Reversal of Fortune

Some work from last year turned up some fossils of Homo Sapiens in Morocco dated to 315,000 years. This pushes back the earliest know evidence of the species more than 100,000 years. During the process of considering this anthropological revelation I was led to consider what humans have been doing over the past thousands of centuries. History written in some form only dates back about 3000 years and we believe the oral tradition goes a bit further to about 6,000 years ago. Evidence is

that it was about 10,000 years ago that homo sapiens began living in communal groups and began to undertake agriculture. That step gave humans the time necessary to form social groups and thus the first crude systems of government came to be. They were no doubt tribal and not very complicated. Very likely they held no lofty ideals and were often based on who or what sub-group could force control over the others but it was a necessary primitive step.

But I began to wonder about the pitfalls the human race must have encountered on its journey to the present. This Moroccan fossil is the first evidence that humanity migrated into the furthest parts of Africa from the Great Rift Valley where it is thought the species originated. Previously we had thought the migration into the Middle East was the direction that the earliest pilgrims made their journey.

I have always found the study of anthropology to be fascinating ever since Dick Lewis taught a number of classes at Somerset Community College. In that earlier life I was even less disciplined than I now am and paid little heed to courses that were necessary to the furtherance of my major studies. I took every class he taught. Later I became a little more focused and became enamored with the study of political science. Neither of these aforementioned fields have been what one could call useful in my pursuit of financial remuneration but I am pretty good at crossword puzzles.

Democracies have only existed for a few hundreds of years. The Greek example and the Romans seem more to be oligarchies or aristocracies than democracies. Post WWII it seemed that democracies were taking root everywhere even if there were notable exceptions like the Soviet Union and Communist China but here, some 70 years later we see democracies struggling under the strain of inequalities of opportunity and gross disparities in wealth. To quote some of my favorite philosophers, Led Zeppelin, it makes me wonder.

How many times did homo sapiens rise to new heights only to fall back to some previous level of achievement. And if it were possible then can it still be possible to repeat that pattern? After rising this far (we have an extraordinarily high opinion of ourselves) is it possible to fall back into some previous form of government such as feudalism or monarchies? Could we still be unable to temper our desires and prejudices and thence fall prey to some model more fascist in nature? Did homo sapiens ever rise to communal life only to be faced with ecological disaster or other tribes more warlike and thus lose the gleam of society?

We are faced with some scenarios in this time that have the potential to exert just such an influence on the species. Climate change has the potential to disrupt the flow of commerce to the point of subsistence existence. People don't consider how tenuous the thread of civilized behavior is and how little it would take to sever it. What would happen if you were unable to go to the grocery for 2 weeks, a month. Would you resort to stealing food, would others steal yours. Climate change is already forcing mass migrations and will soon begin consuming resources as we attempt to hold back the seas from seaports and we find food scarce when the California farms begin to not produce.

What about nuclear holocaust that has the potential to kill hundreds of millions instantly and most certainly billions in a short while. How would that disrupt our threads of civilization? Would we revert to some previous time when it took strength and power to feed and clothe ourselves. What kind of government could survive that?

Or what if our talent for war consumes resources that could have been used for society, for building schools or providing health care? We are near that now. Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States and a Republican said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Will we pay heed or will we revert? Again?

My Take? Time to choose.