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Life on earth appeared billions of years ago; Dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago. Our ancestors separated from chimpanzees and gorillas about 6 million to 6.5438+million years ago and embarked on the road of independent evolution. Therefore, the natural history of mankind is only a short period in the life history of the earth, which is insignificant.

There is only 2% difference between human and chimpanzee genomes.

What we are doing now: gorillas and chimpanzees can be grouped together. They are called apes, and we are human beings.

But our close relatives are chimpanzees, not gorillas. On the other hand, chimpanzees' close relatives are people, not gorillas.

Humans can't form families or even genera independently, but they should belong to the same genus as the other two chimpanzees.

We can put orangutans in cages in zoos and show them in public, but we can't treat people like this. I often wonder how the audience will feel if the classification label on the side of chimpanzee cages in the zoo is marked with "genus".

Only a small percentage of the instructions in the chimpanzee's genetic program have changed, which has produced great behavioral results for us.

This is the most surprising and puzzling discovery in the history of human evolution. Even though the human brain has evolved to the level of modern people, the stone tools have remained primitive and rough for hundreds of thousands of years.

Even some human groups continue to use Neanderthal-type tools for tens of thousands of years, even though their skeletal morphology is no different from that of modern people.

The myth that "human beings have been hunters since ancient times" seems to have been deeply rooted in our cultural imagination, so it is difficult for us to give up some ideas that follow. Nowadays, shooting large animals is regarded as the highest expression of masculinity.

However, anthropologists have found that their main source of heat is plant food collected by women at home.

At this time, modern people with exactly the same form as us appeared. The earliest modern people, we sometimes call them Krohmann Nu people.

Neanderthals suddenly disappeared (about 30,000 years ago) shortly after Kroma farmers appeared, and Kroma farmers put Neanderthals on the road to extinction.

The temporal and spatial differences of this culture are quite different from the unchangeable culture of Neanderthals. These cultural differences constitute the most important innovation of mankind after the Great Leap Forward. Since then, the most important feature of human beings is the ability to innovate.

What helped human ancestors complete the Great Leap Forward? This is an archaeological mystery, and scholars know nothing about the answer. We didn't find any clues on the bone fossils. That may only involve 0. 1% DNA.

If I am forced to guess the cause of the "Great Leap Forward" of human behavior, I will think that "language" has played an important catalytic role-I mean the language ability of modern people. Although we usually think that farmers in Kroma are the earliest people worthy of the title of "the spirit of all things", they also show two characteristics-killing each other and destroying the environment-and sow the bane of the present situation of mankind.

Men are 8% taller and 20% heavier than women.

Among polygamous species, the number of "harem" is directly proportional to the difference between the sexes.

Testicular size theory. Species with frequent sexual intercourse have bigger testicles.

Penile length theory. Average penis length after erection: gorilla 3.18 cm; Orangutan 3.81cm; Chimpanzee 7.62cm；; Human 12.7 cm.

Our average "handover" time is about 4 minutes (Americans), gorillas are 1 minute, bonobos are 15 seconds, chimpanzees are 7 seconds, but gorillas can reach 15 minutes. Compared with kangaroo (12 hour), human performance is "as dew as electricity".

There are also some hot issues in the evolution of human reproduction, such as the evolutionary reasons of "recessive ovulation" and the effect of copulation without reproductive significance.

This result shocked Dr. X. He found that nearly 10% of the babies were the result of extramarital affairs.

About 5% ~ 30% of newborn babies in America and Britain are the products of extramarital affairs.

As long as there is "marriage", it opens the door for "mixed reproductive strategies". "Mixed reproductive strategies" is a scientific term used by social biologists. In Mandarin, it means that married people have an affair.

Retreat and defend (sweet family), advance and attack ("sow" for others to raise), and take advantage of the situation.

Women who cheat are more picky than men.

35% gulls on the shores of Lake Michigan have an affair with their families. This figure is almost the same as the 32% published by American Playboy magazine in 1974.

Gibbon is also a species that both sexes look forward to working together to raise children, but scholars have not found that they also play extramarital sex tricks. As for chimpanzees, "extramarital sex" is a meaningless concept because there is no such thing as "marriage". Therefore, to discuss the unique life cycle of human beings, we must explain the fact that "marriage" and "extramarital sex" coexist in human society.

Nayar in southern India has developed an extreme method to solve this "asymmetry" problem. In nayar's society, women are very free. They can have as many boyfriends as they want, at the same time or by turns, and everything is forgiven. So Mr. Wang is not sure what kind of child his wife gave birth to. How is he? He doesn't live with his wife or take care of her children. He lives with his sister and takes care of his nephew. At least, on average, 1/4 of his genes can be found in nephews.

