Searching for the origins of culture and beliefs.

Just what kinds of things am I talking about? Well, what kinds of things make us comfortable? Or happy? How do we decide if we like where we live? What we do? What icons do we choose as symbols of power, and why? What are the origins of these aspects of our behavior?

Architecture, Art, Literature. Rules of trade. Law and Government – especially Democracy. All of these things that we take for granted, evolved from something earlier. Tools and weaponry are obvious things, of we have seen ample evidence for evolution. These other things are just a little harder to trace. It's also easier to talk of humans as tool users, that creatures with complex emotions and feelings. Since we are talking about ourselves, facing some of our darker aspects is a little scary. But when you think about it, it's remarkably clear that all these characteristics come from somewhere.

Yet despite what this interesting facet of civilization might tell us of humanity and its origins, the evolution of human entertainment, as an anthropological study, has pretty much been left alone.

But let's bravely move ahead. Let’s move our perspective back to 40,000 years ago, when modern humans first appeared on the scene. We can sketch ties between them and earlier ancestors – just a little smarter, a little cleverer, a little more capacity for memory and learning than their predecessors. At the time, the world was quite different in terms of environment and the types of animals that roamed the planet. There were even other kinds of humans living concurrently, if not in proximity to our modern human ancestors. Another 30,000 years hence and we had completely covered the globe – and all remaining proto-humans were gone, (along with a number of other animal species).

Since that time, what’s actually changed? New environment, new materials, new discoveries, new perspectives…yes. New humans? Not really. Since the advent of modern humans – civilization – law – evolution has proceeded along in a whole new way. We are in essence the same humans that wandered the earth 40,000 years ago. Even though, as different cultures in existence today show, we clearly have the capacity for change, physical evolution is basically at a standstill. The aspects of nature that produce change have been mitigated or eliminated in human culture.

The risks to existing culture, even humanity itself, are as great as they were at the dawn of modern humans. That is a rather bold statement. Why do I say that? We have insurance, superior weaponry, all kinds of safeguards in our height of civilization. The risks, my friend, are all within us! Much, if not most, of what we consider essential requirements of living together are learned, not innate. We have the capacity to learn – or not learn, as the case may be. Our very complex structure depends utterly on things that future generation may not grasp. (Possibly because we in our ignorance weren’t smart enough to teach!)

There are some things about us that are innate. We’re still the same people we were 40,000 years ago. All the basic drives – instincts - are still with us. Yes we are very flexible in how we adjust to new conditions. That’s our hallmark. But everything else comes with it. Inventiveness. Frustration. Love – whatever that is. And mass-hysteria. Yes – acknowledging glum Nietzsche – herd instincts. And discrimination. Much of what we consider our "base" emotions actually comprise our "emotional base." Discrimination exists within us because those that discriminated survived to the detriment of those who could not. We were as capable of love and kindness 40,000 years ago as we are now. And we are just as capable now of murder and mayhem, as we were then. We learn, if we are lucky, that these negative actions are better left at the door, when we enter society’s house. Some of us don’t. It’s just plain that simple.

Another aspect of human behavior is our ability to invent, but failure to comprehend the effects of our new tools on society in general. We hand off Promethean advances to the general masses. We just can’t seem to stop inventing. We are monkeys with guns. The guns keep getting better, but we’re still the same monkeys. Somehow this isn’t a very comforting picture I’m drawing. Oh yes, one more thing we do… Breed. Breed, breed, breed. Forty thousand years hasn’t taught us – collectively – anything about controlling population in a civil manner. A conservative nature toward reproduction may not actually be in the best interests of humankind - ever! We can customize ourselves to the ambient cultural situation. But managing birthrates are not yet in the collective memory that comprises our gene pool. We either learn it, individually, or we don’t. And even if "we" do, there’s no guarantee that our descendants will. Each succeeding generation must learn these kinds of things over and over again. This, the increasingly complex world, the technological Eden – with some of our most basic problems not even seriously considered, much less solved – this is the world we leave to our children.

All this aside, the main theme of this series of essays is the evolution of storytelling. Story telling has had a prominent place in all cultures, regardless of their age or technical state. One can safely infer from the plethora of stories that appear to originate in humanities early history, that the art and practice of storytelling extends far back into prehistory as well. How far? And what form did these stories take? That is what I want to explore here.

