What kind of creature is Homo sapiens, so that it can exist on the earth as a "god"? For millions of years, why didn't those creatures who came with Homo sapiens evolve into Homo sapiens? Will future Homo sapiens create "artificial intelligence" and make Homo sapiens face the same situation as other creatures? Instead of worrying about the unrealized future scene, we should analyze the origin of highly intelligent civilization from the perspective of human evolution.
In the book, Herari calls the period from 70,000 years to the present "Anthropocene":
As for Anthropocene, in his last book A Brief History of Mankind, he divided it into three stages: cognitive revolution, agricultural revolution and scientific and technological revolution. During the 70,000 years of the "cognitive revolution", Homo sapiens cooked food with fire, thus reducing diseases and repelling animals and mosquitoes, prolonging life, using language to increase communication, establishing tribes, and learning to fabricate stories for generations. (For details, please skim "Meeting Herari-Reading:")
The biggest difference between Homo sapiens and other creatures is that they create and use tools, control the laws of natural objective existence (using fire, electricity and light is not as simple as God saying "give you light", so we have light) and language, have developed brains, walk upright, and produce fictional culture. How did each difference evolve? What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other creatures? Darwinism believes that it is genetic mutation and inheritance, so how did our genes mutate in the first place?
With these questions, we analyze them from two directions. One direction is to review the key factors in the evolution from primate to homo sapiens from the perspective of biological evolution; The other direction is to analyze the similarities and differences between human genes and other biological genes from the perspective of known genetics.
The position of Homo sapiens in biology;
Domain: Eukarya >> World: Animals >> Portal: Chordata >> Subdivision: Vertebrates. Class: Mammalia >> Subclass: Animals: Primates >> Subclass: Apes. Suborder: Rhinoceros >> Superfamily: Anthropogonidae (apes), other gibbons, Gorillaceae (chimpanzees and gorillas) (it is also said that humans belong to the third kind of chimpanzees or chimpanzees belong to the Terran) >> Family: Anthropogonidae (Anthropogoninae, Australopithecinae) > Anthroposubfamily: Terran, chimpanzees >> Ethnic group: Australopithecus. & gt homo sapiens
About 20 million years ago, starting from primates, apes and monkeys began to separate. The upper lip of apes is not directly connected with the nose or gums, so they can make many facial expressions, and their hands and feet begin to differentiate obviously. Due to the changes and natural movements of tropical rain forests in Africa, apes have experienced a gradual process from living in trees to underground. In order to adapt to land walking, the tail began to degenerate (that is, fish started from reptiles and humans experienced the second tail degeneration). Because of the improvement of expression and visual ability, as well as the adaptation to the new environment, the brains of apes have increased compared with those of primitive monkeys, while the primate "monkey suborder" has remained in the trees to reproduce to this day.
About 654.38+0.5 billion years ago, the suborder of anthropoids evolved and split. Whenever night falls, staying on the ground is more likely to be threatened by bigger animals (lions, tigers and leopards) than staying in trees. Some apes rely more on the tropical rain forest to survive, and they spread their arms and evolved into gibbons. The other part chooses to feed on land during the day and live in trees at night to develop into orangutans; There are also some apes who dare to sleep on the grass, reaching a height of 3 meters and weighing 700 kilograms, becoming giants on land. Unfortunately, they only ate bamboo (the prototype of King Kong) and became extinct about 654.38 million years ago. Great apes mainly live in southern China and South Asia. Human ancestors lived with great apes for about 6.5438+million years, and finally human ancestors who were more adaptable to environmental changes survived.
After millions of years of evolution, a "vegetarian" gorilla has differentiated from the apes. They may develop into the model of great apes, and their size increases but they avoid hunting. They only eat plants, 80% eat rich leaves, and their appetite is huge. They can reach two meters in size and weigh 350 kilograms. Male gorillas gradually eat grass because their weight is not suitable for climbing, and some migrate from tropical rain forests to mountainous areas. They grew up on land and threatened to defend themselves with strength and "beating their chests". Without competitors, there will be no greater evolution. Features: Polygamy, strict community system, male leaders enjoy many opportunities for women to reproduce and mate (such as reptile crocodiles and ancient emperors in China), but in the face of attacks, leaders choose to take risks alone (recall the scene of Mount Tai's one-on-one fight in The Return of Mount Tai). As an adult, the male will be driven out of the group by the leader, and the female will also go to other groups to find a spouse.
The "omnivores" among apes were divided into two groups about 7 million years ago, one was the "apes" of human ancestors and the other was chimpanzees.
