The Abyss of Forgotten Sapiens

[Twit 2]

So I'm reading Sapiens by that Israeli bloke, and it's a page-turning romp that every fucker should read. Herzog gave me the bug for this with his Cave of Forgotten Dreams doc; I am still haunted by the meditation on time and what these people 30,000 years ago thought and dreamt. To us, 50 years seems like a bit of a stretch, but 'man' has been around for a couple of million years, Homo sapiens for over a couple of hundred thousand years, and we've got the same sort of abilities as people who lived 70,000 years ago. 'We've' been using fire for 300,000 years. It's pretty incredible that for a quarter of a million years we didn't change that much and that we were just another animal bumbling about, not troubling the Earth. It's a brilliantly pessimistic book, too, pointing out how the agricultural revolution fucked us and it's only got worse since. There's thought provoking stuff on every page and it almost gave me vertigo when I read 100 pages in a go. I know it's had rave reviews and been a bestseller but I was still impressed by the scope of it and how it takes you right out of your little 21st century life and reminds you your just an animal on a long trajectory to the shitter.

Anyway, I've got the horn for this kind of book now. I know of stuff like Jared Diamond, but I am after good books on pre-history, especially that period from about 200,000 years ago to 20,000 years ago.

[kidsick5000]

It's a brilliantly pessimistic book, too, pointing out how the agricultural revolution fucked us and it's only got worse since.

This piqued my interest. Can you condense what was bad about the agricultural revolution?

[Twit 2]

Prior to that humans were hunter gatherers. Aside from the fact that a simple injury could kill you, or you could be gobbled by a giant cat, the quality of life of an early human was miles better than one living in an agricultural system. Our diet would have been rich and varied as a result of gathering things across a very wide territory, as oppposed to farming a couple of basic crops which are low in nutrition and leave you susceptible to starvation and disease. Our bodies are not designed to cope with farming; we are designed to climb trees and chase after prey and such, not bent over in a field getting a hernia from back-breaking labour. Agriculture caused a big increase in violence and war, as your stuff was liable to get nicked by bastards.

The book is extremely compelling on how the use of myth and imagined realities allows humans to cooperate on vast scales, in cities of millions. For most of our history we've lived lives fairly indistinguishable from a bunch of chimps - living in small bands of no more than a hundred and living in a very concrete real world of nearby resources and objects. The cognitive revolution of around 70,000 years ago allowed us to make use of imagined realities and unite people under shared myths such as 'x animal is the spirit of our tribe'. There are some excellent and disturbing links to how these kind of myths still operate today, in the guise of nationalism, corporations or even the idea of money.

There's lots of little stories, andecdotes and nuggets from history and archaeology to support all this, and it's fascinating to hear some of the speculation, deduction and logic that goes into extrapolating meaning from, say, pieces of religious art and burial sites.

Anyway, there's whole section of the book about the agricultural revolution and countless horror stories of why it's a shit show. In fact it's insanely pessimistic for a Waterstones friendly bestseller affair - not only elucidate how fucked we are now, but how we've been a blight on the planet and ourselves for tens of thousands of years. The section that talks about how we rocked up in Australia
45,000 years ago and fucked over the entire ecosystem in minutes is pretty sobering.

Another sobering one - while all this shitting on the planet has been going on for millennia, the oceans have been spared until recently: ecological fuck ups on land didn't affect whales and the like. But as soon as we got in the sea we've fucked that even more quickly. Bah.

Anyway read the book, it's an audacious and mind boggling yarn.

[shh]

Highly fascinating book. I keep meaning to trawl through the bibliography for further reading. One particular insight that stayed with me was that humans perennially & inadvertently create societies that are detrimental to our own flourishing, from the neolithic revolution to modern drudgery. These structures take on a power of their own that we are incapable of dismantling. It puts the power of Humanity in perspective.

I am always put in mind of this when some self-appointed fanatical 'progressive' decides that humanity will be improved if only we re-arrange society according to their arbitrary prescriptions (I appear to be turning into Michael Oakeshott...)

I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had had it – without knowing why. And since the human spirit naturally tends to make judgements based on feelings instead of reason, most of these young people chose Humanity to replace God...I reasoned that God, while improbable, might exist, in which case he should be worshipped; whereas Humanity, being a mere biological idea and signifying nothing more than the animal species we belong to, was no more deserving of worship than any other animal species. The cult of Humanity, with its rites of Freedom and Equality always struck me as a revival of those ancient cults in which gods were like animals or had animal heads.

