Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchronicitous trip.

The Angelus by Jean-François Millet

I experience synchronicity in some interesting ways from time to time.  Ways which, really, are too strong to put up to coincidence.

Sometime last week I saw this post on Twitter by O. W. Root, to which I also post my reply:

O.W. Root@owroot

Nov 29

Sometimes I have wondered if I should write about being a parent so much, but I've realized that it's one of the most universal things in the whole world, and one of the most life changing things for all who do it, so it's good to do.

Lex Anteinternet@Lex_Anteinterne

Nov 30

It's also, quite frankly, one of the very few things we do with meaning.  People try take meaning from their jobs, for example, which are almost universally meaningless.

My reply, was frankly, extremely harsh.  "[A]lmost universally meaningless"?

Well, in fact, yes.  I was going to follow that up with a post about existential occupations, but I hadn't quite gotten around to it when I heard some podcasts and saw some web posts that synched into it.  I've been cat sitting recently and because of that, I've been able to catch up on some old ones (note the synchronicity of that. . . the tweet above was from November 29/30, but the podcast episode was from June).  The podcast episode in question is:

People to Catholicism Today? ⎮Flannel Panel - Christopher Check

That episode discusses a very broad range of very interesting topics, and it referenced this one amongst them:   Catholicism Is So Hot Right Now. Why?

I haven't listened to the second podcast, but the first is phenomenal.

These are all linked?

Yes they are.

I've noted here on this blog and on Lex Anteinternet that the young seem to be turning towards social conservatism and traditionalism.  It's easy to miss,. and its even easy to be drawn to it and participate in it without really realizing it.  This is different, we'd further note, than being drawn to the various branches of political conservatism.  There's definitely a connection, of course, but there are also those who are going into social conservatism/traditionalism while turning their backs on politics entirely, although there are real dangers to turning your back on politics.

What seems to be going on is that people are attracted to the truth, the existential truths, and the existential itself.  

Put another way, people have detected that the modern world is pretty fake, and it doesn't comport at all with how we are in a state of nature. It goes back to what we noted here:

Yeoman's Third Law of Behavior.  I know why the caged tiger paces.

I think what people want is a family and a life focused on that family, not on work.

As noted above, most work is meaningless.  That doesn't mean it's not valuable.  

Very few jobs are existential for our species.*  We're meant to be hunters and gatherers, with a few other special roles that have to do with the organization of ourselves, and our relation to the existential.  Social historians like to claim that society began to "advance" when job specialization, a byproduct of agriculture, began, and there's some truth to that, but only a bit, if not properly understood.  That bit can't be discounted, however, as when agriculture went from subsistence agriculture to production agriculture, i.e., agriculture that generated a surplus, wealth was generated and wealth brought in a great perversion of social order.  Surplus production brought in wealth, which brought in a way for the separation of wealth from the people working the land, and ultimately ownership of the land itself.  Tenant farming, sharecropping and the like, and agricultural poverty, were all a byproduct of that.  When Marx observed that this developed inevitably into Feudalism, he was right.

Agriculture, originally, was a family or family band small scale deal.  While it's pretty obvious to anyone who has ever put in a garden how it worked, social theorist and archeologist got it all wrong until they made some rather obvious discoveries quite recently, one of the most obvious being that hunter/gatherer societies are also often small scale agricultural ones.  How this was missed is baffling as Europeans had first hand experience with this in regard to New World cultures, most of which were hunting societies but many of which put in various types of farms.  Even North American native bands that did not farm, it might be noted, were well aware of farming themselves.  Even into the present era hunter/gatherer societies, to the extent they still exist, often still practice small scale farming.

It turns out that grain farming goes way, way back. But why wouldn't it have?

Additional specialization began with the Industrial Revolution, and that's when things really began to become massively warped for our species, first for men, and then with then, with feminization, for women.  We've long noted that, but given the chain of coincidences noted above, we've stumbled on to somebody else noting it. As professor Randall Smith has written:

It’s important to understand that the first fatal blow to the family came during the Industrial Revolution when fathers left the house for the bulk of the day. The deleterious results that followed from ripping fathers away from their children were seen almost immediately in the slums and ghettos of the large industrial towns, as young men, without older men to guide them into adulthood, roamed the streets, un-mentored and un-apprenticed. There, as soon as their hormonal instincts were no longer directed into work or caring for families, they turned to theft and sexual license.

Randall Smith, A Traditional Catholic Wife?  

