Where Phase 1 is the dataset (from archeology, comparative physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, etc.) and Phase 3 is the “end product” ie. we are with you. At the same time, Phase 2, in full accordance with the algorithm, is to “move to Phase 3 as soon as possible”. Personally, this algorithm does not quite suit me, and in this study I want to focus on Phase 2. Since every problem needs to be analyzed, and every thesis must be proven, there will be many letters under the cut.
Go to Phase 2.
Description of the problem
In what follows, for the sake of brevity, I will understand by “the appearance / emergence of reason” precisely the appearance of reason in modern people.
The main problem with studying the process of the emergence of intelligence on Earth is the lack of reliable data about the distant past. It can be compared to assembling a jigsaw puzzle from pieces poured out of a box. We don't (and most likely never will) have a picture to rely on, and we don't even know if all of the puzzle pieces are at our disposal. On the one hand, this greatly complicates the search for truth, on the other hand, it makes this process exciting and intriguing.
What does not suit the current state of affairs
When you try to trace the history of the origin of the mind, you constantly come across large white spots, and the maximum that you can count on is the chronology of the appearance of artifacts and the dating of bone remains. That is, answers to the questions “What? Where? When?". These data are, of course, important, but they do not answer the questions “How? Why? As a result of what? ”, Which are of the greatest interest.
The answers to these questions are all the more difficult to find if we take into account the known mechanisms of genetic transmission of information and natural selection. As B.F. Porshnev: “Everything that has been written in the books about the origin of man… is already bad for the one that is not difficult enough” [1], p. 12. All that can be unearthed in the literature is guesswork based on a particular set of known data. However, none of these models provide answers to natural questions:
- How exactly did the mind come about?
- Why did he appear during this period, and not earlier or later?
- Why did it appear in only one species?
- Could it appear in other species, and in what form?
- And many others.
This article is devoted to finding answers to these questions.
Description of the current model
"Exodus from Africa"
The hypothesis of the African origin of man (or "theory of monocentrism") is dominant today. According to her, at first a small tribe of intelligent people appeared in some region of Africa, and then they multiplied, dispersed to different continents, and - voila! - we have human civilization today. At the same time, the history of the evolution of humans as a species is traced by bones (skulls and skeletons), and it is assumed that the evolution of consciousness (mind) is one-to-one with the evolution of the skeleton / skull.
True, paleoanthropologists admit that the “anatomical identity” of an ancient skeleton does not mean “reasonable identity,” and the most reliable sign that the skeleton found belongs to Homo Sapiens Sapiens is the presence of “human” tools or drawings next to the bones. It should be mentioned here that skeletons (or pieces of bone), "anatomically identical" or very close to modern humans, sometimes have an age of several hundred thousand or even millions of years, while dating from tools or (rock) paintings is usually much closer to modernity.
Paleoarcheology, paleogenetics and migration of ancient people
Any model of anthropogenesis is based on data from paleoarcheology . Representatives of this science extract ancient artifacts (bone remains, objects of material culture, etc.), and determine the time of their origin. Thanks to them, we can, relying on material evidence, build a time series of the occurrence of certain events and changes in history.
Paleogenetics (or archeogenetics) - studies the history of mankind by analyzing ancient biological samples (DNA extracted from bones and teeth) and changes in the genomes of modern people. Based on the data obtained, conclusions can be drawn about the mixing of different populations and the approximate time when this happened. Also, paleogenetics, based on the rate of mutations in genes, makes it possible to roughly estimate when and where this or that population of people appeared.
The generalized data of paleoarcheology and paleogenetics made it possible to roughly present a picture of the migration of ancient people from Africa (see, for example, the article "On the origin of modern humans: Asian perspectives"):
Image from the article
Of all these data, we will be interested in two points: (a) the emergence of modern Homo Sapiens about 200 thousand years ago (which is associated with "mitochondrial Eve") and (b) the "Upper Paleolithic revolution" which took place about 40-50 thousand years ago.
Mitochondrial Eve
As many readers probably know, the analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of modern people gave a rather unexpected result: in all of us, mtDNA comes from a single female who lived about 200 thousand years ago. It is commonly called “ mitochondral Eve ”. As scientists emphasize, this does not mean that we all come from her - primitive Homo Sapiens could have different fathers and mothers (up to crossing with Neanderthals and Denisovans). However, today all women are descendants of "Eve" on the maternal side. Maybe her heiresses were more sexually attractive, maybe they had increased survival or fertility - we don't know. But in the end it was the "daughters of Eve" who drove all the other females out of the human population.
A logical conclusion (or, at least, an assumption) that we can draw from this fact: 75-50 thousand years ago, many (but not necessarily all) representatives of Homo Sapiens had a region in their X chromosome that they inherited from the “mitochondrial Eve ". This is an important point that will be useful to us later in our reasoning.
