Please note that this is not an academic paper and you should regard it as light reading with grain of truth.
Humans did not evolve from Apes! And no joking about humanoids, there is no such thing! Lets begin by making sure that we are not denouncing the evolution. What we have is new understanding of human evolution based on Antonyan's scale for civilizations, especially the part about type 0 civilization.
Common theory of our early development is that somehow we share same ancestor with apes and our genetic lineage accidentally placed us at advantage to other apes, thus allowed us to rise into dominant species on the planet. Now multiply that thousand times and that would be about 1% of what anthropologists know about evolution. What this theory is missing, based solely on my opinion, is distinction or definition of the moment that separated us from apes.
Let me offer my theory that is contributing to theory of evolution or more specifically first spark that developed into rise of human civilization. It is based upon findings of Antonyan's scale for civilizations.
According to that scale the type 0 civilization evolves when sentient beings discover a source of energy. In case of our civilization we discovered the fire. Note that discovery is not similar to observation of the fire and to put our theory of human evolution we will try to describe the society and events that lead to our creation, let me rephrase, self creation.
The year was 3 million B.C. and our ancestor was cold, hungry and generally dissatisfied by his current life. At the time he was the alpha male of small group that included five other males and eight females. He was not particularity intelligent or could hardly be called best physically evolved specimen of ape origin. Their group was chased away from nice feeding grounds many times when faced with groups with superior intelligence or sheer physical dominance in strength and numbers. They even came across some group of apes that were actively fishing and hunting but were quickly chased away before they could learn their skills.
The life of alpha male was not easy and even harder when you cannot secure rich feeding ground. It was apparent to our ancestor that he had to recruit more members and strengthen the tribe. It was not a conscious thought but almost an instinct developed throughout his life that was very common for alpha males who faced so many battles that they develop acute seance of power balance and self awareness.
While wondering the forest at dawn, he came across this beast that was fierce and indifferent to his challenges. At one point he misjudged the opponents indifference as weakness and growling aggressively attacked and dealt the single blow. The attack was swift and ended quickly whit him retreating to safe distance to recover from shock of the pain. At that time bright thought lighted up his mind. What if he to recruit the strange beast into his group and strengthen its power? What followed was defining action for our civilization, when our ancestor approached his fierce adversary and tried to recruit him. His adversary was a burning log that was lighted up by lightning, but the pain in his burned hand was telling our ancestor that it deserved all the respect he could give him. After few pleasantries and friendly gestures, mostly by our ancestor, he concluded that the log was friendly and drugged it across the forest to their base camp.
He quickly established the logs position in their group hierarchy by fiercely attacking any male who even dared to approach the stranger. The high position of the stranger in the group proved to be very attractive to the females and after brief fight the most intelligent female took position closest to the burning log and took possession of it. It was fine with our ancestor alpha male, since he was trying to make the stranger comfortable in their group.
This was the night that our civilization was born. Our ancestor alpha male ape, lets call him John recruited the help of fire to strengthen his clan, maybe he was too dumb to realize it was not possible, and most intelligent female ape, lets call her Lili, was the one who took possession of it to improve her status in the group. Actions of John and Lili were just simplistic behaviors but they were the best decisions that any ape made over several thousand years. From that day the life of the group changed and most of the members of the group who were born apes eventually became humans. This was the butterfly effect that caused birth of civilization and echoed throughout history leading to our daily reality.
It took the group about a week to realize that fire is not sentient, but thanks to nurturing and high intelligence of Lili, the group learned to feed the fire to keep it alive. The light and heat produced by fire was beneficial from day one and other benefits that were less obvious but equally drastic followed. Group noticed that predators started avoiding this strange group of apes who lived in such close proximity to dangerous fire.
The group became the first human tribe and started gathering firewood to keep the fire alive. The social atmosphere and general well being of the tribe was better than any other and soon the tribe multiplied. Alpha male was not challenged anymore, since suddenly females, food and feeding ground was in abundance, despite growing population of tribe.
