The similarity of man (left), chicken (center), and dog-fish (right) in their embryo stage.
Contents | Continue to "Life in the Savannah"
For years I pondered on what an ape's account of the history of mankind would be like. An animal is necessarily closer to nature–its laws and its logic–than a human. Only a being whose logic has not been influenced by its mind could explain the history of mankind without prejudice.
Acquiring the mind, humans lost their natural logic, which means that their explanation of natural phenomena, particularly their own existence, cannot but be biased. They also like to explore the known with the unknown.
The ape could begin his history of mankind with modern mankind, whose latest product contains each step of its own evolution. It is unnecessary to speculate about the meaning of fossils. All fossils of the human species can be found in any living human being. Human abstract thoughts are the results of the brain, a brain programed by the major events in the life of the human species. However proud of our mind we may be, the mind cannot create ex nihio. By analyzing abstract human creations he can uncover the major happenings in the evolution of the human species, the happenings which have conditioned or inspired these abstract creations.
It is useless to study wild animals in order to understand humans, because they have little in common as far as their behavior is concerned. Most animals are naturally complete beings possessing some innate pattern of behavior, hereditarily transmitted. Their specialization, the result of an evolution which helps them to find harmony with the universe and its laws, is evidence of their completeness, their correct place in nature, their best way in given circumstances of surviving and reproducing. In brief, they have realized a stable relationship between their specialization and their environment.
Humans are incomplete beings. Lacking specialization, they are open to change with any change of circumstance. The human animal, in contrast to other animals, is unpredictable. Animals inherit their pattern of behavior; humans have to learn it.
It is also pointless to study animals in captivity in order to understand mankind. Animals in unnatural surroundings behave unnaturally.
Furthermore it is fruitless to compare our human ancestors with present-day aborigines or Bushmen. There is far more of our ancestors in modern "civilized" mankind, particularly when confronted with fear or great anxiety in exlex (lawless) situations, than in so-called modern "primitive" mankind. Besides, the modern primitives have a culture, often a very homogeneous culture, and a mind with the capacity for creating abstract thoughts, neither of which our ancestors possessed before Homo sapiens.
The study of prehistory, working backward from modern man, could be even more dangerous, however, than research through fossils or through other animals. Scientists will always uncover what suits their beliefs, prejudices, metaphysical preconceptions, or simply their conceit. A convinced Marxist will find that prehistoric society was based on the collective possession of the means and tools of production. A capitalist will discover, by analogy to other animals' behavior patterns, that private domain or the "territorial imperative" were more important to man than the sexual drive, because without the former, mating was impossible.
An example of how human logic can differ can be seen in the disputes between the East and West concerning the Russian opponents of the Soviet regime. Many dissidents went to lunatic asylums and were treated as mentally sick. Western doctors and the press accused Soviet doctors of being blind instruments of the regime and of having broken the solemn oath of their calling. The Russian doctors thought the West had gone mad in reproaching their behavior. For them, anyone who opposed such an efficient police power must be mentally disturbed. In their view, only those who had what Seneca called Libido morienti (the death wish) would dare to provoke the State. The Russian doctors were convinced that they were undertaking a humanitarian mission by placing the opponents of the regime in asylums and thereby reducing their aggression–the only hope for their survival. To reduce the outstanding to mediocrity was always a medical and human duty in a state where mediocrity had the better chance of survival.
In Western countries, proud of their Christian civilization, anyone imitating Christ's advice of "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that that thou hast, and give to the poor," would either be locked up or imprisoned for impersonating Christ. Yet it is quite natural for Christians to believe in miracles and the supernatural.
When Darin published his thesis, the majority of humanity considered his opponents logical when they protested: "It is better to have a God as a father, than an ape."
Another reason why research in the origin of mankind cannot be carried out objectively by humans is because humans glorify their ancestors and their origin. Perhaps this is why authors such as Robert Ardrey, Jacob Bronowski, Konrad Lorenz, and Desmond Morris are so appealing.
Idealistic philosophy has influenced mankind to glorify itself and its ancestors. Reading some of the books on the origin of mankind, one receives the impression that our ancestors separated from the apes and faced the vicissitudes of the savannah merely to please the ego of modern man and give him the illusion of superiority.
