I recently picked up the book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari. Despite its being recommended by Bill Gates, very much a negative for me, I decided to give it a fair trial, mostly because of hype I had encountered. I have been working on my studies of human cognition since 1954 when I discovered behavioral psychology and Dr. D. F Skinner in the pages of Psychology Today.
I became curious about how humans came to invent language. The first life appeared on Earth about 4,300,000,000 years ago. Those earliest tiny creatures evolved to survive, becoming increasingly complex because that is a good strategy for survival. Even single celled organisms communicated at least well enough to function as groups, each species benefiting others. The drive to communicate is almost as strong as those for individual and species survival. Yet we didn’t invent language until at least 300,000 years ago, most likely in the period of 70,000 to 30,000 years ago.
Some time around 2012, I decided that we had invented language twice, once for communication and a second time for symbolic reasoning. It had to happen twice because it happened in two very different parts of the brain. If you look at the brain, you find a very ancient core dedicated to survival and a thin layer, the cortex, where experimentation and innovation take place. It was the ancient core that wanted to communicate and that first invented language as a way to convey information to others using words, sounds with associated meanings. That may be what we did 300,000 years ago.
Then we increased our ability to abstract information, usually explained by visualizing two actors on a stage that is divided by a curtain. If our primary actor can see the other, he knows the other is there. But if the other steps to a place where he cannot be seen, the primary behaves as if the other had never existed. If the other once more steps out to where he can be seen, the primary may recognize him because the primary has improved at abstracting information. Another improvement in abstracting would be for the primary to recognize that the other was simply behind the curtain, out of sight. Now suppose that the other, while out of sight behind the curtain, puts on a hat and coat. At a low level of abstraction, the primary might simply recognize that the other is the same person dressed differently. At a much higher level of abstraction, the primary might realize that the other is planning to go out, having dressed in appropriate attire. At an even higher level, while the other is out of sight the primary might realize that the other is changing clothes in order to go out … even though the other is invisible to him. It is when the primary can consider the motivations for unseen actions of an invisible being that the second invention of language takes place. That is when we invent language for symbolic reasoning, when we invent religion, when we can tell stories, and when we begin to rule the world around us. This is what happened 70,000 to 30,000 years ago, most likely 35,000 years back.
But how did this make us masters of the world?
About four decades ago I read a series of books by Carl Sagan. One of them, “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, discussed how forming bands of from a few individuals to a few hundred protected us from extinction. Bands of any kind of animals formed patterns of behavior that isolated them from others of the same species and this allowed bands to be sacrificed to disease while protecting the species from extinction. Lacking language, the bands that formed were limited in size to a number of individuals who could know and recognize each other, typically around 200.
There once were two kinds of humans living near one another, Sapiens and Neanderthal, S and N. When S began to thrive, N vanished. Sapiens asked whether S wiped out N or absorbed them. It has long been my belief that if you ask the wrong question, any answer you get is meaningless. I started looking for the right question. The populations of S and N were similar and stable for thousands of years. Let’s assume an area has 200 individuals of each group to begin with. For each individual of one group there should be one of the other group. Let’s see what happens when the S group gets an advantage and expands. When it expands to 2,000 individuals, you will find ten S for each N. When it reaches 20,000 individuals, you will find 100 S for each N. When it explodes to 200,000 individuals, you may not be able to find any more N even though the same number inhabits the area. They, too, may find it difficult to find individuals of their same species, making mating difficult. But even if they manage to continue as before, they will seem to have vanished from the record.
Even a small band has an advantage over individuals. A band typically has an Alpha male, a handful of Beta males waiting for their chance to overthrow and replace the Alpha, an assortment of subservient males, a core of mothers and babies, and mixed juveniles. Specialization is minimal. Most innovation starts with the juveniles and gets adopted and spread by the nurturing females. The males all try to ignore innovation, making themselves unteachable. Businesses and governments all try to adopt the same pattern of behavior.
Before the second invention of language with its ability to invent and believe stories, large groups were impossible. Groups might have 200 members who knew each other. But what if you could form groups — call them tribes — based on believing the same stories. How much more powerful would a nation — Chinese, Indian, African, Russian, British — be than an isolated band of 200? How many Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Wiccans or Pagans can combine to form a tribe? All of the Sapiens believing their origin story could unite into a single tribe and rule the world. Lots of Republicans and Democrats can make it look as if there were no Libertarians or Greens.
The stories don’t have to be reasonable to be believed. Some pretty unbelievable stories get adopted to unite tribes. As belief defines tribal membership, members of a tribe tend to accept any of the tribe’s beliefs as true without any troublesome thinking involved. Thus we get Neo-Nazis, Flat Earthers, unions, fraternities and sororities, those who favor Trump and those bitterly opposed to Trump, and tales of Santa Clause, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, extraterrestrials wandering about in flying saucers, and Cthulhu. And we belong to multiple tribes. Just imagine a French Republican Rastafarian who believes in immortality. He may have a tribe.
I believe it likely that the formation of tribes based on shared beliefs led to the explosion of Sapiens that we have seen. Tribal groups exceeding the limit of 200 would gain power by uniting in ways never before possible. That ceiling, once broken, will never again be adequate to restrict groups to only those known personally by each member. Breaking the ceiling has allowed Sapiens to expand to nearly eight billion. It has allowed specialization that has allowed Sapiens to walk on the surface of the moon and may soon allow us to visit Mars and, eventually, elsewhere. It has allowed us to fill libraries with wondrous works of fiction, of philosophy, of history, of hope and joy — or the opposite.
All because we invented language that broke limits and gave us power in unification.
Word Wine 