Upper Paleolithic revolution
Another important moment for us is the onset of the “Upper Paleolithic revolution”. Here is a quote from Wikipedia:
“It is believed that humans of modern anatomical appearance (Homo sapiens sapiens) appeared about 200,000 years ago in Africa. However, their appearance did not cause a change in their lifestyle compared to erectus and Neanderthals. People still used the same rough stone tools. "
The same is said in his monograph by B.F. Porshnev: “The situation that has developed in connection with this was very carefully examined by the Soviet anthropologist M. I. Uryson. He recognizes as an axiom that a person is distinguished by the manufacture and use of tools, but shows the impossibility of connecting the appearance of this feature with any significant anatomical changes. Neither erect posture, nor the structure of the upper and lower extremities, nor the dental system, nor the volume and shape of the cerebral cavity of the skull, testified to this comparatively anatomical barrier, or Rubicon. " [1], p.35.
Back to Wikipedia: “About 50,000 years ago, the ancient stone industry changed. Instead of one or two archaeological cultures similar on all continents, a multitude of diverse cultures and artifacts have emerged. First, in Africa, and then in other regions, in addition to stone, products from bone and horn appeared, and the number of works of ancient art also increased significantly. According to the finds in the South African Blombos Cave, people learned to fish during this era. Over the next 3-4 thousand years, new technologies spread to Europe. "
That is, from the moment of its appearance (200 thousand years ago) people for 150 thousand years lived neither shaky nor shaky, and suddenly - 50 thousand years ago - they got the reins under the loincloth, and they abruptly began to create new technologies, draw and fish. I believe that this is a material manifestation of a leap in the level of intelligence of people.
Paleoanthropologists do not explain the reasons for this leap in any way - they simply note the fact itself and believe that a person, at last, has an urge to engage in the development of material culture - so he did. And he was reasonable, “of course,” even before that. For he already had a modern skeleton and skull, and even the FOXP2 gene, which is responsible for modulating vocal muscles. That is, for a long time already I could think and speak like you and me. Iron logic.
To judge the intelligence of a creature by the shape of its skull and skeleton is like judging the power of a computer and its software by the size of the case and the shape of the motherboard.
Problems of the theory of anthropogenesis
I think that the facts listed above are enough to formulate the problems with which the theory of anthropogenesis de facto deals, and the related questions that require a clear answer.
Space and time
The very first and most obvious problem is space-time. The fact is that 50 thousand years ago is very close to our time. By this time, people were already dispersed over rather vast areas, and if we suddenly say that the human mind appeared precisely in this era, then we will need to explain, but what the hell, the same property ("mind" ) suddenly appeared on such vast areas, in such different habitat conditions and, moreover, in populations that practically do not interact with each other. This problem is obvious and arises as soon as we put forward such a "seditious" assumption. Therefore, those scientists who adhered to such a theory simply talked about the "spontaneous generation" of the mind in many places at the same time (the so-called " theory of polycentrism ").
At one time, the theory of monocentrism (the origin of people in one place) and polycentrism "fought" almost on equal terms, appealing to different archaeological data, but, with the advent of genetic analysis, which proved the common roots of all people, polycentrists were
Evolution vs revolution
Following the
from. 40:
“So, all attempts to get from the Paleolithic stone tools an answer to the question about the main difference between humans and animals are built on the desire to see in ancient stone tools a kind of shell, crushing which we will find the concept of“ labor ”, which in turn is a shell that hides the essence of the matter , mind, human psyche. However, the more the “fundamental difference” between humans and animals is emphasized, the more obscure the mechanism and immediate reasons for the transition from one to another become. "
p. 43-44:
“The main logical tool of evolutionism in psychology (and sociology) is a category that can be expressed in the words“ little by little, ”“ little by little, ”“ little by little, ”“ little by little. ” Gradually, the higher nervous activity became more complex and enriched, the brain grew little by little, the object-tool and orientation-survey activity was gradually enriched, herd relations gradually strengthened and intraspecific signaling expanded. This, at least, was the case within the order of primates, which itself also gradually rose above other mammals.
If you look closely, we will see that there are hidden ideas about some "logical quanta" or extremely small fractions: "a little", "a little", etc. If so, it is appropriate to think: will a miracle cease to be a miracle from what appears as uncountable many miracles, albeit "very small"? After all, this decomposition is not into elements, but on the steps of a ladder.