Adultery law is a clear example of how men deal with these difficulties. Until recently, all such laws were "asymmetric", whether in Hebrew, Egyptian, Roman, Aztec, Islamic, African, Japanese or others, as long as you can find them. These laws have only one purpose: to reassure married men that their "own" wives have "own" children.

Since ancient times, Mr. Wang's infidelity is not even a crime (punishment). It was not until 18 10 that there was a law in France that Mr. Wang could not keep "wild flowers" at home without the consent of "home flowers". Throughout human history, the modern western adultery law similar to "equal rights" is actually a new thing, which was developed and formed in the recent 150 years.

Relatively mild measures include monitoring and even imprisoning women's bodies.

What's more, there is a barbaric operation to destroy the vulva-cutting off the clitoris or most of the vulva to reduce women's sexual interest.

At present, there are still 23 countries in the world that preserve the custom of destroying Yin and locking Yin, which are distributed in Africa, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

If this can't guarantee male patriarchy, the last "trick" is murder.

Proving the evolutionary root of a barbaric act is tantamount to claiming that this act is justified; Proving that a behavior has a genetic basis is tantamount to declaring that it is impossible to change that behavior.

Modern civilization has successfully stopped some ancient vices, such as infanticide. The main goal of modern medicine is to inhibit the role of harmful genes in human body.

However, we have also developed a moral consciousness. In order to pursue moral goals, even if it violates the goals and methods of reproductive competition, it will do whatever it takes and have no regrets. We can have the experience of fighting between man and nature, which is the most fundamental difference between man and other animals.

You will find that the items with the highest correlation coefficient (about positive 0.9) are: religion, nationality, race, socio-economic conditions, age and political views.

When we choose a mate, we don't value physical characteristics, but when we "breed" dogs, horses or beef cattle, we are very picky.

The correlation coefficient of physical characteristics of husband and wife is 0.2 on average, which does not exceed personality characteristics (0.4) and religious beliefs (0.9).

An obvious reason here is that marriage is not just a choice, but the result of negotiation.

The most surprising thing is the length of the middle finger, and the correlation coefficient is 0.6 1.

At the same time, please remember: besides your parents and compatriots, your "search reference images" are also influenced by others, as long as they often appear around you when you grow up, such as your childhood playmates. Maybe your wife is like the little girl next door when you were a child, not your mother.

She is 100% from China, but she grew up in a white community, and other families in the whole community are white. When she comes of age, she will move to a populous community in China. For a long time, she dated both China people and white people, and finally realized that only white people could attract her. She has been married twice, both with white people.

For example, equatorial West Africa, South China and Scandinavia, but the indigenous skin colors in these three places are the deepest, the yellowest and the whitest respectively. All the islands in Solomon Islands are in the same climate zone, but people with dark skin and light skin live in neighboring villages. Judging from the evidence, sunlight is not the only natural selection factor that affects skin color.

The first reaction is disproof: the time factor. The purpose of this argument is to "deal with" the fact that there are light-skinned indigenous people in the tropics. They said: those ethnic groups are not aborigines in the tropics, but immigrants who have recently moved into the tropics from high latitudes. They haven't had enough time to evolve dark skin. For example, the ancestors of American Indians immigrated to the New World only 65,438+65,438+0,000 years ago. No wonder there are no dark-skinned groups in tropical South America.

Another influencing factor is: sexual selection.

Sexual selection is a powerful force, enough to erase the traces of natural selection and make the relationship between skin color and sun exposure less close.

Because many clones can live to be 60, but Neanderthals hardly live to be 40.

Before the invention of writing, the elderly were a database of information and experience. They still play that role in today's tribal society. In the hunter-gatherer era, even if there is only one person over 70 years old in the clan, his knowledge can determine the fate of the whole clan.

Apes kept in zoos, enjoying the achievements of human science and technology and veterinarians, still can't live to be 80 years old.

Even if a person lies still every day. Men also consume 1640 calories (women 1430 calories) every day to maintain basal metabolism-most of the energy is spent on regular updates that are invisible to the naked eye. So I guess that a large part of our daily energy expenditure is spent on routine renewal of body parts.

Examples in the biological world are: the risk of being killed by (natural enemies), birds are lower than mammals (because the sky is high, birds can fly), and turtles are lower than most other reptiles (because they are protected by turtle shells). Therefore, birds and turtles can expect higher recovery by investing in expensive restoration mechanisms. Birds live longer than similar mammals (aging is slower), and turtles live longer than similar shellless reptiles.

