Sapiens, pages 16-19: The "Unsetting and Perhaps Thrilling" End of Chapter 1

I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time, sometimes four.

Today's post marks the end of Chapter 1. An Animal of No Significance. 

But first, a preview of thoughts to come. Thoughts that are always there, if I'm being honest.

In the last post, we were considering models for human origins that affect how we regard the hominins of the Genus Homo—mostly, the middle to later ones with large brains . 

Either we see many separate species, with Sapiens being narrowly defined and being the only one to survive. This is the perspective from the "Replacement" model or theory. 

Or, alternatively, we see Sapiens as being more synonymous with what Harari separately terms "humans" on page 5. So, instead of separate lineages, Sapiens are one, variable genetically linked lineage spread over geographic space and time, including Neanderthals, and perhaps others like later erectus, and etc. This is the perspective from the Multiregional model or what Harari calls the "Interbreeding Theory". 

[For the curious, there are other models that are messier and in-between those two extremes. Like assimilation, leaky replacement, hybridization, etc. John Hawks wades nicely into that on his blog.]

Because we have already seen Harari distinguish other large-brained, fairly recent fossil hominins from Sapiens and insinuate that the varying anatomical traits that inspire those different categories are due to reproductive isolation (note: we cannot know that)...and because we've already been reading his Original Sin and Cain-like narrative for Sapiens' origins, then it's really no surprise which model he goes with: Replacement.

And it's really no surprise that, despite the amazing advancements in ancient DNA science at the time of his writing, he sticks with the Replacement model. 

Page 16

He's right about his reports of scientists estimating that Europeans carry 1-4% (varies by individual) Neanderthal DNA in their genomes. Since the time of his writing, these estimates have changed to include people globally, including Asia (with amounts equal to Europeans) and Africa (with smaller amounts). This is what one might expect to find in one genetically interconnected lineage such as ours. 

And he's right about analyses of ancient DNA from a fossil of the hominins nicknamed "Denisovans". I have not kept up with that area of research but a quick search now turns up this news (to me) and is one way to follow up on your curiosity: https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/prehistoric-jomon-people-in-japan-had-little-to-no-dna-from-the-mysterious-denisovans-study-finds.

About Neanderthals, we have plenty to think about. 1-4% sounds like a small percentage but that's in each individual who has different parts of the Neanderthal genome. In other words, if you add up what parts are kicking around in human genomes, that makes up more than 1-4% of the whole Neanderthal genome. There's just no way to look at that percentage in each person and then assume that matings were "very rare" between Neanderthal and contemporaneous Sapiens. And then to use that tempting logic to continue to categorize Neanderthals and contemporaneous Sapiens as separate biological species is just not a very strong argument at all. They may have been making babies over thousands of years.  

Part of the problem with the Neanderthal question, since wayyyyy before we had any of their mtDNA or nuclear DNA—so way back when all we had were their big eyes, noses, teeth, chinless jaws, jutting cheeks, brows, and buns, and archaeological debris--has always been that we are comparing them more to us NOW than we are comparing them to contemporaneous Sapiens. And that bias factored far more in the popular perception of Neanderthals since the advances in ancient DNA have kept them in the news cycle. But I'm getting off track. We really need to get to where Harari is going. 

His argument (at the end of 16, carrying over to 17) that Neanderthals were on the cusp of being a biologically separate species, incapable of making babies with Sapiens is just bullshit. 

I can't remember if we've talked about bullshit in the academic sense yet. I have only one source. Harry Frankfurt's little black book from 2005 On Bullshit. But here's the philosophical, or at least Frankfurtian, take on bullshit. It's not lying. Lying acknowledges that there is a truth to subvert/oppose/whatever. Bullshit is unconcerned with the truth. 

Have we gone there yet? I can't remember. But if we haven't, you may be wondering why not. Maybe you think Harari's already gone there. If I haven't brought up bullshit yet, then maybe it's because I've been trying to read Sapiens in good faith. I'll keep trying, too. But for now, in this moment, I call bullshit. You literally cannot know if Neanderthals were on the cusp of full reproductive distinction from Sapiens. (And if Harari is too unfamiliar with the science to know how bullshitty that is, then what the hell is this book doing as the world's favorite human evolution book?)

Page 17

But what you can do is imagine, along with Harari, what it might be like to step out of your DeLorean 50,000 years ago and f*ck a Neanderthal or vice versa.  If you'd prefer to imagine this event with only the unsettling feelings and none of the thrilling ones, then read Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear (for much unwanted sex between a Neanderthal and a Sapiens). But if you brave your way through that, then be sure to read the follow up, The Valley of the Horses, which has ALL of the thrilling and none of the unsettling (and is sex between two Sapiens).

Time out for a sec....

Imagine how unsettling, and perhaps thrilling this is for the tortoise and the pug witnesses.

What we're not getting in this "rare occasions" vision of hominin sexual behavior between what scholars and scientists have categorized as separate species based on slight anatomical variations is this: We do not have the ancient DNA of hominins prior to the very recent era in which Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens overlapped. Who's to say their predecessors' interbreeding/mating/babymaking was rare or not? These are tricky enough questions to even attempt to ask the genomes that we do have, and people are trying, but even then, so much is modeled and so much is unknowable! 

