of 9 parts copper and 1 part tin, became widespread. Iron smelting followed and with this development we see in the Turkish Hittites the development of much stronger weapons. The material was plentiful and the Iron age began culminating in the high temperature blast furnaces of China in 2,500 ybp.

The development of iron tools and weapons allowed quicker clearing of the land and better defensive weapons leading to greater food production leading to the development of both an administrative and a warrior caste – with its attendant knowledge bearers as the priestly caste. This probably provided the means for the first major technology transfer because most of the European population was indigenous⁶. Fixed farming requires the population to remain in one place, with only seasonal migration of domestic herds. A further consequence of fixed farming was that only with sedentary agriculture could chiefdoms and kingdoms developed. The enhanced political system necessary for fixed farming increased the rules and regulations pertaining to land use and food storage, and the need for both internal and external security. Moreover, with fixed farming came the need for ‘weather forecasting’ and the rise of a more organized mystic class that predicted events and became the proto-religions. Proto-religion based upon myths and legends probably grew throughout the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and it was during this early phase of cultural consolidation that the numerous religious practices arose. Different manifestations of religion comprise a single concept, linked to the same idea of our Universe and meta-physical principle of existence. Much of social control in traditional society relies not so much on punishment as on fear: of crop failure, of hardship, of rejection, of death. Those that could predict the seasonal changes, or at least, pretend to interpret the coming of hardship became the tribal controllers: the shamans, priests or whatever [Hart C. C. O., 1972]. The increase in agrarian productivity led to more food; more food meant more people, and more people required more organization. That organization was provided by further expansion of religions sphere of control, and the raise of a well organized military class for the security of both the general population and the ruling classes. Myth and ritual played a key role in establishing belief systems, perpetuated by custom and social pressure, avoiding the need for legal intervention. Humankind wants satisfactory explanations of natural phenomena. Whereas our ancestors were satisfied with religious based myth and legend modern educated people want scientifically tested explanations that are rational. However, a belief system that does not rest upon philosophical insight is merely folk law. Many of the stories of folk law and legend, may indeed be based upon actual events but they then became immortalized in myth, and exaggerated by the re-telling to become super-natural events involving deities. Similarities in religious myths and legends may derive from a common origin in the 4^th – 3^rd millennium BC in Babylon, referred to as pan-Babylonian, and their propagation by diffusion. To have sustainable value any belief system must have a rational, logical philosophical fundament: herein lay the strength of the early religions. Having worked in India, on a regular basis, for almost 20 years I was struck by the nature of Hinduism more as a way of life than a religion. Hinduism has many characteristics I envisage as part of proto-religion and its literature is a literature of myth and legend. A brief introduction to Hinduism may gave insight into how earliest society was organized, especially in terms of a social control system. I see modern Indian society continuing to show a dominance of proto-religious practices.

In Hinduism God is both ultimate as Brakman and also personal as Bhargavas: a supreme reality with a face. Hinduism encompasses a much broader place in the cultural gamodeme than do those modern societies with monotheistic religions: which are totalitarian under a single divine will i.e. fundamentalism. With its absence of a prophet, Hinduism has no single fundament and is a morass of social taboos and mythical gods. The lack of a single consistent set of social rules, and its polytheism [a polytheism that recognizes only one true God], gives insight into what protosociety was like. Even today myth, legend and tribal memory rules throughout large segments of the Indian Peninsular. As population increased so did a hierarchical structure, and so did the caste or class system. The caste system was basically developed along the Lamarckian lines of acquisition of social adaptive traits within the cultural gamodeme. A comparison with what happens in an ecosystem is illuminating once it is accepted that humankind can pass on acquired social traits in a Lamarckian manner. Some in the cultural gamodeme acquired specialist skills to become potters and artisans or other tradesmen but the important groups were the administrators, the military and the religious folk. Civilization was not developed on the principle that all people are born equal. On the contrary in these societies all people were definitely not born equal. The strong, broadly defined as those with physical or mental strength or religious power, continued to control the weak. Women and children were chattels and, as far as the living conditions of the common folk were concerned, life was dismal. Even today, in Africa, Southeast Asia and many other regions of the world cultural gamodemes based upon myth and legend persist and those societies are often fundamentally at the proto-level, where single warlords or city-states exert major control e. g., Afghanistan and northeastern Pakistan. Different societies had similar problems that needed resolution in order to maintain stability but they are simply productions of separate cultures in different distant areas: giving humanity its cohesion.

Hinduism is regarded as the mother of religions and it believes in universal tolerance and acceptance of all religions as true. It is one of the three earliest known religions comprising Hinduism [the religion of the Vedas], Zoroastrianism and Judaism. The early religions garnished a multitude of ideas and in many ways were not what western culture regards as religions but were means of tribal cohesion. The Hindu Vedas for example, explore the very meaning of existence and what is the foundation of self, of the soul and of reality and place themselves at the very center of tribal thought and spiritualism. Hinduism became more formal as population density increased and a caste structure led by the Brahmans took hold with the raise of the city and the need for a more pervasive social control: initiating the beginning of regulation. To live in a cultural gamodeme is to accept its laws, which depends on the realization that one protects oneself by agreeing to maintain a lawful society.

The Hindu believes religion was received by revelation. This is through the Vedas [Veda=to know] which are the spiritual laws that have always existed: like the law of gravity]. The Vedas claim they were never written nor created but simply discovered by the Rishis [Seer of thoughts], who spiritually discovered these eternal truths. Moreover, Krishna was god incarnated on Earth; and, every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere but whose center is located in the body. Death is the change of this center from body to body [Swami ViveKanda , 1937,1989: Essentials of Hinduism] in the way of re-incarnation.

The philosophical basis of Hinduism lies in the Vedas, written in Sanskrit, and divided into two parts: the Kama Kanda, which are the working rules e.g. sacrifices; and, the Juana Kanda, which is the background of knowledge. The thread of the Kama Kanda are widely seen in modern India. They give the duties of the castes, of men and of women. The Juana Kanda is the Vedanta which comprises the three Prasthanas: Upanishads, the Sutras of Vyasa and the Sri Gita. In addition, are the Smritas and the Puranas. The former are books written by the sages but are not fundamental principles of Hinduism. The latter are popular literature coving the history, cosmology, and philosophy of Hinduism, written in a form for the people to understand the religion. The philosophical bent that all of these Sanskrit texts take is to provide an understanding of creation, life and death and how the individual fits into the natural scheme of our Universe. In doing this they define a way of behavior and consequently a means of social control for those who ‘can’ interpret the belief system.

Hinduism rejects the idea that non-existence becomes existence. There is never a true beginning nor ending because belief system is a cycle in which our Universe is infinite without a beginning and time, space and causation are all within the one cyclic system. Thus the Law of Karma presents the idea that life is eternal and only re-incarnation occurs. Each individual is the maker of his own fate and the Law of Karma is opposed to pre-destination and fate. Instead the Law of Karma provides a method of reconciliation between man and god. It leaves the individual alone to be responsible for individual suffering! Partiality in our Universe [good – evil, happiness – sadness cruelty – freedom] are humanity traits not from any general cause of manifestations i.e. Brahman or the one true god or creator. Brahman is all-knowing, omnipotent and eternal. How we lived in our former life, our previous cycle, determines what will be presented to us in our present life i.e. if we are unhappy it is a result of previous irresponsibility, and we alone are responsible for what we suffer. Those whose works had been good are reincarnated into good families and those that were bad are born into bad families or even as animals.