So, in the long chain of events, there was nothing wrong at all about farming. There was something wrong about the expropriation of the wealth it created, and that fueled the fire of a lot of development since them.  That first set of inequities ultimately lead to peasant revolts in Europe on occasion, and to a degree can be regarded as what first inspired average Europeans to immigrate to various colonies. . . a place where they could own their own land.  . and then to various revolutions against what amounted to propertied overlords.  The American Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, and the Russian Revolution all had that element to them.  Industrialization, which pulled men out of the household, sparked additional revolutions to counter the impacts of the Industrial Revolution, with some being violent, but others not being. The spread of democracy was very much a reaction to the the evils of the Industrial Revolution.  Unfortunately, so was the spread of Communism.

Money has never given up, so the same class of people who demanded land rent in the bronze and iron age, and then turned people into serfs in the Middle Ages, are still busy to do that now. As with then, they often want the peasants to accept this as if its really nifty.  People like Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk are busy piling up money and concubines while assuring the peasantry that their diminished role in the world is a good thing as its all part of Capitalism.

It is part of Capitalism, which is a major reason that Capitalism sucks, and that there's been efforts to restrain its worse impulses since its onset, with efforts to limit corporations at first, and then such things as the Sherman Anti Trust Act later on.

All that's been forgotten and we now have a demented gilded prince and his privileged acolytes living off the fat of the land while people have less and less control of their own lives.  Most people don't want to glory in the success of Star Link of even care about it, but people feed into such things anyway, as the culture has glorified such things since at least the end of the Second World War, the war seemingly having helped to fuel all sorts of disordered desires in society that would bloom into full flower in the 1960s.  A society that grew wealthy from the war and the destruction that it created, saw itself as divorced from nature and reality, and every vice that could be imagined was condoned.

And we're now living in the wreckage.

I think this is what is fueling a lot of this.  Starting particularly in the 1950s, and then ramping up in the 60s and 70s, careerism really took hold in American society, along with a host of other vices.  Indeed, again, as Professor Smith has noted:

The “traditional Catholic family” where the husband worked all day and the wife stayed home alone with the children only really existed – and not all that successfully – in certain upper-middle class WASPy neighborhoods during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Working in an office all day is not necessarily evil (depending upon how it affects your family). It’s just modern. There’s nothing especially “traditional” about it.

Most careers are just dressed up jobs, not much else.  Nonetheless people have been taught they need to leave their homes, their families, they're very natures, in order to have a career, sometimes abandoning people in their wake.  They're encouraged to do so, to a large extent.

Indeed, I dare say, for most real careerist, nearly always abandoning people.

And average people are sick of it.

That's why young men are turning towards traditionalism of all sorts.  They're looking for something of value, and they're not going to find it behind a computer in a cubicle.  And that's why young women are reviving roles that feminist attempted to take away form them.  

They mean something.

Footnotes: 

* Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species.  Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being.  It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots.  And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens.  It's in us.  That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.

It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note.  Clerics are in that category.  Storytellers and Historians are as well.  We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time.  They're all existential in nature.  Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that.  The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.

Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.

If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever.  I have very low interest in doing that.  I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending).  That probably sounds pretty dull to most people.  I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.

Sunday, December 6, 1925: Red Grange Saves the NFL

 

December 6, 1925: Red Grange Saves the NFL

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Today -100: December 6, 1925: I do and I don’t: Texas Attorney Gen. Dan Moody, who is not a fan of the governors Ferguson, seems to kill the idea of a special session to impeach Gov. Miri...

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago today:

Interesting to see this question being asked as early as 1925.

Last edition:

Saturday, December 5, 1925.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Art, Equine Transportation, Norman Rockwell, The relationship between men and women, Women

Monday, November 26, 1945. Now's the Time, Wolves and War Brides, Questionable claim about Goering, Test tube babies in Virgin hospitals, Japanese social insurance, ties for Christmas.

Recorded on this day in 1945:

 The Sheridan Press reported on wolves and war brides.

The story on the big wolf is ironic in a contemporary context.  Wolves were wiped out in Colorado, probably and in Wyoming, probably, until the major reintroduction effort of the 2000s began.  It's been a huge success in Wyoming, for which I'm glad, in spite of my initial skepticism.  An ongoing effort is occuring in Colorado, which is meeting a lot of opposition in the anti nature Freedom Caucus era.

The Rocky Mountain News, which I remember from the 70s, 80s and 90s, when it was the best, in my view, of the two Denver papers, was a bit sensationalist at the time, which I've only recently come to appreciate.  It was always a "tabloid", with that sort of paper format for some reason having a reputation of that type.  I've never heard of the story related by the headline here:

A little digging finds that this claim was flat out untrue.

The News also reported on, oddly enough, test tube babies, something that is way earlier than I'd have ever supposed.