Due to the crustal movement, the "Rift Valley" and the area of tropical rain forest can't bear a larger orangutan population. Apes are "forced" to move from trees to land to survive and evolve into "apes". Their bodies are more upright, their arms degenerate and they gradually lose their climbing function, and they gradually use tools such as "stones" to collect and hunt. Apes retain the social system of chimpanzees. Faced with new challenges, they must learn more complex tools to avoid disasters, collective hunting and reproduction. Making tools and walking upright will also increase the brain capacity of apes. Just leaving the tropical rain forest where everything grows, you need enough courage to face the threat of survival. Self-selection and environmental changes have given "apes" the opportunity to further evolve.
However, after 6.5438 million years of evolution, other chimpanzees were naturally divided into "chimpanzees" and "bonobos" because of the appearance of the Congo River. Chimpanzees have a "simplified version of human nature": they know how to make (slightly complicated) tools, such as breaking grass leaves or twigs for processing, and putting their hands into termite nests to lure food. Chimpanzees have feelings and feel sad for the death of their loved ones. Other members of the group will sympathize with the brother of the deceased. They have self-awareness, and when they look in the mirror, they know that the guy inside is not a strange chimpanzee who comes to grab the territory, but himself; There is even empathy, knowing how to put yourself in other creatures' shoes and make corresponding selfish or selfless behaviors. Chimpanzees have even stronger "short-term memory" ability than humans. Why have they made such great progress compared with gorillas? First of all, they also have a community system, but they are very gregarious. Each male leader leads 3-5 or even 30-50 small groups (similar to power autonomy), and the relationship between group members is loose, especially sexual relations. Female animals can mate with many male animals, but some are "single-minded"; Secondly, because they are smaller than gorillas, they are more dangerous to other large animals. Male chimpanzees hunt with tools and in groups, and get food to share with other gorillas to enhance their feelings and survival opportunities. Thirdly, when we exchange ideas and information with each other, we not only rely on different voices, but also use various gestures and gestures to express complex feelings. Emotions are complicated. Touch, hug and comb your hair to increase your feelings.
Bonobos are smaller than chimpanzees and are matriarchal societies. They have a stronger sense of sharing and prefer to share food with strange orangutans rather than familiar orangutans to increase their social network. Can distinguish different colors and make 32 different sounds. Bonobos are "pacifists" and any dispute can be solved by "mating". But so far, these two orangutans have not left the tropical rain forest and the Congo River basin.
According to the blood group gene analysis, the blood group of gibbon is A/B/AB; Gorillas are mainly type B, with a small amount of type A (almost all gorillas growing in Southeast Asia have type B blood). The similarity between gorillas and human genomes is as high as 98%, even exceeding the similarity between gorillas and chimpanzees. It is likely that chimpanzees evolved independently towards their own cognition after millions of years. The blood type of chimpanzees is mainly type A, and a small number of blood types such as O, M and N are also found. Chimpanzees have 48 more chromosomes (24 pairs) than humans, and the amino acid sequence of cytochrome C is the same as that of humans. The similarity between genes and humans is 98.5%, but in this 1.5%, what is the specific difference between chimpanzees and humans, one is on the verge of extinction and the other is ruling the world?
Scientists have found that a gene named FOXP2 is very important to the use of language, which enables human beings to flexibly control the muscles of the mouth and throat and make complex sounds. Protein encoded by this gene has two amino acid differences between humans and chimpanzees, which may be the reason why human language ability far exceeds that of chimpanzees, and chimpanzees can't control their mouth and throat muscles. The emergence and application of language is an important foundation for human beings to effectively transmit information, accumulate knowledge and create a civilized society. After training, chimpanzees will master a vocabulary system composed of plastic pieces of different colors and graphics, and use them to talk to people. Chimpanzees can also learn 100 gestures. They can not only use these words to talk to people, but also talk to each other among chimpanzees who have learned gesture language, and even creatively apply the words they have learned to occasions they think appropriate. For example, when learning the word "dirty", it even uses this word to curse people, which shows that chimpanzees have strong vocabulary organization ability. Ulindi's genome-wide analysis shows that bonobos and chimpanzees have 99.6% identical DNA. Bonobos share about 98.7% DNA with humans, which is consistent with the sharing rate between humans and chimpanzees. About 1.6% is shared by humans and bonobos instead of chimpanzees, and the same amount of DNA is shared by humans and chimpanzees instead of bonobos. These differences show that the primitive ape population that formed humans, chimpanzees and bonobos was quite large and varied in genes, with about 27,000 reproductive individuals. More than 7 million years ago, the ancestors of human beings were separated from the ancestors of bonobos and chimpanzees. The ancestors of bonobos and chimpanzees maintained such diversity until their populations were completely divided into two populations 6,543,800 years ago. Generally speaking, the difference between humans and chimpanzees lies in the strengthening of language functions, the emergence of verbal communication, the establishment of culture, and leaving the rainforest to face more dangerous challenges and using tools and fire to overcome nature.
