Tool-making

Posted on by wanderer

Tools can be seen as the means to a goal or goals. For example, a similar narrative to the shiny objects one can be constructed. Rare things were just objects to attract mates or facilitate social interaction. But obviously tools are also utensils that expand the range of resources in the environment accessible to a given individual. There are many examples of non-human animals using tools in their natural environments to widen their range of possible nutrient sources. One of the most studied behaviours is the use of stones or logs to crack nuts by non-human primates. We can perform the same exercise if we go to the countryside and see some freshly fallen nuts on the ground. Most likely, we will pick up a rock or a log and crack a few nuts for the pleasure of enjoying that small treat.

More sophisticated strategies for using tools also exist that can not be thought as tools in a strict sense, like fixed elements of an environment. And also more intelligent. I once saw a monkey in Colombia opening a coconut by hitting it against a large tree branch. I can honestly say that I could not have opened the coconut by replicating its technique, nor could I have devised the technique myself, even if I put my mind to it. For those unfamiliar with a fresh coconut, it has an inner hard shell, the same type we see in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. However, it is encased in a fibrous layer, about six inches thick, covered by a thin, smooth outer layer that is difficult to break. If you simply hit the coconut with a rock or throw it to the ground, the fibres absorb the impact, making it frustratingly difficult to access the inner part. Instead of a rock, the macaque had a neat and efficient opening process. It was a complex sequence: hitting the coconut against a large tree branch while standing on it, then rotating the coconut to remove the outer smooth layer and fibres until it had a convenient handle. Then it could crack the hard shell against the tree branch. This was a sophisticated process requiring knowledge, skill, and technique—one I have never seen a human use to open a coconut, and i counted almost about a dozen different ways of doing it on my travels.

Many other sequential, complex examples of tool use exist. In the case of birds, it has been observed that New Caledonian crows can create long-reaching tools out of short, combinable parts—connecting different short sticks to form longer ones that allow them to access food in a puzzle box. Interestingly, in that experiment, as we have seen, only one of the eight crows, called Mango, was able to piece together four or more short sticks. Therefore, intelligence is not evenly distributed among all individuals of the corvid family. Other great apes, including humans, can also use complex tools, especially to extract insects from holes and colonies.

More intriguingly, the other crows did not learn from Mango to apply his technique. His innovation, stemming from his superior intelligence, benefited only himself—perhaps allowing him to gather more food, gain a reproductive advantage, and produce more descendants who might inherit his heightened cognitive abilities. Consequently, knowledge acquired through innovation is retained only indirectly, as a genetic change—a process that occurs very slowly.

Despite their impressive tool use, neither non-human apes, birds, nor any other known species have made the cognitive leap to trading, exchanging objects or knowledge, or gifting them away. Each time a chimpanzee wants to eat ants, it must create an elaborate brush. There is no brush-making chimpanzee who exchanges their higher-than-average ability for food, grooming, or social status. Nor does Mango the crow trade his long tool with less skilled crows. There is no market or ceremony among non-human species where goods, tools, or knowledge are exchanged or given freely.

We will see that more sophisticated behaviour is needed, connectivity will allow the increased complexity of tools.

Rarity and Curiosity <- Previous Next -> Exchange and gift-giving

Growth of communication- Culture

Posted on by wanderer

All of the previous examples I have highlighted until now, show living beings collaborating and cooperating require a basic feature: communication. Communication involves shared channels in which the individuals that form a group or interaction have cues and signals that can be understood by other members and entities. These are mainly visual, chemical, acoustical, and vibrational cues. With these cues, the basic structure of formations larger than the individual exists, allowing for the generation of other ways of interacting with the environment that individuals alone cannot achieve.

Out of the three bases of global reach (intelligence, collaboration, and communication), I will focus on communication as the most critical for our understanding of how we got here—that is, the capacity to communicate at many and diverse levels and across a wide range of scales. From really superficial to deeply technical ones, from proximity to global.

At some point in this arrangement, a complex cognitive structure emerged in the form of language. This sophisticated communication would encompass most forms of categorising the external and internal world of individuals in any group united by communication. Many debates concerning the limits of knowledge originate from analysing where our knowledge of the world around us is constrained by language. These debates span back centuries, for example G. Berkeley’s, A Treatise on Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) or J. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), or take really interesting forms, like the Sapir-Whorf effect, where language might shape the essence of how we see our world. For example, many languages do not have words for numbers larger than 3 or 4, but might have hundreds of words for different scents, which we lack.