Theologians understood this long ago, which is why they stopped arguing with evolutionists. Yes, they say, man was created by God from a monkey (inanimate matter), and the fact that the thought of God is a timeless moment, “the day of creation”, can be measured by an uncountable number of divisions on earthly clocks and calendars. The creator could well create a person as the evolutionary theory describes. Blind people, theologians continue, you think that with your measurements of the transitional steps you have put a miracle to shame, and now you have bowed to it an uncountable number of times instead of bowing once. "
p.44:
"We are not for the abyss because we want to be reconciled with it forever. ... But we look with open eyes at the fact that the transition from the zoological level to the human level has not yet been explained."
Here the author of the book emphasizes that the transition from "non-intelligence" to "reasonableness", firstly, has not been explained (at the time of this writing), and secondly, that this transition was not smooth-gradual (little by little ), but a leap over the abyss.
And further:
“In Soviet textbooks and generalizing books we find a mix of both: both the qualitative boundary separating man ... from the ape ... and the illusion of an evolutionary description of how the“ last monkey ”grew to a fatal point, and the“ first man ” gradually moved from this monkey point further. This only illustrates that both positions do converge into one. The most important thing still remains out of sight: why the transition took place. It is disappointing and makes us look for new ways. "
The last phrase is still relevant today, 50 years after the publication of the first edition of the book.
In order to try to find a “new way”, I want to first define what we are actually looking for. That is, I will try to give my own definition of what "mind" is.
What is "mind"?
Biologists do not have an exact definition of this "property of an organism", using which it would be possible, looking at a living being, to say whether it is reasonable or not. Philosophers are trying to give such a definition ("the highest type of mental activity"), which would be applicable only to humans and inapplicable to animals. I want to give such a definition of the investigated property, which could be explained to a computer, i.e. translate into algorithmic language and make it quantifiable (at least in principle). It would be nice if this definition allows you to “measure intelligence” in animals and artificial systems as well.
To make the description uniform for different systems, I will use structural units typical for computers - RAM, ROM, processor (its architecture, set of commands), input devices (primary sensors), BIOS and firmware (a set of programs originally embedded in ROM) ... In artificial systems, the parameters of these structures are determined by the manufacturers. In biological systems, such "hardware" is determined by genes and is formed during the growth of the organism.
In this metaphor, life experience can be described as a database accumulated in the process of interacting with the outside world, and algorithms (rules) formulated as a result of processing this data.
Obviously, "intelligence", whatever it is, is entirely the result of the work of "built-in hardware". Today, this should be as obvious as the fact that the behavior of a powerful PC is different from that of a calculator, not because the PC is connected to the Internet and can communicate with thousands of similar ones or because it has speech I / O, but because that, with the same principles of operation, the PC has a much more powerful processor, more RAM and ROM, and, accordingly, is able to execute much more complex programs.
Let's try to figure out how the “quality of reason” (“degree of intelligence”) is related to the above structural units (RAM, ROM, etc.) and their parameters.
"Software and hardware" of the mind
If we try to highlight the most typical processes of "reasonable thinking", we can distinguish the following:
- perception,
- abstraction,
- memorization and retrieval from memory,
- establishing associative links,
- making decisions based on incoming and accumulated information.
Each of them is associated with its own "built-in algorithms" and specific requirements for the "hardware".
So perception . This is the flow of primary signals from sensors. We will not dwell on the mechanisms of primary filtering, data compression and noise cleaning, since it doesn't matter for our reasoning. Therefore, we will assume that the primary sensors (vision, hearing, etc.) give out sufficiently “clean” signals ready for further processing.
Abstraction- a more difficult stage. It replaces the entire set of primary signals with an "internal representation". That is, the picture of a “tasty” or “tasteless” berry (containing, relatively speaking, millions of bits) is replaced with an “internal image” of “tasty” / “tasteless” food, which may contain (again, conventionally) only one or several tens or hundreds bit. We can say that abstraction is a comparison to a certain signal flow of a certain complex vector of "bodily state", which contains information about both the external environment and the sensations of the organism, corresponding to this state of the environment. Do not forget that transcoding "signal flow -> state vector" is carried out exclusively at the "hardware" level. We can compare this process with the formation of the autoencoder weights... Like perception, abstraction is a fairly universal biological mechanism and works in many organisms.
Memorization is the actual transfer of the formed state vector to short-term memory (RAM), and then to long-term memory (ROM). It should be noted here that the structure of the "data warehouse" is substantially optimized for the structure of the corresponding state vectors. That is, the organism will memorize those vectors of states for which its memory is optimized most effectively (with the least expenditure of energy). Accordingly, the mechanisms for retrieving data from memory should be optimized to work with typical vectors, so that you can quickly and easily retrieve the stored information and use it.
It is obvious that the optimization (increase in efficiency) of the mechanisms of abstraction and memorization / recollection in the process of evolution proceeded in parallel, and they are well coordinated with each other.