The similarities of certain stories may infer a common origin – as with language in general. And as with the myriad language sets that we currently enjoy, the differences in these stories say much about their evolution – their depth of origin in prehistory. Identifying common themes, and deriving a theory concerning their origins and development, is my proposed task here. I have a larger picture in mind, though. Later on, at some point, the first attempt at a formal system describing human civilization will be set forth. This is one of the links back to my philosophical stomping ground. Here I leave behind the conventional anthropological ground behind. The methods, I hope, will tie in with current research into the development of language.

My take on storytelling is that humans were not the first, by any stretch. Communications between members of any social group - for instance communication between one member and the rest – this is a behavior that extends well back into our most distant of animal kin. Any creature who displays social behavior, be they wolves, baboons, or even honeybees, have at least limited forms of communication. Even honeybees are storytellers of a sort: each worker has the capability of informing the hive where the great flowers were that she found.

These messages can, such as in the bee’s case, be between peers, and be totally innate. Or they might, in the wolves’ and baboons’ cases, be learned behavior, and take the form of instruction of the young, as well as peer-to-peer. In this case, one reasons, the urge to this behavior might still be innate, but the message itself, what specifically one is trying to communicate – would be flexible. Perhaps even something the adult learned. This is slightly different than the rote regurgitation of the entire flight of the honeybee. Here we have the recognition of some basic action that has been categorized in the creature’s mind as "important", and passed on to the succeeding generation. If we acknowledge this behavior for what it is, then we must also acknowledge that it is just a single step away from the capacity we ourselves possess. The only things missing are the capacity for storage of more messages, more details, and the ability to descriminate between messages.

Primates rely heavily on these kinds of communication. Life for them is a combination of self-learning and instructed learning, as well as development of innate behaviors.

In humans, better memory seems to be the focus. Better memory meant better strategies toward dealing with competitors if needed. And it also meant more awareness of the state of competition that perhaps existed from time to time. Less able proto-humans, in lean times, may not have even perceived of a potential conflict until it was too late.

But I digress… Let’s go on. Many animals have warning calls that groups must respond to en mass. In animals, this kind of communication is again a combination of innate and learned behaviors. Even in a cow, an animal most humans would consider to be somewhat limited in intelligence, we find this combination. The mother must innately respond to her calf, but must figure out where the calf is. She is smart enough to put together the information she has – sights and sounds – and put them all together to distinguish her calf. Many animals, social or nonsocial, have innate strategies to protect their young, but they also have to take that learned step of where they need to be in order to effectively execute that strategy. That part is learned.

Thus, even our so-called noble desire to teach has an innate basis. It’s the things we teach that are flexible – the learned things – the adaptation criteria. These are the things we find it necessary to pass on – to the next generation – or to the group at large.

I conjecture that early stories among the proto-humans must have been one of two types. They either took the form of passing on important observations:

Or the form of a warning:

As our capacity for reasoning evolved, the boundary between right and wrong behavior became more complex. Communication evolved right along – it had to – because competition dictated that in a world where communication was a survival trait, the best communicators would be better off. These messages became more elaborate, but up to a point, the purpose of the messages was the same: potential danger or potential resources. Distinctions between the kinds of danger became important. The simple message of:

Might not be enough to ensure the survival of the group.

"A lion in the valley!" versus "Other people in the valley!"

Could elicit entirely different responses in our proto-human tribe. As our group evolved, even more complexities emerged.

Would result in one reaction, while:

Would cause another one entirely.

I want to point out a subtle distinction between theabove cases. You may not have noticed, but the first warning was very general, but by the time we got to the bottom of the list, the warnings were all about other people

So you can see that as time passed, competition between hominid groups became the main focus. The kinds of perceptions that the proto-human cultures had to have in order to survive, required more memory, more detailed and perhaps more diversified roles, and more complex communication - a plausible explanation for the birth of complex language. But this doesn’t explain the shift from communication of basic information to something of entertainment value. I’ve explained the "Bread" but not the "Circuses".

Recognize in passing that none of the characteristics we’ve discussed were geared toward making our developing proto-human any kinder, gentler, or more loving. On the contrary, it was competition that was being identified as the primary driver for the development of language. Any kindness or love is likely to be a continuation of the nurturing and protective strategies already well developed on our ancestors.

