The New Sense

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

I wanted to go to the movies this evening, but B— said no. He finally admitted that the reason he's not very keen on films or even TV is that they are too light — they are images without weight. That's why he originally told me he was a photographer — he was being ironic.
I just can't get inside his head. If I try to imagine what his world is like it becomes a Catch-22. I can only imagine it in images, and that's exactly the opposite of his experience. He talked to me about his theory of human evolution. It was fascinating, though I can't remember all the details well enough to reproduce the whole argument. There's no doubt about it that he's more than a bit obsessed with this stuff, and I don't know how he's managed to refrain from talking about it with me all this time.
Apparently the popular belief that we descended from Neanderthals is a misinterpretation of Darwin (of course it is — I've met several Neanderthals who are still running around bars in Montreal). The real Theory of Evolution says that humans, apes and Neanderthals descended from a common ancestor, who co-existed with Homo Sapiens for many thousands of years and then mysteriously disappeared over a relatively short space of time. B— thinks he knows the answer to why they disappeared. The popular theory is that humans had a far more advanced ability to speak and were generally more intelligent, so they outwitted the physically-stronger, but dumber, brutish Neanderthals and hunted them to extinction using superior organisation and weaponry.
Now, this makes sense if we judge by how humans have treated other species in recent times, and it appeals to us because it makes us feel intellectually-superior. B— sees this as a complete mistake. He thinks that (and apparently there's a lot of archeological evidence to back this up) Neanderthals were just as capable of speech as humans. On top of which, they had bigger brains! B—'s belief is that both species were able to speak fairly articulately, but how they used their ability was different. I'll try to remember how he put it:
"There is a lot of respected theory which says that language evolved in humans not only because of certain physical abilities to do with the larynx, the tongue and the jaw, but for social reasons too. In conjunction with the physical potential for making different sounds to mean different things, our ancestors' social structure made it an evolutionary advantage to get better at making more distinctive sounds. Natural selection among a social species depends not only on physical fitness, but on quick-wittedness and social manipulation. In other words, a human ancestor who could seduce a partner away from a physically stronger rival would pass on his genes."
(Why is it always the men doing the seducing in these scenarios? I've seen plenty of Neanderthal women in those same bars on Crescent St.)
"My theory is that although Neanderthals learned to speak for the reasons I just explained, they didn't take that ability quite as far as the contemporary humans did. Humans are masters of deceit. It makes sense that in many situations where a competitive advantage could be gained from psychological manipulation the genes of those who were best at doing the manipulating were passed on to the next generation. In other words, humans lied much better than the Neanderthals and won the battle between them because of it.
"There is a stereotype, which I think goes across many cultures, of the big, dumb, friendly giant. They are usually hairy, too. I think that this mythical figure is a version of the Neanderthals which has been passed down in human cultures ever since they died out, which wasn't all that long ago — 20,000 years at most. Which is from here back to Jesus times ten. Not long at all for a myth to survive."
This was all very fascinating, but I had no idea what it had to do with his sense, so I asked him.
"I don't believe that the Neanderthals were wiped out by warfare, but rather that they died from a combination of two factors. First, disease. They were an isolated population which wasn't resistant to infections brought by humans following the ice age (just like native Americans when the Europeans conquered them). Second, genetic assimilation. The survivors of the diseases intermarried with humans, who were far more numerous, so that the Neanderthal genes quickly became diluted and the species was subsumed into Homo Sapiens."
"So what? You're a Neanderthal? Even if you are, what's it got to do with your sense?"
"Maybe I am. Or at least I think I have a larger percentage of Neanderthal genes than the average Homo Sapiens. And maybe Neanderthals had this sense. We know that Neanderthals evolved in a genetic bottleneck which was produced by the ice age".
"B—, I don't know anything about this stuff. I don't know what a genetic bottleneck is."
"Sorry. I know I'm a bit obsessed about this, but so would you be in my situation. In genetic bottlenecks the chances of weird but useful mutations being passed on are much higher because the population is smaller. In other words, where there is a large population of a particular species the chances that genetic variations will be passed on are minimal because they are not especially useful for the survival of the species."
"Give me an example."
"Okay. There is a large, widespread population of human beings right now."
"Yes."
"So let's say that because of a mutation a baby is born who is able to hold its breath significantly longer than any other human."
"That's useful if your father's farts smell like my dad's."
"Well, there you go. But in general the human population is so big and successful and geographically-dispersed that the baby in question would have no particular advantage over other people in terms of survival. It may pass on the gene responsible for it's superior lung capacity or whatever it is, or it may not pass it on, but in all probability the gene will be lost in a generation or two."
"That's funny. Probability rears its head again. Four times out of five."
"Ha-ha. But it is all about probability. Because let's imagine that global warming increases the sea level worldwide and causes the collapse of human civilisation. Isolated pockets of people cling to bits of land, cut off from whatever mainland remains. In that situation the same mutation suddenly becomes useful. Maybe a family survives a flood because it can hold its breath longer and is able to swim to safety. The gene in question is then not only useful, but concentrated in a small community, maybe no bigger than an extended family. The probability of it being passed on is then greatly increased. Suddenly a population of humans has evolved with a competitive advantage over the others.
This scenario isn't so different from the situation during the last ice age. Homo sapiens thrived in Africa, untroubled by the glaciers. But in Northern Europe small groups were cut off and left to struggle to survive by themselves. They quickly evolved thicker body hair [Hmmm… it's true that B— is rather hairy] and other traits which helped them survive. They probably developed different social traits from Homo Sapiens too, such as a higher level of co-operation to hunt for scarce large game like woolly mammoths, as well as a need to share the food once it was caught because it was in limited supply. It doesn't take many generations for evolution to have a significant impact in a situation like that. By the time the ice age was over the Neanderthals were very, very different from the humans they then encountered."
"But your sense?"
"Well, if my theory is correct, then the same genetic bottleneck gave rise to a mutation which helped the Neanderthals survive and which is my sense."
"And did this gene evolve in conjunction with the nerd gene, or did you just develop that all by yourself?"
He laughed a lot. But it's true that he's a nerd. He's absolutely obsessed with this stuff, which I guess explains the amount of time he spends on the internet.
The thing is, even if he is some kind of variation on the human theme, it doesn't mean he's any more of an expert in any of this stuff than anyone else. I've got lungs, but I don't really know how they work. And he's only twenty. He doesn't have the maturity to deal with it properly. I guess I can understand his paranoia though. For sure, if Bigfoot shows up in the woods of Montana or something, I don't expect that scientists would manage to only study him from a distance. There would be a media circus for a start, and probably dozens of hunters out to capture him, dead or alive. That's what B—'s worried about, even if Sean doesn't catch up with him.

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posted by Sara