Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Earlier Gardeners
I get a kick out of scientific findings that run counter to the accepted view. Darwin, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein all discovered a more accurate way to comprehend our universe. They each ran counter to their predecessors. (And all of their theories subsequently became amended.) Their descriptions shook up accepted beliefs. It’s the way that science should go.
I also get a kick out of ruminating on the ramifications of new and unexpected scientific findings. I like to play around with how they might alter our current worldview. One recent example is a research finding that human cultivation likely began much earlier than previously thought. The current belief is that our ancestors began to evolve from hunter-gatherers to horticulturists about 10,000 years ago, and then transitioned into an agrarian culture some 5,000 years ago. These recent findings show, however, that we entered our horticultural period much earlier—maybe as long as 20,000 years ago.
If true, this suggests that we were gardeners for far longer than we had been believing. That struck me as possibly quite meaningful, as far as helping to interpret our modern behavior, and giving me some optimism. How so? Well, as horticulturists we began gardening by simply poking a hole in the ground and dropping a seed in it. It was work that required little physical strength. Women could do it, while the men went on the hunt. In horticultural societies the contributions of women and men were equally valued. Our religious sense also began to bloom during that period, so our deities tended to be both male and female.
When our ancestors became serious about farming, we moved from being horticulturists into the agrarian period—a much more intensive form of agriculture, when animals were used to plow and plant. Agrarian work required more strength, so it fell largely to men. Women couldn’t risk miscarriage, so they turned the hard labor of farming over to men. As our skill at farming grew, food surpluses came into being for the first time. This allowed some people to take on non-food jobs, such as priests, scribes, politicians, and artisans. Since men were now in charge, the specialty jobs were filled mostly by men. Women gradually came to be viewed to be of lesser value, even eventually to become demeaned and abused. Children often suffered similar mistreatment in an agrarian culture.
Since the agrarian period is closer to us, we are more familiar with its customs and viewpoints. In fact, modern culture contains many vestiges of patriarchy, in the way we continue to demean women and children. We are struggling to overcome that agrarian worldview. Much more growth awaits us.
But if we were horticulturists for twice as long a period of time than we previously thought, maybe the equal valuation of men and women that prevailed during that period is deeper in our bones than we thought.
Evolutionary science tells us that many of our actions are guided by the extremely long time that we were hunter-gatherers (for as much as 500,000 years). We may have acquired a big brain along the way, but a lot of our unconscious behavior is still patterned after our deep hunter-gatherer ancestors. If so, I welcome the news that we were gentle horticulturalists for much longer than we’ve believed. Maybe that will make our work of getting past our aggressive, patriarchal, agrarian outlook a little easier. We’ve already begun the transition—maybe we’ll succeed sooner than we thought.
I also get a kick out of ruminating on the ramifications of new and unexpected scientific findings. I like to play around with how they might alter our current worldview. One recent example is a research finding that human cultivation likely began much earlier than previously thought. The current belief is that our ancestors began to evolve from hunter-gatherers to horticulturists about 10,000 years ago, and then transitioned into an agrarian culture some 5,000 years ago. These recent findings show, however, that we entered our horticultural period much earlier—maybe as long as 20,000 years ago.
If true, this suggests that we were gardeners for far longer than we had been believing. That struck me as possibly quite meaningful, as far as helping to interpret our modern behavior, and giving me some optimism. How so? Well, as horticulturists we began gardening by simply poking a hole in the ground and dropping a seed in it. It was work that required little physical strength. Women could do it, while the men went on the hunt. In horticultural societies the contributions of women and men were equally valued. Our religious sense also began to bloom during that period, so our deities tended to be both male and female.
When our ancestors became serious about farming, we moved from being horticulturists into the agrarian period—a much more intensive form of agriculture, when animals were used to plow and plant. Agrarian work required more strength, so it fell largely to men. Women couldn’t risk miscarriage, so they turned the hard labor of farming over to men. As our skill at farming grew, food surpluses came into being for the first time. This allowed some people to take on non-food jobs, such as priests, scribes, politicians, and artisans. Since men were now in charge, the specialty jobs were filled mostly by men. Women gradually came to be viewed to be of lesser value, even eventually to become demeaned and abused. Children often suffered similar mistreatment in an agrarian culture.
Since the agrarian period is closer to us, we are more familiar with its customs and viewpoints. In fact, modern culture contains many vestiges of patriarchy, in the way we continue to demean women and children. We are struggling to overcome that agrarian worldview. Much more growth awaits us.
