[ExI] The Grand Arc of Humanity

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Sun Apr 18 03:31:04 UTC 2021


Did you ever wonder what was the specific, unique development in the
history of the world that set humans on our path, separate from animals and
out to reach the stars?

I don't mean all the prerequisites for humans to exist. There is a
combination of string landscape properties that defines the specific
physics that allowed inflation, hydrogen and gravity, which allowed for the
formation of stars that are necessary for humans, but stars are also needed
for chloroplasts and rhodobacteria, so this is not specific enough. Nuclei
and mitochondria were needed to create larger creatures, such as humans but
nuclei and mitochondria also created snails and trees, so again not
specific enough. Trees populated by snails and the like created an unusual
ecological niche, that of a tree-dwelling fast moving omnivorous creature
with stereoscopic vision and arms adapted to the grasping of sticks, and we
needed our vision and arms to become what we are but then lemurs, gibbons
and hundreds of other primate species have been around for 55 million
years, so these adaptations are not sufficient for an intelligent species
to appear, or else ruins of cities older than the Himalayas would be
littering the planet. The ability to use tools such as sticks and to have
rudimentary language also isn't sufficiently specific, since apes have been
doing these things for millions of years and were getting nowhere fast.

But there came a day when an Australopithecine made a stick that was longer
and sharper than what the chimpanzee uses to dig for tubers and to pick
termite mounds. That stick could hurt if used by a creature with
stereoscopic vision and strong, grasping hands. That stick could be thrust
at a predator, or prey. An Australopithecine on the ground + leopard means
a snack for the leopard but an Australopithecine + sharp stick + leopard
means a very sore leopard, possibly even a big dinner for the ape. The
sharp stick completely changed the equation. It propelled the
Australopithecine from the rank of lowly scavenger and often easy prey to
the level of a moderately bad-ass all-around brawler, not hardcore enough
to take on lions but just too tough to kill under most circumstances. It
changed the ape from an occasional hunter to a frequent hunter, giving
access to the meat and the marrow and the energy to feed a bigger brain
without forcing an increase in size. And most importantly, this is the
first time in the history of the Earth that the survival and thriving of a
social, large, terrestrial animal with stereoscopic vision and manipulatory
appendages became dependent on the creation of a tool - a tool not merely
aiding survival, like a stone wielded by a monkey to crush nuts, but
actually indispensable for survival due to the incredible boost in
abilities it afforded the user. The sharp stick was just such an amazing
quantum leap that once the ape learned to use it, the ape couldn't live
without it and it became a hominid.

So here is my opinion about when the Grand Arc of Humanity started - with a
big, sharp stick. Everything before was generic, prerequisites like size,
stereoscopic vision, manipulatory arms, sociality, all necessary but
insufficient to create something as unique as us. The sharp stick was the
keystone to the portal to the technological civilization that opened before
the Australopithecine - all of what followed flowed then logically from
that point. The need to make and use a tool prevented us from becoming
generic predators that survive by the tooth and claw. The sharp stick is an
external adaptation - not of the body but dependent on the learning mind
for its usefulness. The ability to use the sharp stick channeled our
evolution towards the use of more and more tools, with ever less need for
genetic adaptation and more cultural transmission. Apes can use fire and
love cooked foods but they wouldn't benefit from fire much even if they
could maintain it. Hominids with sharp sticks can feed the fire with meat
and can fend off predators while on the ground, which is why we lost the
adaptations to swing from tree branches and improved our ground mobility.
The sharp stick can also be thrown - it became the spear, and that moved
the hominid to the rank of serious badass, the kind you want to stay away
from. Access to fire gave us cooked food which reduced the amount of time
needed to chew from 6 hours a day to 30 minutes and it freed 25% of our
metabolic energy from digestion to thinking, so our brains grew because we
had the time and the energy to actually use them. Bigger brains meant more
ability to invent cultural adaptations, which meant stronger pressure for
bigger brains and also dramatically faster adaptability to changed
circumstances, which meant spreading throughout the world of different
climates and different food sources. Finally, the sharp stick meant we
could kill each other from ambush, safely, leading to the
self-domestication of us, H. sapiens, and extinction of the other Homo's.

A bunch of positive feedback loops started with this first technology and
in geologically no time at all propelled us to the moon and beyond.

The Grand Arc of Humanity is now close to its end. H.sapiens will soon
disappear, hopefully by uploading, maybe in other ways. But it all started
with a sharp stick held by a hungry ape.

Rafal
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