Within Hinduism the soul also is immortal, omniscient and omnipresent with no beginning and no end. In each reincarnation there is the mind [manas] behind which is the soul [attman]. An individual soul inhabits all organisms and thus there is a unison of life. It is ageless and sexless. Ignorance is the cause of bondage and the incessant cycle of reincarnation. The goal of the soul is freedom from bondage and it goes from birth to death with the mind in each cycle until it has obtained all knowledge. At this point the cycle of life and death ceases and the soul has the choice of keeping the mind or letting it go forever – when it becomes independent and free throughout all eternity. This freedom is called mukti. Protosocietal life was oriented around the cycle of life and the desire for mukti and become a powerful tool for social control by the priests and Brahman caste. The caste system of Hinduism shows how social isolation can for individual ethno-cultural gamodemes without the need for large scale geographic isolation.

Eusociety

With the raise of agriculturalists, pastoralization and weapon making came the rise of cities as places for trade, work and protection. By 5,000 ybp City States run by war lords [often called kings] developed. The people and the material wealth within were defended by high walls, natural barriers, and a privileged warrior class. Agglomeration of City States by conquest developed the early nations and finally some 4,000 ybp the earliest Empire, that of Sargon of Akkad evolved over the region from Turkey to the Persian Gulf. One way to define Eusociety is a ethno-cultural gamodeme that is governed by one polity: a geographic area representing a single State with a single controlling government. In Europe, geography played a major role in the development of localized cultural gamodemes within which separate polities’ developed as separate states and city-states. By 1500 ad there was over 500 states in Europe. Each cultural gamodeme evolved its own optimal strategy for survival, and a pluralistic Europe evolved as the product of geography in which successful cultures adopted successful strategies for homogenization their Nations.” Hart, 2008 pp: 78-80.

Many geneticists claim that race is irrelevant because we all differ from one another by a minute amount of out DNA. For example, Richard Hayer of the Center for Genetics and Society said “modern science reveals that genetic differences are trivial and that ‘race’ is an almost meaningless descriptor”. Whereas he was correct in his first statement he is decidedly wrong in his second. The notion of separate interbreeding populations forming distinct ethno-cultural gamodemes is a very valid concept for understanding Protosociety. As a social concept to understand Protosociety, the spatial distribution of human variation is clearly significant, despite the ideologues of the west coast of the USA who rightly see genetic variation within the global population as continuous – missing the point that Cultures are separated on their differences not their similarities and that physically each geographic area did show a unison of characteristics that led earlier anthropologists to define human variants. These variants were not significant, and probably did not exist during Archaeosociety and are breaking down since Eusociety commenced. However, during Protosociety they developed and were important concepts influencing people.

The problem seems to me to be related to the modern education of bio-scientists.: one flaw is that they do not seem to understand TAXONOMY. The older generation had a strong background in both taxonomic theory and practice, and understood that taxa are separated primarily by differences not similarities. A useful taxonomy of humankind does use a variant-based hierarchy; and the resultant classification is based upon a unison of measurable and visible physical traits. To deny this is bowing down to political correctness: to use it as the basis for racism is both unethical and evil. It is for this reason that I continue to use the geographically based [physical gamodeme based] classification, especially for Protosociety. As I have said elsewhere:

“The combination of various geographical effects was evident in the isolation of the cultural gamodemes that formed the traditional interbreeding populations of Homo sapiens by the end of the Pleistocene Epoch [11,500 years ago]. By this time the archaeosociety of the hunter-gatherer was being replaced regionally by protosociety as agriculture developed”, Hart, 2008, p:73.

This classical grouping of Homo sapiens is based upon the above concept and divides humankind during the pre-modern Era into ethno-cultural groups that are essentially based on the interbreeding population [physical gamodeme].

Homo sapiens var africanensis and the African Cultures.

Homo sapiens var caucasensis and the European Cultures.

Homo sapiens var mongolensis and the Asian Cultures.

Homo sapiens var australensis and the Australasian Cultures.

Homo sapiens var khoisanensis and the Southern African Cultures.

“Increase in population density requires an even greater structure to the cultural gamodeme. Eusociety is especially characterized by a need to maintain internal law and order and a need to negotiate protection from external damage from competing cultural gamodemes. Negotiating-from strength continues to be a characteristic of early eusociety, for the threat of violence is the ultimate means of control. Characteristics associated with the birth of eusociety include an increasingly integrated class structure that was different from a simple pecking order or rule by a warlord. The larger the controlling group the better they can structure themselves to control the masses. A need for strong internal regulation clearly understood by the population is evident in Eusociety, and rules and regulations pertaining to all manner of social interaction arose as common law. The role of government is fundamentally one of regulation, the development of regulation, and the imposing of regulation upon the population. An important constraint is that government is perceived as providing access to the basic resource needs of individuals within the cultural gamodeme.” Hart, 2008, pp:81-82.

With the development of Eusociety came mass emigration and immigration and the physical gamodemes are becoming much more genetically diverse. Nevertheless specific ethno-cultural grouping are clearly recognizable even though these are no longer specifically genetically based. An interesting observation by Geoffrey Miller in the Economist: “The World In 2010” is that “The looming crisis in human genetics” is precisely the problem that genetic studies are showing how we are all a product of out physical gamodeme.

Eusociety saw the establishment of Empires, Nations and religious hegemonies that increased the level of social control and gained greater access to regional and global resources by cooperation and capture. The present stage became established in many cultural gamodemes around 1500 ybp with the beginning of the Age of Exploration and accelerated with the Industrial Revolution of the 1750’s. Remnant cultural gamodemes – holdovers from the Protosocietal stage – still exist where agrarian, quasi-city states run by warlords and chieftains occur. However, as the principles behind Eusociety spread the remnants are targeted for extinction. Global communication and media penetration emphasize the similarities and differences between one cultural gamodeme and another. People from all cultures now see how others live and this instigates change. In this manner a knowledge of other conditions in other cultures can increase the selection pressure on the State. Increased population density and numbers put increased selection pressure on the State because people bind together in society to acquire the six basic individual resource needs [food, shelter, protection, sexual partners, companionship, and knowledge]. Essentially the people mandate the State to acquire sufficient resources for the people. This has to be done within a framework that allows group rights alongside individual rights; and, concurrently encourages interaction with external States to avoid conflict. Because of adaptive necessity this places two important constrains on the State. Firstly, the need for increased social control; and, secondly, the need for increased cooperation amongst different polities.