Konrad Lorenz, in his book On Aggression stressed the following apologetic words: ". . . and who has gained insight into evolution, will be able to apprehend the unique position of man. We are the highest achievement reached so far by the great constructors of evolution." Seven pages later Lorenz writes: "Unreasoning and unreasonable human-nature causes two nations to compete, though no economic necessity compels them to do so; it induces to political parties or religions with amazingly similar programmes of salvation, to fight each other bitterly and impels an Alexander or Napoleon to sacrifice millions of lives in his attempt to unite the world under his sceptre" . . . "and we are so accustomed to the phenomena that most of us fail to realise how abjectly stupid and undesirable the historical mass behaviour of humanity actually is."
The genius of Darwin has its moments of adolescent infatuation. "The world," he writes, "it has often been remarked, appears as if it had long been preparing for the advent of man: and this in one sense is strictly true for he owes his birth to a long line of progenitors." But many animals have just as long a line of progenitors as humans, most even longer. Darin should have known that even Caesar who, in the agony of death, adjusted his toga to cover his nudity, or the stoic death of Antoninus Pius, are nothing in comparison with the greatness implicit in the behavior of dog described by Darin himself in his book The Descent of Man". . . and everyone has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator."
Some scientists, such as Lévy-Bruhl, call the mental activity of humanity following the advent of Homo sapiens "logical," and the mental activity preceding Homo sapiens, "pre-logical." In my view, ever since man discovered his brain and the mind's power to create abstract thoughts, he entered an era of beliefs, an era in which he remains today. "Homo" is more credulus than sapiens. In this era of beliefs man is consequent to his beliefs, to his prejudices and to his abstract convictions. This is contrary to logic. It is the logic of a believer, but not of a rational being. The human female can be logical, but we live in a man's world, a supernatural world, a world created by man's mind, a world which rejects a natural intelligence and its logic. Man's abstract world is man's refuge from reality. Any believer finds it quite logical to obey, without question, the orders of his superiors.
In this book I will do my utmost to detach myself as far as possible from human logic in favor of natural logic and to interpret mankind's past and present more objectively. Many theories on the origin of mankind and its evolution have been nothing but pure and often naïve speculations. "Most books concerning the origin of humans," Ellen Morgan explains in her The Descent of Woman "include some phrases such as 'the early stages of man's evolutionary progress remain a total mystery.'" The following statement of Sherwood L. Washbourne confirms my view. "The study of human evolution is a game rather than a science in the usual sense." At a meeting in London in 1975 of fossil man experts, F. C. Howell said: "We ought to throw away a lot of ideas and try to start anew."
Scientists today explain that mankind came from the killer-ape who separated from his non-aggressive cousin and advanced his status because of his predatory life. In order to hunt he became upright and by using his hands he developed his brain.
There are many people who still believe that humanity was created by God. According to Archbishop Usher's "Kallender," God created mankind on March 23, 4004 B.C. In propounding this date the Archbishop ignored the fact that the Egyptians already had a real calendar in 4241 B.C.
The main difference of opinion on the origin of mankind lies between paleontologists and serologists. The former claim that the separation of humans from apes occurred between 15 and 50 million years ago, the exact date varying from author to author; whereas the serologists, led by Vincent Sarich, an American molecular biologist, explain that the separation of man from ape occurred only 4 million years ago.
I will start with the presupposition that one can see in the final product both its origin and its stages of evolution.
Mankind is a singular species in nature with a number of unique peculiarities. Logically, therefore, the history of humanity should be a history of these peculiarities. It is also logical that a unique end-product must have had a unique beginning.
From the very beginning our ancestors must have been more open to development than other animal species. What kind of animal can be open to development? Surely only an underdeveloped animal. The human species must have started from a state of inferiority, a unique inferiority.
Darwin proclaims that Natura non fecit saltum (Nature does not jump). This is true, but nature can create abnormalities, not by jumping forward but by slipping behind, by halting at an earlier stage of development.
The main peculiarity is that humans are ready to perform sexual intercourse at any time, while other animals are only sexually aroused during the so-called mating season, or at the time of oestrus. What is more, humans are the only species to organize their lives around sexual pleasure.
In order to understand what really happened at the beginning we must point out another peculiarity of mankind. Human beings are the only species of animal lacking the instinct to reproduce. Humans reproduce by accident as a result of sexual pleasure.
Lack of an instinct for reproduction caused lack of an instinct for preservation of the species. Lack of an instinct for preservation of the species explains the ease "with which humans destroy each other, their indifference to the future of mankind.