We predict that the gender with lower probability of violent death will get more from the investment of repair mechanism (thus prolonging their life).

If aging is a major factor, then the right medicine for this factor is equivalent to finding an elixir for human beings.

But evolution really seems to have turned our bodies into a state of "simultaneous and all-round decline", and our bodies will only invest in places worth repairing.

For example, Mercedes-Benz owners should not buy cheap ball bearings, but spend a lot of money on other parts.

These findings show that it is easy to underestimate the information content of animal sound load.

Perhaps "human beings are not the only species in the world that communicate with language".

If babies grow up in an isolated environment, they will never speak or invent or discover a language when they grow up, such as the famous "Wolf Child" Avilon.

Our art must have a "predecessor" in the animal kingdom.

It should be a painting by two chimpanzees (Congo and Betsy), a gorilla (Sophie), an orangutan (Alexander) and a monkey (Barbro).

Therefore, in the process of evolution, the female of the flower pavilion bird shifted her attention from the natural decoration of the male body to the decoration built by the male. Although in most animal species, the role of sexual selection is to strengthen the differences in body decoration between the two sexes. In flowering birds, sex selection makes males emphasize "external objects" rather than physical decoration. From this point of view, the flower pavilion bird is very similar to people.

Of course, it is a common phenomenon for animals that can feed effectively, because of the lack of life and a lot of leisure, many behavior patterns are pushed to the extreme, beyond the original purpose.

I advocate that art is useful, but it does not mean denying the entertainment value of art.

The third characteristic of human art: every human has a unique artistic style, and the knowledge to create and appreciate this style is learned, not inherited.

Ants invented not only agriculture, but also animal husbandry.

"Hunting and gathering" life: bad, savage and short-lived. Since all the food had to be searched in the wild at that time, it was impossible to store much food, so (according to this view) every day was spent foraging, and there was no extra time for other things.

Let me give an example to illustrate the indirect verification method they use. If farming is really a wonderful idea, once it rises, it should spread quickly. In fact, archaeological records show that the "progress" of European agriculture is like a snail crawling. It can barely reach 3000 meters a year. About 10,000 years ago, agriculture rose from the Near East, spread to northwest Greece after 2000, and entered the British Isles and northern Europe after another 2,500 years. That is not a "warm response" at all. Until the19th century, Indians in California still lived a life of hunting and gathering. They are not ignorant of agriculture, because they will exchange goods with agricultural groups. However, California is now an American orchard. Don't those Indians know how to benefit themselves? Or are they too smart to see through the appearance of agriculture and have ulterior motives, and most human beings are trapped in it and can't get out?

It's amazing. Before the end of the Ice Age, the average height of hunter-gatherers living there was 177.8 cm for men and 167.6 cm for women. After the rise of agriculture, the height dropped sharply. About 4000 BC, it was 160 cm for males and 155 cm for females. In the classical era (ancient history), the height began to rise slowly again, but modern Greeks and Turks have not "recovered" to the level of their ancestors.

Agriculture is harmful to human health for at least three reasons. First of all, there are many kinds of food for hunter-gatherer groups, and the contents of protein, vitamins and minerals are appropriate, while farmers' food is mostly starch-rich crops. As a result, farmers get cheap calories, but they pay the price of malnutrition. Today, only three high-sugar plants (wheat, rice and corn) supply more than 50% of the calories consumed by human beings. Second, because farmers depend on one or several crops for their livelihood, if crops fail, the risk of starvation is much greater than that of hunters. The Great Famine in Ireland is an example. Finally, without the rise of agriculture, most of today's major infectious diseases and parasites would not take root in human society at all.

In addition to malnutrition, famine and infectious diseases, agriculture has also brought another scourge to mankind: class division.

However, the message we want to convey is still the same: I am strong and I am the best. Even if I only took drugs once or twice and smoked a cigarette, the feeling of burning and choking didn't knock me down, or I survived the first hangover, which is evidence of my strength.

Perhaps this information is appropriate for birds, but it is wrong for us. This instinct, like many other animal instincts, has been out of tune with modern human society. If you can walk after drinking a bottle of whisky, it may prove that the alcohol dehydrogenase content in your liver is relatively high, but it doesn't mean that you are excellent in other aspects. If you are a heavy smoker and smoke several packs of cigarettes a day, you may have a gene against lung cancer, but this gene has nothing to do with intelligence, business vision or the ability to create family happiness.

Kung fu martial artists drink kerosene. Iwan explained to me that practicing kung fu can keep fit. He and his master drink a glass of kerosene every month to test their skills.