The firewood gathering, storage and usage sparked first technological advancements in history of our civilization. The first invention was the torch that could have been used for transportation of fire, as a light source and as a weapon that would deter even the scariest beasts from attack. The next invention was the spear that was formed by sharpening of the tip by repeatedly burning it and removing the chars. That followed by wooden knives that were forged in similar fashion. Soon haunters could rely on this weapons to better use their tactics and it proved highly efficient way to limit injuries during hunting. There was a little darkness in our history at the time, since often other apes were the pray. Yet this could hardly be called cannibalism since our ancestors transcended their genetics and were a rising civilization, fighting for resources, and even similarity of the gens between early ancestors and apes were apparent, in reality those two species were thousands of years apart. One being intelligent rising civilization and the other just an animal trying to survive. The result of this explosive grout was vast territory, void of apes and predators with abundant resources and singular tribe with several hundred members.
Sheer number of members dictated usage of multiple fires and separation of the tribe into smaller but integral members. This was the first village/city that was borne out of events started by John and Lili. More time was freed due to highly nutritious protein meals and used for socialization and that led to development of more complex lingual skills. For the first time our civilization realized the value of the wood, as a technological resource. Also individuals members were thought from early age, the skills of feeding the fire, gathering resources and making simple tools. Games become the first schools of our youth who would compete on their management of spear throwing and fire building skills. The necessity to nurture the fire gave birth to first tiny shelters, designed just for fire, until someone realized that they could build larger shelters and live in them.
Cooking was invented accidentally and was highly beneficial in disinfecting the food and making it more nutritious. Also cooking allowed us to use out teeth to devour meat, while they were shaped by evolution to suit more vegetarian diet.
Members of our civilization became masters of using fire as a tool to process wood and turn it into useful objects. First wood products were spears, knives, torches followed by basic amenities to store water and fruits. Simple sticks that were cleaned off from bark were used as firs kitchen utensils to cook meat or fish. This followed by simple furniture and shelters. Then the scale changed in few decades and we could hollow entire tree trunks to make boats and expand our territories.
What followed was gradual expansion of the tribe that was genetically identical to the apes but vastly superior in numbers and technology. Then it became almost explosive expansion. The quick expansion of the tribes was fueled by this genetic compatibility with apes. Hostile ape groups were dealt with very quickly by killing and consuming the adults and nurturing their children into humans. At some instances the raid would be targeted to just gaining females by chasing off the male members of ape group. While converting adult female apes into humans was hard, the offspring was very playful and readily capable to join our young civilization. It took us several generation to become different from apes by appearance. This change was caused by fact that we were using our muscle groups differently, utilizing our brains more often and even though we were living in the same climate and environment as apes, our living conditions were superior. For the several million years that followed the evolution shaped our bodies and that was reflected in our DNA. About 2.5 million BC we became more like modern day humans, if not by appearance but by our behavior, proudly building our civilization. This was the end of the wood age and beginning of the stone age, where our civilization selected a new material to advance our technology.
This could have been the story of our civilization, but no one knows, we can just guess. In reality the experience of John and Lili might have been repeated countless times with various degree of success for many millenniums before our ancestors. It is undeniable that even such small even like a rain might have delayed birth of our civilization by millennium. But once started our transformation took decades to complete and our physiology started to significantly differ from apes in less then a century.
To summarize we can say that we do not share common ancestor with apes and we sculpted our beings by sheer might of our intelligence and with generous help from evolution. John and Lili were born apes but transcended their genetics and died humans. Note that the anthropologically correct term would be hominids, or otherwise known as great apes, but I would like to call them humans. By that logic we can conclude that our ancestors were humans.
Until now we did not have any sound theory about beginning of humans and our ancestors.
The notion that evolution blindly created humans out of some species is incomplete. The general assumption is that humans brains became bigger and bigger and it gave us some advantage over other animals. And gradually our civilization rose from faceless animal kingdom from some mysterious ancestor. This theory does not explain the fact that the same process did not occur any other time in history and no other species evolve. The obvious flaw of this theory is staring us in a face with dolphins having bigger brains then us and yet they fail to establish any superiority in animal kingdom.
And most importantly this theory explains why apes did not evolve. The civilization and intelligence requires availability of energy source that could be exploited to improve the environmental conditions and fuel technology.
Another conclusion of Antonyan's scale for civilization is the fact that many species would not become intelligent even if left to evolve for millions of years. Dinosaurs come to mind and such intelligent species as dolphins, dogs and horses. In the example of dolphins, they would not ever have access to any energy source, capable of lighting up their existence and igniting a dolphin civilization.