The amount of contraceptives used and the number of abortions performed underlines this. Mankind, however conceited or proud it is, must admit that behind the origin of every human being there is no noble instinct of reproduction or any generous feeling toward the species, but merely sensual pleasure sometimes in a drunken or drugged state, a pleasure often obtained by money, deceit, or rape.
It is impossible to imagine the number of people walking the streets of this world whose conception was unwanted, but whose foetal life was not terminated because of some religious, legal, or moral prejudice, or through financial straits. Most accidentally pregnant women would laugh at the poetic thought of Novalis, who saw in every child an amour devenu visible.
Before starting to explain the origin of these human peculiarities, it is necessary to explain briefly what happened before mankind came into existence.
Scientists estimate the creation of the earth at about 4,500 million years ago. Approximately 4,000 million years ago the sea as formed; 500 million years later the first life appeared in the water in the form of single-celled algae and bacteria. Though there are several theories about the origin of life, only one thing is positive: life, once started, being life, started breeding life. Organisms evolved from other organisms following the elementary law of life: the survival of a better biological adaptation. "Le rêve de toute cellule vivante est de devenir deux cellules," wrote François Jacob.
We can calculate the appearance of the first oxygen-breathing animals at approximately 900 million years ago, and the development of various species of fish at 400-600 million years ago; 430 million years ago land plants began to grow. Between 300-400 million years ago the amphibians, reptiles, and insects started to evolve. Approximately 230 million years ago the dinosaurs appeared, followed by mammals and, some 30 million years later, birds.
Around 70-75 million years ago, the ancestors of our ancestors, small, ratlike insectivores, left their perilous life on ground level for a safer one in the trees. In these small, tree-shrew type of mammals who chose an arboreal environment for reasons of safety, is the origin of the primate. The first page of the history of mankind opens in the woodlands of East Africa.
Most scientists calculate the appearance of monkeys and apes to be about 40 million years ago. They explain that the oldest manlike primate, Ramapithecus, lived in Africa and India about 10 million years ago. Australopithecus lived in Africa approximately 1 1/2 million years ago and is considered to be our direct ancestor. Approximately one million years ago we meet so-called Homo habilis, the tool user or tool-maker, and at the same time humans started walking upright. About 130,000 years ago Neanderthal people were in North Africa and Europe, but 20,000 years ago they dwindled with the appearance of Homo sapiens.
This is a general picture of the evolution of mankind until the arrival of Homo sapiens, as presented by most scientists today.
Desmond Morris in The Naked Ape describes this important era in the following two phrases: "The ancestors of the only other surviving ape - the naked ape - struck out, left the forest, and threw themselves into competition with the already efficiently adapted ground dwellers. It as a risky business but in terms of evolutionary success it paid dividends" - a statement which sounds more like a financial report than a statement of history.
Carlton S. Coon, in his book The History of Man, compresses the most vital events in mankind's past into the following three sentences: "From some kind of a Miocene ape probably living in Africa, both living apes and men are descended. The apes' ancestors, after a trial period on the ground, sung back into the trees. Ours stayed below, rose onto their hind-legs, made tools, walked, talked and became hunters."
In other words, humans and apes decided one day to come down from the trees, to leave an environment ideal from the point of view of food and security. Then the apes, the less advanced animals, returned to the trees and lived happily ever after, while the more advanced humans walked out of their natural paradise into the hell of the savannah.
In the savannah the human ancestors, with no natural specialization, small and fragile (about 2 1/2 feet tall), with a brain not more than a third of the size of the gorilla today (i.e. one seventh the capacity of that of modern man), had to live and compete with highly specialized and dangerous predators. In natural logic, our human ancestors could only have made this step if they ere urged on by a strange desire to commit collective suicide. We must remember that originally the ancestors of primates fled from the dangerous ground into the safety of the trees, a wise step which must have left a trace on their brain. No animal will ever leave a safe environment for a dangerous one, especially when it has an inbuilt and atavistic fear of the danger. This atavistic fear of falling is occasionally experienced in our nightmares.
Scientists do not explain why our human ancestors separated from the apes' ancestors and initiated their own evolution. Nor have they ever explained what the anomaly was which affected our ancestors and launched the human species, an anomaly which must have been present from the start, and one on which depends our separation from the other apes, and our uniqueness.
What follows is my explanation of the beginning of the human species.