Apparently, in animals, these mechanisms were optimized in the direction of increasing survival. That is, they make it possible to very effectively encode and memorize, first of all, vital states and situations. For example, meeting with a predator, useful / harmful food, shelters and feeding places, etc., etc. It is easy to imagine that, in full accordance with the principle of natural selection, individuals with more efficient operation of such mechanisms received an advantage for survival, which contributed to the genetic fixation of these qualities.
And finally, the establishment of associative links... In many cases, the work of this mechanism is reduced to the formation of conditioned reflexes (the light is on - the gastric juice is released), i.e. transferring the processing of associations to the "hardware level", since the "body processor" (ie the body as a whole) has great power and can solve many problems with minimal energy consumption. For survival in the wild, this approach is quite justified in many cases. If you are hunting or fleeing from a predator, you do not have time for reasoning - decisions should be made as quickly as possible, “automatically”.
If some situations occur quite often for a long time (thousands or millions of years), then the corresponding algorithms are transferred to a lower level and become "hard" genetically programmed. It is much easier for an animal to learn to dig holes and make nests, grow wool, increase fat reserves for the winter, learn to change color in accordance with the seasons or migrate to other regions, than to think about the need to build a dwelling that would negate changes in the external environment.
Differences, differences ...
Now we can formulate the differences between the human mind and the mind of animals (see table). Here the attributes describing animals are given for "natural" conditions of existence, ie. in the wild, in the absence of human interaction.
Another important feature that we have not yet mentioned is the “automatic” acquisition of speech in newborns . This process is wholly and completely carried out by the "internal gland" and, therefore, is wholly and completely determined by genetically inherent mechanisms.
We are unique - but why?
At first glance, the differences between the "mechanisms of the mind" of a person from those in other animals are not so fundamental. Well, we have a memory that is tens, thousands or millions of times larger in volume than the same monkeys - so what? Well, we can operate with completely abstract concepts that will not fit into the mind of an animal in any way - so what of that? And what's so strange about the fact that human babies from birth absorb abstract information like sponges?
Nothing strange, Karl. Unless you ask yourself a question - how did these properties appear in wild animals, which, in fact, were Homo Sapiens two hundred thousand years ago? How exactlycreatures who could only collect berries-roots and, at the very least, hew cobblestones, received intelligence that allows them to create spaceships, build nuclear power plants and look deep into the microcosm and into the farthest corners of the Universe? And the most important question - what conditions of the external environment acted on Homo Sapiens, that they were forced to develop their own superintelligence, and why did these conditions not work on other animals that lived in the same places?
Here I use the simplest logic: if there is some factor in nature, the pressure of which forces one species to change, then the same factor acts on other species, albeit to a lesser extent. As a result, the distribution of species according to the degree of adaptation to this factor will be “fairly continuous”. That is, if everyone is cold, then someone will better learn how to maintain body temperature (for example, by growing fur or increasing the fat layer), someone worse, and someone in general will hibernate in a cave or learn to freeze through without harm to health. The same is true for running speed, ability to recognize smells, etc. And if we suddenly discover a factor by which one single species has a huge advantage over others, then it's time to stop and say: "What the hell?"
To make the problem of the emergence of intelligence more obvious, I want to draw the attention of readers that intelligence is not a biological phenomenon, but an informational one . And it is quite obvious that in the natural environment of wild primates there were no and there are no factors that create the pressure of natural selection in the direction of increasing the speed and efficiency of information processing. Otherwise, today we would see gorillas making fire by friction, or chimpanzees fishing with a line.
How could reason arise?
Perhaps the statement that there are no conditions in nature for the evolutionary appearance of the human mind is too rash? To understand whether this is so or not, let's try to formulate the conditions in which the pressure of natural selection would "push" to the emergence of intelligence.
To do this, let us recall once again that the mind is a consequence of the existence of "hardware". Without a processor with the necessary architecture, without RAM and ROM, optimized to work with the corresponding data format and having a large volume, without BIOS and firmware, “adjusted” to the tasks being solved, “human” consciousness is simply impossible. What we mean by "mind" is the result of the work of all this "hardware". Moreover, its structure is in the genes.
Everything would be easy and simple if the accumulated experience and knowledge of parents were directly passed on to descendants. On this assumption, Engels's theory of the role of labor in the transformation of a monkey into a man was built. However, today we know that this is not the case, and that the mechanisms for the emergence of new qualities must necessarily be substantiated from the point of view of genetics. For the same reason, I consider inadequate theories that “explain” the emergence of reason by social reasons (like “I wanted to communicate more, since people are social animals”). All such theories explain the appearance of reason at the level of "something, somehow somewhere," and the most important argument in them is "but today we have what we have, which means that it somehow arose!" Such explanations may be perfectly acceptable for the humanities, but not for engineers.
