The relentless classification of everything into groups done by naturalists in the 19th century, mostly based on simple observation without any understanding of genomes or DNA, has meant at least a temporary sorting and now something approaching a history of the “homos” — neither homosexual nor homogenized milk but “Homo (from Latin homÅ, meaning 'man') is the genus that emerged in the otherwise extinct genus Australopithecus that encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens (modern humans), plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely related to modern humans
Two abilities fitted these species to their lives in their own ecosystems. The first one was the ability to adapt quickly to the conditions of the place in terms of food and shelter, escape from predators, producing babies, and perhaps improvising tools. The second one was the ability to see how to change the ecosystem place to suit themselves, learning how to build shelters, manage fire, cook food, and clear land to plant.
"Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis . . .emerged with the appearance of Homo habilis just over 2 million years ago.”Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago and, in several early migrations, spread throughout Africa (where it is dubbed Homo ergaster) and Eurasia. It was likely the first human species to live in a hunter-gatherer society and to control fire. An adaptive and successful species, Homo erectus persisted for more than a million years and gradually diverged into new species by around 500,000 years ago.
The third force for fittingness to survive was the ability to live in communities which enabled hominids to work together, invent culture, communicate, and cross generations via memory.
“Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) emerged close to 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, most likely in Africa, and Homo neanderthalensis emerged at around the same time in Europe and Western Asia. H. sapiens dispersed from Africa in several waves, from possibly as early as 250,000 years ago, and certainly by 130,000 years ago, the so-called Southern Dispersal beginning about 70–50,000 years ago leading to the lasting colonisation of Eurasia and Oceania by 50,000 years ago.”
Here’s a chart of the species development over time.
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Homo
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Linnaeus, 1758
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Linnaeus was the one who devised this system and the invented the prefix of “homo” meaning all the same, though the point of naming the hominins is that each named group is different from the others, partly from changing to suit their ecosystem and partly increasing their abilities to change the place because of their efforts.
We have come to a time when our efforts to change our ecosystems have become destructive because of our wanting to suit ourselves, ripping apart the ecosystem elements that sustain them so that they end. Sometimes we did this innocently, not realizing how much impact we had.
The other element is our failure to understand how best to adapt to each other, our own homoecosystems, if you will. The tension between the individual and the group, or between groups, rip apart the elements that sustain ourselves. Some “nations” have disintegrated entirely, like Somalia. Others, like ourselves, are discovering that ruthless individuals can use rival systems to tear our nation apart in spite of good will safeguards. So now what?
My strategy is to think big, like in terms of Deep Time that reach back before there was life on this planet, pause for the blip that is human life, then project forward to what might give us more time. The most immediate problems are how to limit the population and how to improve distribution of food. I read activist’s declaration of what a basic “human” right it is to have enough to eat, and then look at huge camps of people who have nothing to eat. Eating is not a "right" extended by the planet. The universe cares not.
People who starve are not a new phenomenon. It happens in plain sight on our streets and in secret where people have found places to hide. And it doesn’t just kill our species. Same with thirst. We use the distribution system against each other to try to give ourselves an advantage. Letting an entire demographic die changes the dynamics of the whole planet. When I read an article about past pandemics, it was said that the slave-based economy ended because all the slaves died. That was the beginning of serfs and share-cropping.
Fertility is one way a species maintains itself, so prey species have big litters. The joke is that a half-dozen coyotes chase a pair of rabbits into a haystack and one rabbit remarks to the other, “Should we make a run for it now or wait until we outnumber them tomorrow?” Fertility is high in the South and among poor people. They are outnumbering us because we have defined them as prey.
A danger is overspecialization. What does an anteater eat if there are no more ants? What do we eat if the next plague kills all the wheat? Our industrial revolution has morphed into a technology so incredibly deeply into cell-life that we can create a molecule to interfere with the spikes on the corona virus and prevent it from attaching to the aperture in a cell's skin.
But the problem then becomes one within the human demographic — how to produce, how to distribute, and who will enforce the conditions, which social group will they come from? Usually the one that has all the resources, depending either on their willingness to share (compassion) or their enlightened attitude that each of us is connected to everyone and everything else.
When we learned to control fire, it was an advance. Now that we are failing to control fire and the scale is immense, the fires are a demonstration that our lack of care for climate change is here to erase a good part of our species.
So Trump’s father found his Mafia niche in the cement monopoly on Manhattan that was linked to the building of skyscrapers, because cities are phenomena of population density and tall buildings enable that. Now Trump’s failure to control world viruses has led to our species adaptation by using technology to enable distance learning. No one goes into the office and no one goes to the theatre. The buildings are standing empty. So do the subways.
Manhattan is over. The skyscrapers may never be filled in the future. The Trumps are merely a small genetic loop connected to the transformation of the US, since we are so influenced by the ideas of that rich culture, particularly the many educated Jewish families who brought high level German learning to the city. And also the Nazi ideology.
Now we are bicoastal and many of our best doctors and scientists are from India. They respond to the new conditions in new ways. The species is changing in order to persist. Trump is just a match to the fire. His emotional accelerant is excessive. He is extinguishing his family.
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