In the Eocene epoch (36-58 million years ago) there as already a distinction between the anthropoids and the prosimians. The former were human like primates, the latter included ancestors of lemurs, tarsiers, and tree shrews.
Our ancestors lived in company with the ancestors of apes. The law of natural and sexual selection was in operation. From their former existence as lower mammals, the primates inherited a hierarchical system of organization. In this oriental type of male tyranny we find polygamy. In this hierarchical society the female assumes the rank of the male she is copulating with, her aim being to copulate with the highest rank possible. Primates only copulate when the female is in heat. During this period the female develops a distinct odor which arouses the instinct of reproduction in the males. This was the system which human ancestors and ape ancestors respected.
Before continuing, I must clear up an important point. Scientists, ever since Spencer and Darwin, have talked of the "struggle of life," the "survival of the fittest" and "sexual selection," but none explain exactly what is meant by the "fittest." Does it mean the strongest physically or the most intelligent-in subjugating the other males? My belief is that in the fight for pre-eminence within the highest rank in the group, it as not the cleverest or most intelligent who won. It was not even the strongest physically, although strength often coincides with fitness. In the animal world the individual with the strongest fighting spirit, with the most determination, will impose himself on the others. But what dictates the fighting spirit in a male? It must be the level of maturity in his instinct for reproduction - the main instinct in nature, stronger than the instinct of survival - survival serving the former.
This will be clearer by citing a relevant fact. When one reads that in the struggle for sex and for survival it is the fittest who wins, one immediately has an impression of war, a bellum omnium contra omnes, a fight to the death inter-species and intra-species. It has even been called a "jungle law," or simply a "jungle." But in a jungle there is no "jungle." Even in relations between predator and prey there is order. Between predator and prey there is no hatred or unnecessary killing. The struggle in the jungle is very civilized in comparison with human struggles. In the jungle, and particularly between males of the same species, we see more a display of strength than a use of it. In this display it is not the fittest who wins - victory presupposes a fight which is not logical in nature. In a display of strength (more correctly described as a display of determination to fight if necessary), it is not the more determined who wins; it is the less determined to fight who concedes the victory. Nature survives through an elementary law that the less fit acknowledges the fitter, paying homage to him and either abiding by his order, or withdrawing from the group. Flight is the rule in nature. Fight is the exception which occurs when the flight of the less fit is impossible.
On the fringes of any group of human and ape ancestors there as always a group of omega males. These individuals were there because their instinct for reproduction was not mature enough to compete; it had ceased to develop at an earlier stage. Competition is not a facet of a weak instinct for reproduction. This observation must have induced humans - aeons later - to tame animals by castration. These omega bachelors were biologically adult, able to copulate and procreate, but their instinct for reproduction as not strong enough to urge them to compete for sex with other males. In an abulic state, they followed the group at a distance, indulging from time to time in illegal intercourse with an undisciplined or randy female. It is to these omega ape individuals we may look for our first ancestors. Humans have one pair of chromosomes less than gorillas and chimpanzees.
Had their illegal copulation not resulted in offspring, they would have died out without leaving a trace. The male offspring of this unnatural copulation, if inheriting his father's slow-maturing instinct for reproduction, would join the omega individuals. If, however, he felt a strong instinct he would join the group in search of a rank. The female offspring who inherited the father's low instinct for reproduction started the history of a new species: mankind. This female, with underdeveloped oestrus due to the immaturity of her instinct for reproduction would, on reaching adulthood, start to solicit the hierarchy in search of copulation. In her soliciting of the males, she was not urged on by the instinct for reproduction but by another instinct developing in underdeveloped beings - the instinct of imitation. Imitation of the superior, of the grown-up, is increased by feelings of insufficiency, by an internal itch of the immature, by the frustration of the underdeveloped. Soliciting without oestrus, without the scent to provoke sexual reaction in the males, was soon considered by the hierarchy to be contrary to natural order, and abnormality and a nuisance to the males. In nature, order rejects disorder. This abnormal female ape, soliciting in imitation but without oestrus, was soon chased out of the group. There, on its fringes, she joined the omega bachelors.
These insufficient omega individuals had one positive quality. They were receptive to any new development, any new life. Animal trainers are well aware that it is easier to train an omega individual than an individual of a superior rank.
Soon the new females seduced the omega bachelors.
"The male monkey cannot in fact mate with the female without her invitation and her willingness to co-operate," Leonard Williams states in Man and Monkey.
