Before Slavery

Although there are the rare naysayers, it is almost universally accepted that slavery did not exist for the first two million years of hominid development..  Hominids probably began to evolve in various locations on what is now the continent commonly referred to today as Africa, maybe as long ago as five million years ago and the homo erectus began migrating out of Africa nearly 1.8 million years ago. By 50,000 years ago we had pretty well circumnavigated and established habitation around the globe.

The origin of the name Afica is currently under dispute.  Was it the Phoenicians, the Greeks or the Romans?  A name imposed by one group upon another is not uncommon.  While several early hominid ancestors evolved in Africa, none were near, relatively speaking, the exact  Upper Nile in what is now northern Sudan-southern Egypt that I am aware of. That may be an error.  While I have never learned to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, I have some limited comprehension of Hittite script, and I have seen a facsimile of a letter sent by Amenhotep of Egypt to Mitanni and the word used by Amenohotep in that letter when referring to his domicile is afru-ika.  Some have told me this is what Amenhotep calls the land he dwells in, his word for his area of rule.  That’s pretty close to Africa.  But that may have just been what the Hittites called the Egyptian homeland.  The Egyptians normally referred to themselves as “remetch en Kermet”  (people of the darkest soil, not black soil as sometimes translated, at least I am told that “darkest” would be a better translation, but “kermet” one word does not, as we mentioned in the last article translate easily because black soil or darkest soil would in either case be a single noun for the soil of the land and not an adjective describing the color of the soil.  The nation of Egypt was “Kmt,” sometimes phoneticized to Kemet, or more probably would have been anglicized to Kermet.  

As I have no intention of disputing Mr. Kenyatta’s Alkebulan term because I cannot, I do believe the root for calling the continent extends prior to the oft-mentioned nomenclators.  But again, I’m not certain at all of my Hittite translation and am relying on others who defined the word in the letter to me. But it did seem contextually sensible to me.

There is a possibility of the evolution of hominids in some part of the Indonesian archipelago.  I say that not only because there is some not completely confirmed evidence that there was a pre-homo sapien species that might have evolved there, or it has been suggested that homo erectus may have survived much longer than previously thought; but it was the successful birthplace of our  primate cousins, the orangutans, as well as one of the evolutionary birth places of our lesser primate relatives, the gibbon.  We don’t tend to think of ourselves, or any of the greater primate species as that closely connected to the gibbon.  I have a sensitivity however that there is one element we share in connection with gibbons and that is in the larynx’s ability to manipulate sound and only the gibbon, of all other primates besides humans, can both chatter as well as sing.  The gibbon of course does not chatter in any humanly recognizable manner, but they do tell long stories to each other that the others will gather round and listen to and respond to, so my wild idea is they do talk to each other in the same sense that we do.  Of course we now know that all animal vocalizations are not just noise, but a method of communication, but the gibbon and the human actually seem to speak to their listener in a recognizable intra-species pattern that has a multitude of inflectional vocalizational and we are both among the rare land mammals capable of singing.  (Along with mexican free-tailed bats,and two rare rodent species the scotinomys and the antelope squirrels.)  So for that larynxnal connection, I view them as slightly more than lesser.  