In any case, at some point language was used not only for the communication between members of in-groups, but also with external groups, becoming a federation of groups, as anthropological research shows. That is where everything really changed, where “Culture” emerged in the sophisticated form that we know and where information, collaboration, exchange, reduction of conflict and complex networks would extend the wealth of possibilities of how interact and shape our environment. This level of inter-group communication is something that has not been achieved successfully by any other living thing on this planet —maybe with the exception of the Fire Ants, and they are a only doing it for the last 100 years or so. As humans, we achieved the creation of a structure —culture— which allows detailed communication between virtually all the members of our species.

Once communication between groups emerges, everything changes. This accumulative communication allows for the complexity of the tools we use to be open-ended, as the evolution of technology and tools like large particle accelerators or space satellite constellations shows.

Communication is also open-ended, meaning that it can potentially keep increasing indefinitely, probably linked to the complexity of tools. In nature, communication channels tend to be very limited and do not show growth or evolution by themselves, while human languages are always in continuous evolution—incorporating new concepts and terms, combining existing ones, losing or forgetting others, and actually forging what is needed. This applies not only to language but also to symbols, signs, experiences, training, repetitions, etc. This indefinite addition of communication elements adapts to achieve the desired level of communication, understanding, and sharing of the initial information. To put it simply, to pass on a specific message. This depth of communication also requires boundless collaboration to construct the complex concepts needed for sophisticated knowledge.

All in all, this open-ended way of sharing messages has created what we have come to know as culture and cultural evolution—the body of messaging and knowledge that is passed from one generation to another, with the capacity to add new pieces to that pool or lose them. Moreover, we have, in principle, the limitless capacity to transmit accumulated knowledge and messages to other human beings, as long as there is a shared communication channel.

Collaboration <- Previous Next -> Language

Overview

Posted on by wanderer

What does humanity want?

In this work you will not find the answer to this question, but you should find realise of the beauty and unique time when we can ask it at all.

This work is no different than the old philosophical questions of “where we come form?” where are we going?” “And why are we here?”. These have been asked countless times over generations and you would not find the answer to them here. But I would just put these questions in the context of “humanity” as a new emergent concept that has never existed before in the history of our species.

I also do this questioning from my particular background. I have been raised in a Mediterranean, European cultural context, deeply immersed in Greco-roman philosophy and state building plus the influence of the Book or Aramaic religions.

On top of that my studies shape my information sources and world view. I studied a Bachelor in Physics, a PhD in cosmology, did projects in neuroscience, astrophysics, dynamical systems, perturbations, information theory, causality, human evolution and cultural loss and cultural survival. These lines of research are the framework in which I am basing the texts presented here.

Moreover, in that particular “western” view, I come from València, from a catalan speaking family where both of my grandfathers are from the same town I was born (Sagunt), both being Catalan speaking. Both of my grandmothers emigrated to my town in the 40s (in the psot civil-war period) with their families, coming from the interior of València, from a region that was previously Aragonese speaking and switched to Castilian. As with many other mixed families, my linguistic landscape is mixed. My maternal grandmother did not switch to Catalan in the family environment, while my paternal grandmother did. The main economical sources of my grandparents where linked to the land, as farmers, orange orchards and orange industry, bakery and later on neighbourhood retail shops. In general terms they where from lower to upper middle class range in their society at the time.

Although inside of a mainly Catholic society, I have been raised a free thinker, with agnostic parents. Since childhood I always have felt a natural inclination to skepticism, empiricist and atheism. All these inclinations where allowed or encouraged in my educational and family circles, even by my paternal grandmother, who is the most religious and spiritual person in my connections. Although a christian believer, she is not a devout practitioner and is quite skeptical of the institution of the Catholic Church. One of her sayings being “do what the church says, not what the church does”. I have had little interaction with the Catholic church structure, other than the festivities, and enforced learning program at 6-7 years old that was required to do a first “communion”. Even in these classes I have been able to express my early atheism, at the little price of being put to face the wall for extended periods of time.

My parents move within the left-leaning Catalan/Valencian nationalism, which pursues auto-determination by our people in particular, within the historical boundaries of the pervious Kingdom of València, and by historical cultural groups in general My parents shifted away from the land and businesses, got university education and worked mostly at government jobs (city hall taxes and school- high school counselor and head teacher). The land itself in Valencia is of high significance, is one of the most fertile irrigated grounds in the planet, with extensive irrigation channels dating back centuries and developing a industrial level production of fruits, mostly grapes and then oranges.