If these constraints are not applied then the polity is destined for change or extinction, by revolution or war. The present cultural gamodemes are the product of these two constraints and the cladogenesis of Eusociety is in the eruptive stage. Currently, Liberal Institutionalized Democracy [LID] is not the modal form of global government. Much of modern society is democratic but few States have the checks and balances of a LID which performs two main functions. Firstly, it uses Institutions to provide group rights that supersede those of any individual, whilst controlling those humanity traits that would allow one group to dominate another group. Secondly, it uses Liberalism to allow individual rights providing access to individual resource needs. Thus the eusocietal cultural gamodeme must balance both group and individual rights whilst maintaining a balance with external States, by a policy of cooperation. The tensions within specific cultural gamodemes are part of a hierarchy in which Individual Will interacts with Group Will which interacts with General Will. Although General Will is subject to abuse whilst it is being applied, historically it is never wrong because it is exists only in terms of a future outcome – in society as in general evolution, the end always justifies the means i.e. what is the living population in the here and now, is the living population of concern – not the future population. Even though we may formulate laws and plans to protect the Earth’s resources for our future offspring the reality is whatever is happening today will effect what happens tomorrow: whether or not it is good policy or seems nonsense to a future generation: the means always produces the end!

Group Will is molded by reason based upon education and people as a whole have an innate moral or common sense that leads to a common set of humanity traits and social obligations. However, education can be exploited by an unjust and corrupt authority i.e. Pot Poy, Taliban and the SS of the NAZI era.

Individual Will is often a manifest problem because individuals, most often unconsciously, constantly ask the question ‘what do I demand from society and what does society demand from me?‘ Individuals are in constant conflict within themselves about this question and often individual will is subject to individual evil. What individuals will accept from the polity is a fair balance between the will of the State and the will of the individual. Because of this relationship large segments of the USA will support legislators who show character [examine for example Governor Edwin Edwards of Louisiana who still lingers in a penitentiary but was an extremely popular legislator amongst the people for many years], and are perceived as fair and just when is comes to the use and abuse of power [examine for example President B. Obama].

In the LID’s two important events have molded the ethno-cultural gamodemes: the growth of empirical reasoning based upon sectarian logic, and population growth. Both increased internal selection pressure. With population growth came a need for increased regulation of society at a more and more, detailed level. With this need arose additional administrative classes or castes to interpret and enforce the law. In Protosociety this was done within the confines of religious law but Christianity saw a divergence of a State political hierarchy from the Church theological stem. An acceptable concept of the separation between State and Church was only accomplished in the last two centuries in the LID’s but this divergence did create the conditions for the rise of a Representative Democracy in many parts of the world. The establishment of global Representative Democracy, preferably based upon Institutional Liberalism is the objective of much of American and European international policy as the doorway to Eusociety.

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Science of Man: 01

August 25th, 2011

PREAMBLE

At the end of the Ice Age, some 12,000 ybp family-group based Archaeosociety was ubiquitous and the selection pressure on Homo sapiens was lenient. Our species grew in numbers, and increasingly population density overtaxed the local resources, causing increased local selection pressure as populations grew. The solution was the splitting-off and migration of small groups into new areas: this could happen because there was plenty of adjacent land with available resources.

With the advent of stationary agriculture, currently estimated at some 10,000 ybp [8,000bc], local population densities increased rapidly, as food supplies became more plentiful and secure. A consequence of a stationary life-style was the development of Protosociety in which each gamodeme [interbreeding population] became increasingly organized, with caste structures and rules and regulations for social conduct. Politics developed as religious belief systems and formed the basis for the rules, regulations and caste structure of each society. The make-up of these localized gamodemes became characterized by a unison of physical biological characteristics determined by inter-breeding within the population, determined by the interaction of the individual genomes and the environment within which the inter-breeding population lived. Each individual in the population was biologically based and each gamodeme could be separated from another by its modal form and salient physical characteristics of its composite individuals.

Throughout the history of society exchange of goods and breeding partners occurred between populations. As interaction increased modern Eusociety evolved and with it new concepts of mercantilism, capitalism, and intellectual exchange. The biological barriers between populations began to break down as industrialization emerged and attracted immigrants and simultaneously caused emigration: this was a function of the ability to travel between gamodemes.

Globally the migration of people on a large scale began with the industrial age, in the 1700?s, and four hundred years later we are seeing the original gamodeme gene pools changing by inter-breeding between individuals from different populations. The biologically dominated regions of Protosociety and early Eusociety, are being replaced by ethno-cultural regions dominated by a modal variant that is increasingly defined by language and a belief system founded in religion. The tribal trait which I call the ‘arrogance’ humanity trait, and is defined by the attitude “my group is better than your group”, became endemic in the character of these ethno-cultural gamodemes; and, remnants of this tribalism remains embedded within most nations today. Pre-eminently this is because of humankind’s ignorance of the true nature of Nature allowing belief systems, that had little basis in reality, to be perpetuated and strengthened within the ethno-cultural geographic regions.

The immense growth in population numbers that has been a characteristic of the emergence of Eusociety has increased selection pressure within, and among, the ethno-cultural gamodemes as population density devours the available individual and group resources. It is this balance between population and resources that is the crux of the problems facing us today, and it will cause increasing conflict both within and amongst the ethno-cultural gamodemes.

A premise of this eBook is that if the embedded tribalism is not extinguished from each ethno-cultural population then humankind as a whole will reach its ‘tipping point’ with catastrophic effects. It is necessary to establish a greater coherence amongst nations to avoid this tipping point; and, it is my belief that democracy based upon liberal institutions is currently the best basis upon which to form a workable future global society. Furthermore, because of the vastness of the problem only mass education, based upon scientific principles, can create a social system able to accomplish the necessary reforms required to avoid the tipping point. This requires all of the liberal institutionalized democracies [LID's] to adopt a much more militant approach to the teaching of democracy and directly encourage its proliferation throughout the nations of the world using all non-violent methods it can devise. Defining and talking about the needed changes is not sufficient. A rigorous enforcement [brainwashing] of democratic principles is necessary throughout those regions where democracy already is established or has an initial foothold, in the belief that the best form of advocacy of democracy as a way of life is by showing its success. This implies ignoring the protests of the fringe groups in our society who will wail about both individual and group rights as each nation implements a strong educational policy that rigorously enforces basic knowledge about the democratic system. That the establishment of democracy must sometimes use undemocratic methods is not a good reason not to act. Society follows evolutionary principles: it is a legacy system based upon inheritance not innovation: selection pressures mandate that the system that is best adapted to the changing environment survives. In this way both nature and the evolutionary process has always shown that ‘the end justifies the means’. However, extinction is real: both in nature and social evolution.

Science still needs to understand the depths of evolutionary controls on society and especially those factors that influence social control, social innovation and social change. We need scientific answers to such questions as the following.

1. “How has the population pressure, resulting from increased numbers, affected the development of the cultural gamodemes? This equates with the effect of selection pressure on the species in physical evolution. Increased social control is perhaps the major consequence but what are the others?

2. What causes new ideas to arise that direct social change? This equates with the mutational effect within the genome in physical evolution.

3. What is the equivalent cladogenic process that pertains to the development of a new social movement? This equates with the process of speciation in physical evolution.

