That Grandmothers Were Crucial for Human Evolution!

Grandmothering was the initial step toward making us who we are.

For years, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists have struggled to explain the existence of menopause, a life stage that humans do not share with our primate relatives. Why would it be beneficial for females to stop being able to have children with decades still left to live? [Read more…]

Our ancestors and we.

They’re our ancestors. Men, women and children had fireside dinner and chat 300,000 years ago. Women were not asked to sit in separate places. I do not think women were forced to eat less or leftovers.

After 300,000 years, in the 21st century, women are secluded in many parts of the world only because they are women. Not only that, they are forced to eat leftovers and they obviously suffer from malnutrition. Some evolutionary biologists may find logic behind it. I do not find any fucking logic to oppress half of the world’s human population. Sometimes civilization is used to destroy equality.

Beauté Animale

I saw an exhibition on animal’s beauty at Grand Palais in Paris today. I like the exhibition. I really do.
The people behind the exhibition say, ‘there is still a close link between art and science, between our desire to know about animals and our fascination for their beauty’. It is true that paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, famous or not-famous.. the exhibition brings together about 130 masterpieces of Western art from the Renaissance to the Modern day, and takes a radical new approach by choosing works in which the animal is shown on its own and for itself, without any human presence.

I liked the monkey room. There I saw 100 school children, five or six years old, brought by their teachers, were learning about evolution. Children were listening attentively. I was so happy! That was one of the effective ways to learn about the truth.

They say about monkeys and men:

The publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 was a shock for Judeo-Christian civilization. The naturalist developed his theory of natural selection, based on the struggle for life, and suggested that men and monkeys were cousins. Artists were keenly interested in these theories. The image of the monkey, previously ridiculed and conventional, changed radically and gave rise to disquieting portraits, like Pompon’s extraordinary Orang-utan.

There were some arts on Noah’s ark. The story about Noah’s ark was called a ‘myth’ in the exhibition. Children were laughing at the handful of animals that were waiting for the ark in the paintings. They were saying, ‘even though we are small children we know that there are much more animals in the world, where is dinosaur by the way, not a single polar bear is here. We know better than the myth-creators and the painters. Don’t we?’

I left the exhibition with a good feeling. The future might not be so bleak.

Make Love, Not War.

Some scientists say: ‘Bonobos, chimps and humans shared a single common ancestor from about 6 million years ago, Chimps and bonobos shared the same common ancestor until about a million years ago, when the Congo River formed. Then the bonobos developed on one side of the river, the chimps the other.

Bonobos are our ape cousin that is kinder, nicer, and gentler than the chimpanzees and us,humans. They make love, they do not make war. But chimpanzees and humans make wars. We humans are as close genetically to the peace-loving bonobos as we are to the more violent chimpanzee. Bonobos and humans share 98.7 percent of the same genetic blueprint. Chimpanzees and humans share 98.7 percent of the same genetic blueprint.

Chimpanzees and bonobos are much more closely related to each other — sharing 99.6 percent of their genomes. Chimpanzees kill and make war. They do not share food with total strangers. Chimps tend to use tools better and have bigger brains, like humans. Chimpanzees are ruled by male chimps. Chimps get more violent as they age. They kill.’

Humans make love, but they also hate and kill and make war. Some humans do not share food with strangers, some do. Humans are ruled by male humans. They are not necessarily get violent as they age. Humans kill.’

Bonobos make love, not war.Bonobos share food with total strangers. They stay close to their mothers — who even pick out their sons’ mates — long after infancy like humans. Bonobo heads are slightly smaller and their teeth are arranged differently. In behavior, bonobos are far more tolerant, more social. They are inordinately sexual. Instead of releasing tension by fighting, they make love repeatedly. Bonobos are ruled by alpha females. Bonobos don’t get violent as they age. They bite, but they don’t kill.’

We are a little bit of bonobos and a little bit of chimpanzees. We should work hard to be more like bonobos and less like chimpanzees. We should try to stop wars. We should stop fucking each other. We should love more, we should make love, make more and more love.