But if we were horticulturists for twice as long a period of time than we previously thought, maybe the equal valuation of men and women that prevailed during that period is deeper in our bones than we thought.
Evolutionary science tells us that many of our actions are guided by the extremely long time that we were hunter-gatherers (for as much as 500,000 years). We may have acquired a big brain along the way, but a lot of our unconscious behavior is still patterned after our deep hunter-gatherer ancestors. If so, I welcome the news that we were gentle horticulturalists for much longer than we’ve believed. Maybe that will make our work of getting past our aggressive, patriarchal, agrarian outlook a little easier. We’ve already begun the transition—maybe we’ll succeed sooner than we thought.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Oh Deer
Out in our neck of the woods we’ve been increasingly faced with incursions of deer, the last few years. Their numbers and audacity seem to have grown immensely. A century ago they were held in check by big predators like wolves, coyotes, and wildcats; but humans drove them out, so the deer now ramble quite freely. A few decades ago numerous hunters roamed these woods with rifles and played the primary role of deer population-control predator. But each year these woods see fewer hunters and more deer. The automobile may soon become the sole predator.
Deer love to eat the things that people grow: luscious vegetables, fruit trees, ornamentals. These fancy plants are far tastier than tough forest vegetation. Deer may be cute, but they can be pests.
We have been quite lucky not to have been too bothered by deer in recent years—even though many of our neighbors have been. We’ve always had good-sized dogs as members of the family. They’ve roamed the immediate area, spread their scent, and enjoyed a good deer chase.
But that luck has recently been changing. Maybe it’s the increased deer population, maybe it’s the current dog getting older and more sedentary, maybe it’s all the luscious apple saplings I’ve planted. We’ve repeatedly been invaded by deer, with the buggers nibbling off the tender tips of the saplings. Their pruning technique is not to my liking. After some research and a few false starts, I’ve come up with a repellant that does a pretty good job—a noxious blend of raw egg, milk, vegetable oil, liquid soap, and cayenne powder. The sour milk and rotten egg turn my stomach, but I believe that the hot pepper bothers them most. The vegetable garden has yet to be invaded, but how much longer?
There is a worse problem than the deer nibbling our plants, however: Lyme disease. This scary malady is caused by an adaptive little germ—the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb)—that is carried by the deer tick. The tick sequentially attaches itself to field mice, humans, and deer, in that order. We—in the middle—suffer from the disease; the animals don’t. The germ must accomplish that triple-host journey, riding in the gut of the tick and pulling off the unlikely stunt of getting transferred to its current mammalian host and then back to subsequent generations of the tick. Unfortunately, Bb is very successful in meeting the challenge.
The germ’s incredibly complex journey once was rare, but is progressively more common. Humans and deer cross paths more frequently, as people have moved farther out into the exurbs. Lyme disease is nasty. But it’s certain that we’re likely to see more of it in the near future, as we rub shoulders with an escalating deer population. I think I’d rather deal with apple sapling nibbles.
Deer love to eat the things that people grow: luscious vegetables, fruit trees, ornamentals. These fancy plants are far tastier than tough forest vegetation. Deer may be cute, but they can be pests.
We have been quite lucky not to have been too bothered by deer in recent years—even though many of our neighbors have been. We’ve always had good-sized dogs as members of the family. They’ve roamed the immediate area, spread their scent, and enjoyed a good deer chase.
But that luck has recently been changing. Maybe it’s the increased deer population, maybe it’s the current dog getting older and more sedentary, maybe it’s all the luscious apple saplings I’ve planted. We’ve repeatedly been invaded by deer, with the buggers nibbling off the tender tips of the saplings. Their pruning technique is not to my liking. After some research and a few false starts, I’ve come up with a repellant that does a pretty good job—a noxious blend of raw egg, milk, vegetable oil, liquid soap, and cayenne powder. The sour milk and rotten egg turn my stomach, but I believe that the hot pepper bothers them most. The vegetable garden has yet to be invaded, but how much longer?
There is a worse problem than the deer nibbling our plants, however: Lyme disease. This scary malady is caused by an adaptive little germ—the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb)—that is carried by the deer tick. The tick sequentially attaches itself to field mice, humans, and deer, in that order. We—in the middle—suffer from the disease; the animals don’t. The germ must accomplish that triple-host journey, riding in the gut of the tick and pulling off the unlikely stunt of getting transferred to its current mammalian host and then back to subsequent generations of the tick. Unfortunately, Bb is very successful in meeting the challenge.
