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June 27, 2010
Historical Overview
It’s now well accepted among the scientifically literate that mammals were able to evolve as they have only because dinosaurs suddenly became extinct following an impact event about sixty million years ago. We humans then ultimately became free to evolve from primates into our present position of dominance over other animals within just a few hundred thousand years of separate existence as a species. The mechanism by which that dominance was established was the cognitive ability of our brain, an organ that, although structurally very similar to that of other mammals is demonstrably capable of far more complex intellectual function, a factor that was apparently what also permitted groups of humans to emigrate at intervals from Africa and populate every continent except Antarctica. Their domestication of some plant and other animal species is what then allowed their survival as widely scattered remnants from those forgotten diasporas to virtually every habitable location on the planet.Although there’s general agreement among those with a modicum of scientific knowledge that the foregoing is accurate, considerable differences remain over essential details. Other observers, usually less educated, reject all evidence of biological evolution and modern earth science in favor of interpretations that are far more compatible with religious scripture. Still others consider scripture to be mostly metaphor but still believe in a universe created by an all-powerful deity with a variable degree of interest in the detailed behavior of His/its human creations.
Be that all as it may, there is increasing evidence from Paleontology of our human precursors' early development within Africa prepared their descendants (our remote ancestors) for subsequent exploits: first, and most important, was language. Next, thousands of years later, came the “discovery” (actually independent development) of a variety of writing systems in different parts of a world populated by surviving isolates from the various separate migrations from the home continent.
The "ancient" human world that existed before writing, but after the last Ice Age, contained areas where agriculture and the domestication of animals eventually permitted the development of large, complex human societies, but geography and the exigencies of travel precluded extensive contact between those populations for extended intervals.
One result of that isolation has apparently been a continuance of Darwinian natural selection, primarily in response to climate, that is still going on. One obvious result has been the relative dominance of certain characteristics that tend to define "racial" groups and can now be seen as climate related. At the extremes are the dark skins and small statures of pygmies who lived for millennia in tropical rain forests where efficient cooling was essential to survival. In marked contrast are the pale skins, and relatively massive bodies that preserved the body heat of Northern Europeans. We can now also use DNA to track migration routes, further elucidating historical analyses. For example, Inuits from Asia had arrived in Greenland well before the early Vikings; it was their (cultural) preference for fish and lack of dependence on European grains that seems to have allowed them to outlast early Norse settlers who had (typically) assumed a dominance based on their different, and less acclimated, cultural preferences.
In Asia, particularly, but also in Africa and the Americas, some cultures were already technically quite complex long before their "discovery" by Europeans. However, the more aggressive exploitation of gunpowder (a Chinese invention) and more highly developed deep-water navigation skills gave the Europeans decisive advantages that were almost inevitably exploited in their dealings with indigenous peoples. The recorded history of those encounters also bears witness to the near-universal Eurocentric bias exhibited by essentially all the European colonizers who followed Columbus.
Humanity may have now reached a point where the combination of our numbers and behaviors represent the most serious short-term threat to the continued survival of all living things, particularly ourselves. In fact, the notion that our disappearance would not be missed became a theme of several TV series.
Although I consider the above a generally accurate thumb-nail sketch of humanity’s immediate prospects, it’s an assessment certain to be unpopular because it contains no prospect for a quick, easy “victory” similar to those implicit in most “wars,” whether metaphorical or real, especially as conceptualized by those who declare them. Just before rushing into wars, most humans seem to forget that they often turn out quite differently than projected. Ripple effects may be profound and come back to haunt “winners” years and decades, even centuries later.
Perhaps no other metaphorical war has been so widely endorsed and done so much unintended damage as America’s “War on Drugs,” a folly that began less than a century ago with a deceptive federal tax law focused on two medicinal plants and has since grown into global UN policy that punishes possession of nearly a hundred separately listed agents.
The damage done by the drug war is not just its punishment of people caught up in the illegal enterprises. To that must be added the emotional trauma inflicted on people victimized by the circumstances of their birth, the empowerment of the worst elements in every society, not mention the gratuitous daily suffering of millions in pain and emotional distress. In essence, the metaphorical war on drugs has long since become a real war on patients, physicians, and research, one that saps the strength of whole societies and perpetuates enough injustice to destabilize whole regions of the world.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at June 27, 2010 07:28 PM