4. What determines the success or failure of a new social movement? This equates with selection pressure on new varieties in physical evolution.

5. How does the rate of change affect the success of social innovation? This is the equivalent of phylogenesis in physical evolution.

6. What determines the fate and ultimate acceptance or extinction of a social movement? This equates with the sum of all selection pressures on the species in physical evolution”Hart, 2008

As Earth’s resources are placed under exponentially increasing population stress, and with the absence of globally enforced restraints, conflict between people will increase. For a sustainable global society Earth’s human population must be in quasi-equilibrium with the available individual and group resources. To achieve this I believe we must establish and follow some fundamental rules for the future, based upon the idea’s developed within the LID’s. If we do not accomplish a balance between population and resources by mid-century we will reach the tipping point with catastrophic results.

Currently I envisage four rules that need to be investigated and fully implemented by mid-century if the tipping point is to be avoided.

RULE 1: Implement a set of peoples ethics that reduces population density and numbers so that population is in quasi-equilibrium with global and local resources.

RULE 2: Implement a set of political ethics that uses the efficiency of capitalism to sensibly use and distribute resources and build wealth.

RULE 3: Implement a system of individual and group rewards based upon meritocracy.

RULE 4: Implement a system of individual and group relationships that allows freedom of choice at the individual level constrained by a usefulness to the development of the social system.

INTRODUCTION

In America we think of Adam Smith [1723-1790] in terms of the Father of Capitalism but this was surely not what he thought of himself. Smith was a product of the Enlightenment of Britain and France and a prime representative of the Scottish Enlightenment. His cause was an understanding of the science of humankind and his method was to be a series of learned books [possibly four] examining the nature of humankind’s society. Of the planned multi-volumed work two were published and notes for others exist. The first volume TheTheory of Moral Sentiments, concerned social theory and ethics and Smith regarded this as the greater work. The second, the An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the one that is mainly associated with him: because it was a very insightful analysis of capitalism and the merchant world. “In the Wealth of Nations, Smith was to pay close attention to the role of small towns in shaping the commerce and culture of the regions of a commercial state.” Phillipson, 2010. The third volume would probably have been concerned with rhetoric and jurisprudence; and, the fourth with the history of philosophy and science if his recovered lecture notes are to bear testimony¹.

Nelson Mandela, noted in his diary that Adam Smith was massively concerned with the role of property as a pivotal point in the social gamodeme. Property was the prime reason for laws and the formation of government because without laws the poor would take from the rich. Moreover, property, was the cause of inequality and irritation amongst the rich and the poor alike: it was the separator in whatever form it occurred. Today we can redefine this barrier as wealth converted to money which defines class within the social gamodeme. Smith pointed out: “Laws and government may be considered in this and indeed in every case as a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and preserve to themselves the inequality of the goods which would otherwise be soon destroyed by the attacks of the poor, who if not hindered by the government would soon reduce the others to an equality with themselves by open violence”. Thus, government in its first role was seen as a protector of the rich and a bastion of the status quo. [see Phillipson, pp:110-111]. This view was echoed by Nelson Mandela who noted “law is nothing but organized force used by the ruling class to shape the social order in a way favourable to itself”. This was written as a result of his experience in fighting for a non-racial society in South Africa, and is applicable as a generalization of global society today. Good governments are rare and even the wise ones often fail in justice and goodness. All government requires obedience of its citizens but obedience itself restricts individual free will: so there is an inherent conflict between the group and the individual.

Smith would not be out of place today except that his nobility would be replaced by corporate elite and his aristocracy by the corporation. Citing ambition, arrogance, insolence, garnishing of political power, and contempt of the mass of people as characteristics of the nobility Adam Smith accurately described many of the modern corporate elite. These are characteristics of the aristocrats of Corporate World. The arrogance of Wall Street, the ambition of the Bush and Kennedy dynasties, and the insolence of leaders of many American corporations who threaten to move their business to another country if they cannot have their own way, places the leaders of public corporations outside of public society.

The total picture of a ‘Science of Man’ during the 1700?s was the real quest of the enlightenment, and the subjects of morals, ethics, wealth, law and governance were all subject to scientific [i.e. philosophical] analysis. The 1800?s saw the extension of these analyses to cover all of gods works. However, it was not until the New Enlightenment released by the push of Science and Socialist thought in the early and mid-1900s that the Science of Man in the sense of Adam Smith and his cohorts re-emerged. The New Enlightenment ended in the 1970?s in the United States of America, with the advent of religious intervention and corporate strength into the politics of the people.

It was Charles Darwin and Karl Marx who took up the challenge to understand the ‘Science of Man‘. Darwin was the center, for his fundamental observations found application in all aspects of the human gamodeme. Marx took Darwin and Smith’s ideas and used them to extract a deeper understanding of the human economic and political condition. Many, today contrast Smith and Marx but it was more of a synergy with Marx applying Smith to his current environment as Darwin would have done. The underlying social theme we see at the beginning of the 1900?s was essentially Darwinian, based on his concept of the survival of the fittest.

Today, we can extract at least three laws that affect both the physical and cultural gamodeme, and are the basis of ‘The Science of Man‘ in the new Enlightenment [see Hart 2009].

1. The Law of Instability.

2. The Law of Actualism.

3. The Law of Combinatorial Outcome.I believe these natural laws are not simply applicable to physical evolution but directly apply to the evolution of human society.

The law of instability

“One clear law that permeates the development of our Universe. Whether we examine the evolution of living systems, as a natural step in the evolution of matter; or we examine any process within our Universe, such as the history of a planetary system, a connection exists between time and change. Essentially, in the vastness of time, everything changes and nothing is permanent. The Universe we live in is a dynamic system and is constantly changing. The rate of change may be different for different things in our Universe but the basic concept that the whole system is changing with time holds true, even for the sub- atomic particles. This observation led to a law governing natural systems called the Law of Instability. This law is expressed as follows.

Every system that is termed stable imposes upon all phenomena that are associated with it a restricted amount of action. The restrictions imposed upon some phenomena are minimal and the conditions are optimal for their existence. The restrictions that are imposed upon other phenomena within the stable system allow their temporarily existence, because of special transient conditions. Still other phenomena can never occur because the restrictions are total.

Corollaries of the Law of Instability are:

New objects or phenomena introduced into a system interact with that system. If the resulting condition is stress, then the phenomenon either disappears (becomes extinct) because it cannot survive under the prevailing conditions, or adapts to the system and in so doing is itself altered. If the resulting condition is unstressed then the phenomenon will flourish. This interaction between the phenomenon and the system is termed the selection pressure of the system upon the phenomenon. If the system changes, then all phenomena that occur within the system are placed under a changed selection pressure and will change if stressed.

