The Dragons of Eden
In Pliocene/Pleistocene times there was almost certainly a
vigorous competition among many manlike forms, of which only
one survived--the tool experts, the line that led to us. What
role killing played in that competition remains an open
question. The gracile Australlopithecines were erect, agile,
fleet, and three and a half feet tall: "little people." I
sometimes wonder whether our myths about gnomes, trolls,
giants and dwarfs could possibly be a genetic or cultural
memory of those times.
-p 96
So far as I know, childbirth is generally painful in only
one of the millions of species on Earth: human beings. This
must be a consequence of the recent and continuing increase
in cranial volume. Modern men and women have braincases twice
the volume of Homo Hablis'. Childbirth is painful because the
evolution of the human skull has been spectacularly fast and
recent...The incomplete closure of the skull at birth, the
fontanelle, is very likely an imperfect accommodation to this
recent brain evolution.
-p 97
The first city, according to Genesis, was constructed by
Cain, the inventor of agriculture - a technology that
requires a fixed abode. And it is his descendants, the sons
of Lamech, who invent both "artifices in brass and iron" and
musical instruments. Metallurgy and music - technology and
art - are in the line from Cain. And the passions that lead
to murder do not abate: Lamech says, :For I have slain a man
for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me; if Cain
shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and
sevenfold." The connection between murder and invention has
been with us ever since. Both derive from agriculture and
civilization.
-p 99
"Much of what we think of as human evolved long after the
use of tools."