The germ’s incredibly complex journey once was rare, but is progressively more common. Humans and deer cross paths more frequently, as people have moved farther out into the exurbs. Lyme disease is nasty. But it’s certain that we’re likely to see more of it in the near future, as we rub shoulders with an escalating deer population. I think I’d rather deal with apple sapling nibbles.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Beyond the Big Balloon
The Big Bang theory is a story that carries a lot of weight in the scientific community. It was first proposed a half-century ago—first as a mocking comment, but then became accepted—and has gained general concurrence ever since. It helps explain many observations that astronomers have made and fits the mathematical models. The theory pulls a lot of loose astronomical threads together into a very satisfying weaving. And yet…
While the Big Bang story accounts for a lot, it also presents us with a few conundrums for which science as yet has no explanations. It also plays games with our brain by tossing it seemingly illogical situations to deal with. For example: How is it that all the matter contained in the universe could have once been wedged into a space the size of a pinhead—or even a pinpoint? That just doesn’t seem possible. Yes, the mathematics elegantly describe that “in the beginning” this vast universe occupied virtually no space at all, but wrapping your mind around the math can cause a big headache.
Another conundrum: What happened “before” the Big Bang? Was there a “before?” The mathematical model of the universe simply places its origins at about 13.7 billion years ago—it doesn’t care about any “before.” But my mind keeps asking that unanswerable query. Maybe the question makes no sense. Maybe an answer will come some day.
Then there’s the riddle of what may lie outside the universe, if indeed there is an “outside.” One mental model of our universe is to imagine that it’s a Big Balloon that’s been blowing itself up for nearly 14 billion years. The balloon contains the “known” or “visible” universe—by definition, “the totality of all the things that exist.” Earth and all we can see are somewhere inside this balloon. The farthest we can observe—by either the math or the Hubble Telescope—is out to the skin of the balloon; not at all beyond.
But if the cosmos was once dancing on the head of a pin (when the balloon was tiny), can anything ever have been outside the expanding Big Balloon? Any “thing” beyond the Big Balloon is by definition outside the universe. Huh? Does that mean there is no “beyond?” I feel another headache coming on.
But it gets even more interesting. Recently a group of astronomers analyzed the motion of a group of galaxies. After cranking their computers for a few days, their results suggest that the speed and direction of this group of galaxies is being controlled by “something” outside the balloon! So, if they’re right, there is something out there in the vast nothing. It’s gotta make you chuckle. Stick around—this story’s ending has yet to be written. Maybe the Large Hadron Collider will help us out.
While the Big Bang story accounts for a lot, it also presents us with a few conundrums for which science as yet has no explanations. It also plays games with our brain by tossing it seemingly illogical situations to deal with. For example: How is it that all the matter contained in the universe could have once been wedged into a space the size of a pinhead—or even a pinpoint? That just doesn’t seem possible. Yes, the mathematics elegantly describe that “in the beginning” this vast universe occupied virtually no space at all, but wrapping your mind around the math can cause a big headache.
Another conundrum: What happened “before” the Big Bang? Was there a “before?” The mathematical model of the universe simply places its origins at about 13.7 billion years ago—it doesn’t care about any “before.” But my mind keeps asking that unanswerable query. Maybe the question makes no sense. Maybe an answer will come some day.
Then there’s the riddle of what may lie outside the universe, if indeed there is an “outside.” One mental model of our universe is to imagine that it’s a Big Balloon that’s been blowing itself up for nearly 14 billion years. The balloon contains the “known” or “visible” universe—by definition, “the totality of all the things that exist.” Earth and all we can see are somewhere inside this balloon. The farthest we can observe—by either the math or the Hubble Telescope—is out to the skin of the balloon; not at all beyond.
But if the cosmos was once dancing on the head of a pin (when the balloon was tiny), can anything ever have been outside the expanding Big Balloon? Any “thing” beyond the Big Balloon is by definition outside the universe. Huh? Does that mean there is no “beyond?” I feel another headache coming on.
But it gets even more interesting. Recently a group of astronomers analyzed the motion of a group of galaxies. After cranking their computers for a few days, their results suggest that the speed and direction of this group of galaxies is being controlled by “something” outside the balloon! So, if they’re right, there is something out there in the vast nothing. It’s gotta make you chuckle. Stick around—this story’s ending has yet to be written. Maybe the Large Hadron Collider will help us out.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
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