“Knowledge of this simple law allows a natural scientist to begin to understand the Earth System and the processes of dynamic change, including physical and cultural evolution. This law is a direct consequence of the thermodynamics operating within our Universe as a whole. Science can directly observe the Law of Instability everywhere on our planet. Examples of this law [see Hart, 2008] are all manifestations of the fundamental idea that everything is unstable with time and contribute to the proof of the dynamic nature of our Universe. The Law of Instability is associated with the concept that all natural systems can be considered meta-stable. As soon as a stable condition seems to set-in, some change occurs which stresses the system, and everything has to start adapting to the new set of conditions once more. This is true even though the change may be small. In natural systems stress at the smallest level seems to be constant. All objects, at any particular moment, can be regarded subject to some selection pressure or other. They are in the process of adapting to the system conditions, momentarily appearing to be adapted to the system conditions, or failing to adapt to the system conditions. An interesting characteristic of the dynamic nature of natural systems is that the changes that take place with time are conditional changes. This means that what happens now is totally or partially dependent, in some way, upon what happened previously. If conditional changes are fairly obvious they are termed trends or sometimes cycles (if they twist back on themselves). A more general term for conditional changes is a developmental sequence, and numerous developmental sequences are observed in nature. Sometimes the cause is known, in other cases we simply observe a trend and must search for a logical reason for its occurrence. It is often difficult to understand trends and cycles in biological systems because the way in which selection pressure acts upon a phenomenon is rarely straightforward. A number of reactions may be probable responses to a single event, but due to minor variations in selection pressure a particular one of them will occur. Natural science problems are always approached knowing that the system is not only dynamic but also conditional and probabilistic. These dynamic and probabilistic aspects of evolution often make interpretation of natural phenomena difficult and interpretation is highly dependent upon the amount and quality of the data, especially because many of the relationships are non-linear.”

The law of actualism

“The second natural law discerned from the workings of the Earth System is the process – response law. This law strongly affects all natural phenomena; and, is applicable to the future evolution of the ethno-cultural gamodeme. It is the Law of Actualism, based upon James Hutton’s [1726-1797] Principle of Uniformity as follows.

The record of the past could be interpreted on the assumption that processes at work today operated in the same way and at similar rates in the past. [Stern et al., 1979].

From this the Law of Actualism is developed:

Physical processes at work today operate consistently in the same way whether in past, present or future, if all environmental conditions remain equal. Moreover, under such conditions they will produce the same responses.

There is a question of resolution that needs to be established when applying the Law of Actualism, because often the actual observed phenomenon, or end product, cannot be clearly associated with a particular process. Resolution relates to how much information is available concerning the events between the initiation of a process and the final response. Unless the system is micro-monitored there is an information loss pertaining to the cause(s). Resolution, therefore, refers to the fact that missing information would tell us that the conditions were not equal defocussing the Law of Actualism. Deductive reasoning using the available information, diminished by loss, may not allow a single conclusion, and thus opens the way to an interpretive choice from amongst more than one processes. Actualism is not only applicable to understanding the physical Universe but can be applied to examining changes in social conditions to extract those aspects of society that are persistent or ubiquitous characteristics. Indeed, the prime limiting factor when trying to understand the essence of society through a historical approach also is resolution i.e. information loss. Consistently it can be observed that evolution of the social condition is intimately associated with the environment influencing the population at the time, but, history is as blind as are the rocks when it comes to understanding the details of how most social conditions are formed and how they developed. We rarely know with certainty the real stresses that provided the selection pressure on the ideas evolving in a particular population of individuals in the past. Large segments of history provide only an outline of social evolution, and the information loss is larger the further back in time one attempts to extract details. Detailed expositions in history generally are written by/in the future as interpretations. We know that recorded history biases and skews the definition of a previous social condition towards a present interpretation. This is the resolution problem as a humanist’s nightmare! ……. The logical mind itself can discern that much of history is a myth: provided it has an adequate knowledge base.”

The law of combinatorial outcome

“A further law derived from natural processes is the Law of Combinatorial Outcome. This is seen in various guises and under different names in the sciences, humanities and arts but it is a commonly expressed idea. It is the decision rule law that balances cost against benefit prior to deciding upon a particular course of action but is more than the simple case of the selfish gene immortalized at the genetic level by Richard Dawkins [1981, 1982, and 1989]. It is the workings of the law as seen in Evolution, in society and in consciousness. It is the yet to be understood workings of the stock market. The law relates to what happens when an action is to take place. In a brute-force solution all possible interactions can be considered in combination before a response is made. The Law of Combinatorial Outcome uses decision rules that recognize pathways leading to a dead-end, gateways, and novel situations. These pathways determine whether or not, a particular action will take place. The outcome will then be performed. Because of the complexity of the solution, the end result may appear as an emergent phenomenon and, indeed, this is the law that probably will provide an understanding of both complexity and emergence. The Law of Combinatorial Outcome can be stated as: follows.

When an action is to be taken, a decision rule is set up within the system, which examines all possible input interactions and results in an output determination that causes a specific action to occur.

In a massively parallel system such as the human mind numerous links are made, sorted, dead-ended, and followed to produce the result. The process only appears to manifest properties that cannot be predicted from the make-up of the brain [holistic phenomena], but by following the Law of Combinatorial Outcome emergent decisions are possible. The conscious mind decisions seem to be taken by combining all experience contained in the mind [as physical links in the brain] to assess the next action. The future action may be how to respond to a question, or whether or not to jump off of a sinking ship, but the working of the brain appears to operate in the same way viz: what in my mind pertains to the future action, combine this knowledge to come to a decision that is a logical conclusion. More often what will maximize benefit and minimize cost in one form or another: it is a set of meta-data filters that direct the search. The Law of Combinatorial Outcome does not negate free will. The human brain has about 10 billion neurons [Cohen and Stewart, 1994, page 147]. Even if there are only 1000 neurons in the brain acting during the making of a particular decision, there will be 2¹⁰⁰⁰ possible combinations that could be considered by the mind prior to deriving an action. These figures provide more than enough ‘space’ to account for natural variation and free will as logical and physical attributes of nature.”

Population, resources and humankind’s pivotal points

The Theory of Evolution, and the three laws of nature, apply directly to our Social gamodemes, and have influenced the entire discourse of human history, and will continue to do so in the future. The principles impact critically on population growth and population density, and are applied very effectively to determine the selection pressure that humankind imposed upon our Earth System, and more importantly, the selection pressure our Earth puts on humankind.

The evolution of ethno-cultural gamodemes rests on the fact that our Earth has a finite set of resources that life can exploit and these act as a limiting factor on the population density and the total population of every species. Human populations have been, are and will always be, constrained by the total set of resources. Excessive population density impacts not simply on the rate of resource depletion but directly and negatively upon pollution, conflict, group and individual freedoms, and many other factors within human society. Population density is the overriding constraint on humankind and for H. sapiens‘ future urgent invasive measures are needed to avoid failure of all of our global ethno-cultural gamodemes.