Humans did not evolve from Apes! And no joking about humanoids, there is no such thing! Lets begin by making sure that we are not denouncing the evolution. What we have is new understanding of human evolution based on Antonyan's scale for civilizations, especially the part about type 0 civilization.
Common theory of our early development is that somehow we share same ancestor with apes and our genetic lineage accidentally placed us at advantage to other apes, thus allowed us to rise into dominant species on the planet. Now multiply that thousand times and that would be about 1% of what anthropologists know about evolution. What this theory is missing, based solely on my opinion, is distinction or definition of the moment that separated us from apes.
Let me offer my theory that is contributing to theory of evolution or more specifically first spark that developed into rise of human civilization. It is based upon findings of Antonyan's scale for civilizations.
According to that scale the type 0 civilization evolves when sentient beings discover a source of energy. In case of our civilization we discovered the fire. Note that discovery is not similar to observation of the fire and to put our theory of human evolution we will try to describe the society and events that lead to our creation, let me rephrase, self creation.
The year was 3 million B.C. and our ancestor was cold, hungry and generally dissatisfied by his current life. At the time he was the alpha male of small group that included five other males and eight females. He was not particularity intelligent or could hardly be called best physically evolved specimen of ape origin. Their group was chased away from nice feeding grounds many times when faced with groups with superior intelligence or sheer physical dominance in strength and numbers. They even came across some group of apes that were actively fishing and hunting but were quickly chased away before they could learn their skills.
The life of alpha male was not easy and even harder when you cannot secure rich feeding ground. It was apparent to our ancestor that he had to recruit more members and strengthen the tribe. It was not a conscious thought but almost an instinct developed throughout his life that was very common for alpha males who faced so many battles that they develop acute seance of power balance and self awareness.
While wondering the forest at dawn, he came across this beast that was fierce and indifferent to his challenges. At one point he misjudged the opponents indifference as weakness and growling aggressively attacked and dealt the single blow. The attack was swift and ended quickly whit him retreating to safe distance to recover from shock of the pain. At that time bright thought lighted up his mind. What if he to recruit the strange beast into his group and strengthen its power? What followed was defining action for our civilization, when our ancestor approached his fierce adversary and tried to recruit him. His adversary was a burning log that was lighted up by lightning, but the pain in his burned hand was telling our ancestor that it deserved all the respect he could give him. After few pleasantries and friendly gestures, mostly by our ancestor, he concluded that the log was friendly and drugged it across the forest to their base camp.
He quickly established the logs position in their group hierarchy by fiercely attacking any male who even dared to approach the stranger. The high position of the stranger in the group proved to be very attractive to the females and after brief fight the most intelligent female took position closest to the burning log and took possession of it. It was fine with our ancestor alpha male, since he was trying to make the stranger comfortable in their group.
This was the night that our civilization was born. Our ancestor alpha male ape, lets call him John recruited the help of fire to strengthen his clan, maybe he was too dumb to realize it was not possible, and most intelligent female ape, lets call her Lili, was the one who took possession of it to improve her status in the group. Actions of John and Lili were just simplistic behaviors but they were the best decisions that any ape made over several thousand years. From that day the life of the group changed and most of the members of the group who were born apes eventually became humans. This was the butterfly effect that caused birth of civilization and echoed throughout history leading to our daily reality.
It took the group about a week to realize that fire is not sentient, but thanks to nurturing and high intelligence of Lili, the group learned to feed the fire to keep it alive. The light and heat produced by fire was beneficial from day one and other benefits that were less obvious but equally drastic followed. Group noticed that predators started avoiding this strange group of apes who lived in such close proximity to dangerous fire.
The group became the first human tribe and started gathering firewood to keep the fire alive. The social atmosphere and general well being of the tribe was better than any other and soon the tribe multiplied. Alpha male was not challenged anymore, since suddenly females, food and feeding ground was in abundance, despite growing population of tribe.