The first "test tube" baby was born in 1978.  That person Louise Brown, is still with us.  The first example of IVF in a mammal did not occur until 1959.  Apparently the proponent of this suggestion was well ahead of her time in terms of scientific knowledge.

It's notable that the suggestion had a strong eugenics characteristic.  That drive is also now very much coming into fruition, with designer babies now becoming a thing.

On the underlying concern, the explosion in births and the drop in the average age for a woman to first give birth that commenced at this time shows the concern was misplaced.  As a Catholic, of course, I regard IVF as both unnatural and immoral.  The bizarrely pro natalist Trump administration is all in on it.

The News also reported on Japanese social insurance, something being brought in by the progressive and distributist MacArthur occupation.

The cartoons of the day.

A classic gift was suggested.

British troops swept the Sharon plain in reaction to a prior days terrorist attack.

Ezra Pound was indicted for a second time on 19 counts of treason.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 25, 1945. Taxing war profits.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Austria, Christian Democrats, Douglas MacArthur, Japan, Occupation of Japan, Taxes

Monday, October 29, 1945. Noting the Chinese Civil War.

The press noted the outbreak of a civil war in China. . . which in fact had been going on for a couple of decades, having broken out in August, 1927.

Sheridan was very obviously considering the City Manager form of government.

There are three types of municipal governments under Wyoming's law.  Strong Mayor and Council.  City Manager and City Commissioner, the latter of which has never been adopted by any Wyoming municipality.

Sheridan does have the City Manager form of government, although I don't know if they opted for it in 1945.  Casper and Laramie also have that form of government, and apparently Laramie did by 1945.  Here too I'm surprised, as I didn't realize the option went back that far.

Yet another war related loan drive.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 27, 1945. Navy Day.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, boats and ships, Harry S. Truman, Indonesia, Indonesian National Revolution, Navy Day, New York, the spoken word, U.S. Navy

Thursday, October 29, 1925. No Free Speech.

 Free speech didn't work as a defense for Bily Mitchell.

This isn't the full paper by any means, but there is some interesting items here and there.

Not to tread where we shouldn't, but the advertisement above for Kotex surprises me. 

So does the item on constant pain from pimples.

And the one on credit score. This is really before I thought there was a credit score.

And you don't need to add bran to Oatmeal.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 28, 1925 Mitchell challenges Jurisdiction.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Army, Billy Mitchell, Blog Mirror, Calvin Coolidge, Cartoons, football, France, J.R. Williams, law, Marriage, The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell, U.S. Navy, Whatever It Is I'm against it

Sunday, October 9, 1875. Mormon Tabernacle Dedicated.

The structure had been largely completed and opened in 1867, but was dedicated on this day in 1875.  Some ongoing construction was still occuring.

This is a remarkably early large structure for the American West.

Last edition:

Wednesday, September 29, 1875. Grant at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Army of the Tennessee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which U.S. Grant expressed sentiments that would horrify MAGA today.

Labels: 1870s, 1875, 2020s, 2025, Dixiecrats, Donald Trump, Education, Republican Party, U.S. Grant

Hard soled sandels.

New fossil footprint evidence suggests that humans wore hard soled sandals over 80,000 years ago.

No surprise.

Can't win for losing. Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action.

For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.

At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. See, e.g., 4 App. in No. 21–707, at 1725– 1726, 1741; Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 10. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) “[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,” and the prohibition against racial discrimination is “levelled at the thing,not the name.” Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, 325 (1867). A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

The judgments of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and of the District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina are reversed.

It is so ordered.

After a series of decisions on cases which liberal pundits were in self afflicted angst about in which the Court didn't realize their fears, the Court finally did realize one and struck down affirmative action admission into universities, something it warned it would do 25 years ago.

The reason is simple. Race based admission is clearly violative of US law and the equal protection clause. That was always known, with the Court allowing this exception in order to attempt to redress prior racism.  As noted, it had already stated there was a day when this would end.  The Court had been signalling that it would do this for years.

Indeed, while not the main point in this entry, it can't help be noted that when the Court preserves a policy like this one, which it did last week with the also race based Indian Child Welfare Act, liberals are pretty much mute on it.  There are no howls of protest from anyone, but no accolades either.  Political liberals received two (expected, in reality) victories from the Court in two weeks that they'd been all in a lather regarding. They seemed almost disappointed to have nothing to complain about, until this case, which gave them one.

Predictably, the left/Democrats reacted as if this is a disaster.  It isn't.  Joe Biden instantly reacted.  Michele Obama, who has a much better basis to react, also made a statement, pointing out that she was a beneficiary of the policy, which she was.  That's fine, but that doesn't mean that the policy needed to be preserved in perpetuity.