Archaeosociety comprising the hunter-gather mode of life involved small bands roaming over large areas. Earth actually has quite limited resources to support hunter-gatherer cultures, and the population of our immediate ancestor Homo erectus was probably no more than a couple of million individuals world-wide. Similar restrictions applied to Homo sapiens during Archaeosociety and at the most the probably population is estimated at only 5,000,000 to 8,000,000 at the beginning of Protosociety. Because fixed agriculture provided a reasonably assured food supply Protosociety initiated a dramatic increase in global population, extending to around 60,000,000 by 7,000 ybp. Eusociety increased societal organization and allowed greater efficiency of resource utilization. Consequently, the global population of Homo sapiens rapidly increased to 100,000,000, blooming to 600,000,000 immediately prior to the Industrial Revolution, 900,000,000 by 1800; 1,600,000,000 by 1900; and 6,000,000,000 by 2000. Today we are well on the way to 15,000,000,000 by 2100: resulting in an unsustainable population density over most of our Earth with the consequences being famine and war for resources.

A prime mistake made in assessing the effect of population on Earth’s resources is to base evidence on population numbers rather than population density [area occupied by people]. Most statistics are given as a resource consumption per individual rather than resource consumption per unit area [acre, hectare, square mile, etc]. This is particularly important when one attempts to understand resource loss, pollution and similar attributes. India and China with large population numbers are small polluters per capita but major polluter per hectare area of Earth’s surface. The following should clarify where the problem arises [data ca: 2000]:

The USA had 293 million people, 77707 tmt CO emissions, a surface area of 962909 ha, and, for example, 198 threatened tree species.

China had 1.3 billion people, 88867 tmt CO emissions, a surface area of 959806 ha, and 190 threatened tree species.

India had 1.1 billion people, 63844 tmt CO emissions, a surface area of 328726 ha, and 266 threatened tree species.

From the viewpoint of the Earth the correct way to look at the data is on the basis of per area of land surface not per capita. Thus, for carbon monoxide [per thousand metric tones per hectare] India pollutes most at 0.19421646, China next at 0.090698567 and the USA least at 0.080700253; and, for threatened tree species India is highest with .000809185 per hectare, USA next with 0.000205627, and China closely behind with 0.000197957.

From the viewpoint of all species resources are of two kinds: finite and renewable. It is the availability of both of these that influence humankind’s limiting factors. From the individual viewpoint the basic resource needs are: food, shelter, protection, companionship, sexual partners and knowledge. The first four of these are deeply inbred via the evolutionary process, and all can be considered as renewable resources if population density is controlled. Every social and political system must address these resource needs as individual rights if the individual needs are to be satisfied and social tensions avoided. These individual resource needs control how individuals react to one another and to groups within their own population. The exchange of breeding partners is the area where individual and group resources interact, and breeding partners were absolutely necessary for the growth of human populations. Economically, breeding partners are essential to the welfare of the older members of a family, tribe, or group, because children are an insurance against old age and infirmity. Politically they initiate inter-population bonding.

Beyond the interbreeding populations, societies exist at a hierarchy of different levels. Fundamentally these are Regional and National, and within them resource availability relates to territory [including natural resources], population numbers, social organization and knowledge. Group resource needs determine how localized populations react to other populations.

Rules and regulations [laws] enacted within each cultural gamodeme are an attempt to satisfy the requirements for survival of the group and the requirements of individuals within the group as far as they require resource needs. The group rights are the instruments though which individual political and social systems are imposed. This requires agreement amongst individuals – but not necessarily consensus because the group attempts to achieve consensus by representation. Representation reduces within-group tension but creates a hierarchical social system based on control [law]. Achieving consensus through representation gives both the individuals and the group a greater investment in the decisions and a much greater likelihood of implementation and acceptance of any decision. The individual exists within the cultural gamodeme and must accommodate other members of that population, at the same time acquiring needed and necessary resources for themselves. This quest for resources is at the foundation of individualistic within-group conflict. In addition, it is the basis upon which basic individual rights within the group are derived, and accounts for human sociability, which is an adapted and inherited trait of humankind needed for each individuals survival within the group. It is the reason why humans are fundamentally social animals; cooperate or be ex-communicated! My former mentor, P. C. Sylvester-Bradley, believed that all living forms placed kin-relationships at the core of their group. The immediate kin-based group is extended by the acquisition of ‘friends’. This agglomeration process proceeds because occasionally, someone comes along who can be trusted: this person we call a friend. However, it must be realized that to receive someones trust requires above all loyalty. Trust and loyalty go hand-in-hand and strongly expressed in the kin-relationships that exist in all tribal societies. There may be a deep genetic bases to this type of kin-loyalty, aka ‘the selfish gene’, but it’s expressed pattern is ‘our group versus their group‘ and as such friends outside of the immediate tribe can exist only when loyalty plays a part of the relationship. The beginning rule is that one can trust only one’s own direct kin – parents and grandparents- with lessening trust as one moves outwards, to aunt, uncle and cousin. Amongst others there must be some form of a compromising relationship for trust to occur but even then one must choose very carefully who one calls a friend! At a different level simple companionship can lead to allegiances which can become organized into guilds and sects as they evolve into sub-gamodemes within the general population. These small sub-gamodemes represent the fundament of all of our group actions.

Property laws, have formed the basis of the law within all societies because it is an inherent trait of humankind to accumulate sufficient resources to meet their desires, not simply needs. As Smith, Marx and Mandela have noted the prime purpose of law is protection of these resources [properties] i.e stop the resource-poor individuals from taking from the resource-rich individuals. Protosociety and Eusociety have evolved a simple unified method of accounting for resources: money. Today a monetary value can be placed on all resources, whether it be a life, a limb, a sexual partner, an extracted or grown product or a constructed product. Money can be used to acquire and evaluate every kind of resource and together with power is the basis of the modern class system. Total monetary equivalence can be used as the definition of wealth. Power can be achieved principally by money, strength [intellectual or physical] or cunning. This is why power within a society is generally within the hands of the wealthy, intelligentsia [those who advise], or criminals.

Pivotal points occur as the population density increases, causing stable political systems to become more difficult to administer because the threat to an equitable, or at least fair, distribution of individual resources grows enormously. As I will discuss later it is the fair distribution of individual resources that is the basis of individual rights laws; and the purpose of a superimposed economic system on a political system is to provide a fair distribution of resources so that individuals can pursue their individual quest for happiness. Any superimposed economic system always suffers from the fact that greater population numbers mean the resources per individual become more competitive, and additional rules and regulations are necessarily imposed by the political system: “the pie is only so big”.

Posted in Evolution of Society | Comments Off

Science and Religion: an unnecessary conflict.

February 20th, 2011

by Professor George F. Hart

A short, 10 slide, presentation on how science and religion can reconcile  their conflicting views.

Religion and Science

Posted in The Social Future | Comments Off

Personal Belief

February 21st, 2011

By George F. Hart

In response to the slide show on ‘Science and Religion: an unnecessary conflict‘ my friend Bill Ross, recently brought up the question of how I view ‘death’ within my own belief system. Like all belief systems one view may be correct and the other incorrect but they cannot both be correct – although they can both be wrong. This, of course, is the reason for the tension amongst belief systems.

