I mentioned a few weeks back that this blog was going to have a broader focus than in the past. Well, this post might suggest that I now have a completely random focus! At any rate, it’s my first attempt at waxing philosophical on these pages.
Disclaimer: Don’t Blame Religion
First off, let me make a disclaimer: I don’t have any religious objection of any kind whatsoever to the theory of evolution. At some other time perhaps I’ll explain why, but for now just accept that I don’t actually see evolution and Genesis as contradicting each other. The reason I say that is because I’m about to dis on evolution a bit and I don’t want to get stupid comments about how I’m biased by my religious views.
Question #1: Why are humans so much awersomer than EVERYTHING else?
There’s something about the idea that humans evolved from other animals on earth that doesn’t jive with the world around me. The thing is, we’re so much more awersome than everything else that is alive on this planet. There’s a huge, miles-wide chasm between us and everything else in terms of brainpower. Even the least intelligent normal human is thousands of times more intelligent than the smartest animal. You put Barney Rubble up against Wilbur the Pig at checkers any day and Barney will win every single time.
There are lots of animals with similarly sized brain cavities, all of which would definitely benefit from a few orders of magnitude leap in intelligence. Take elephants for example – don’t you think they’d be considerably better off if they had a bit of a mental boost? They could store up water for the dry season and avoid all that trek-across-the-summer-desert panic that kills off huge numbers of them every year.
I’m not just being silly here. In every aspect of being human but intelligence we have animal contemporaries. We’re not the only ones with fingers and opposable thumbs, the ability to walk upright, or feel emotions. Other animals have evolved to form social groups, mate for life (not that many humans do anymore), and provide extended care for their young. Why has no other form of life on the whole face of the planet made the same leap to be smart?
Shouldn’t at least one other creature have done it? If you made a bunch of lists along the lines of “Species that fly”, “Species that jump”, “Species that whatever”, every one of those lists would have more than one, usually more than ten, different species in it.
Now make a list of species that can imagine something that doesn’t exist and make it exist.
It’s short.
Question #2: Shouldn’t there be humanoids?
Remember the cantina scene in Star Wars? It was full of humanoids – human-like beings that weren’t Homo sapiens. Why isn’t earth more like that cantina?
I mean, if you had a cantina for squirrels, you’d see multiple species. The same is true of nearly every other type of animal on the planet, except perhaps the platypus and a few others.
Instead, if you go to any bar on earth, every single person there is Homo sapiens, except for those dudes from the Geico commercials. You might question this fact based on appearances, but trust me, blood samples would prove my point.
It seems to me we ought to have more than one species of humanity. This doesn’t make sense to me – if evolution causes branching in human families, why haven’t we done it?
Or did we do it and just kill the other ones off? Maybe that’s where myths of giants, ogres, trolls, etc came from – perhaps they were the other humanoids and we just took em out.
I’m just sayin.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Drew @ Cook Like Your Grandmother // Feb 25, 2010 at 10:16 am
First off: Dolphins. Sure, The Hitchhiker’s Guide made a joke of it, but they *are* pretty smart. And considering how little we know about any number of large marine animals, it’s entirely possible some of them are even smarter. How would we know?
Second: There are plenty of examples of tool-making among other species. So your example of imagining something and making it exist is wrong.
Third: Using a blood test to conclude there is only one species of human is faulty, since there is more variation between individual humans than there is between the average human and the average chimp. The differences are just in different parts of the DNA.
Fourth: To say that no animal is as smart as any human relies on excluding those born with brain defects. Yes, some of these are injuries sustained during birth and don’t count. But lots of them are genetic defects, or random variation. And if a single animal is born with a mutation that grants high intelligence, how would we know?
Fifth: Yes, we *absolutely* would have killed off anything that posed a challenge to our dominance. The only species it pays to keep around are those that can work for us, or we can eat. We routinely drive other high-order predators to the brink of extinction for the crime of eating “our” livestock.
2 Allen // Feb 26, 2010 at 1:52 am
Put a Human underwater with an unlimited air supply and see how long they last vs. the others. We aren't all that.
Our opposable thumbs let us take flint and sticks from lightning strikes and do amazing things. I think if dolphins or whales could have the same chance, they could give us a run for our money.
3 Rick Grey // Feb 28, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Another data point, for what it's worth: the current belief is that Neanderthal and Cro Magnon, separate versions of early humans (we're from the Cro Magnon path), co-existed on the planet for around 10,000 years. Anthropologist aren't sure whether the two types ever lived alongside each other, so it would be speculation to say (to your point) that Cro Magnon was directly responsible for killing off the Neanderthals. But it does suggest that, when it comes to human and human-like species, being more awesomer is such a huge evolutionary advantage that there tends to be very little variance at any given point in time.
To take another perspective (read: now I'm just making stuff up), perhaps the human genetic code is more rigid somehow, and less prone to the kinds of mutations that result in greater variety of things like squirrels, bears, monkeys, dogs, and cats. Our brains make us adaptable, so our genetics don't have to.
Last comment: some of the bars I've been to had some things walking around on two legs drinking PBR that I'm not so sure I'd categorize as Homo sapiens. I mean, I didn't take genetic samples or anything, so I've got no proof. But it made me wonder sometimes.
4 Rebecca // Feb 28, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Very interesting, Dave!
Let's assume that logic and rational thought is evolved as an ordering system for our wide capacity for emotion, and our range of emotion is evolved out of our broad capacity for conflict production and resolution, which is a result of our combination of physical dexterity.
It may be that our mental smarts are products of our bodies.
5 Steven Riley // Jun 7, 2010 at 8:29 am
This is very good article. It is talk about animals other creatures in the world. This is very usefull for us.
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