At some point, it's worth noting, these policies become unfair in and of themselves.  Not instantly, but over time, when they've redressed what they were designed to.  The question is when, and where.  A good argument could be made, for example, that as for the nation's traditionally largest minority, African Americans, this policy had run its course.  In regard to Native Americans?  Not so much.

Critics will point out that poverty and all the ills that accompany it still afflict African Americans at disproportionate levels, and that's true. The question then becomes why these policies, which have helped, don't seem to be able to bridge the final gap.  A whole series of uncomfortable issues are then raised, which the right and the left will turn a blind eye to. For one thing, immigration disproportionately hurts African Americans, which they are well aware of.  Social programs that accidentally encouraged the break-up of families and single parenthood hit blacks first, and then spread to whites, helping to accidentally severely damage American family structures and cause poverty.  Due to the Civil Rights movement, African Americans became a Democratic base, which was in turn abandoned by the Democrats much like Hard Hat Democrats were, leaving them politically disenfranchised.  Black membership in the GOP has only recently increased (although it notably has), as the black middle class and traditionally socially conservative black community has migrated towards it, but that migration was severely hindered by the legacy of Reagan's Southern Strategy, which brought Southern (and Rust Belt) Democrats into the party and with it populism and closeted racism.

While the left will howl in agony on this decision, it won't really do anything that isn't solidly grounded in the 1960s, and 70s, and for that matter probably moribund, about the ongoing systemic problems.  Pundits who are in favor of institutionalizing every child during the day will come out mad, but they won't dare suggest that immigrants take African American entry level jobs.  Nobody is going to suggest taking a second look at social programs that encourage women of all races to marry the government and fathers to abandon their offspring, something that Tip O'Neill, a Democrat, noted in regard to the African American family before it spread to the white family.  The usual suspects will have the usual solutions and the usual complaints, all of which aren't working to push a determinative solution to this set of problems.

Hardly noted, yet, we should note here, is that this decision, just like Obergefell and Heller, will have a longer reach than people now seem to note.  If college affirmative action is illegal, then similar race based programs (save for ones involving Native Americans, who are subject to the Indian Commerce Clause) are as well. And maybe so are gender based ones, including ones that take into account the ever expanding phony categories of genders that progressive add to every day.  In other words, if programs that favor minority admission into university are invalid, probably Federal Government policies that favor women owned companies over others are as well.

Indeed, they should be.

Societies have an obligation to work towards equality before the law, and before society, for all.  But the essence of working on a problem is solving it.  The subject policy was successful for a long time, but this institutionalized favoritism was no longer working to a large degree, and for that matter, in some instances, impacting others simply because of their race.  It's not 1963, 1973, or 1983 any longer.  New thoughts on old problems should be applied.

Some of those new thoughts, frankly, should be to what extent must we continue to have a 1883 view of the country as if it has vast unpopulated domains to settle that it needs to import to fill.  Another might be, however, that American society really has fundamentally changed on race even within the last 20 years.  While racism remains, and the Obama and Trump eras seem to have boiled it back up, for different reasons, a lot of street level racism really is gone.  For one thing, seeing multiracial couples with multiracial children no longer causes anyone to bat an eye anymore, and that wasn't true as recently as 20 years ago.  We may be a lot further down this road than anyone suspects.

Neanderthal Crab Bakes.

Neanderthals living 90,000 years ago in a seafront cave, in what’s now Portugal, regularly caught crabs, roasted them on coals and ate the cooked flesh, according to a new study.

From CNN.

No surprise. Why wouldn't they have roast crabs?

Neanderthals eating crabs 90,000 years ago.  Okay, actually, these folks are in Raceland, Louisiana in 1938, but its the same thing, probably right down to the beer.  The messiness of eating crab is shown by the newspapers, and that explains also why those looking in the subject cave can tell Neanderthals ate crabs.

This provides, by the way, one more reason that being a vegetarian is nuts.  You don't toss out diets that we've been acclimated to for eons.

Neaderthals and their advanced brains.

A science headline on a paper just out yesterday:

Homo sapiens and Neanderthals share high cerebral cortex integration into adulthood

From a synopsis by the authors of the study:

A surprising result

The results of our analyses surprised us. Tracking change over deep time across dozens of primate species, we found humans had particularly high levels of brain integration, especially between the parietal and frontal lobes.

But we also found we're not unique. Integration between these lobes was similarly high in Neanderthals too.

I know it sounds flippant, but I'm not surprised.  I would have expected our brains, and Neanderthal brains, to be just about the same.  And that's because I also believed this:

There's another important implication. It's increasingly clear that Neanderthals, long characterized as brutish dullards, were adaptable, capable and sophisticated people.