These omega males performed intercourse by imitation. Because of the lack of the odor of oestrus of the new females, their sexual participation was unnatural. There were no natural means or methods of sexual attraction between our ancestors. Today there are none either.
Soon our human ancestors felt pleasure in the imitation of mating, that unique pleasure that only humans, these inferior beings, can experience, the pleasure of achievement - the excitement of performing an act reserved for superior beings. For other animals mating was the normal course of nature.
Slowly mankind became an imitating species. Imitation became the human specialization. Humans learned to run, swim, jump, food-gather, hunt, and fish, all by imitating the specializations of other animals. "No animal voluntarily imitates an action performed by man," Darwin says. Why, indeed, should animals imitate humans, when human actions are a bad imitation of their own? How clumsy we must seem to fish when we swim, or to predators when we run or hunt.
Imitation is the activity of an incomplete being in search of completeness. Successful imitation results in orgasmic pleasure. Orgasmic pleasure is the feeling of achievement experienced by an incomplete being. Only humans can attain orgasmic pleasure, and only through successful imitation, not only in sexual acts but in any other imitative performance. People who are overly self confident or who, under the say of some abstract belief, consider themselves complete beings, such as saints or mystics, are not interested in sex.
Man, being more incomplete than woman, experiences more orgasmic pleasures. One example of male orgasmic pleasure can be seen when members of a football team hug and kiss each other after one of their team has scored a goal.
That orgasm is the result of successful imitation can be proved by post-orgasmic exhaustion. Imitation requires an effort - successful imitation even more so.
If one observes the behavior of those members of our society who are more poorly developed mentally or physically, one will notice that they exaggerate their participation in activities which for them symbolize adulthood - being grown-up. They may end up as alcoholics, chain-smokers, nymphomaniacs, or Don Juans. Exaggeration in the imitation of grown-up activities is a sign of a feeling of incompleteness. Today millions find pleasure in smoking or drinking. It all started when, as a child or an adolescent, they copied what they considered the proper activity of an "adult." Any time a smoker or a drinker doubts his completeness he needs encouragement. This he finds in successfully performing a "grown-up" activity, such as lighting a cigarette. Any time frigid men or women doubt their maturity they will quickly indulge in sexual activity - a performance considered "grown-up" - in search of self-reassurance.
In humans, sex became a yardstick of achievement, an instrument of completeness - a means of satisfaction. These attitudes opened the gates to rape, prostitution, sexual violence, and perversion of sex, particularly in the human male. In the animal world there is no such thing as rape, prostitution, or perversion.
Mankind's beginnings were based on the immature instinct for reproduction among some apes. As this deficiency, owing to the early mortality of our human ancestors (they lived for about twenty to twenty-five years), had no time to improve, it slowly became part of their nature.
The offspring of these new couples, if similar to the parents, would stay with them on the fringes of the main group.
Darwin realized that humans evolved from inferior apes, but he did not dare to emphasize the fact. It was already considered a crime in his time to have revealed that man and ape had common ancestors. "Hence it might have been an immense advantage to man to have sprung from comparatively weak creatures," he wrote in The Descent of Man. "We have seen," he wrote in the same book, "in the last two chapters that man bears in his bodily structure clear traces of his descent from some lower form."
Today, when man is so proud of his achievements, he still produces non-self-sufficient, incomplete infants, who, not inheriting any natural pattern of behavior, have to learn how to live. Man had to invent cultural inheritance, which is an imitation of the past. Cultural inheritance is not a natural inheritance; it is an "ought to be" behavior; it has to be forced on human infants.
The ancient Egyptian Ani advised his son to marry and beget a son whom he must "teach to be a man." Since the beginning of his existence in the woodlands, man has had to learn how to be a man. The Egyptian deity's advice was as valid in the woodlands as it is today in British schools or in Sicilian villages.
The human reproduction continued, not as a result of instinct but by an imitation of sexual intercourse and the pleasure experienced in successful imitation. When one sees a little girl playing with dolls it is a result of her developed instinct of imitation, not her instinct for reproduction.
With pregnancy our human female ancestors acquired the instinct of preservation of the species, particularly in caring for their offspring.
With the birth of the offspring of the two original underdeveloped apes, the first nucleus of mankind was formed. The female soon realized that the only way to keep the male with her and the group was sexual pleasure. The new group introduced a new way of life to the world of mammals, a life of sexual promiscuity based on consensus which, as any consensus, was based on seduction. In the case of our ancestors, it was the seduction of the male by the female.