Maya enema ceremony. The function of those pipes was finally figured out, because archaeologists found some colorful bottles with scenes of using them. Initially, these tubes were used for enema. A figure in a high position, obviously a monk or a nobleman, is painted on the colorful bottle, and someone is watching the enema ceremony. The enema tube in the picture is connected to a bag filled with foam juice (like beer), perhaps wine or LSD juice, or both-other Indian groups have similar examples.

As far as alcoholic drinks are concerned, enema with wine can show a person's strength better than drinking with the mouth, because alcohol can directly enter the blood vessels from the intestinal wall. If you drink, the wine will enter the stomach first and will be diluted by the food in the stomach.

Therefore, in my opinion, enema is more credible and shows people's strength than our whisky advertisement. I will recommend the beauty of enema to more aggressive public relations companies, so that they can put forward novel ideas when competing for big winery projects.

Art and drug abuse are both human characteristics, which exist in most known human societies. Both of them need to be explained, because they don't seem to be the products of natural selection, and it is difficult to understand why they can help individuals find spouses in the process of sexual selection.

Complex behavior has its own life history (internal logic), which can go beyond the original purpose (if there is only one purpose at the beginning), and complex behavior may have multiple functions at the beginning. Just as art is no longer just a "gadget" to entertain itself and others, advertising art is very functional; Drug abuse is not just an advertisement now. In order to relax and relieve depression, everyone can drink and take drugs.

These animal features only seem to be "self-destructive" on the surface, but in essence they are "eugenics".

Life on earth has a characteristic that biologists call "convergent evolution".

It can be found that many different biological groups have independently evolved ways to use the same place, or evolved the same physiological adaptation. Birds, bats, pterosaurs and insects all evolved into flying independently.

So this brings scientists a question: Are similarities inherited from the same ancestor? Or "convergent evolution"?

The European men they met for the first time were wearing trousers and belts, which puzzled them. A man put forward a unique view on the function of clothes: those men's penises are very long and must be rolled around their waists and covered with clothes.

There is no isolated society in the world, and its scale can be compared with that discovered by the archibald expedition in August 1938.

The process of world cultural integration has accelerated. Reducing cultural differences may be the price we must pay to survive.

Before 4000 BC, the inhabitants of Eurasia had five kinds of livestock, which are still the main livestock of human beings: sheep, goats, pigs, cows and horses.

Until today, only a very small proportion of wild mammals in the world can be domesticated.

In other words, our ancestors experimented with hundreds of kinds of animals, and several of our mammals and domestic animals quickly emerged, while others were abandoned.

First, in most cases, it must be a gregarious animal. In the community, low-level individuals instinctively show obedience to "big brother"

Gazelles, as well as many deer and antelopes, are very sensitive and difficult to manage, because they will run away as soon as they find something wrong, unlike other animals who don't do anything when they are in danger.

Only Peindier in the cold zone has been successfully turned into a domestic animal by human beings. Reindeer can tolerate alien invasion into their activity space, live in groups, have no territorial concept, and are materials for human livestock.

Secondly, many animals look docile and healthy in the barn, but they may refuse to mate-zoos often have this kind of trouble.

After the invention of saddle and stirrup, Attila the Hun dealt a heavy blow to the Roman Empire with it. The Mongolian cavalry led by Genghis Khan was invincible and established an empire across Europe and Asia.

1September, 939, the Polish cavalry lost to the Nazi mechanized army that invaded Poland, and the era of war horses on the battlefield officially ended.

Native mammals in the United States and Australia have never pulled plows, carts or chariots, and have never produced milk or carried people. The civilization of the New World hobbled forward with the strength of human muscles, while the civilization of the Old World took the lead with the help of animal power, wind power and water power.

Like animals, only a few wild plants are suitable for crops. For example, monoecious/self-pollinated plant species (such as wheat) are domesticated earlier and easier than monoecious/cross-pollinated plant species (such as rye). The reason is that it is easier for self-pollinated plant species to select individual plants and cultivate pure lines, because each generation does not have to be mixed with other wild lines.

It turns out that corn is a kind of plant that is difficult to domesticate and grow, and its products are not ideal.

Humans naturally prefer harvested plants. These plants usually have several characteristics: the seeds are large, the seed shells are easy to remove and the seeds are not easy to shake off.

The three branches of Indo-European language family are Germanic (including English and German), Italian (French and Spanish) and Slavic (Russian).

In Europe, almost all languages belong to the Indo-European family, such as English, Italian, German and Russian. But the language spoken by Finns is not, and several other languages are also "non-Indo-European".