I, of course, maintain that Neanderthals weren't a different species at all, but simply a subspecies of our species.

Sustainable fashion.

A new study reveals the following:

Humans have been using bear skins for at least 300,000 years, suggests study

This is not surprising, of course.

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...A few observations.

A few odds and ends on this story:

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...:   Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel Yup.  And. . .  The early Middle Pleistocene site of Ge...

By most reckonings, the humans, and they were humans, who were grilling up the carp were not members of our species, Homo sapiens.

They likely would have been Homo Heidelbergensis or Homo Erectus, the former having at one time been regarded as a subspecies of the latter.

No matter, these people were a lot closer to you than you might imagine.  Their brain capacity, for one thing, is just about the same as modern humans at 1200 cc.  FWIW, the brain capacity of archaic Homo Sapiens was actually larger than that of current people, members of the species Homo Sapien Sapien. Our current brain sizes are pretty big, in relative terms, at about 1400 cc, although Neanderthals' were bigger, at 1500cc.  

About the "archaic" members of our species, it's been said that they're not regarded their own species as they have been "admitted to membership in our species because of their almost modern-sized brains, but set off as ‘archaic' because of their primitive looking cranial morphology".¹  Having said that, some people say, no, those are Homo Heidlebergensis.  It can be pretty difficult to tell, actually, and as been noted:

One of the greatest challenges facing students of human evolution comes at the tail end of the Homo erectus span. After Homo erectus, there is little consensus about what taxonomic name to give the hominins that have been found. As a result, they are assigned the kitchen-sink label of “archaic Homo sapiens.”

Tattersall (2007) notes that the Kabwe skull bears more than a passing resemblance to one of the most prominent finds in Europe, the Petralona skull from Greece. In turn, as I mentioned above, the Petralona skull is very similar to one of the most complete skulls from Atapuerca, SH 5, and at least somewhat similar to the Arago skull.

Further, it is noted that the Bodo cranium from Africa shares striking similarities to the material from Gran Dolina (such as it is). This suggests that, as was the case with Homo erectus, there is widespread genetic homogeneity in these populations. Given the time depth involved, it is likely that there was considerable and persistent gene flow between them. Tattersall (2007), argues that, since the first example of this hominin form is represented by the Mauer mandible, the taxonomic designation Homo heidelbergensis should be used to designate these forms. This would stretch the limits of this taxon, however, since it would include the later forms from Africa as well. If there was considerable migration and hybridization between these populations, it could be argued that a single taxon makes sense. However, at present, there is no definitive material evidence for such migration, or widespread agreement on calling all these hominins anything other than “archaic Homo sapiens.”²

 Regarding our first ancestors, of our species, appearance:

When comparing Homo erectus, archaic Homo sapiens, and anatomically modern Homo sapiens across several anatomical features, one can see quite clearly that archaic Homo sapiens are intermediate in their physical form. This follows the trends first seen in Homo erectus for some features and in other features having early, less developed forms of traits more clearly seen in modern Homo sapiens. For example, archaic Homo sapiens trended toward less angular and higher skulls than Homo erectus but had skulls notably not as short and globular in shape and with a less developed forehead than anatomically modern Homo sapiens. archaic Homo sapiens had smaller brow ridges and a less-projecting face than Homo erectus and slightly smaller teeth, although incisors and canines were often about as large as that of Homo erectus. Archaic Homo sapiens also had a wider nasal aperture, or opening for the nose, as well as a forward-projecting midfacial region, known as midfacial prognathism. The occipital bone often projected and the cranial bone was of intermediate thickness, somewhat reduced from Homo erectus but not nearly as thin as that of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The postcrania remained fairly robust, as well. To identify a set of features that is unique to the group archaic Homo sapiens is a challenging task, due to both individual variation—these developments were not all present to the same degree in all individuals—and the transitional nature of their features. Neanderthals will be the exception, as they have several clearly unique traits that make them notably different from modern Homo sapiens as well as their closely related archaic cousins.³

Well, what that tells us overall is that we were undergoing some changes during this period of the Pleistocene, that geologic period lasting from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago.

And that, dear reader, points out that we're a Pleistocene mammal.

It also points out that we don't have yet a really good grasp as to when our species really fully came about.  We think we know what the preceding species was, but we're not super sure when we emerged from it.  And of course, we didn't really emerge, but just kind of rolled along mother and father to children.

Which tells us that Heidlebergensis may have been pretty much like us, really.

Just not as photogenic.