Therefore, the very first and natural assumption would be the idea of a random mutation: once in a herd of primitive Homo Sapiens a mutant (or mutant) appeared, in which (which) quite by accident appeared such a genome, which gave rise to all the necessary set of "hardware" - entirely and immediately. This mutant managed to survive and give offspring, and, thanks to his outstanding intelligence, his descendants had an increased survival rate, and began to multiply and multiply. And the result was Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
As a variant of this model, one can consider the concept of "accumulation of mutations", when one mutant has the necessary "central processor", his descendant has increased the amount of RAM, his descendant has expanded the ROM, etc., until the entire set of required "gland". The disadvantage of this option is that here we must explain why, in fact, the required mutations accumulated, why they were mutually coordinated and why they were not lost "as unnecessary", as is often the case.
All of humanity - from one mutant? I don't think
From the point of view of paleoanthropology, the most "convenient" model is the origin of mankind from a single mutant, which we spoke about above. Random mutations may well occur and even be fixed in the offspring, there is no contradiction with the principle of evolution. Moreover, mutations can be of very different kinds - "as God puts it on his soul." The beauty here is that you don't need to explain anything, you just have to say that "but this is how it happened itself."
In principle, one could agree that both the structure of the central processor and a large amount of abstract memory are the result of a single random mutation (for example, in a single gene). But with the innate speech acquisition mechanism, a problem arises: this is not just some kind of static parameter (such as the amount of RAM), buta program that has been active since the "system start". And for the formation and genetic consolidation of this program, a long and continuous pressure of natural selection must be maintained (tens of thousands of years? Millions of years? - obviously not a couple of tens of centuries). Moreover, in order for this program to be effectively fixed, the newborn must already be surrounded by speaking adults. That is, the problem of "chicken and eggs" arises.
The likelihood of such a program spontaneously emerging as a result of random mutation, and not as a result of long and harsh natural selection, is extremely small. I believe that such a probability is generally strictly zero. Therefore, I reject the hypothesis of the emergence of intelligence as a result of a natural "one-time" mutation.
His Majesty Natural Selection
Since we want to remain in the positions of scientific (not necessarily Marxist-Leninist) materialism, our task is to try to build such a chain of cause-and-effect relationships, which, on the one hand, would take into account the material processes of transmission and correction of genetic information (mutations, sexual selection, etc. etc.), and on the other hand, the influence of the external environment on these processes.
Within the framework of this model, we will assume that the “directed” change in the genome occurs under the pressure of environmental factors. These factors can be both physical (temperature, speed of movement, sounds, etc.) and biological (preferences given when choosing a sexual partner). And the stronger the pressure of natural selection factors, the faster the transformation of the genome occurs.
In the first case, the principle “change or die” operates mainly, and in the second - “change or there will be no offspring”. Our goal is to understand what the factors of the external environment (wildlife) should be in order for them to stimulate the emergence of intelligence capable of creating spaceships, computers and nuclear reactors.
Natural selection "for survival"
Let's start with the CPU, BIOS and firmware. These three components must go hand in hand and be very well matched with each other. Their evolution should take place in the following directions:
- improving performance,
- increasing the speed of decision-making based on real-time data,
- increasing the efficiency of algorithms for abstracting and coding information,
- increasing the efficiency of retrieving information from memory.
In natural conditions, the first two requirements may correspond to a situation when a creature is faced with a rapidly changing complex environment - for example, it gallops along the branches of trees, like a gibbon , fleeing predators or following congeners. Those who do not have time or make mistakes fall down and break or fall for predators.
But 200 thousand years ago, Homo Sapiens no longer jumped on branches, but lived on the ground. Their body structure is optimized for bipedal walking, and therefore the nervous system (including the brain) too. Therefore, even if their ancestors had a central processing unit that provides the required for effective brachiationhigh-speed performance, then during the transition to habitat on the plains it was probably lost "as unnecessary" along with the anatomical features characteristic of the arboreal lifestyle.
Now about abstraction algorithms. When living in constant or very slowly changing (say, hundreds or thousands of years) conditions, there is no need for deep abstraction. This need arises when a creature repeatedly changes its habitat during its life (for example, it moves from one continent to another), and with each change of scenery it must quickly understand who is the enemy and who is not, which food is edible and which is harmful or dangerous, etc. But the migration of ancient people was very slow (about 400 meters per year [2]), and took not a few days or months, but years and decades. The need to retain in memory "what was" in completely different conditions and to isolate in it common properties with "what is" here and now simply did not arise.
The changes in the environment were so small and gradual that it was quite possible to adapt to them using existing mechanisms. Accordingly, there was no need for algorithmic support for these functions. Therefore, the memory could well remain “body-oriented”, and not be optimized for storing abstract properties of objects.