Somehow (and it's amazing..) despite the evidence that we are descendants of, not separate from, Neanderthals, peoples' minds about Neanderthals and their separateness do not change. They keep the Replacement model and refuse the Multiregional model. Still. And I don't know why I should be surprised. When we're dealing with theories that are so heavily reliant on taxonomy which is human-constructed, not the facts found in nature, and when we're also dealing in theories of things that we cannot entirely observe or verify or falsify, then we can go on believing what we want, even when the evidence changes. 

Harari's preference for the Replacement narrative (which is the mainstream popular one, I think still today) keeps Sapiens separate from everyone else as a way to hold our species as such and to explain with a number of possible reasons falling under one powerful triumphant theme: Sapiens are better and worse than all the rest.

So, only within Harari's narrative, within the Replacement model, could we even ask the question that's rampant in discussions of human evolution: WHY ARE WE THE ONLY ONES LEFT? 

1. "Homo sapiens drove [the other hominins] to extinction" by being better at surviving and reproducing and multiplying and spreading compared to less resourceful Neanderthals who eventually died out.

Page 18

2. Competition for resources "flared up into violence and genocide. Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark." Oh. It gets worse: "It may well be that when Sapiens encountered Neanderthals, the result was the first and most significant ethnic-cleansing campaign in history." Wow. You know why you've never heard a serious scientist say that? Because there is zero evidence for this and it would take omniscience to actually know if it's true. It's entirely science-fiction and so it cannot be a serious perspective contributing to an intellectual formulation of human nature and should not contribute to the evolutionary psycho-analysis of our species. (And whether anything should contribute to such a project is a question that I find myself answering always with 'no'.)

About 1 or 2,  Harari says, "Whichever way it happened..." Well well well... he forgot the option where it happened neither way. He forgot a 3rd. Like, something to do with the fact that we are descended from various hominins of the Upper Pleistocene, Neanderthals included and we could think of them all as Sapiens, but who cares what they're called because it's possible to narrate them as never going extinct because they live on in us. 

But outcompeting them or killing them off is a better story. Is an actual story. Existence existing is no story and is not acceptable book fodder. And so...we are asked... instead to wonder... 

"Had the Neanderthals survived, would we still imagine ourselves to be a creature apart?" 

How confusing. Harari just led us to believe that science, not our imaginations, leads to the conclusion that we are a creature apart.  Now he is subtly acknowledging the arbitrariness of taxonomy and how it is based in bias and then goes on to biases our perspective. Right? Is that what he's doing? Ugh. Good? But too subtle. Any goodness here is canceled out by the very next sentence...

"Perhaps this is exactly why our ancestors wiped out the Neanderthals. They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate."

I can't read any irony into that. If irony or presenting a point of view was the aim here, rather than asserting his point of view or that of science's, then it failed. 

By the bottom of the page we're into the final summary grafs of the chapter...

"Whether Sapiens are to blame or not, no sooner had they arrived at a new location than the native population became extinct. The last remains of [later erectus] are dated to about 50,000 years ago [ which is incorrect and may be based on an old paper? It's a little over 100,000, which is very different.]" 

Page 19

And he says the Denisovans and Neanderthals disappeared shortly after, by 30,000 years ago. Except of course that they didn't actually disappear any more than any of our ancestors did, because they survive in us. 

And he nods to the "hobbits" on Flores, again who are now known to have a deeper date of around 50,000 years ago (not 12,000 like we originally believed at the time of his writing). 

"What was the Sapiens' secret of success?"

See. If we're not the last surviving ones, then there is no triumphant tale to tell and, apparently, one must be told. It's the hero's journey. Joseph Campbell told us that not only is it universal but it's human nature, not just to tell it, mind you, but that it is told universally because the story structure itself is describing human nature. In her 1990 book Narratives of Human Evolution, Misia Landau showed us that the forefathers of human evolutionary theory all narrated human evolution like a hero's journey. So many tests to overcome on the way to triumph...

"How did we manage to settle so rapidly in so many distant and ecologically different habitats? How did we push all other human species into oblivion [sheeeeesh]? Why couldn't even the strong, brainy, cold-proof Neanderthals survive our onslaught [ffffffffffff]?"

The debate over the reason for our triumph "continues to rage", he says. And he says the "most likely answer is the very thing that makes the debate possible." It's clever stuff like this that taps into the numinous is these sorts of books, isn't it? I love that feeling. Too bad it's followed by the next sentence!

"Homo sapiens conquered the world [C'MON] thanks above all to its unique language."

I am the last person to diminish how magnificent humans are. Humans are my favorite animal. 

I'm just not a fan of storytelling as if it's science. In fact, I've been radicalized against storytelling as if it's science. I'm approaching 50. I've seen enough to know what storytelling is and, more importantly, why it's bad for science and why that, in turn, most importantly, is bad for the world. 

I love novels. I love fiction. Keep it up artists!!! Everyone else, keep up the reading!!! There are so many reasons. For people who do science, literature fills the creative well, opens the creative mind to possibilities a person cannot conceive of on their own. Other people make us brilliant because they make us bigger than ourselves, and that's especially experienced through novels and fiction. Yes. But I do not love when fiction masquerades as science, or is perceived to be science, and that's what we mostly found in Chapter 1 of Sapiens. 

Chapter 2 is next. And, right off the bat, we'll get to why the Replacement model is just as enticing for racists as the alternative. To be continued...