Be that as it may, my surmise, is that long before our species' pre-ancestors began to evolve, or emerge from the continent, they probably had absolutely no cognizance of a continent or of anything we might refer to as a “people” or a “land”. I imagine they might have called the individuals something, or maybe the groups that traveled together were small enough there was absolutely no need to be individually identified by any nomenclature.  Who knows?  I know they communicated with each other and I know they didn’t just grunt, because the homo erectus had a fully functional larynx capable of making sound words like the gibbon is capable of.  And I am pretty certain I know why they migrated out of Africa, which for familiarity’s sake alone I am going to call the continent.  1.8 million years ago there was a serious drought and it is at that time that two of our closest cousins separated from each other-the baboons and the chimpanzees.  It is at that time another cousin migrated northward–the gorilla.  So it is only reasonable that this great environmental drying of the central and eastern portion of Africa also precipitated the expansion of hominids beyond the confines of Africa.  It was well after the Zanclean flood that filled the Mediterranean Sea and created the African continent, or made crossing  the continent into what is now Europe possible.  But the homo erectus (which is no longer thought to be the first hominid to walk upright, it was probably from them we are truly born.  They were able  to cross the Levantine and found many familiar animals like the rhinoceros and plenty of olive and other fruit bearing trees.  They were pretty smart dudes and dudettes and they already had crafted two-sided stone tools.  But the old notion that they crossed the Levantive because of  the grasslands disappearing and moving eastwood no longer adds up.  Miriam Belmaker has found pretty conclusively that as they left the drying savannahs they found a forestry and moist land and animals we mostly associate now with central Africa.  But once on the move they didn’t stop.  For sure the homo erectus evolved to propel himself and to infinitely just walk. No species had ever evolved that could walk the way they could.  But while I’m perfectly certain they could walk and run a hundred miles in a single day, because I can, they probably settled awhile and moved on and long walks would occur only in less friendly environmental surroundings.  But this is the start of humanity.  And they didn’t just walk because of continual environmental conflicts, they kept on walking because they evolved to do so.  They were the evolutionary success story in our line because their niche in the environmental chain was that though they had the ability and had crafted the tools to destructively attack the environment, the species' success was to never linger long enough to do so. Supposing they had not continued their migratory journeys, supposing they had stayed put and destroyed the environment as they encountered.  Then the evolutionary dice would have rolled against them. And yet this species probably predates us by a million years, or they left Africa a million years before we did.

So let me go back.  Because the evolution of humanity and the success of that humanity is upside down and genetic archaeology is connecting unknown dots that have turned everything my kids (who are young enough to be my great-grandkids) learned in school to be false.  For all of my disenchantment with humanity today, my enchantment with its past is totally enthralling me.  And it is genes, not fossils that are telling us our own story.  

The story is unfolding that our ancestors did not evolve in one location and day by day transform into modern humanity.  No, not at all. It evolved in several locations across the African continent and these species were closely enough related they could mate and we became humanity because of this.  These matings enabled us not only to march towards becoming humanity, but the intermingling exposed us to new technologies, developed in us new skills.  We did not slowly and separately and all at the same time become smarter.  If snow leopards from the Himalayas wandered into the Indian forests and intermingled with the African tiger and each were able to develop new skills—well that didn’t happen.  We might, in the bygone days of evolution, five years ago, that might have been a species who evolved exactly opposite to that, one species that wandered away from each other. Well it did happen with bonobos and chimps more than likely.   But species evolve separately, sometimes simultaneously, and sometimes (maybe) similar species might evolve separately in separate locales and or environments.   

The story of humanity though is turning us out to be species that seemed genetically different but were genetically capable of meeting and mating.  And there is no evidence of violence.  The evidence is pointing in one direction, the women selected the mates they thought would create the most diverse community of skills that would enhance their evolutionary growth and ability to survive. That was another aspect of human evolutionary  success.  The ability way back yonder to recognize the success of the species was contingent upon diversity of human personalities.  Because while many other species can use tools, there is no uniqueness in our ability there, human survival is dependent upon tools.  We can’t survive in cold without warmth, we aren’t strong enough to bring down large game, and generally not quick enough to catch smaller game.  We need(ed) a group to hunt and also for protection.  Developing a community that had a multitude of skills was important.

Okay, what has all that to do with slavery?  Absolutely nothing.  That is the entire point.  We needed a community to survive, but we needed a  community of individuals with different abilities. If someone had tried to dominate the species we would not have succeeded at all.  If dominance was paramount to doom to the species and survival depended on the intermingling rather than conquest of others close enough to our kind, then of course no one marched forth looking for spoils and conquest.  The community needed to be structured around an equality of participation, so it needed members who could equally participate, and the leader could never have assigned roles by whim, but sought out and recognized how each could contribute the most to the whole.  It had to be that way and the discoveries are indicating more and more that this is not mere wishful thinking of a dreamy and maladjusted misfit named  Ken.  