Natural selection by sexual partner
It's even easier here. Nowhere in the wild does sexual selection or the search for a "reasonableness" mate occur. By external signs, by smell, by marriage melodies - as much as you like. But we will not find such a species (except for a person) in which one sexual partner would evaluate the other by the ability to accumulate information and effectively process it. And among people, mostly men "love with their eyes", and women - with their ears.
The above also applies to increasing the amount of memory and rebuilding it to store abstract information - there is no pressure of natural selection to move in this direction in the primate habitat.
To solve a problem, you must first understand it.
Perhaps we have already collected enough information to formulate the main problems in the theory of anthropogenesis. Let's list them explicitly.
- . Homo Sapiens post factum, . , .
- Homo Sapiens , , . .
- , , .
, , , – / – . ( ) . - , , -, Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
, ??
So it looks like our research has led us to the point that we (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) should not have come from evolution. It's funny. That is, all other species have quietly evolved in complete harmony with Nature, and we fell from somewhere about 50 thousand years ago. And at once in many places and almost simultaneously. Oops, something's not good here. Need to think.
Since we do not consider options with the intervention of higher forces or aliens, our task is to find a scenario in which the final result (the emergence of Homo Sapiens Sapiens) is due to purely terrestrial processes that took place (or could have taken place) in the biosphere 200-50 thousand years ago.
First, let's formulate the criteria of natural selection that could lead to the emergence of the "hardware" necessary for the functioning of the mind.
- Increasing the speed of processing incoming information . The higher this speed, the greater the chances of survival should be.
- Increasing the depth of information abstraction . When faced with new habitat conditions, the chances of survival should be greater for those individuals who can more quickly isolate the most common signs in useful and harmful foods, dangerous and safe creatures, quickly adapt to danger signals in a given area, etc. For this direction of selection to work effectively enough, creatures must often (for example, once every six months) change their habitat conditions, and these conditions must be significantly different.
- . , .
- . , . .
In fact, here we are talking about the reasons for the appearance of speech, but it must be borne in mind that speech is not necessary for the functioning of the mind. But in humans, mind and speech are closely related.
We have already noted that these conditions were not typical for the habitat of ancient people. And for whom can they be characteristic? The answer is obvious - for birds!
Birds have had millions of years to evolve and hone all of the above functions to perfection. In addition, since they could not have a large brain, they worked out so efficient algorithms for the construction and operation of the nervous system that their central processor, meeting all the requirements listed above, takes up a microscopic volume.
Horizontal transfer is our everything
And now I want to formulate the most controversial statement underlying my entire model:
The emergence of intelligence in humans is associated with the horizontal transfer of genes that determine the principles of the organization of the nervous system from birds to Homo Sapiens.
I understand that at the first reading this thesis can cause a reaction of rejection: "This cannot be, because this can never be."
But let's calm down a bit and think - what if it did happen? Does it contradict any laws of Nature known to us? No. Could this ("purely theoretically") happen? Yes. How? Let's think about it.
In this articlefor example, it is indicated that genes derived from bacteria are present in the human genome. The authors of the article concluded that horizontal gene transfer "... has occurred and continues to occur on previously unexpected scales in multicellular animals and probably contributed to biochemical diversity during animal evolution."
In another study , patches of the same genetic code were found in the genomes of eight animals that were not apparently related to each other. Scientists blamed poxviruses for this.
Our ancestors (albeit quite a long time ago) borrowed proteins from viruses that once served to build the virus envelope.
Today, you can find a large number of articles devoted to horizontal gene transfer between different species. We are interested in the transfer of genetic information between two multicellular organisms. Here I want to quote from a rather interesting article on horizontal transfer in animals:
"Recent evidence shows that HT of TEs (including non-LTR retrotransposons) is much more widespread and frequent than previously believed, affecting a broad range of organisms through numerous potential vectors."
"Recent results indicate that horizontal transposon transport (including retrotransposons lacking long terminal repeats) is much more widespread and more frequent than previously thought, spreading to a wide range of organisms through a variety of potential vectors."
I do not want to dive deeply into this topic, because, firstly, I am not an expert in it, and secondly, it can take us far from the main line of research. In short (and very roughly), I understand the possible mechanism of gene transfer between organisms as follows:
- The retrovirus is introduced into the genome of organism A.
- The retrovirus captures some genetic code from A.
- The retrovirus with the captured code is released into the environment (for example, through mucus or feces).
- The retrovirus with the captured code enters organism B and integrates into its genome.
- The captured code from organism A enters the genome of organism B and, “if you're lucky,” begins to actively work there.
- Organism B begins to exhibit properties / qualities inherent in organism A, associated with the code introduced by the retrovirus.
Obviously, in order for organism B to acquire something useful as a result of this process, a number of conditions must be met:
- At a minimum, capture of the genetic code from A.
