Humans have a special connection with animals, as countless web lovers of dogs, cats and scorpionsMay be a little less for scorpions clearly demonstrate. U.S. paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman is deeptly interested in the tight bond that unites us to the animals. She infers new hypothesis about human nature and the evolution of our species: analysis and debriefing.
Pat Shipman noted that human-animal relationship goes well beyond simple affection. According to her, it is a process unique in the animal kingdom – an extremely ancient interdependence who played “a crucial and beneficial role over 2.6 million years of evolution of the species human.” I am pleased to note in passing that daring paleoanthropologist drastically revise the age of our species, and in the right direction, that of tradition. Mainstream science dated Homo sapiens a small million years … while tradition evidenced his presence long before. This bold step off the beaten trails of paleoanthropology make us hope that one day even the scientists eventually admit the great antiquity of man. It was high time.
Back to the starting point of Pat Shipman: “Establishing an intimate connection with other animals is a unique feature and universal to our species,” says she. How comes that we are so attached to all animals? Pat Shipman advanced another dominant characteristic of our species: tend to feed members of other animal species. (Source)Pat Shipman, Current Anthropology Review, August 2010
Quite against-productive: “No other mammal in nature systematically adopts other species – as does the human species,” said Shipman. “Every bite you give to another species is a mouthful that your own children will not eat.” According to the law of the jungle, fighting for survival and survival of the fittest, the care of another species are inadequate, why humans do it? Perhaps because they are not just animals, but that Pat Shipman has no right to consider as part of his research in paleoanthropology. That the observer can influence the outcome of the experiment does not seem to touch a moment. Yet this is a major discovery illustrated by quantum physics.
On the other hand, raising, feeding and domesticating animals of another species is not at all limited to humans. Termites and ants, for example, raise aphids they carry on plants and milk like cows to harvest the honeydew that feed their larvae. But this consideration escaped Pat Shipman’s attention.
Another forgotten fact, even more disturbing: the link between man and animal has its very real counterpart, namely the link between animal and man. We remember the film The Wild Child, inspired by a real fact. An abandoned child in the wild is raised by an animal female, a bear, a lioness or a wolf, like Romulus and Remus. In The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling’s masterpiece, the Mowgli child is raised by the Baloo bear, Bagheera panther, and other big cats. More recently, in the United States, a lost child has been helped spontaneously by a bear. (source) Actually this anthropologist has skipped a lot of essential data, which would have led her to more discernment. Her analysis would have gained in accuracy and conviction.
It is imperative that humanity form a new way of thinking to survive and reach a higher plane. (Albert Einstein)
“The cutting tools have transformed human ancestors in effective predators, as evidenced by the numerous cuts on the fossilized bones of their prey,” she wrote. Becoming predators, our ancestors found themselves in direct competition with other carnivores who fought for their carcasses and prey. As Shipman explains, those of our ancestors who have studied human prey had more meat than others. “Those who have observed the behavior of their prey and potential competitors have added a double evolutionary advantage for natural selection,” she said. It’s interesting but short sighted: the inner vision of neolithic culture escapes completely.
But she has not finished yet. Over time, Shipman explains, the volume of information collected on animals has increased, and the evolutionary advantages to transmit this knowledge. Language has evolved in parallel, becoming a means of communicating information through symbols. “Although we can not know the original use of language, however, we get an idea through prehistoric art. Almost all rock paintings and engravings represent animals.”
It is true, as evidenced by the cave paintings of Lascaux, Altamira – or Göbekli Tepe, the oldest temple in the Mediterranean, with its many stelae decorated with animals only. One may wonder why our ancestors never represented other vital topics such as edible plants, water, tools and weapons, and human relations. These topics are almost never mentioned in the rock art.
Human representation limited most often at the hands dipped in paint and pressed onto the wall.
It looks more like signatures than actual drawings. Not more than the absence of human scenes or tools, this omnipresence of animals does not indicate that the primitive language of our ancestors was animal, based on the imitation of animal cries, or other nonsense of the same kind.
Who can say that their customs, their language or their clothes were primitive? For my part, I believe that our Neolithic ancestors lived much like us, comfort and technology included. The cliché of big hairy guys wrapped in buffalo robes does not fit the graphic control and aesthetic refinement shown by painters of Altamira. Worst of all, Pat Shipman ignores the essential: we can not analyze the cultural productions of an unknown era without first getting rid of our contemporary uses, habits and preconceived ideas coming from our temporal, geographical, social and cultural origins.
Pat Shipman forget, inter alia, that the rock art is not art. The cave paintings are neither decorative nor hobby, it is sacred magic, shamanism. Graham Hancock took over the old analysis: one day, it was necessary to transform wild animals into domestic animals. And to tame animals, to come to terms with collective souls of each animal species that the neolithic shamans made these magical paintings.
Faithful servant in the system, Pat Shipman has a much more prosaic view of animal domestication: forced to observe wild animals, she said, the men began to feed them – it was the first stage of domestication. And the dog, she added, the first conquest of man, was a wild wolf domesticated about 32,000 years ago. Observing wildlife is one thing, feeding predators is another. Why would our ancestors start feeding wolves? It is frankly not the most friendly animal.
Neolithic saw a great wave of animal domestication. Did our ancestors manipulate the genetic species, as they have done to create us? After being hunter-gatherers for long centuries, suddenly our ancestors engage in agriculture and livestock. But to raise cattle, you must have first domesticated animals that will be the first herd. Where domestication began?
U.S. paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman responds with the theory of animal tools: the wolf has undeniable qualities to protect property and people. Okay, but no wild wolf show that. How men could they know before a first domesticated wolf? Moreover, the study of human settlements from the Neolithic shows a total absence of fortifications. It seems that the period of domestication of animals was a period of peace and prosperity. No sign that Neolithic men have needed domestic wolves to defend their resort.
On the contrary, every sign suggests otherwise.
In short, in bidding gratuitous hypothesis, the theory becomes an overly complicated system. The example – chosen among a thousand – shows the impasse where science is engaged, with no longer the name of science. The university mandarins impose to researchers a narrow framework that forbids any real discovery, and theories that young researchers arde building with great difficulty are necessarily unproductive because they must fit into a stupid but compulsary model. As always in kaliyuga, science is opposing tradition. Here tradition suggests that we reverse the process. Who are our ancestors? We are dealing with wild hunters and wolves killers.
Many times, I guess, a female wolf was killed while her cub was not yet old enough to feed itself. We can easily imagine that one day the feeling to feed a wild animal came to a child, disarmed, but full of love? Thus the first domestic dog could have been a cub rescued by a little man – it is no surprise.
Thus love – not interest – pushed children to wild animals. Anyone who has seen a young goatherd know that between child and animal, the true language is silent, it comes from the heart. The domestication of animals was not done by man, but by a child. Who was not motivated by self-interest, but by pure love.
I’ll make it clear: this is not a contest of egos between the anthropologist and me. Issues are beyond our personal differences. If I have good reason to believe that things happened as I said, if the animals in my opinion, were united with us by love and not by self-interest, it is only because the tradition taught me.
The Light will come through the door of Dream – and Joy will smile.