Man, an animal with a feeling of insufficiency, found self-importance in sexual intercourse, a feeling of achievement. This is why sex was and still is performed throughout the year, day and night.
The first human society based on sexual pleasure was dominated by woman. In promiscuity, paternity is unknown. The human female, thrown into this group of abulic omega apes, recognized that she had to seduce them and keep them under the spell of seduction. The human female, compared to her cousin the ape who attracts males by the scent of her oestrus, developed her own intuition, the ability to smell out the easiest prey among men. Here an important factor must be emphasized. The human female, in order to seduce the male, followed the elementary law of movement in nature, the law of least resistance. The female was attracted to the male who proved the easiest to seduce. This is why the theory of natural and sexual selection have never worked with the human species.
Spurred on by numbers, our ancestors, still living alongside their cousins the apes, performed the first and most important act of mankind. They rebelled. They rebelled against following the main group which up to that time had always been natural. They separated from the main group, from authority, from natural order (an order based on the dominance of the fittest), and started an autonomous life, a life of sexual pleasure in sexual permissiveness.
This first step of mankind, this rebellion against natural order based on the authority of the fittest, has left a big scar on the old brain of humanity. This scar shaped the human mind when it became active in Homo sapiens.
Any hierarchy, whether religious, social, economic or political, became the reason for rebellion, the movens of revolution for male humanity, as soon as the power of the mind was discovered. Individuals, and gangs of individuals, lived, and still live in permanent fear of being taken over by some superior individual or a superior gang. Humans achieved a paradox typical of their species. They were able to accept misery with joy as long as everyone was sharing it equally. The old Italian proverb Mal comune, mezzo gaudio (An evil in common is halfway to enjoyment) has proved valid throughout history. This paradox of the human mind, this fear of being overtaken by someone fitter, can be seen in the success of the systems that promise equality, even if equality is misery.
If any animal could ever achieve abstract thought, the idea of rebellion would never enter its mind. For an animal, rebellion is abnormal and dangerous. The animal world must have viewed the first rebellion of the human species, and any subsequent rebellion, as humans view rebellious cancerous cells reproducing independently, defying any order or limit on their growth, and breaking the harmony and eventually the existence of the organism in which they live - their own habitat.
Rebellion and the search for autonomy will always remain the essence of human nature, the nature of the inferior being. Rebellion is in conflict with rational laws. Humans, when they discovered the mind, even glorified rebellions and revolutions. Men dedicated one of the most important myths to their greatest rebel, Prometheus.
Human beings were the victims of natural selection, and essentially they will always hate inequality. Most human rebellions were successful because they were fought in the name of equality. Equality is irrational, and irrationality is stronger than rationality because it is accompanied by aggression.
An inferior being can only succeed by destroying order. The history of mankind is only a history of social, political, economic, and religious rebellions, rebellions of the inferior - inferior in age, wealth, strength, or intelligence; rebellions in the name of equality. Humans, after all, are only happy when promiscuous and permissive because this gives them the impression of freedom, of access to all ranks, so canceling all ranks. The first human community was a community of "hippie apes" who eschewed law and order and formed their own independent commune.
Humans owe their survival as a species to the pleasures of mating. The purpose of mating in the animal world, dictated by an instinct, is to promulgate the species. The purpose of mating in humans is pleasure, through which, by accident, the human species has continued. The natural instinct for reproduction has its counterpart. It diminishes or ceases whenever the number of individuals increases to the point of jeopardizing the survival of the species. The reproduction of humans, based on sexual pleasure, and on mental satisfaction after the mind was discovered, has no natural brakes. This must be emphasized in order to explain the next major happening in the history of mankind.
In the Oligocene epoch, between 15-36 million years ago, there is already a clear distinction between apes and humans living side by side in the woodlands of Africa. The ancestors of gorillas and chimpanzees, respecting the natural law of selective reproduction, advanced in their evolution. Our human ancestors, particularly human males, living their lives of pleasure in an environment ideal from the point of view of climate, security and food, and devoid of competition for sex, lagged behind the apes. In this earthly paradise, our human ancestors played with life. Toleration by apes of humans was guaranteed through the amount of food and space available in the Oligocene period, which also was the most ideal epoch for primates in its climate.
Life in the Oligocene paradise left a deep mark on the old brain of our human ancestors, a mark which has been bequeathed to all our descendants and will continue to be bequeathed over future millennia, a mark which will shape, feed, and influence the thoughts of the human mind: Paradise.
