Somebody exploring a Greek cave recently found a human skull estimated to be around 210,000 years old (we automatically accept that "experts" know how to determine the age of skulls, don't we?) What's amazing is that the deceased cave dweller was not supposed to be there for tens of thousands more years Ain't that a kick in the head? Now we have to update all those anthropology text books. (sorry kids, you can't use last year's edition. Pony up for a new one).
Not only that but a leading anthropologist now tells us Homo Sapiens started talking millions of years ago rather than 200,000 or 300,000 that most experts believed to be the case. (Isn't 100,000 years a pretty generous allowance for pin-pointing?) How do they know when the first woman told the first man he should try to remember to lower the seat ring on the squat rock? I obviously have a good deal more research to do to flesh out these bare bones.
But before leaving the subject of how our oldest ancestors got it together to form the marvelous social order we have today, consider the way another leading anthropologist proposes our earliest forbears domesticated themselves: he posits that they cooperated in killing individuals who were determined to be incurably violent.
That's our quick audit of the last couple or three million years of Homo Sapiens's striving, and we still have considerable work remaining to achieve a truly humane society. Way too many incurably violent tribesmen remain out there.
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