The clear and obvious story that develops from this primitive society is the male-based hero’s journey. This story, and its many versions, is likely to be one of the first – if not the first – story ever told. This tale, in which our generic savior leaves the safety of the fold, journeys to a strange place, encounters some form of challenge, and returns to the group (likely to its enhancement or sustenance). This easily-recognized story was born from the hunt, a battle, or a combination of the two. The many variations on this central theme could be considered to be an evolutionary process, coupled with the imprint of the ambient culture of the time.

It is interesting to note the basis for this story crosses over into the animal world – easily. Examples are ubiquitous. Just today I watched two naturalists on TV, observing female and adolescent Grizzlies fishing for spawning salmon in Kamchatka. Suddenly a 1500-pound male approached the fishing spot, and the other bears scattered. The observers faded into the shrubbery, but then, as the large male moved into the water, they returned to the shoreline, and into full view. The male watched them, sizing them up. The observers did not run away in fear, nor did they threaten. The big bear returned to his feeding on the dead salmon in the river. The observers had passed his test. Can there be any question that such events not only model the hero’s journey, but serve as the basis for such stories?

Recursion And Humor

I conjecture that humor appeared at about the same time as the recognition of recursion in the developing language system. As soon as primitive hominids recognized the effect of words, even if they were wrong – for instance someone speaking aloud in their sleep and causing a stir – then humor and story telling soon became a part of the ambient culture. This is a necessary (and potentially sufficient) condition, for unless one can hear the words without reacting – step away from the "bee dance" interpretation of communication, then stories for their own sake could not be possible. Words always had to mean something concrete up to that point. Beyond it, with "meta-thinking" in the realm of capacity, words about words were possible, and they could be spoken in multiple contexts. One human could speak to another, and the other would know the difference between "action words" and "word words". This distinction provided a very important survival trait for the group. They now could plan activities - talk about them without doing them immediately. Humor and planning came as a matched pair. Youget one, you get the other.

I am proposing that this might have happened in its rudimentary stages quite early in hominid development, as chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans are very close to this capacity on their own. (Gorillas can be taught sign language, and have been known to lie.)

Everything we perceive is only a representation of reality. Life itself uses models to persist, in the form of the senses. Originally this model was used only to react to stimuli directly. But with evolution came reflection – the ability to think and weigh the various stimulus-response mechanisms within ourselves – and ultimately came the ability to think about thinking.

In the mean time, of course, analysis and using models, is what we are good at. And once the capacity for storytelling was part of the hominid equation, a great new realm was opened up.

Other institutions were written in as well, once we were able to manage recursive symbols. What initially was merely an evolutionary step, that would enable the bearer to deal more effectively with conflicting perceptions, transformed much of our primitive pre-cultural forms into institutions that existed for themselves. Ritual became rite. Repetitive gestures became dance. Words became stories and song. Pictures became art. Learning became teaching. Sacred places became temples. (And ultimately theaters – "meta-temples" - when we learned to laugh at the institutions we had made.)

This journey – from being creatures that react to stimulus, through those that can think about which stimuli to respond to, to creature capable of thinking about thinking – changes nothing about the "creature" part. Choosing as we do to live among one another, places the awesome responsibility upon each and every one of us to instruct those upcoming novices, who will eventually displace us, the ways and limits of society. Those who do not learn are either shunned or restrained. And there is always the risk that an entire generation cannot or will not accept the structure we lay upon it, at which time the system will at once fall apart.

It seems strange that we have not taught ourselves what to teach. It seems almost intuitive that we should, and yet we can’t even agree on what to teach. When one thinks about it, a variety of approaches is compatable with human (animal) nature. Differences create conflict, which in turn weeds out those processes that fail to "make the grade". In this way, society accepts the risks of falling apart in favor of a social version of natural selection. Thus society evolves, even if we don’t.

Storytelling became a way to transmit information from one generation to the next, in a way that was acceptable to both the speaker and the listener. Stories worked, because they were told in a way that captured the interest of the listener, but often contained a message that would become clear upon analysis. Unfortunately, this analysis does not always take place. The confusion between the message of the story, and the actual description of events is, to a great degree, responsible for much of the mythology we hold so near and dear, as Joseph Campbell (1949) described so well for us in "The Hero With A Thousand Faces".

What I would like to do is to proceed with the analysis of a particular type of story, where there is little if any underlying message. I classify these stories as the "How things got to be the way they are" type – a way of explaining the current state of the world in lieu of a truthful accounting.

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