

by Charles Lyell on July 10, 2012

“Habit rules the unreflecting herd.”  – William Wordsworth

Is it possible we’re all descendants of Rudolph the brown-nose hominid?

In his book, The Third Chimpanzee, Pulitzer Prize winning author Jared Diamond explains how the earliest Europeans owed their success to their continent’s domesticatable animals. As Dr. Diamond explains, of the hundreds of potential candidates, only a small number of animals are capable of being domesticated.

Domestication, as opposed to taming, requires a short list of unimpressive traits. In addition to living in herds, the animals must breed in captivity. They can’t be high-strung. And they must be innately submissive towards dominant members of their own species. Most importantly, their submissiveness must be transferable to human handlers.

It’s a complicated mix. Reindeer are only one out of over forty deer species that have been domesticated. Five of the eight horse species have never been broken. Camels can be domesticated but their cousins, the vicuna, can’t. Most species of sheep refuse to behave like ‘sheep.’ And except for cats and ferrets no other solitary territorial species have succumbed.

Professor Diamond’s book doesn’t contain any mention about Homo sapiens being prime candidates for domestication. His omission seems strange, especially since Homo sapiens’ undeniable submissiveness and herding instincts, coupled with a strong aversion to independent thinking, provides so many insights into how unconscious war mongers managed to cripple our species’ fate.

Diamond’s oversight raises an interesting question: What if there were more than a few, or dozens of, hominid species in addition to Homo neanderthalis and Homo sapiens? And what if the hominids who couldn’t be domesticated, including Homo neanderthalis, were simply slaughtered by vengeful control freaks who destroyed their indomitable male counterparts, impregnated the females, and eliminated irrepressible offspring?

Primatologist Frans de Waal noted, “Nevertheless, it cannot be coincidental that the only animals in which gangs of males expand their territory by deliberately exterminating neighboring males happen to be humans and chimpanzees.”

Homo sapiens and chimpanzee males, who are also known to practice infanticide, murder neighboring males to get at the females. Knowing what we know, it seems more than possible that we are descendents of Homo Rudolphis.

The primitive gangsters responsible for the artificial selection of our species didn’t have to be rocket scientists. Derailing evolution was as easy as following the dopamine-influenced instincts that kept them ingesting pleasing foods (that triggered dopamine flow) and swatting annoying bugs (that threatened dopamine flow).

For millennia, acquiescent minions were permitted to live and reproduce, as long as they did their part to keep the bosses’ dopamine flowing. Throughout history, the most brutish minions earned their keep by swatting annoying questioners and other threats to the bosses’ dopamine flow. Genetics took care of the details.

Breeding answers a lot of unanswered questions, including:

  • Why has there always been a dearth of great thinkers and a glut of dolts?
  • Why is it always the dolts trying to silence thinkers and never the other way around?
  • Why did it take so long for one man, Charles Darwin, to finally connect all the obvious dots between Homo sapiens and chimpanzees?
  • What can possibly keep huge numbers of seemingly intelligent people believing in fairy tales while denying Darwin’s findings?
  • Why isn’t this information on hundreds of, or any other, internet sites?
  • Why doesn’t anyone want to know how dopamine-induced addictions to drugs, sex, food, fear, power, safety, acceptance, approval, attention, esteem, status symbols, money, and/or religion are in the process of destroying our species’ chances of survival?
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