Charles Darwin created quite a stir in the mid-nineteenth century with the publication of his thesis “On the Origin of Species” suggesting the evolution of the various animal species, including man, spring from common ancestry. His theory has been widely embraced by the scientific communities, and widely condemned by fundamentalist religions. As with most theories their proponents can point to examples of how this must be true, and the opposition -- examples to question its legitimacy. Let’s put those arguments aside and use the theory to talk only of the evolution of mankind.
How long has man (homo) been around? According to Wikipedia (so it must be true, right?), some form of man began roughly eight million years ago, give or take a few hundred millennia. From those early days, we’ve evolved from our chimpanzee cousins into the fully evolved Homo Sapiens of today. Or have we? Have we really evolved?
The earliest recorded histories we find are paintings or etchings of the early survival of mankind. Hunting, gathering, and religious festivals celebrating their survival. It wasn’t until about 3,000 BCE (Before the Current Era)[1], that mankind sat down and decided we should have some simpler way to record what was going on.
According to the worldwide web of all things, the Sumerians were the first to record their history, but some believe the hieroglyphics found in the tomb of Egypt’s Scorpion 1 (AKA Scorpion King or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) predate those early Sumerian writings by a few hundred years.
Somewhere along the way, we find the earliest history of war is dated back to about 9,000 BCE when the city of Jericho (in what is now called the West Bank between Israel and Jordan) was destroyed by people who coveted their modern mud huts. So here we are some 11,000 years later still fighting over the same piece of parched earth. We’ve certainly found new and more lethal ways to wage war and to kill each other for the power, and domination of our fellow man, but it doesn’t appear the inherently human qualities of greed, envy, lust, and jealousy have evolved very much in the last eleven millennium. So, tell me, how have we evolved?
Looking back on the ancient empires of Egypt, Babylon, Samaria, Greece, Rome China, and India, we see the evolution of man from simple creatures of survival to the various classes of poor and privileged. The privileged had free time on their hands so they invented leisure where they could dabble in various arts like literature painting, theater, and sculpting. They studied the heavens to find out the right time to have the unprivileged head out to the fields to plant and harvest, and of course, they convinced the unprivileged they were too important to not obey. Being a god came in handy in the early days of empires. The privileged were able to convince their followers of the destruction of the earth if they did not fall in line. Today we see the destruction of the earth is a mere decade (maybe two) away unless we fall in line and do what the privileged say. Again, have we evolved? If so, how? Back then they had gods for everything and they could not be challenged or their whims questioned. Now we have science, but like the gods, it cannot be questioned.
Finally, when our survival depended on our abilities and death was a constant companion, we mourned the loss of children stillborn, or children who died from decease, accidents, or violence. Families grew and supported each other, Parents became grandparents and remained close to help as long as they could and then to be cared for by the younger generations as they became more dependent. Now we have a society that cries about the inequality of mankind but places their own elderly into remote nursing homes. We have groups of people whose passion is to save the wildlife, but at the same time think nothing of helping someone destroy human life. We shut down our economy (and vilified the President for not acting however the left thought he should) over a virus that has taken over 400,000 lives, but think nothing of destroying 800,000 lives a year because the mother and father choose not to accept the responsibility of its creation. So how have our values for what makes us human evolved?
[1] BCE is the currently fashionable term for what used to be BC (Before Christ) noting the greatest event in human history.
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