- The code from A must be "acceptable" for the organism of B. If, for example, a virus captures the code of increased porosity and lightness of bones from birds, then a person with such bones will not live long, if at all he can be born normally. And in general, in the overwhelming majority of cases, "what is good for a Russian is death for a German."
- The virus must integrate in B's body at such a place in the DNA so that information from A can be actively used there (and not passed as information garbage) without harming anything.
Of course, the probability of such a transfer is extremely small, but not necessarily zero. And if we have a pandemic associated with a virus that can drag information between organisms, then, given the large number of infections (or the recurrence of pandemics over thousands of years), such a transfer can occur in tens, hundreds or even thousands of cases.
How it was: putting together a puzzle
It all started with Eve
I believe we now have enough pieces of the puzzle to try to piece together the big picture, albeit a very leaky one for sure.
Let's start with mitochondrial Eve. She appeared about 200 thousand years ago, and her heirs began to reproduce quite actively, occupying an increasingly large female part of the Homo Sapiens population. So far, neither the "daughters of Eve" nor their offspring were modernly intelligent - they were the same wild semi-monkeys that the Neanderthals were at that time. Maybe the Neanderthals were even smarter and smarter.
During the first (after the appearance of mitochondrial Eve) migrations of Homo Sapiens, which, as we remember, began more than 100 thousand years ago, the descendants of Eve, who then already constituted a fairly large part of the travelers, settled in new territories. Along the way, they interbred with local tribes and, as far as possible and ability, exchanged with them the skills of making stone tools. Again, there was not much difference in the level of intelligence between the newcomer Homo Sapiens and the natives.
"Bird virus"
And now, somewhere 75-70 thousand years ago, a new virus strain appeared in nature. What kind of virus it was - a retrovirus or an infection with a more cunning name and work algorithm, we do not know. Maybe we'll never know. Therefore, I will simply refer to it as the "bird virus" here. Why "bird"? Because he could effectively infect and spread birds, along the way, as far as possible, infecting everyone who turns up under the wing.
For my reasoning, only the assumption is important that the avian virus possessed the ability to horizontally transfer genetic material.
Given the very low level of social responsibility of our wild ancestors and the equally low level of health care in primitive tribes, no one then wore masks and did not observe personal hygiene and social distance. In short, they didn't wash their hands with soap, slept in bulk and ate everything right from the ground and from the branch. Together with bird (and not only bird) snot and poop left by those who passed by or flew by. And, of course, along with the bird virus in these snot and poop. Which, no less naturally, led to a pandemic along the trajectory of bird migration.
Avian virus pandemics were either annual or cyclical (for example, once every 50-100 years), depending on the mechanism of its circulation in the biosphere. It is very likely that the primary focus of infection from which the pandemic spread throughout the world was Africa. The virus itself circulated in the biosphere for several thousand (or tens of thousands) years. Whether he survived to this day and whether he retained his properties is unknown. Most likely, he did not live or lost the ability to transfer horizontally.
And this is where the law of large numbers comes into play.
If you suffer for a long time, something will work out ...
Even with a very low probability of the transfer of genetic material from birds to humans, but with a huge (many hundreds of thousands and millions) number of infections that took place over thousands of years, sooner or later there was a successful horizontal transfer of "bird genes".
Of course, the virus did not choose which part of the genome to capture from the bird and which of the two-legged and where to insert it into DNA. Everything happened completely by accident. But, as we remember, the "successful" transfer of genes, in which they are actively involved in the work, is possible only under certain conditions. One of the important (if not the most important) condition is the "admissibility" of the new code to work in a new place.
Let's dwell a little on this condition. The "admissibility" of changing the code that determines the work or design of an organ means that the new code does not violate the role of the organ in the body (or, at least, does not drastically change its role). If suddenly the brain begins to secrete bile or the kidney begins to grow to the size of the liver, it will end in disaster. Most likely, such an organism will die in the womb or shortly after birth. That is, if by its nature an organ has a well-established structure and functionality, their abrupt change will not lead to anything good.
Nerves are the head
However, we, like all vertebrates, have an exceptionally plastic organ that does not have a definite "shape", the function of which is not rigidly fixed and which is constantly changing throughout life. This is the nervous system. Accordingly, the transfer of genetic information that encodes the algorithm for constructing the nervous system can go completely unnoticed by the organism, from the point of view of which “practically nothing happened”. The effect of such a correction will manifest itself only after birth, when new programs, encoded in a new structure of connections and principles of functioning of neurons, begin to manifest themselves in interaction with the outside world.