Another thing we have discovered is that almost all women mated and less than half the men.  Now the old way of thinking is that a few men took the most women.  But it has to be the other way around and a few men were chosen frequently by the same women.  It has to be that we evolved more bonobo-like, with the females selecting the favored mates.  It was only later when we became chimp-like with the select men choosing the female.  

The entire society of dominance of the few was alien to the possibility of our species’ survival. Such concepts as racial differences  would have been preventive to the survival of the species.  It was actually the opposite we survived by welcoming and understanding our very need for difference.  And because of that a few millennia later homo sapiens emerged and followed the same steps to survival.  The two most essential ingredients was the need for a community of diverse individuals  and leaders who recognized that need in us.  This continued for several hundred thousand years.  If slavery had entered into the picture at any time prior, we would not today be here.

Identification as a People

Many times I’ve written that I had trouble identifying with any faction or  clique and that I attempted to infiltrate and be a part of each.  It seemed to serve well as a youth but became more challenging as an adult.  But I guess my identification was not a group as such, not democrat or republican, or any particular normally considered type of ethnicity,

But anyone who reads this column even occasionally has to be aware that I do identify strongly as a laborer.  Even after 1980 when, except for a one and half year period when I pursued day labor I have seldom actually labored.  I did not become by any means white collar, I drove people around in vehicles a lot, I continued doing research and sometimes ghosting work for others, I went back to getting a salary for another year and a half as a sort of traveling supervisor which I abominated and I took a couple of contracts with companies that had contracts with other very large companies.  That was after I got married at the age of 59 and became responsible for a wife,a couple of kids and a mother-in-law that would eventually expand to more kids that we took in for various reasons.  Marriage and responsibility was difficult and a great transformative dissettlement in my life.I struggled with myself, I often found my temper flailing over nonsense and quite frankly all of my emotional stability was put into challenge mode.  Well we’ve survived for nearly sixteen years, the kids have found their own stability and when my wife and I found ourselves alone there was another difficult transition because we had little in common to actually talk about.  I’m too long winded without feedback and she’s most generally too intimidated to express herself openly.  

But we do have an essential bond, or feeling about injustices perpetrated by any upon another.  We both believe that overall man acts badly because he is led to act badly.  In my years of driving for hire I suppose I ferried  a minimum of 180,000 people.  In my life,especially in my youth of being permitted to freely wander neighborhoods in Muncie, Kaohsiung , and Yokohama, traveling around (mostly) northern Europe in my two sojourns, and my season working at a tourist hotel in the Bahamas, my various employments over the years and the people I encountered on my two long walks, I suppose I’ve encountered at least a million people.  And the “bad actors” I’ve encountered and have scorched their way into my memory because of how few there have been. Fifty would be stretching it.  That is less than 0.0005% of the people I have encountered.  But what would I believe about people and what would the percentage be if I were not white, male and American?

Now I would rather not use any of those aspects to proclaim my identity.  Nevertheless, whether I do or do not, I am perceived to be identified as such.  Politically I don't know how others exactly identify me.  I suppose most might tend to think me “left-leaning” because of my anti-boss stand.  But people of a “socialist or communist” bent find me radically nazi-ish (I’ve been told by them).  But I do not disparage their perceived goals, only the practical effects which themselves I find  resulted in “nazi-ish” government. But when I also profess that majority rule is nazi-ish the left departs in groves, although many now seem to recognize a need to expand the two-party system beyond its stranglehold on the American political scenario.  

On the other hand, the so-called right leaning people I encounter find me ridiculous, naive, or downright stupid. I mean I must be wrong, mustn’t I?  about everything if I’m wrong about anything.  But then is there a difference if I am Nazi to believe in the dignity of work and want to end the persona of the welfare recipient?  