And so, not knowing how to believe in God and unable to believe in an aggregate of animals, I, along with other people on the fringe, kept a distance from things...

One other small insight was that we are essentially modestly-endowed mid-tier food-chain creatures who have only advanced to our godlike position due to a freak of evolution (language/social intelligence) unconnected with our individual abilities, which explains why so many of us can be utterly terrified of everything from spiders to cows. We are not meant to be where we are.

Here's a talk between him and ('arch miserablist') John Gray on the subject of this book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDHa-tPfRo

This has spurred me to get 'The Mind in the Cave' which has been on my to-buy list for some time (re Herzog)

[Twit 2]

I should also point out there's bits where he gets carried away, brushes over things or talks about Harry fucking Potter. But it really does catapult you out of your everyday perspective. The section on the invention of script is almost sinister in the way it shows how recording and cataloging allowed us to create an amount of data way beyond our comprehension and control. The Hindu caste system and racial segregation in the US come across as rightfully absurd and pitiful.

His thesis that we are essentially trapped because we think live has always been a case of 'like the generation before but with a couple of changes for the better maybe' is depressingly true I think; he makes a great case for our use of myth being a prison which creates permanent suffering for large groups of people.

When I think of when I am really happy, it will be something like eating an apple in a meadow. Not much different from any other primate, and as a Homo sapien I could have done that 70,000 years ago with just as good results.

We didn't need fax machines.

Will check out the book you mentioned.

[Mister Six]

Yeah, let's all run around in forests and get clawed to death by bears or have our knackers stung by bees. That's much better than drinking a nice whisky and watching Twin Peaks.

(Sorry, this does sound super interesting and thank you for bringing it to my attention.)

[MojoJojo]

Agriculture caused a big increase in violence and war, as your stuff was liable to get nicked by bastards.

That was one of the bits that annoyed me, for all the his talk about how great things were before the agricultural revolution, he then mentions that about 30% (numbers made up as can't be arsed to look them up) of fossils from that time show violent death, which is about 3 times higher than you'd expect in a warzone.

But, heh, the food was good!

[shh]

Just finished reading that 'Mind in the Cave' book. Very intriguing and persuasive, although ultimately I'm in no position to say how valid his conclusions are. I don't want to 'give it away' but the author posits the source of Lascaux/Chauvet,etc cave paintings in the in-built neuropsychological capacity of Homo sapiens to experience, revisit and socialise altered states of consciousness, which Neanderthals (for example) were not capable of (ranging from waking thought to hallucinations, via day dreams, REM sleep and even migraine attacks).

For instance, (very loosely) he interprets going underground through a long, black, narrow cave as a "geographic metaphor" (very much in inverted commas) of an (apparently) near-universal experience humans undergo in states of altered consciousness. Apparently across time and cultures people report seeing hallucinatory images through a vortex when in such heightened states (eg in Western culture the common 'tunnel' image in dreams/visions which we interpret as taking us to a Christian idea of heaven).

As subjects move into Stage 3, marked changes in imagery occur. As this point, many people experience a swirling vortex or rotating tunnel that seems to surround them and draw them into its depths...Sometimes a bright light in the centre of the field of vision creates this tunnel-like perspective...Shamans typically speak of reaching the spirit world via such a hole. The Inuit of Hudson bay describe a 'road down through the earth' that starts in the house where they perform their rituals. The Conibo of the Upper Amazon speak of following the roots of a tree down into the ground...The vortex and the ways in which its imagery is perceived are clearly universal human experiences.

Definitely want to re-watch the Herzog doc to put this into perspective (a holiday to the Dordogne wouldn't be too bad an idea either...)

[Mobius]

This sounds really interesting thanks.

I just read the wiki for more info and it says that 70 thousand years ago 'the cognitive revolution' is when we 'developed imagination' can anyone smart explain that to me? how that happened? cheers

[Twit 2]

Get the book dude.

[marquis_de_sad]

Great thread.

