"By the entrance to the building, there’s a model of an elderly Neanderthal leaning on a stick. He is smiling benignantly and resembles an unkempt Yogi Berra," Elizabeth Kolbert
"It’s only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don’t see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop,” [says evolutionary geneticist Svante Paabo]. If the defining characteristic of modern humans is this sort of Faustian restlessness, then, by Pääbo’s account, there must be some sort of Faustian gene. Several times, he told me that he thought it should be possible to identify the basis for this “madness” by comparing Neanderthal and human DNA."
Yeah, this crazy wired ambition and unfortunate tendency to driving other hominids and animals to extinction. Like Neanderthals. Obliteration. Or absorption. Humans!
I liked Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction. It's a grim subject, sure. Are we in or on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction event and this one caused by humans. A debate that devolves at times into obscure disputes about statistical significance of species loss in various global locations and cases. But Kolbert somehow manages to turn the science into interesting questions about human impacts on the natural world and eases her way into heartening humanizing portraits of scientists in the field studying species loss, trying to stop it, understand its causes, and they're all just well-meaning worker bees, albeit very important ones, trying to help out, increase understanding through science, which is exactly who we ought to want on the job trying to understand and head off extinction threats, or the way I figure. It was a winning popular science book about species extinction. Neat trick.
"Where the kids routinely outscored the apes was in tasks that involved reading social cues. When the children were given a hint about where to find a reward—someone pointing to or looking at the right container—they took it. The apes either didn’t understand that they were being offered help or couldn’t follow the cue. Similarly, when the children were shown how to obtain a reward, by, say, ripping open a box, they had no trouble grasping the point and imitating the behavior. The apes, once again, were flummoxed. Admittedly, the kids had a big advantage in the social realm, since the experimenters belonged to their own species. But, in general, apes seem to lack the impulse toward collective problem-solving that’s so central to human society."
Sorry, but the "collective problem-solving" skill is not looking good these days but maybe, again, hopeful that scientists are still finding some evidence of these human social skills for cooperation before it has been beat out of them. Although, I should note I saw way more of it in high school students classroom teaching in this century than I ever felt as a high school student in the last one, for sure, but no one to blame there but me. Keep hope alive!
I've read references to Goethe for ages (and still not sure how to pronounce his name correctly) but I don't think I've read more than quotes and only know second-hand the Faust story. A pact with the devil met at a crossroads promises unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faustian means sacrificing spiritual values for power, knowledge, or selfish material gain until you grow sick of your ceaseless drives and pursuits. Faustian speaks of the tragedy of burning out on ambition.
Paleogenetics appears to be blowing away the single migration out of Africa theory asserted by genetics as recently as 2002, The Journey of Man, Spencer Wells, which I taught many times and, absolutely, because for one reason I liked Well's united colors of Benetton multicultural angle, but now in evolutionary archaeology they're adding multiple waves of migration, branching off in central Eurasia, some shooting off on their own and some doubling back and reconnecting with Neanderthals until modern humans are finally the last hominids standing. So still empirically multicultural but also evidently very hostile towards others, to put it mildly.
Humans are incredibly creative and productive and, Kolbert keeps reminding us, astonishingly destructive. These characteristics got us here but also might be pushing us toward extinction. Anyway, I like Kolbert on the case.
ElizabethKolbert @ The NY-er (Sorry, behind paywall. I've been giving up my mainstream subs, spitefully, frustrated by my vague sense they are all complicit in this disaster, but NY-er remains my favorite long-form journalism, and I know lots of people who don't have the patience for the long-form part. I don't keep up with but a fraction of it but always finding gold. Like Kolbert.)
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