At the same time that chimpanzees and bonobos were divided by the Congo River population, between 4 million and 1 10,000 years, apes left the forest and migrated to all parts of East Africa, gradually evolving into "Australopithecus". Most Australopithecus walked upright, and because of the worse living environment, they had to live in groups on the premise that their tools were still crude. Most of the other traits of Australopithecus are like apes, and the brain volume is still very small, between 450 and 530 ml.
The origin of human beings represented by apes to Australopithecus is an evolutionary leap, which marks the separation of human families from other groups in higher primates. The next leap is within the human family: the hominid is closer to our group-the genus hominid. During the period about 2.5 million years ago, there were able people. Capable people can make complex stone tools, such as stone chips, stone hammers and chopping tools. Through stone tools, he hunted medium-sized animals and slaughtered them. Homo habilis may have built a simple hut. The skull wall of homo habilis becomes thinner and the brain volume increases, with an average of about 680 mL.
If "homo habilis" gradually grew into a real human because of the use of tools, then "Homo erectus" evolved in the next 2-200,000 years made a further qualitative leap: he learned to control and use "the fire of nature" and mastered the complex ability of speaking. Natural fire generally comes from lightning, volcanic eruption and so on. Wild animals are afraid of fire, which is an element of nature. Homo erectus used "kindling" to burn trees and food to dispel the fear of the night, thus realizing a leap from wild animals to humans and greatly improving the chances of survival. Homo erectus' limb bones are basically the same in length and shape as those of modern people, indicating that their upright walking posture is the same as that of modern people, and there has been an obvious division of labor between upper and lower limbs. The average brain volume is as high as 1 088 mL. The brain not only grew in size, but also became more complex and reorganized, indicating that Homo erectus had already had quite complex cultural behaviors, and there was asymmetry between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, indicating that Homo erectus had mastered the ability of spoken language.
So how do humans control the unique genre of "spoken language"? When Charles Darwin, a British biologist, wrote The Origin of Man, he thought about how human beings learned to speak. He wrote that "the vocalization of birds provides a recent analogy for the development of human language in several aspects". Darwin believed that language may have originated from the singing of birds, which may have produced various oral expressions of complex emotions. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and scholars at the University of Tokyo in Japan said that Darwin's speculation was correct. Evidence shows that human language is the grafting of two forms of communication in the animal kingdom: the singing of birds and the more practical and richer expressions found in other animal species. It is this accidental combination that triggered the development of human language. There are two levels of human language: one is "expression" level, which mainly involves the variability of sentence organization, and the other is "vocabulary" level, which is related to the core content of sentences. Chimpanzees have a certain "vocabulary layer", but the "expression layer" is limited to gestures and some oral airflow changes; Other animals, such as birds, have almost no "lexical layer". About 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, human beings combined these two expressions to form a unique and mature language form. Professor Miyagawa said: "There used to be two pre-existing systems, just like apples and oranges, but they were just put together." "The adaptability of this existing structure is very common in the process of natural history. When new things evolve, they are often based on old things, and the old structure can be changed slightly to obtain fundamental new functions. " We can exchange important information like bees or primates, but also have the ability of melody like birds, and we can reorganize different parts of our language (it is not difficult to understand the existence of "parroting"). Because of this, our limited vocabulary can produce seemingly infinite different meanings. The research shows that, as Darwin speculated, human beings first learned to sing, and then tried to combine specific lexical elements into these songs to form more ballads and rhyming poems (it is not difficult to understand the penetrating power of ancient poems such as the Book of Songs, Li Sao, Tang Poetry and Song Ci through time and space). However, due to the limited rhythm of human learning birds, the language system is not completely free in the limited system, and it must be based on certain rules. Only when human language breaks the rules in a certain period in the future can it produce more intelligent language interaction (artificial intelligence). Even so, when the protagonist "Caesar" shouted the first simple word "No!" How shocking it is for human beings who think they are the only intelligent creatures.