The firewood gathering, storage and usage sparked first technological advancements in history of our civilization. The first invention was the torch that could have been used for transportation of fire, as a light source and as a weapon that would deter even the scariest beasts from attack. The next invention was the spear that was formed by sharpening of the tip by repeatedly burning it and removing the chars. That followed by wooden knives that were forged in similar fashion. Soon haunters could rely on this weapons to better use their tactics and it proved highly efficient way to limit injuries during hunting. There was a little darkness in our history at the time, since often other apes were the pray. Yet this could hardly be called cannibalism since our ancestors transcended their genetics and were a rising civilization, fighting for resources, and even similarity of the gens between early ancestors and apes were apparent, in reality those two species were thousands of years apart. One being intelligent rising civilization and the other just an animal trying to survive. The result of this explosive grout was vast territory, void of apes and predators with abundant resources and singular tribe with several hundred members.
Sheer number of members dictated usage of multiple fires and separation of the tribe into smaller but integral members. This was the first village/city that was borne out of events started by John and Lili. More time was freed due to highly nutritious protein meals and used for socialization and that led to development of more complex lingual skills. For the first time our civilization realized the value of the wood, as a technological resource. Also individuals members were thought from early age, the skills of feeding the fire, gathering resources and making simple tools. Games become the first schools of our youth who would compete on their management of spear throwing and fire building skills. The necessity to nurture the fire gave birth to first tiny shelters, designed just for fire, until someone realized that they could build larger shelters and live in them.
Cooking was invented accidentally and was highly beneficial in disinfecting the food and making it more nutritious. Also cooking allowed us to use out teeth to devour meat, while they were shaped by evolution to suit more vegetarian diet.
Members of our civilization became masters of using fire as a tool to process wood and turn it into useful objects. First wood products were spears, knives, torches followed by basic amenities to store water and fruits. Simple sticks that were cleaned off from bark were used as firs kitchen utensils to cook meat or fish. This followed by simple furniture and shelters. Then the scale changed in few decades and we could hollow entire tree trunks to make boats and expand our territories.
What followed was gradual expansion of the tribe that was genetically identical to the apes but vastly superior in numbers and technology. Then it became almost explosive expansion. The quick expansion of the tribes was fueled by this genetic compatibility with apes. Hostile ape groups were dealt with very quickly by killing and consuming the adults and nurturing their children into humans. At some instances the raid would be targeted to just gaining females by chasing off the male members of ape group. While converting adult female apes into humans was hard, the offspring was very playful and readily capable to join our young civilization. It took us several generation to become different from apes by appearance. This change was caused by fact that we were using our muscle groups differently, utilizing our brains more often and even though we were living in the same climate and environment as apes, our living conditions were superior. For the several million years that followed the evolution shaped our bodies and that was reflected in our DNA. About 2.5 million BC we became more like modern day humans, if not by appearance but by our behavior, proudly building our civilization. This was the end of the wood age and beginning of the stone age, where our civilization selected a new material to advance our technology.
This could have been the story of our civilization, but no one knows, we can just guess. In reality the experience of John and Lili might have been repeated countless times with various degree of success for many millenniums before our ancestors. It is undeniable that even such small even like a rain might have delayed birth of our civilization by millennium. But once started our transformation took decades to complete and our physiology started to significantly differ from apes in less then a century.
To summarize we can say that we do not share common ancestor with apes and we sculpted our beings by sheer might of our intelligence and with generous help from evolution. John and Lili were born apes but transcended their genetics and died humans. Note that the anthropologically correct term would be hominids, or otherwise known as great apes, but I would like to call them humans. By that logic we can conclude that our ancestors were humans.
Until now we did not have any sound theory about beginning of humans and our ancestors.
The notion that evolution blindly created humans out of some species is incomplete. The general assumption is that humans brains became bigger and bigger and it gave us some advantage over other animals. And gradually our civilization rose from faceless animal kingdom from some mysterious ancestor. This theory does not explain the fact that the same process did not occur any other time in history and no other species evolve. The obvious flaw of this theory is staring us in a face with dolphins having bigger brains then us and yet they fail to establish any superiority in animal kingdom.
And most importantly this theory explains why apes did not evolve. The civilization and intelligence requires availability of energy source that could be exploited to improve the environmental conditions and fuel technology.
Another conclusion of Antonyan's scale for civilization is the fact that many species would not become intelligent even if left to evolve for millions of years. Dinosaurs come to mind and such intelligent species as dolphins, dogs and horses. In the example of dolphins, they would not ever have access to any energy source, capable of lighting up their existence and igniting a dolphin civilization.
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