On that, it's also been recently noted that the best explanation for the disappearance of the Neanderthals, which are now widely regarded as a separate species that emerged also from Heidelbergensis disappeared as they just cross bread themselves out of existence.  Apparently they thought our species was hotter than their own.

Assuming they are a separate species, which I frankly doubt.

Here were definitely morphology differences between Heidelbergensis and us, but as we addressed the other day in a different context, everybody has a great, great, great . . . grandmother/grandfather who was one of them.

And another thing.

They ate a lot of meat.

A lot.

I note that as it was in vogue for a while for those adopting an unnatural diet, i.e. vegetarianism, to claim that this is what we were evolved to eat. 

Not hardly.  With huge brains, and cold weather burning up calories, we were, and remain, meat eaters.

Foonotes:

1.  Archaic Homo sapiens  Christopher J. Bae (Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Hawaii-Manoa) © 2013 Nature Education  Citation: Bae, C. J. (2013) . Nature Education Knowledge 4(8):4

2. By  James Kidder, The Rise of Archaic Homo sapiens

3.  11.3: Defining Characteristics of Archaic Homo Sapiens

 

Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel

Yup.  And. . . 

The early Middle Pleistocene site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel (marine isotope stages 18–20; ~0.78 million years ago), has preserved evidence of hearth-related hominin activities and large numbers of freshwater fish remains (>40,000). 

People like to eat fish, and save for the oddballs who like to eat sushi, for which there is no explanation, they like their fish cooked.

Most places, people like to eat carp too.  For some odd reason, there's a prejudice against carp in at least the Western United States, but elsewhere, not so much.

So, our human ancestors 780,000 years ago. . . put another carp on the barbi. . . 

Why on earth would this be surprising in any fashion?

 Regarding a set of Neanderthal remains found in Siberia:

When Skov started comparing the genomes from Chagyrskaya, he got the surprise of his career. Two individuals, an adult male and a teenage female, shared half of their DNA, a situation that could occur only if they were siblings or a parent and child. To determine the relationship, the researchers examined mitochondrial DNA — which is maternally inherited and would therefore be identical between siblings and between a mother and child, but not between a father and child. This differed between the male and female, suggesting that they were father and daughter.

This is a huge whopping surprise?

Donkeys

Donkeys transformed human history as essential beasts of burden for long-distance movement, especially across semi-arid and upland environments. They remain insufficiently studied despite globally expanding and providing key support to low- to middle-income communities. To elucidate their domestication history, we constructed a comprehensive genome panel of 207 modern and 31 ancient donkeys, as well as 15 wild equids. We found a strong phylogeographic structure in modern donkeys that supports a single domestication in Africa ~5000 BCE, followed by further expansions in this continent and Eurasia and ultimately returning to Africa. We uncover a previously unknown genetic lineage in the Levant ~200 BCE, which contributed increasing ancestry toward Asia. Donkey management involved inbreeding and the production of giant bloodlines at a time when mules were essential to the Roman economy and military.

Abstract, The genomic history and global expansion of domestic donkeys.

Footprints dating back 12,000 years have been found in salt flats at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

More evidence showing that human beings had spread well into the continent much earlier than had only recently been supposed.

The area was, at the time, a wetland. The footprints appear to be those of women and children.

The antiquity of the species.

Scientists say a Homo sapiens fossil found in Ethiopia in the 1960s is at least 233,000 years old, which would make it 36,000 years older than the previous estimate.

No surprise whatsoever.

Which means that the species is at least 300,000 years old, even if nobody is going to admit that.

Probably older.

No big surprise.

As its probably more like 500,000.

A couple of interesting items. . .

 to ponder.

View from the S H Knight (geology) Building in 1986.

Recent research has indicated that humans reached the Faeroe Islands at least 300 years prior to the Vikings doing so.

This doesn't surprise me a bit, and apparently it's been more or less known for some time, and its what I would have expected, but new studies, involving obtaining DNA from the bottom of a lake, has proven it conclusively.

Evidence of really old sheep defecation was found down there.  Maybe sort of gross sounding in a way, but really cool nonetheless.  So not only was early colonization much earlier than guessed at, but it was true colonization.  I.e, we know about this place and we're bringing our sheep.

Really cool, in my opinion, is that part of the groundbreaking research was done by Dr. Lorelei Curtin of the University of Wyoming. She is a post-doctoral researcher at the university's Department of Geology and Geophysics, of which I'm a graduate.

She specializes, I'd note, in climate research and another study just out notes that global cooling seems to be brought about by global warming. Something I was taught when a student in that department some 35 or so years ago.

Graduates of the other department that I'm a graduate of, the College of Law, have not pegged me out on the pride meter much as time has gone on, but the Department of Geology and Geophysics is different.