Because I'm a twat I have to point out that Harari gets many things wrong in his book and is overall a very sloppy writer. Jared Diamond (who is similarly sloppy) was mentioned upthread, and Harari seems to take a lot from his work, ignoring the mountain of critiques of Guns, Germs and Steel by academics. He even ignores the stuff that Diamond himself has since gone back on. Harari also cites a book called Sex at Dawn, which failed peer review and is basically pseudoscience. So any reader should take his claims (especially the ones that he doesn't even bother to source) with a grain of salt. To be honest his book reads like he came up with some cool-sounding assumptions then googled sources to back them up.

He's also a very unreliable writer. He rarely says that an idea might be controversial or lack evidence, and he rarely gives the opposing argument. Sometimes he doesn't even tell the reader that the stuff he's saying has been proven wrong. That's not even mentioning his tedious political obsessions, which was like reading someones blog.

[Twit 2]

Yeah, good points. However, I reckon the book is more an exercise in thinking big and of making sense of huge swathes of time. I wouldn't be reading it for accuracy or depth, but it makes your head spin a bit and is essentially a piece of entertainment. For any bits that pique your interest, you could just read the relevant literature around that subject.

[hermitical]

This sounds really interesting thanks.

I just read the wiki for more info and it says that 70 thousand years ago 'the cognitive revolution' is when we 'developed imagination' can anyone smart explain that to me? how that happened? cheers

[Johnny Yesno]

When I think of when I am really happy, it will be something like eating an apple in a meadow. Not much different from any other primate, and as a Homo sapien I could have done that 70,000 years ago with just as good results.

I've not read the book, so apologies for jumping in here.

I just wanted to point out that your experience is not the same as someone would have had 70,000 years ago. This is a mistake that libertarians frequently make in their keenness to return to an agrarian past. 70,000 years ago, you'd have probably been thinking about where the next apple was coming from. 70,000 years ago, you wouldn't have had the security of modern medicine a phone call away if it turned out that your knowledge of what was a safe fruit to eat wasn't as comprehensive as you thought.

One other small insight was that we are essentially modestly-endowed mid-tier food-chain creatures who have only advanced to our godlike position due to a freak of evolution (language/social intelligence) unconnected with our individual abilities, which explains why so many of us can be utterly terrified of everything from spiders to cows. We are not meant to be where we are.

Language and social intelligence are not freaks of evolution. They are just directions of travel in all the possibilities played out over time. There is no such thing as 'where we are meant to be'.

[hermitical]

I should have been clearer by what I meant with that image, I was alluding to McKenna's 'stoned ape' theory. Shrooms

[Twit 2]

I've not read the book, so apologies for jumping in here.

Language and social intelligence are not freaks of evolution. They are just directions of travel in all the possibilities played out over time. There is no such thing as 'where we are meant to be'.

A lot of the book is exactly about this notion! Give it a read. I agree with what you said about my apples.

[Twit 2]

Interesting article about Neil Andertons:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/07/ever-evolving-story-humanity-david-reich-interview-neanderthals-denisovans-genome

[paruses]

Good thread - I started to read it last year and then things took over and I set it down. As a rare reader of non-fiction outside of work related stuff it was quite a page turner for me and I did find it quite mind blowing.

Will pick it up again so I can join in - nothing much to add at the moment outside of the fact that I thought Michael Marshall took that pre-agriculture idea and applied it to his Straw Men characters who sought a return to an ideal time (but as serial killers rather than just people looking for trees full of dates).

[Norton Canes]

I have to point out that Harari gets many things wrong in his book and is overall a very sloppy writer. Jared Diamond (who is similarly sloppy) was mentioned upthread, and Harari seems to take a lot from his work, ignoring the mountain of critiques of Guns, Germs and Steel by academics. He even ignores the stuff that Diamond himself has since gone back on. Harari also cites a book called Sex at Dawn, which failed peer review and is basically pseudoscience. So any reader should take his claims (especially the ones that he doesn't even bother to source) with a grain of salt. To be honest his book reads like he came up with some cool-sounding assumptions then googled sources to back them up.

He's also a very unreliable writer. He rarely says that an idea might be controversial or lack evidence, and he rarely gives the opposing argument. Sometimes he doesn't even tell the reader that the stuff he's saying has been proven wrong. That's not even mentioning his tedious political obsessions, which was like reading someones blog

Can you recommend anyone with a better take on the subject?