In this life of paradise, the human male lost the remainder of his instinct of aggression - his canine teeth. In promiscuity, where there is no sexual selection or discrimination, aggression and authority are replaced by seduction and consensus. Humans, these unaggressive animals, soon began to fear even the sight of a display of strength or signs of aggression from their cousins the apes.
In the Oligocene epoch, human ancestors and ape ancestors lived together in peaceful co-existence. The apes evolved in a natural way, conducive to natural selection; humans evolved in a promiscuous way guided by sexual pleasure. Promiscuous reproduction created variety, and in this variety of human types we must look for an important factor in the survival of humans as a species, particularly when they started life in the savannah. In the animal world the fittest reproduce, in this way helping the species to survive. The animal's way of survival is better for a stable environment and for animals who are specialized. The human's way was better for unspecialized animals and for the unpredictable and changing environment which humans faced in the savannah.
In the Miocene epoch, 13-16 million years ago, the second major event occurred in the evolution of mankind; a change of climate took place. The deterioration of the climate transformed a great part of the woodlands into a desert. This new environment brought major changes to the existence of the primates. Previously the vastness of the woodlands and the abundance of food enabled the primates to tolerate each other. There was no territorial feeling. When the space for living was reduced, non-toleration by apes of humans began. Reduction in food and space created an awareness of territory, and this awareness bred aggression.
Here I repeat that the instinct for reproduction in animals brings with it its own automatic brakes, whenever the environment cannot support the increase in population. In humans then, as today, since reproduction was not controlled by instinct but by pleasure, there were no brakes. Instead, for some abnormal or typically human reason, in any situation of anxiety or danger, humans copulate more avidly - and so increase their population.
Soon the war between apes and humans became open and total. Humans, in their ever increasing numbers, were creating a serious threat to the survival of the apes. The apes, however, were better equipped for the battle. They had "abided" by natural selection, by which the fittest survive for reproduction, and had developed their main weapons, canine teeth. Humans no longer possessed these aggressive tools. Apes became territorial animals and started to chase humans, first to the edge of the woodlands, then out to the open savannah. Humans had never developed their sense of territory; they had no natural weapons - and therefore no aggressive instinct to defend it. In promiscuity there is no feeling of property or territory. Humans, as we shall see later, started to develop a feeling of territory with the arrival of Homo sapiens - with the first man-made weapons. We shall also see later that human aggression developed pari passu, with the development of the human mind.
About 16 million years ago our ancestors were evicted from their woodland paradise into the hell of the African savannah. This traumatic experience, this ejection from paradise, has remained as a scar in mankind's brain for eternity.
Most anthropologists assert that human stock, the brightest of existing animals, came one day out of its natural, ideal environment, with food in abundance and no danger, and chose to start a new life in the hell of the savannah, with limited food, no safe shelter, and a savannah filled with dangerous predators and particularly deadly serpents, which humans and apes feared - and still fear hysterically. This theory is not acceptable by any natural logic. No animal will voluntarily leave a good environment for a bad one. This cannot be explained by the logic of our ancestors - a logic dictated by sexual pleasure, a pleasure more safely performed in the woodlands than in the perilous savannah. These explanations follow modern human logic, which is based on conceit. Humans, considering themselves the most advanced species in nature, had to proclaim that this important step was the most progressive step of their ancestors, determined by free will (which is mankind's great illusion).
As we shall see, the human brain started to expand fast only about a million years ago, and only became capable of abstract thought and conceit about 30,000 years ago. Our ancestors, therefore, could not have been so conceited as to be so irrational.
I think that the most compelling evidence that humans were evicted from the woodlands into the savannah is the fact that the human mind, when it started to function, created the idea of paradise. The mind's ability to create was influenced by the scars left on the brain by past experiences of the species. If any other animal ever became capable of creating abstract ideas, it would never imagine paradise. It would never be able to summon up the myth of a Golden Age. Paradise arises from an experience of humiliation which animals never face. No animal has ever been thrown out of its environment and survived.
Mankind is the product neither of fallen angels nor elevated apes. Mankind consists of fallen apes. The Bible is more accurate than science in its explanation of the origin of human life. Our human ancestors, our Adams and Eves, were evicted from Paradise. The only difference is that historically they were not evicted by Almighty God, but by fitter apes.
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