Words on Paper

The Ancestor’s Tale follows evolution backwards in time to find a common ancestor for all life on the planet. This is the fourth Dawkins book I’ve read, and although I’m still very early in the book, I think it’s going to be my favorite. Dawkins’ books are most interesting when he writes about concrete examples, not just theories or ideas, and so far real world examples have filled the text.

After a general prologue in which he explains the organization of the book and some of the research methods used, he writes about the Agricultural Revolution. I remember learning about the Agricultural Revolution in school, but I never thought about the implications outside of Mesopotamia or its relation to civilization. Then I read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, and I understood that through agriculture groups of people could stay in the same place and build cities, thus creating civilization. Another idea from Ishmael is that people were doing fine before the Agricultural Revolution and although there was some fighting between groups, overall people lived in relative peace with each other and nature. Then, with the onset of civilization, civilized groups spread their culture, mostly through warfare, throughout most of the world. This spread of civilization brought with it destruction of natural resources and increased work for people, who had previously lived off the land with relative ease. I know that can’t be completely true, but I was mostly convinced for a while that civilization was bad and that it was more of a disease than a way to live. Dawkins, however, disagrees. He says that even before the agricultural revolution, species of animals went extinct because of human hunters, so the idea of an early Utopia with groups of people living in harmony with nature is wrong. Either way, we did a lot less damage before the revolution than after it.

As an aside, I mentioned extinction in the previous paragraph as a negative, which I think it is if humans are directly responsible for it. I don’t think, however, that extinction in nature is necessarily bad: it’s a natural part of evolution. If a species has qualities that allow it to survive, then it should be able to evolve again.

Dawkins also discussed lactose intolerance in humans. Although I knew it was unnatural for us to drink the milk of other animals, I didn’t realize human genes generally stop tolerance for lactose around the age of four. I drink lots of milk and have no problems with it at all. The people who are intolerant are normal, so I guess that makes me a freak. All right!