Well, go Pokes.

I'll note this as well. The Vikings first settled Iceland starting in 874 and Greenland around 980.  I'm guessing that the last date is correct, but I'll bet that somebody was on Iceland by 874. Rather obviously, the Vikings weren't great at recording who exactly was where they went, when they got there, as the Faeroe Island discovery more or less proves.

Milk, Big Lunches, and Coffee

Milk, it does a body good. . . or not.

The ability of some, but not all, human populations to drink milk is supposedly only about 6,000 years old.

I am not a huge milk fan, frankly.  Some people really are.  There are adults who like milk so much that they'll buy it and regularly consume it, although people seem to mostly do that at home, and with adults it seems to really drop off.

It's not that I detest it either.  I just quit drinking it pretty much as a teenager and I don't like it enough to resume drinking it. . . if I could.  I don't recall the last time I simply drank a glass of milk, but it would be a long time ago.  The last time I regularly did it, I"m pretty sure, was in basic training, as they served it in little pint cartons, just like schools used to do.

Milk has to be digested.

Our species is supposedly about 300,000 or so years old, which probably means its closure to 500,000 years old if not 600,000 or more.  We only got around, they say, and as noted above, to drinking cows milk about 6,000 years ago, supposedly, which probably means its a little longer than that.

Now, if you are a mammal, you are evolved to drink milk. . . as a baby.  Milk, all milk, contains lactose, a sort of sugar, and babies produce lactase in order to be able to digest it.  But human adults, in our default state of nature, don't.

In fact, no adult mammal does.  Not even cats, which will drink milk for the fat in it. Cats can't taste sweet, by the way, so they're not experiencing milk like you do when they drink it.  It's more like gulping down a liquid bratwurst for them.

About 6,000 or so ago a mutation started showing up in European genetics for lactase persistence.  In reality, lactose intolerance isn't so much a genetic deficiency as lactase persistence is a genetic advantage.  What was pretty clearly going on is people were keeping cattle, so they didn't have to go out and hunt them (wild cattle in Europe still existed. . .indeed they existed on much of the globe) and at some point, either out of desperation or something, they started drinking their milk.  That was probably a bold move, but we'd note that the only pastoral people on earth who remain lactose intolerant are African pastoralist, who will if things get desperate bleed cattle for protein, which is sort of similiar in a way.

According to the BBC, the first humans to take up drinking milk probably were rather flatulent, but if my own experience means anything, they probably felt a little sick to their stomach.

I.e., as an adult I've become somewhat lactose intolerant.

It's a bummer.

It just happened over the last couple of years, which surprises me.  My lactase production as an adult must have always been somewhat weak, but only very recently has this become a problem.  But it has now.

It's breakfast where the problem really shows up.

As best as  I can determine, in my amateur but scientific fashion, I still produce some lactase.  I can and do eat cheese, for example. And usually things cook with milk in them, which I frankly don't eat a lot of, don't bother me.  I'll note that I'm also mildly allergic to eggs, and this is true of them as well.

But putting milk on cereal has become a sufficient enough problem that I have to use it very sparingly, and even then sometimes that's a problem.  And there's one egg/milk casserole dish that my wife occasionally makes that is practically a no-go for me.  Just too darned much.

Pass the cheese slathered leftovers please. .  F=m(a).

I'm not much of a breakfast eater anyway now that I'm in my older years.  I tend to eat it, as I don't eat lunch hardly at all, and that way I don't get too hungry during the day if I’m doing something, although truthfully if I don't eat at all, it usually doesn't matter.

That's probably because I have an office job most days, and sitting around on your butt isn't expending much in the way of calories.

That's self-evident, I think, but to a lot of people it doesn't seem to be, or it is in sort of a chasing the tail fashion.  

I note that as it seems that about 100% of the European American population in the United States is on some sort of a "diet".  I just commented on this.  This affliction doesn't seem to wander into other ethnicities, in so far as I’m aware, but for European Americans, at least middle class and upper class Americans, this is true.

Americans have long had a problem with magical thinking about diet and medicine as it's earlier than actually accepting the science of things.  I.e, rather than think "yikes, I'm getting sick and might need to see the doctor" it's easier to buy "essential oils" or some other crap off the Internet.  If you don't die, you can proclaim it cured you, and if you die, you won't be around to make that point.

Diet works the same way.

The basic biology of diet is pretty simple.  You expend so many calories just existing, and if you work beyond that, you'll expend more.  Sitting around in an office doesn't expend many calories.  So if you don't want to gain weight, the first principal would be not to eat too much.