But mostly, too many think my ideology is fruitcake.  (Not referring to homosexual “fruitiness” but  as in fruitcake ideology that someone once referred to David Hume’s ideology that it was a cake that had been baked without any fruit, so maybe fruitcakeless? At any rate the opposite of being “fruitful”, terminology that did exist long before it was disparagingly applied   to people’s sexual proclivities.)  Fruitcake because they accuse me of wanting to return to a primitive past, a la Rousseauian nostalgia.  Well that is a misinterpretation of both of us, and Rousseau has actually had little impact on me. I don’t remember much about either Emile or the  Social Contract.  But the biggest error is that humans of the past lived primitively and were not too smart. Well the truth is they created and crafted tools with which to survive and continuously improved their toology.  They traveled to all parts of the world and learned to exist in all types of climates and developed the tools necessary for survival, they developed the crafts necessary for both needs and entertainment.  They were as great as scientists as we are today, perhaps better.  Not because they knew more about what was in the heavens, but they understood more about the movements and rotations of the constellations and what effect that had upon their daily lives and their ability to survive.  They knew more about herbology than even most farmers do today, and only scientists actually in the field today probably could equal their knowledge.  They had to.  They had to know what they could digest, what would kill them, what had some medicinal properties (not suggesting I have much faith in herbal medicine and think those who promote miraculous cures from “ancient” remedies are essentially scam artists, but it was nevertheless marvelous knowledge and eventually led to better and more efficient knowledge).  To disparage what they knew at the time as somehow inferior though causes me much umbrage.  They knew as much as they could and they learned more everyday.  And nothing we know today is because we are now smarter but because knowledge builds upon knowledge and knowledge grows more exponentially as it develops because the more knowledge available to build upon, then the more rapid the pace of knowledge that can be ascertained.  But comparatively speaking almost all scientific knowledge  I learned in my school days (with the exception of chemistry, but we know more even there) would now be just as primitive.  But nevertheless everything we have learned since we have learned because of what we knew then.  

So since I believe that humanity has the same capacity to learn I don’t think we need to become primitive.  The knowledge is greater, the capacity to understand is not greater.  And I’ve written enough about the foolishness of the “large brain”.  Please spare me.  Jellyfish have no brain but new studies show they are capable of learning.  Species have the brain (or no brain) that enables them to learn what is necessary to construct a society (or no society) necessary for its survival. It’s only that simple.  An elephant has an even larger brain and in general we don’t believe that makes them smarter.  Plants (recently discovered) scream when they are harmed (a pitch at a much higher frequency than we have the capacity to hear) and they have no nervous system, let alone a brain.  To construct our brain as  somehow of magnitude beyond other species is something that no “primitive” mind would have conceived of.  It is a construct of the deformed mind of humanity when some began to see themselves as superior in capacity and also simultaneously see themselves as superior to other species, and the concept that the human brain has a capacity beyond other species is just a construct of that concept. The human brain has the capacity it needs for the human to survive,

One of those capacities is to identify its relationship with other humans as a species.  One of those capacities is to understand the need for differing individuals to bring differing skills and knowledge to the community to ensure the community’s success.  One of those capacities is to select leaders who are the most mindful of those differing needs and is the most capable in bringing the members of the community to share their differing abilities in the most consensual manner and has the capacity to understand that the individuals within the singular community have singular needs that sometimes might bring them into conflict.  The leader must be able to resolve conflicts by being able to show each member that it is singularly needed.  

When this cannot happen, when communities cannot reach a consensus for cooperation then communities within humanity separated, maybe not always amicably.  But there were individuals who simply saw themselves as more important or simply non-cooperative to the goals of the rest.  I suppose such individuals were an inevitable, if unnecessary and undesirable, part of a species that survived as a community because of strong individualistic traits within its community.  Now some suggest these individuals might have simply been killed by the community.  That is certainly possible as a last resort.  And there is growing evidence that this trait and this fate might have extended all the way back to homo erectus, maybe earlier, who knows.

As the population of humanity expanded, as migrations continued  to be the human behavioral pattern it might have also been inevitable that these deformed personalities might somehow succeed.  At any rate, it happened, and to keep control of the communities they so desired to control in opposition to the needs of the community that needed to impose their own deformity of character upon the society and to deform the human community to their own need to control it.  And now, my friends, slavery begins as the deformed personalities attempted to deform humanity from a highly successful species into a species they desired to transform and subdue and craft into their underlings.