The questions raised were essentially:

1. How do I face life without religion to comfort me?

2. How can I face death without believing in an afterlife?

3. How can I make sense out of the death of a young child?

4. Why am I not terrified by having no answer to these questions?

I believe we can face all of these things once we accept we are part of the continuum that is our Universe. We live a life [even maybe only for six months in the womb] that is merely a changing combination of atoms within the physical form of a human being, and then those atoms pass forward as a continuum of matter and energy, taking on another form, and then another, and then another until the end of our Universe. Our physical form is only transient.

Similarly, since the moment we were born our mind has had an effect on everyone we interact with, maybe initiating a major change or maybe having an almost imperceptible impact like a single atom brushing against your cheek in a strong wind. But the effects of our mind and our body continue because life is not innovative but is a legacy system. It builds upon what went before and for the future we are what went before.

This is why I am fearless of those questions. I do not want to die because my id and ego is enjoying this brief moment but death holds no mystery and no fear.

My friend points out that in the book ‘The Secret Sorrow: A Memoir of Mourning the Death of God”, Jay E. Valusek, an identical view of our bodies being part of our ever changing Universe is put forward [now I must read that book!], and notes “I guess I occasionally have a sense for that while hiking in the wilderness ... but most of the time I sense no connection to my atoms, my cells, or even my body! Our ids seem to be completely unaware of, or personally connected to, our complex bodily selves. So it's our id that we so desperately want to see continue. We are humans. Therefore we care about wanting to continue. Trees are not afflicted with such feelings. And these feelings are both a curse and the stuff of living that comprise a full human life. That's the trade-off I say yes to.” [br]

But in a universal sense trees do have feelings! In my eBook [page 65] I note that “Once logic was established [in our Universe] the other traits associated with humanity could be derived: honesty, work motivation, preferential love, a sense of fairness and of justice. All of these have distinct counterparts in a single cell, where chemical affinity equates with preferential love, chemical reaction with work motivation, and, chemical binding with honesty.” The specifics may be wrong but the idea is correct! I do not imply that our cells and inanimate objects have the same feelings as human beings but the origins of our emotions and feelings have a deep origin in the evolution of matter in our Universe.

This has led to the question of ‘equal rights i.e. the “ideas have broad moral implications. If all of life has characteristics comparable to humans then the lowliest creatures deserve equal rights, yes?” [br]

Fundamentally, I agree with this but equal rights for one species or object [i.e. a rock] is not the same – it is equal rights within each set within which the objects exists. The concept of equal rights is a human construct based upon semantics and definitions. Humans legislate equal rights, lions do the same thing in the old fashioned way; strength, cunning and sexual favors: it is meritocracy at work – like in the olden days “Woman! Me big, me strong, we breed“. Crude but effective throughout nature and humankind’s early history.

Deep down all of matter simply follows the Law of Actualism! Of course, the other laws of nature also play a part: but everything, first and foremost, is part of it’s environment and reaches stability [it's equal right] by interaction between the individual object and the environment.

I do not know whether this is a satisfactory explanation for others who better understand what humanity really is but it is currently my personal belief system. Bill notes: “There is just one compelling theme I care about in all of this discussion: how to deal with death without religion (and knowing my atoms will continue doesn't help me). For me I deal with it by accepting the pain and sadness of knowing that death is a tragic loss with the incredibly compelling drama of a life with a definite expiration date and thus proportionally precious”

This is a very human viewpoint which I understand, but my personal problem is that when you live without fear you also live without some forms of love. I do not believe that people who have religion do any better than people who do not have religion: neither in their personal life or interaction with others. Do religious folk really think that after death they are going to a place where they will meet all the friends and relatives that they had in our world? Or, is the ability to believe simply a consequence of the evolutionary process i.e. it has an evolutionary advantage as far as consciousness is concerned and that is why it is so prevalent? If so why do some people have belief in God and others do not?

Posted in The Social Present, What is Humanity? | Comments Off

Is Zero a better name than God: for the phenomenon that created the Universe?

February 7th, 2011

November 1992

Reprinted from the 1993 distributed pre-print.

By George F. Hart, Ph.D.

It started with the birth of Natural Science and blossomed in the work of Darwin; attacked religious foundation in a way more persuasive than the Copernican earth model; and, it manifests itself in evolutionary biology – the death of God!

The final blow was delivered by paleontologists but the death knell is being tolled by physicists who are pushing towards the point where reason has no logic and chaos reigns supreme – beyond point Zero.

If humanity is to mature into the New World Order a uniform logic for existence must prevail. History has shown that successful religions come to accept the facts of prevailing logic. Modern logic, in the form of science, explains how time and our Universe began; how Earth originated, and how life grew from the inanimate; and conclusively, the inevitable end of everything. History thus predicts the ultimate fall of the tribal religions that dominate much of humanities present thinking. Religious interpretations and the variety of Holy books hide these truths by a cloak of irrationalization and a semantic web, and if we are truly to attain an understanding of nature, the Gods of old must die and be replaced by a concept acceptable to all people. Allah, Jehovah, Christ, Krishna, Buddha and even Satan must all be one and the same; and, modern science tells us that this concept – a basis for a unified religion – is ZERO.

No heroic creature is necessary to bring our Universe into being. No wizard or warlock, no mythical god, no poet, philosopher or magician. Our Universe began out of nothing. Modern science accepts this as a known fact. Our Universe will end as nothing. Modern science predicts this in heat death of our Universe, when entropy is zero and perfect order rules. In the meantime reality is real and we exist; and life, and death and all things form a holistic whole. Our existence, our reality, is merely the spacetime occurring between these nothings. Is our existence then simply a dream by God?

In the beginning there was nothing, not a point, not a void, not a time, not a space. This was before creation, outside of time. But something was astir at the boundary of this nothingness, some hazy, frothy, unfocused darkness was popping in and out of existence from beyond the 5^th dimension. Virtual space-time bubbles less than 10^-33 cm in diameter and existing for less than 10^-43 seconds, before they are pulled back into multidimensional chaos by super-gravity – or is it super-time. Then – for time begins – a stir, a ripple, something minimally small, an inconceivably little thing has popped into existence. But within this thing is the whole of spacetime, of energy, of matter; and ultimately, of all dreams and desires and yearnings. Super-gravity has had a quantum transition and within the quantum world you can really get something from nothing.

Our Universe is at Planck Time and has a size of Planck Length: it has started. A super-gravitational warp into the 5^th dimension and spacetime exists, The temperature was over a trillion, trillion, trillion degrees and the grande unified particles condense as bosons [photons, X-particles and their kin] and fermions [lepton-quarks]. At this temperature only gravity and the grande unified law controlled the interactions within our Universe. All this in a universe the size of a raindrop. This universe contained no matter at all – not even dimensionless matter. It was pure energy.

The energy accompanying this Big Bang was so colossal that it contained within it all the radiation and matter of our entire future Universe. From this moment of inception the Universe cooled, and as it did so it underwent a phase change, as a heated iron bar does when it cools and develops electromagnetism; or as a body of water cools and suddenly freezes. By 10^-35 seconds at a temperature of 10²⁶ degrees the photons froze-out and the physical laws of the strong force and the electro-weak force, along with gravity, held the energetic universe together as it continued its cooling and expansion. But other things were formed at the instant time began and during the first moments of existence: neutrinos, and possibly undetectable things such as dark matter, cosmic strings, and texture that give the present universe the bulk of its mass and its detailed structure. And for every thing there was an anti-thing. Anti-neutrinos, anti-photons, maybe anti-grande unified particles. This universe must have been asymmetrical from the beginning, with more things than anti-things. We know this because we exist!