At present, there are two theories about the evolution of Homo erectus in the world. One is multi-source theory. Wushan people in China and Chongqing, for example, originated 2 million years ago and lived with apes. It is possible that East Asians have been in the same strain from the beginning of ape differentiation, but it is difficult to be in the mainstream because of apartheid and other reasons. The other is the theory of single origin of human beings, which originated from Australopithecus in East Africa (the view supported by Herari). The earliest human fossil "Lucy" was discovered more than 4 million years ago, and African Homo sapiens began to migrate from Africa to Eurasia.
In the past hundreds of thousands of years, various human genera have appeared on the earth, such as Heidelberg, Neanderthals, Wushan, Denisova, Beijingers and African Homo sapiens. In the end, only African Homo sapiens survived and multiplied, and everything else became extinct. Why?
Neanderthals in Europe (Neanderthals for short) found from genome sequencing and bone research that they had the FOXP2 gene to distinguish whether humans had language function or not, and they had mastered language communication skills. Their brain capacity reached 65,438+400 ml, and some even surpassed that of modern people. Besides Africans, there are 1% modern people in Eurasia? 4% of Nigerians' gene contribution can be inferred that Nigerians died out after African Homo sapiens left the African continent and came to Nigeria to assimilate some of their genes.
How did Nigerians become extinct? In the sci-fi drama westworld, Professor Ford told Bernard the robot that "Neanderthals were eaten by us". This is indeed a possibility. Through fossil research, it is found that many Neanderthals had torn skeletons, while the tools of African Homo sapiens were long hair and bows and arrows that were easier to carry (imagine the scene, the expansion of the empire was that women reproduced and men slaughtered, while earlier Homo sapiens directly ate men, probably because of the harsh environment. Another explanation is that because Nigerians suffered from sudden cold and hid in caves, the national ties between them decreased, and a large number of inbreeding led to extinction, and the environment in which Nigerians lived in the "Ice Age" was extremely bad; It also explains that African Homo sapiens carried a large number of viruses (with antigens themselves), which made Nigerians face mass plague extinction. Herali believes that "imagination" is the fundamental reason for the survival of Homo sapiens. In the past millions of years, Homo sapiens evolved from the African rainforest and gradually mastered the "imagination", which gave Homo sapiens unprecedented ability in the face of cold mutation environment, national unity and cultural communication, and created "fictional imagination" stories such as "God, Witch and Totem".
Opinions vary, and there is no completely reasonable explanation. Only when we use cloning technology to resurrect a Nigerian with a larger brain than modern people (not necessarily developed) will it be clear (at present, we have the ability to resurrect and find a surrogate mother). But one thing is certain: African Homo sapiens can make more advanced tools, self-help ability and community solidarity ability in the face of natural disasters by virtue of their strong "imagination ability". So how did imagination come into being?
The premise of "imagination" is to have a large enough brain, a two-dimensional communication language, a basic understanding and application of the surrounding environment (thunder and fire), gene mutation induced by gene mutation and passed down from generation to generation, and a tool carrier for communication (singing, drawing and long-term memory). These are things that our close relatives chimpanzees don't have, and the earliest Australopithecus didn't have genes, brains, languages and so on. The inducement of gene mutation is probably that Homo sapiens has mastered natural fire and mastered the valve of "drilling wood for fire". Fire, as a natural phenomenon that any animal is afraid of, has become an incentive for Homo sapiens to have higher wisdom. Homo sapiens knows how to control the energy of nature for our use, which is an awakening of "cognitive revolution", just as we have mastered the awakening of "industrial revolution" induced by "lightning". With "fire", Homo sapiens realized that he was not only an animal, but also a master who controlled the "God" of nature and was the master of other animals. Passing on this "providence" has created more "fictional stories" to consolidate national rule and unity, resulting in so-called religious beliefs. If you have imagination, you will have creativity, and the application and manufacture of tools will produce more diversity, so it is possible to manufacture fighters and bronzes.
With the power of controlling nature, African Homo sapiens became more and more brave, trudged from East Africa to explore the world for the first time, and finally broke through the barriers of ecological zones and became a single ecosystem in the history of the earth. Subsequently, humans mastered another ability in 1 10,000 BC, which induced gene mutation and produced the "agricultural revolution".
The next part mainly analyzes the changes of human beings in the process of the transformation from the religion of worshipping "God" spawned by the agricultural revolution to the humanistic religion of worshipping "Man" spawned by the scientific and technological revolution, and the real existence of human "soul and consciousness" brought by the so-called humanistic religion.