Daydream man

Homo Somnium- Daydream man

 Do you catch yourself daydreaming? Do you expend energy on things such as painting, writing a blog or playing golf? Things such as these we all do for many reasons. Perhaps we do it to relieve boredom or to exercise pended up energy?  From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, there would seem
to be no obvious survival benefit to it. Despite this, we as individuals spend an awful lot of time and energy imagining things, some of which never come to fruition.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)61496-7/fulltext?rss=yes&utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=196607&utm_campaign=0




Some say that this is a side effect of the cultural revolution ushered in by civilization. As our time was freed up from the rigors of hunting and gathering more free time could be allocated to things not directly related to our immediate survival. However, no one alive today can know for sure what the causal relationship between creativity and the rise of civilization might have  been. It would seem logical that there must have been some preexisting  semblance of the creative mind  to make the initial jump in the first place.

                          Gobekli Tepe
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/?no-ist

 From those dusty fragments that are available of a remote past, we must, therefore, infer what we can. Scientists and other professionals across many disciplines for many years have been doing just that. There are  many conflicting ideas, some of which that do not fit so squarely within the accepted cannon. However, with each new discovery, it is becoming more evident that complex and abstract thought far predates the onset of civilization. The question then is how long?

As we trace back our human lineage we find that some of our now extinct cousins were capable of abstract symbolic thought and perhaps even language. For example, we now know that our direct ancestor, Homo Erectus had the ability to shape his world in ways that placed him right at the top of his food chain. In many ways, he was superior to us. No one today could survive the wild as he did in direct competition with lions, hyenas, and dire wolves. Our transformation of the world has negated the need to possess such strength and guile.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-worlds-oldest-art-shell-20141204-story.html
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.10399/pdf

  The tradeoff, of course, is civilization and all that it entitles
one to. We must, however, learn to recognize the inherent fragility of this thing in which we all participate.  We do after all still possess that same problem-solving mind. To what end then will become this latest and last survivor of our genus?

As the saying goes, all good thing must come to an end. There are many species with whom we share this planet. Some of which may be in the possession of higher processes that rival our own. In our absence will one of these candidates rise to the challenge? It would seem that there would be no obvious candidates. Perhaps it is to our evolved descendants who we shall deliver this world as an inheritance?

In a future world in which sentient machines have relieved us of our toils and labors perhaps the true nature  of this daydream mind will be unleashed.  Whether or not our robot overlords may be so benevolent is another story entirely. The key to this question may ultimately rest in our ability to survive long enough for our innate creative capacity to be unleashed. It served us well enough when we dropped out of the trees onto the savanna.

The Parasitic Arms Race

The parasitic arms race

Though it may appear to some that we feel secure in our domination over nature it is important on occasion to recall that this was not always the case. Certainly the news of late should serve as a reminder to this. Throughout all of the kingdoms of life that have ever existed on Earth there has been an ongoing arms race the prize of which is survival. This arms race has left within each us all a lasting legacy of immunologic memory of biological battles fought well before anyone alive was ever born.

In a previous creatures log “the realms of the very small” I wrote about the microscopic creatures such as demodex that make themselves at home upon the surface of our bodies. For the most part these fellow travelers tend to cause us no harm. There are however whole legions of viruses, bacteria and parasites that are far less benign. As early man wandered around the coasts until he literally walk out of Africa into Eurasia he took with him only the parasites that came along for the journey. However there in the African cradle of human evolution there remains in the environment hosts of creatures that evolved specifically to parasitize us. 

Ebola was discovered by the outside world only in 1976. Hidden there on the fringes of man’s territory it had surely lingered for millennia. Since that time in contained remote areas in central Africa there have been limited outbreaks in which entire villages have fallen in its wake. In the decades since it has elicited within us a nascent fear. Reminiscent of all the plagues of our nightmares it kills indiscriminately as jumps from host to host.Here in the west perhaps because we live far from the region of our natural evolution we erroneously feel we have had little to fear from our ancient nemesis. However there are no more “contained areas”, for anywhere in the world is now accessible within a day’s time. As our populations swell and technology everyday makes the world a little smaller, we should abandon this notion of invincibility in the face of a very old and sophisticated enemy.

                                                      A heart effected by Chagas disease



http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2010/02/14/genes-from-chagas-parasite-can-transfer-to-humans-and-be-passed-on-to-children/

Are we headed toward a perfect storm to which we will one day become extinct like all previous occupants of the top of the food chain throne? I would say not. The plagues that have for eons besieged our bodies are doing just as nature had evolved them to do and they have done it well. However despite this almost constant battle, along the way humans have not only survived but have thrived. Hidden within each of us transcribed within the strands of our DNA is the story of many a hard fought battle of survival. The evidence of which can be seen in the traces of parasitic bacterial and viral DNA sequences that abound intermingled with our native code. Some of these splices possibly date back to the beginnings of life on earth. These battles have undoubtedly influenced our own evolution.  Some of these subsequent adaptations may have greatly improved our survivability. However we should not fool ourselves that we should go unscathed this time. We will survive as we have done before.  This time we possess the advantage of foresight.   Armed with the latest that medical science can provide we should take the responsibility to do all we can.  We must remember while doing so to maintain a healthy respect for our enemy and an eye on our own frailty.