As the blob of spacetime begins to expand and inflate like the surface of a balloon, nature had a wonderful simplicity about it that science can unfold. From 10^-33 cm to 100,000 kms across in a fraction of a second – and the great bang that heralded creation still reverberates throughout our Universe and is heard by our modern instruments as the back-ground radiation. These facts prompted Pope Pius XII to remark that “everything seems to indicate that the universe has in finite times a mighty beginning” [address to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Rome, 1951].

Cooling still more the leptons and quarks became separate entities when at 10^-10 seconds expansion had lowered the temperature to about ten thousand, trillion degrees. At these temperatures the electroweak force is no longer applicable. It is replaced by the electromagnetic force and the weak force and the four laws of physics that govern particle interaction today are now all manifest – gravity, strong, weak and electromagnetic, controlling the behavior of the leptons, quarks and photons. Curiosity these particles are dimensionless and our universe had size only in terms of the spacetime occupied by its energy – a size about that of our Sun.

As our Universe grew in size so it’s energy occupied a greater volume and it’s temperature dropped. By spacetime 10^-6 seconds the temperature had dropped to below a thousand trillion degrees – a level that the quarks combined into nucleons [neutrons and protons] and anti-nucleons – the building blocks of our modern common-place matter. Quarks could no longer exist alone and the four forces of nature then played out a dance with the particles and anti-particles of our Universe such that by 10^-4 seconds they had magnified the original asymmetry resulting in the destruction of most of the anti-particles and the survival of one nucleon to 10⁹ photons. Now as the temperature dropped to 100 billion degrees and our Universe is one hundredth of a second old [10^-2] the nucleons split into neutrons and protons.

By time one second [10⁰] our Universe was a 300,000 km ball of energy with a temperature of 10 billion degrees. A chaotic mass of light particles – the fertile brew of creation. And in this brew moved protons and neutrons, electrons and positrons, and entities born during the first fraction of a second of time, in that searing furnace at the dawn of time.

Conflict and clashes between light particles spawned electrons and positrons which were stable at the temperature of the one second universe. Now we see why Einsteins insight was a key to creation. The brilliance of the idea that: E=mc². That energy and mass are the different sides of the same coin and can be transformed one from another … and so mass was born our of light energy. Genesis was already a second ago – Creation ex nihilo! The supreme scientific myth [3].

But what of God? Pre-christian religion recognized an entity prior to our Universe. The High God Zervan, who existed beyond light and darkness, was worshiped by the Zervanites. Our Universe was formed by the interaction between light and darkness, good and evil. This idea pre-dates the Babylonian concept of a divine spacetime and has more in common with the cosmic dimension of oriental philosophy. Judaism and eventually Christianity made the dualism of the origin of our Universe and anthropocentric concept, shifting the cosmic struggle of good [light] and evil [darkness] to a spiritual struggle with the soul of person. St. Augustine saw our Universe as created with time not in time. A God existing outside of spacetime cannot alter phenomena within spacetime.

Imagine multidimensional spacetime, pure consciousness, a holistic mind. From this spawned the ripple within the nothingness before our Universe began. From this was ejected the black cosmic blob of Grande Unified particles into the fifth dimension. From this was given the Grande Unified Law that defined the behavior of our Universe: the laws of physics. Gravity permeated the system. Is God then the supreme holistic concept, perhaps many levels of description above that of the human mind? [3].

And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.

The book of Genesis, Christian Bible.

READINGS

1. John Barrow, Theories of Everything, Clarendon Press, 1991

2. David Darling, Deep Time, Dell Publishing, 1989

3. Paul Davies, God and the New Physics, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1983

4. Paul Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter Myth, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1992

5. James Trefil, The moment of Creation, Collier Books, 1991

6. Andrew Welburn. The Beginning of Christianity, Floris Books, 1991

7. Malcolm S. Longair, The Origins of our University, Cambridge University Press, 1990

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I thank my long time friend Dr. Faith Lagay for kindly criticizing and editing this manuscript.

GLOSSARY

Planck length 10^-33 cm. At this very short distance gravity manifests its quantum effects. Below this size the Universe does not exist as we know it i.e. the universe popped into existence with this initial size!

Planck time 10^-43 seconds. This is the time it takes light to travel a distance of Planck length. Below this is the quantum level at which time does not exist. The universe did not truly exist until this time i.e. there never was a time zero!

Gravity and Super-gravity Gravity is a kind of geometry that describers how spacetime is shaped or warped. It is not a field existing within spacetime but it is spacetime. Super-gravity is the gravitational effect at the quantum level and exerts itself over distance of <10^-33 cm [Planck length].

Virtual spacetime Volumes of spacetime <10^-33 cm in diameter which pop in and out of existence of less than 10^-43 seconds within the Void that is the pre-universe. It can be considered a projection of the 5^th dimension into the 4^th dimension of spacetime. The universe started to exist when one of these virtual spacetime volumes continued to exist for longer than Planck time and expanded as our Universe.

Chaos, entropy and heat death of our Universe Anything that arises from virtual spacetime is in a maximum state of chaos or disorder. Entropy is a measure of this disorder. High entropy is maximum disorder and as our Universe evolves it’s total entropy decreases i.e. it becomes more ordered. When it decreases to it’s minimum all motion will have stopped and, from the concept of the heat death of our Universe, every particle will be at an infinite distance from it’s neighbor.

Matter and anti-matter E²=M²C⁴ is a formula that has two roots [+ and -] and leads to the idea of anti-matter. It predicts that every sort of particle has an anti-particle. Moreover, the energy locked up in a space-warp can be created into both matter and anti-matter. This is why matter appears spontaneously our of the Void of virtual spacetime.

Background radiation The cosmic microwave radiation pervades the whole universe and is thought to be the relic of the electromagnetic energy generated by the explosive origin of our Universe.

Cosmic strings and dark matter Material that is theorized to have formed at the time our Universe began. Dark matter is invisible material that must exist if our Universe is closed. Cosmic strings are extremely small tubes of energy left over from the big bang, comparable with the cracks formed in ice as water freezes. Inside the tubes are bits of the universe frozen in the quantum state they possessed at the time of their origin at 10^-35 seconds.

Fundamental forces of nature The strong, the weak, the electromagnetic, and the gravitational force are the basic forces of nature. In the early phase of our Universe the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces were combined into a single force which controlled the actions of the material universe.

Fundamental particles Bosons [photons, neutrons and X-particles], fermions [leptons, quarks, electrons and neutrinos] are the particles that formed in the early universe and later gave rise, under control of the laws of physics, to the everyday materials we know today.

Since writing this in 1993 the idea that our Universe will continue expanding forever  has gained in importance.

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