The second one would be not to eat an unnatural diet.  If it comes prepackaged in cardboard, it's probably unnatural.

Anyhow, that's simple enough, but that means you'd have to eat less, and for a lot of people, that's a real bummer.  Most people like food, and most people like some food that is way high calorie.

The big problem is, however, that most people don't work for their food in the physical sense, the most class definition (but not the only one) being that W=m(a), that is work is equivalent to mass times acceleration.  No, most people don't do that.

Take even the period just prior to World War One, which wasn't that long ago in real terms.  There was some prepackaged food in the form of canned goods, and there was food that people canned themselves. And there were salted and brined meats as well. But by and large, what most married people experienced involved quite a bit of work. 

A Canning Club Girl, May 26, 1920.

If you lived where I do, for example, there's a strong chance that you walked to work, if you were a man or one of the minority of women who were employed outside the home.  Some were driving by 1921, but a lot were still walking, and it was 1911, most were walking. That's work under the physics definition.

Married women, or women in a married household who were adults, typically went to the grocers and the meat market every day during the day. So that was more work. 

In contrast, now most people simply drive to the grocery store and get what they need, which involves work for the car, but not for the eater.

Added to that, in addition, quite a few people worked to some degree, at least by having a garden, for their food.

Some of this still goes on, but by and large people are highly acclimated to doing very little physical work for their food.

This isn't really new. Since the mid 20th Century this has been an increasing trend, and by the late 20th Century, when it might be noted people really started putting on the weight, it was much like it is now.  The odd thing is, however, that people have never really gotten away from large-scale food consumption.

Eating three full meals a day makes sense if you are a farm hand in 1910, but not much if you are an office worker in 2021.  For that matter, even aboriginal people rarely eat that much, and that's what our bodies mostly think we are, with some regional evolutionary adaptations for agriculture.  If you don't have those adaptations at all, what your body thinks is that you might not eat today. . . or tomorrow, but you'll be okay when you kill that deer the day after.  But pass on that milk . . .

Or if your ancestors, let's say, lived in the Mediterranean, your body probably thinks you'll get three squares with lots of grains and cheese, but you're also going to be spending almost all day hiking around with your goats.

Your body never thinks that you are going to eat a hearty breakfast, drive to work, and eat a lunch as big as most people's dinners in prior eras, then drive home and eat an even bigger dinner.

That's what a lot of people actually do, but very few people are ready to admit it.

I'm 5'6" tall and I weight 165 lbs (normally).  

I did a post on this quite a while back, from an historical prospective.  That post is here:

Am I overweight? Well, that might depend on the century.

I realize now that I actually messed up on that post, as the linked in chart involved only women.  In that my weight, 165, would have been overweight for a woman, barely, but my  guess is that it wouldn't have been for a man.  According to current figures, however, I'm overweight to the tune of 10 lbs.

Now, a lot goes into that, and I'll admit that I should lose some weight, even though I don't think I'm really all that much overweight.  Be that as it may, if I ate breakfast every day, and then followed up with a full meal at noon, and went home to eat dinner, I'd be very much overweight.  I'd guess at least another 20 lbs higher.

It's a matter of physics and metabolism.

On this, being overweight is not a sign of some moral failing.  I'm continually surprised when people assume it is.  Indeed, when Chesterton had a pending cause for canonization, there were some who noted that he was overweight.

Seriously?  That's why he shouldn't be canonized?

Coffee, it does a mind good

Some recent reports hold that drinking coffee significantly reduces the risks of dementia later in life, by which they presumably mean drinking a caffeinated beverage. The headlines were on coffee, however.  That's good news for me, as I drink a full post of coffee before I go to work.

I've witnessed dementia up close and personal as my mother acquired it.  I'll be frank, it worries me, but then you have to play the cards you are dealt.  It doesn't occur on my father's side of the family at all.  Having said that, for the most part, most of the men in my family haven't tended to live much past. . . my current age. Once again, you play the cards you are dealt.

Having said that, it's probably the case that not too much can be drawn from the latter.  My father acquired a persistent internal infection that we don't really know the origin of, but which was probably related to his gal bladder and some ineffective early medical treatment (he knew what he had, but his physician didn't seem to really grasp what was going on completely).  He inherited late in life gall bladder problems, by all appearances, from his mother, who also had them, and died from them.  However, they both had a bit of a fondness for certain foods that didn't help that, and I don't really have the same sort of sweet tooth they did.  My father's father died in his late 40s, but he had high blood pressure, which I don't.  My father's brother is in his late 80s and doing great, so hopefully. . . 

Anyhow, I drink a lot of coffee and I'm glad for the news.