For example, a newborn human baby may now have a "genetic imperative" commanding to memorize and automatically analyze the sound environment - just as a songbird does, whose genes are now embedded in the baby's DNA. And if for a bird this imperative is the result of a million years of natural selection, then for the newly minted Homo Sapiens Sapiens it is quite literally a "gift from heaven".
And again Eve
So what does mitochondrial Eve have to do with it? The point is that the new genetic code cannot start to work effectively without getting to the "right place". To do this, the genes surrounding it must already be oriented towards the same functions as the new code. Well, what's the point in a gene that enhances the ability to analyze and memorize sounds, surrounded by genes that code for bone density or tooth growth?
Therefore, adding, relatively speaking, "genes of the mind" was effective only for the genome, in which there was a place for the insertion of such genes. That is, there was a section coding for the structure of the nervous system into which the bird virus could squeeze in and where it could insert the bird genes brought with it.
My guess is that only the mitochondrial Eve genome has had such a successful landing site. And therefore, only a few of her descendants were able to become Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Everyone else didn't even have a chance. Nothing personal - it just happened.
Well, what did it give us?
The peculiarities of the nervous system of birds are high speed of working with data, efficient processing of visual information, adaptation to the sound environment from the moment of birth, abstraction of information. All this is "hammered" into their hardware and optimized to the limit. Moreover, the instructions themselves encoding these properties can be quite simple - just as simple instructions that determine the behavior of cellular automata can lead to a very complex behavior of a collective of automata.
The transfer of these instructions into the genome of Homo Sapiens and their fixation in the DNA made us “kings of nature”.
Thus, when the "pandemics of the mind" began, here and there individual individuals of Homo Sapiens Sapiens began to appear. This did not necessarily lead to sustainable development of the intelligent-human population. So, "..." high culture, in which beads were made from shells, appeared in Africa about 72 thousand years ago, but did not last long - about 1000 years, and then disappeared. And it appeared again about 65 thousand years ago ”[2]. However, about 50 thousand years ago, quantity finally turned into quality, and the process became irreversible. This marked the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic revolution, and the emergence of spaceships and nuclear reactors was only a matter of time.
The transfer of "bird genes" into the human genome led to the emergence of speech, and also, due to the much larger volume of the brain, gave us much larger volumes of short-term and long-term memory - we simply can allocate much more resources for this than birds. Also, one should not exclude the possibility that the combination of human and avian algorithms for processing and storing information has led to the emergence of qualitatively new mechanisms, which neither one nor the other had.
Summing up
Let's briefly summarize our research.
No paleo ... logic or ... nomics will give us an answer to the question "When and how exactly did the human mind appear?" All we can do is formulate hypotheses and try to prove or disprove them. And my hypothesis is just an attempt to take into account all the known facts as much as possible , and not to discard some of them in favor of my views.
The “complete” model describing the “evolutionary” emergence of Homo Sapiens Sapiens should explicitly describe the following:
- What factors in the wild stimulated the emergence of these qualities of mind in Homo Sapiens:
- increasing the speed of information processing;
- increasing the depth of information abstraction;
- an increase in the amount of memory optimized for working with abstract information.
- Reasons for the appearance of speech and the mechanism of genetic consolidation of speech acquisition in newborns.
- Causes of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution.
We can state that none of the existing models of anthropogenesis provides an answer to the above questions. Typically, “explaining” is simply a matter of listing known facts and drawing analogies with phenomena seen in modern wildlife and primitive tribes. In addition, all models of the origin of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, without exception, ignore the informational aspect of the phenomenon of reason.
Brief chronology of events
A very rough chronology of events can be represented as follows:
- 200 thousand years ago - the emergence of "mitochondrial Eve". Reproduction of its genotype in the population of primitive Homo Sapiens.
- 120 thousand years ago - another wave of migration from Africa to Eurasia. Crossbreeding with local individuals.
- 75 thousand years ago - the emergence of the "bird virus" capable of carrying out the horizontal transfer of genetic material.
- 75-50 thousand years ago - “pandemics of the mind”. The appearance of the first Homo Sapiens Sapiens among the “descendants of Eve”, the fixation of the “genes of intelligence” in their DNA. The emergence of "centers of mind" in different habitats of Homo Sapiens.
- 50 thousand years ago - the Upper Paleolithic revolution: Homo Sapiens Sapiens, taking the technology of their ancestors and neighbors as a basis, began to actively develop and improve them. The selection of sexual partners according to the "degree of intelligence" and the separation of Homo Sapiens Sapiens from Homo Sapiens began.
Brief description of the Homo Sapiens Sapiens emergence model
The model I propose can be described as follows:
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1. Porshnev B.F. On the beginning of human history (problems of paleopsychology) - Ed. B. A. Dilenko. - M .: "FERI-V", 2006. - 640 p.
2. Markov A.V. Video lecture "The origin and evolution of man": rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2451554