Monday, May 30, 2011

A story about humans

Humans first walked the Earth many millions of years ago.

The first civilisations started about 10,000 years ago when we decided to form and live in towns and cities with most of us working in farms rather than running around looking for food.

It's amazing how much we've changed.

We do not have fur.

Humans do not have fur. Why? Some argue that it was because we did such a horrible job of cleaning ourselves that it became an evolutionary advantage _not_ to have fur (which lice and other parasite could hide in). This exposed the skin to the sun and depending on where you lived you would get different amounts of sunlight creating different skin colours leading to the different races. There are three 'great races', Caucasoid (white people), Mongoloid (asian people) and Negroid (black people).

Oh and not having fur meant that we had to find other ways of keeping warm - like making a fire, one of our great ancestor's most important skill. It served a social purpose by bring people together to cook and share food. [Although we do get goosebumps to keep us warm.]

Another thing that serves a social purpose is alcohol. Our bodies are designed for alcohol (our largest internal organ, the liver, is there for the purpose of metabolizing alcohol). At the beginning of civilisation we started living in towns and cities and worked on the farm tending to crops and animals. Half of the grain was used for making beer. Beer was the one big draw of city life, it was something you couldn't get as a roaming solitary nomad. Beer is a social lubricant - it makes social situations much easier to deal with.

As towns and cities developed and grew larger and larger it became quite difficult keeping track of all the people. How did we managed to solve this problem? By inventing gossip. The first uses of our more complex language (originally probably developed to coordinate hunting) was to sit around the campfire and exchange information about the ones who weren't there, behind their backs.

That use of language--that sharing of juicy secrets about who was sick, or dying, or who was mating with who--let us gather information about other members of the group who don't happen to be present. This is what the other animals could not do, and it let us create the kind of complex societies other species can barely understand.

Ever wonder why women seem to talk--and gossip--more than men? Some think it's because while the males were out hunting, it was the females who did the gossiping around the campfire.

Now there are problems that need some personal time to solve. Sometime we just gotta get away from people and from society. Well thats why we have depression. Depression makes you want to cut off contact from others until we could get our act together. Depression is a part of being a normal, healthy person.

Well I hope you guys found this story fascinating!

25 comments:

  1. I want to be a dick and post that XKCD comic about citations :P

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  2. i'm quite a hairy person. so does that qualify as fur?

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  3. I'm (reasonably) sure the lack of fur was a result of our developing to run for long periods of time and using sweat to cool our bodies. Humans are superior at running long distances than almost any animal

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  4. very much so... humans are.. destructive without even really intending to be xD

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  5. great story man ;) keep up the great work

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  6. HA! Thats a great way to look at it all ;)

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  7. Alcoholic beverages were also safer to drink than water.

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  8. i thought we do not have fur because we needed to hunt and chase our prey for extended periods of time

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  9. Great story. But it's only a story :D haha but seriously good read.

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  10. very cool outlook, enjoyed reading it

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  11. Amazing story, keep posting great stories!

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  12. I certainly did. I've never given much attention to how the Human race became the way it is.

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  13. Wow, that was more detail than I'd ever heard about the development of skin color.

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  14. humans are evil! thats why we destroy everything .-.

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  15. this blog is very good mmmm

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  16. Excellent post that's concise and detailed. I always enjoy reading about our species. Thank you for sharing!

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