Today, the Indo-European language family is not only popular in most parts of Europe, but also in Asia bordering Europe, such as the Middle East, and directly to India in the East. The popular languages in this vast land are very similar to each other in vocabulary and grammar. Of the 5000 languages in the world, only 140 is Indo-European, which is certainly not enough to reflect the status of Indo-European in today's world. Since 1492, the global expansion of Europeans (especially British, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Russian) has re-planned the language map of the world. Now nearly half of the world's population takes Indo-European as their "mother tongue".

For example, there are about 1/6 Greek words, which come from non-Indo-European languages. These words are exactly what you can easily imagine the Greek conquerors borrowing from the aborigines: places such as Corinth and Olympus; Greek crops such as olives and grapes; Names of gods or heroes, such as Athena and Odysseus. These words may be the remnants of the indigenous (non-Indo-European) languages living in this part of Greece.

Recent field data show that gorillas and chimpanzees will be murdered by the same kind, and the probability is at least the same as that of ordinary humans.

By our standards, it is inefficient for chimpanzees to besiege single compatriots, but on the whole, the process of "genocide" is also inefficient. It took three years 10 months for the Kahama team to be eliminated. They were killed one by one, not several at a time.

Of course, some chimpanzees are unarmed.

However, chimpanzees did show "genocidal intentions" and plans (though not brilliant).

Technology has liberated human's killing impulse (instinct).

1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, declaring that "genocide" is a crime against international law. However, the United Nations has never taken serious countermeasures to prevent, stop or punish "genocide".

President George Bush: "The current goal is to completely destroy and destroy their settlements. It is crucial to destroy the crops in their fields and prevent them from planting more crops. " Benjamin Franklin: "If God's will is to destroy these uncivilized people in order to make room for those who cultivate this land, then rum may be the designated means, which seems not impossible."

President theodore roosevelt: "The colonists and pioneers are actually on their side;" This great continent can never be preserved only as a wildlife sanctuary for despicable barbarians. "

Humans will regard the past as a "golden age" in many aspects, and environmental protection is no exception.

Even now, some people think that the classical Greek and Roman era is the "golden age" of western civilization. Ironically, the Greeks and Romans considered themselves "fallen people", and they also believed that there had been a "golden age" earlier.

Not just afraid of birds. When Maori arrived in New Zealand, other now extinct birds were still alive. After centuries, most of them were extinct.

New Zealand is not an isolated case. All other distant Pacific islands recently excavated by archaeologists have found many extinct bird species at the earliest migration sites, which proves that the extinction of birds seems to be related to human migration.

The geographical displacement of this great country is a far-reaching and lasting historical model, which cannot be the product of "accident". Some people put forward a specious hypothesis, saying that every ancient civilization center has destroyed its own resource base, so hegemony will shift.

Small-scale equal rights society, as long as it lasts for a long time, often has the opportunity to evolve environmental protection measures, because they have time to understand the environment and understand where their interests are. On the other hand, the ethnic groups that are most likely to damage the environment are often those who have migrated to new environments (such as the Maori and Polynesians who first landed on Easter Island); Or ethnic groups that have been pioneering their consciousness in the "frontier"-they have nothing to hide, make a mess of a place, and "cross the border" to explore new environments (such as Indians who first entered the new world).

The tragic failure caused by knowingly committing a crime is a moral evil. In this respect, we Americans are different from the "ancients" in those days: scientific knowledge and the ability to use words. We know how to estimate the relationship between resource utilization rate, resource recovery rate and population, but they don't. We can read the reports of ecological disasters in the past, but the "ancients" can't. However, our generation continues to kill whales and cut down tropical rainforests. No one seems to have read the past of Maori and the "ancients". The past was still a "golden age" characterized by "ignorance"; Now is the "iron age", and we turn a blind eye to it.

At present, the speed of biological extinction caused by human beings is much higher than that of natural extinction. We estimate that in the next century, half of the 30 million species in the world will be extinct. If so, the current extinction rate is 1.5 million species per year, or 1 hour, 1.7 species. Of the 9,000 species of birds in the world, at least two are extinct every year. However, in the natural state, there are less than/kloc-0 species extinct in a century, that is to say, the current rate is at least 200 times higher than the natural rate. "Life will naturally become extinct", so refusing to acknowledge the extinction crisis is tantamount to refusing to condemn genocide on the pretext that "everyone dies".

Because I read "A Brief History of Humanity" before, the shock brought by this book is very limited, and it can be used as a supplementary reading. In addition, the translation is really not flattering, and it is very tiring to chew.