Sapiens, pages 20-21: "The Tree of Knowledge mutation" (You CAN make this stuff up.)

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

Chapter 1 felt like an eternity. Given all the millions of years it covers, and how long it took me to post the pages, it kind of was. 

But I was, at least, enjoying the process. Now, while I still expect to enjoy the process going forward, the honeymoon is definitely over. 

Just looking at the first two pages of Chapter 2 makes me mad. 

I mean, there were already problems, sure. As we read chapter 1, we noticed that the details about the facts themselves, the fossils and their estimated dates, didn't matter at all, literally at all. The ideas presented weren't dependent on anything other than the fact that we evolved from earlier forms. Fossils and their old geologically-estimated dates demonstrate that, period. But what those forms looked like and how they change or differ from dated phase to dated phase across time and space mattered not at all to Harari's presentation of our ancestors' psyches, and their resulting behaviors. That tells us that the facts themselves have very little to do with what Harari's imagination and his readers imaginations concoct out of the truth of evolution.  

By the end of Chapter 1 we had arrived at "sapiens," a different animal than ever before including, especially, any other hominin. And, for evolved reasons that set us apart from all other hominins, sapiens are the only hominin species left standing. 

Harari must have read Ian Tattersall's books. (We wouldn't know. There are no actual human evolution books in the references. See below). I haven't read Tattersall's most recent, but I have read Masters of the Planet (many times as I taught with it) and The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack. In those, Tattersall, an eminent paleoanthropologist and curator at the AMNH, argues for a sudden appearance of a very different hominin: Homo sapiens. That's what Sapiens is offering us, too, but with the added, entirely sci-fi drama of "wiping out" and "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" and driving any other hominin species "from the face of the earth."

So the excitement of this project had already started to sour by the end of Chapter 1. But, like Harari's story about our ancestors, I too have experienced a sudden shift in my cognition and, thus, my psyche. 

It doesn't help that this week, Harari is in the New York Times talking to Ezra Klein who describes him as someone who studies how stories shape societies. Okay. But isn't it curious that, about human evolutionary stories, he never wonders about their impact on societies? (or vice versa!) Right, spoiler alert: he never acknowledges that his storytelling (and that of whomever seeded his ideas about human evolution) is anything like the "fictions" or "imagined orders" he goes on to to expose in the book, to come.

Instead, in Sapiens (and probably in the graphic versions for kids, and maybe in the other books too, but I haven't read them) Harari is offering a science-free version of human evolution, like it's mad libs with Genesis, but if Freud and Jung wrote Genesis. This is the world's favorite human evolution book and it ignores the actual science of human evolution. 

So either Harari is intentionally trying to use a story about human evolution to shape society, or he's unaware of what he's doing. I can't decide which is worse. 

And if he's someone who studies how stories shape society then, I have questions. Is it ethical to study what you do, yourself, and not disclose that? (I don't know. Maybe ask the tobacco industry? Maybe, the oil barons? The AI overlords?) Is it worse than an ethics problem to be studying a phenomenon that you don't even know you're doing, yourself, with your massive influence?

Tell you what. It's not easy to face Chapter 2 right now. I'd prefer a divorce, today. I'm looking at it and seeing the same themes continue from Chapter 1, the same irritating and offensive habits.

Remember how few references went into Chapter 1? It's not much better for 2. Take a look at the zero references to the hominin fossil record or to Neanderthals, let alone for how they did or did not get along. And, no citations for genetic mutations to do with brain function, which is the crux of today's post. 

I hate to feel this way so early in the project. I really do. I'm not exactly perfect. Who's to say I'm not the asshole here? Who's to say the honeymoon's not over because of me?

But, hang on, isn't it adaptive to be an asshole? Isn't this the sapiens way to triumph? Aren't I just carrying out what we evolved to do, and to be? And sapiens are not quitters, that's for sure. 

Here we are, then, at Chapter 2. We're going to read more about how our species became as Original-sinny, or Cain-like, as Harari led us to imagine in Chapter 1. 

And right off the bat we're told, that not all sapiens are actually sapiens. 

He tells us about something I've never heard: sapiens tried to disperse around 100,000 out of Africa but Neanderthals in the Middle East blocked them. He provides no references to accompany this story (though maybe going down an Ofer Bar-Yosef rabbit hole could explain where he's coming from). Still, he uses the made-up story to demonstrate that, because of their "poor record of achievement," those sapiens weren't yet true sapiens.  So there you have it. Dominating (to put it nicely) other hominins is his measure of sapiens achievement. But, of course, you can't (or shouldn't) measure what you've plucked out of thin air. 

Right. Not all sapiens are actually sapiens. He's saying that it's actually not until 70,000 years ago, when they left Africa, that sapiens became the sapiens "doing very special things." He is wowing us with boats, oil lamps, bows and arrows, needles, and carved animals. He never mentions preservation bias. We may not have these things from earlier hominins simply because the Earth does not make it easy for such things to preserve, let alone to be discovered by anyone who's looking for them. 

Instead, he says these advances all point to the emergence of uniquely human language--a form of communication that is unparalleled in other animals. And he attributes language and all that comes with it to the sudden appearance of mutations that he calls "the Tree of Knowledge mutation."

Another Bible metaphor. Right. It seems reasonable but let's break it down just a little.

We don't even assume every visible change in anatomy in the fossil record is due to mutations! The angle of the femur from the hips to the knee is something that develops in bones when they grow up inside a biped, propelling a bipedal body. 

A = Chimp, B = Human. Christine Tardieu, "Development of the human hind limb and its importance for the evolution of bipedalism" (linked in text above and here)

If someone never walks, they keep the straight leg bones they were born with, and they do not develop that tell-tale sign of bipedalism. 

So, again, even with purely anatomical changes we can see through time and that we can hold in our hands, we don't assume that genetic mutation is the only possible explanation. And if you think there's something wrong with my line of thinking because you think the Tree of Bipedalism mutation could have brought the behavior about that then that, in turn, is what caused the leg bones to develop at an angle... then all I have to say is... how could we know? And wouldn't you at least agree that a mutation bringing about bipedal behavior is not the only possible way bipedal behavior came about? I mean, the other apes are great at it as kids, until they grow big bodies with heavy strong arms.   

With the Tree of Knowledge mutation, Harari isn't even doing that, though. We can see bipedalism evolve over the years of the fossil record. We cannot see language evolve. And so, while, yes, we have to assume that language emerged at some point or else it wouldn't exist now. That's really all we can say!

And so, to assume this is a mutation-based phenomenon happening suddenly, 70,000 years ago to explain the new technologies and arts on record at that time is like assuming that "the Tree of Circumnavigation mutation" brought about tall ships or that "the Tree of AI mutation" brought about tech companies or ... 

Oh, don't be silly. We all know that something extraordinary happened in our evolutionary history because LOOK AT US NOW. 

And yes, we're magnificent! So once again why am I complaining about this telling of our species' marvelous story?

Because that's all it is, just a story, and stories are never "just" stories when they're about human evolution which is really about human nature. Stories about who we are, why we're like this, and who we can be are POWERFUL. They're the kind of stories that shapes societies! 

And Harari has skillfully woven a status quo, Old Testament, Freudian, Jungian, and old school paleoanthropological plus selfish-gene's-eye-view narrative into a 100% bullshit rendering of human nature that looks like scientific fact to most readers. 

That's why.

That's why I'm complaining so soon and brought up divorce already. (But I just peeked at the pages to come and I'm looking forward to them!) 

Pages 22+ are next. To be continued...