To expand a bit on my unique cultural background, Valencian and Catalan cultures are quite special inside the Iberian and Spanish context. There are 3 states in the peninsula (Andorra, Spain, Portugal), plus a small part of the United Kingdom (Gibraltar). As Spaniard passport holder, I have unrestricted access to the colonial lands outside the peninsula: the Canary Islands and Ceuta and Melilla.

There are still 4 main languages in the peninsula (Euskara/Bask, Catalan/Valencian, Castilian/Spanish, Galician/Portuguese) and at least 3 other latin languages that are rapidly disappearing or are quite in the minority (Aragonese, Bable/Asturanu, Occitan/Aranés).

Historically, we have layers of culture that most of us can trace to Iberians, Celtics, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Arabs and Berbers/Amazigh. And in particular catalans are the last colonisers of the Valencian land, which was predominately dominated by Arab culture by the time of the Catalan colonisation in the XIIIc.

For few centuries my land was the home of the three main Abrahamaic religions, Judaism, Christianism, and Islam. But, within the Spanish monarchy in the Iberian context, they outlawed the other two religions and expelled every family that was associated with the practices or ancestry of the Jewish or Islamic religions. The Jewish heritage peoples where expelled in 1492 and the muslim heritage peoples in 1609.

In particular, in the town I was born, it is estimated that jewish population peaked at about 20% of the town population before being expelled, and muslims where about 20-30% before being expelled. So within 3-4 generations almost half of the population of my town was kicked away from their ancestral lands. This could be seen archeologically in empty houses in the old Jewish quarters that where scarcely inhabited until the XX century.

The peoples remaining from these other religious and/or ethnic groups were under strict scrutiny. They were forced to adopt Christian Catholicism and they were heavily punished if they were found to violate the practices. That is where the infamous “Spanish Inquisition” comes from.

Therefore, I am from a land depleted form its historical religious and cultural diversity, from a cultural group who’s main language comes from colonisers to the north, and our language itself has been prosecuted in a more or less stringent way for the last few centuries. Yet, we still widely use it, even if it is in decline.

Valencia is also the home to a staggering number of highly visual and impactful cultural traditions and festivities along the territory, or at specific towns that are involved in a grandeur public display. Among others these are: Falles de Valencia; Fogueres d’Alacant; Tomantina de Bunyol; Moros i Cristians d’Alcoi; Correfocs (shared with Catalunya and Balearic islands); la Cordà de Paterna; Muxarangues d’Algemesí; Bous al carrer i Bous Embolats; Bous a la Mar de Dènia; el Misteri d’Elx; la Foguera de Canals; Gegants (Giants and big heads, also shared in many other places of the Iberian peninsula and Europe, especially France and Belgium); Carnivals, shared with most of the Catholic world; and the Holy Week parades (shared with most of Spain and Latin America), which in the case of Sagunt’s Holy Week, it seems to be among the oldest ones, with its origins placed in 1492 and associated with the converted Jews and textile workers.

This framing is intended to raise conscientiousness that in a different socio-cultural background, with different interests, worldviews, formative years, the topic of this text could take a completely different perspective. Humans are the only animal (that we know of) that can sit at night looking at the stars and start wondering how would be the universe in 100 years, 1000 years, 10.000 years, 100.000 years, 1.000.000 years, 1 billion years, 1 trillion years, and where we will be in that time, even there will be such a thing as “humans” then. Moreover, these thoughts would make these humans act NOW in certain ways. To illustrate this point, there is an exercise that is passed to philology students to communicate to people living tens of thousands years in the future to not enter radioactive waste dumpsters. Under this simple exercise there is the deep thought about caring about the future so far removed from us cultural that current communication would be mostly gone.

But beyond these thinking, star-dreaming, “nuclear waste” worried humans, we created something new, the concept of “humanity”.

Therefore, I encourage the question itself to be shared and explored by many other different people, because, willingly or not, we are “forced” to live in the age of “humanity”.

We are no longer simply humans, that time has passed, we are now “humanity”. “Humanity” understood as a willingness to include every single individual on this planet that we can catalogue as a biological “hominid species” in a kind of tabla rasa where we are all equal and there are universal rules applied to all. These rules emerge, in big part, from the cultural background where I have been raised and nourished. Nevertheless, we will see the limits of this universal view, where they are and why.

This writing is about “humanity”, not humans. How “humanity” came to be, how “humanity” can “think”, and if “humanity” can also look at the stars, realise the beauty of the question, and the unique time “humanity” is living, and see what these thoughts, if they exist at all, would make “humanity” act NOW.

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