Monday, January 18, 2016

Never again let the Africans invade

The August 2015 SciAm cover story is about how African human ancestors conquered Europe and Asia about 70k years ago, and concludes:
Sometimes I think about how that fateful encounter between [Africans] and [Europeans] played out. I imagine the boasting tales [European] Neandertals might have told around their camp-fires of titanic battles against impossibly huge cave bears and mammoths, fought under the gray skies of glacial Europe, bare-foot on ice slick with the blood of prey and brother. Then, one day, the tradition took a dark turn; the regaling turned fearful. Neandertal raconteurs spoke of new people coming into the land — fast, clever people who hurled their spears impossible distances, with dreadful accuracy. These strangers even came at night in large groups, slaughtering men and children and taking the women.

The sad story of those first victims of [African] ingenuity and cooperation, the [European] Neandertals, helps to explain why horrific acts of genocide and xenocide crop up in the world today. ...

Culture can override even the strongest biological instincts. I hope that recognition of why we instinctively turn on one another in lean times will allow us to rise above our malevolent urges and heed one of our most important cultural directives: “Never again.”
I used brackets to clarify some confusing terms. The article refers to Neandertals as "cousins", whereas DNA data has proved that they were direct ancestors to Europeans, with African interbreeding. It also refers to the Africans as "modern humans", whereas it is now known that there has been significant human evolution since then.

What is meant by "never again"? This is some vague political spin on an anthropology article. The obvious meaning is that Europeans should never again allow African invaders to destroy their culture, exterminate their resources, dilute their gene pool, and steal their women.

The article theorizes that the Africans learn to cooperate by fighting to defend shellfish beds, and invented throwable spears while the Europeans just had hand-held spears. The main evidence is from looking that tiny stone blades, but they really don't know what the blades were used for, and the assertions about throwing spears are highly speculative.

The author must realize that Africans and Arabs are currently swarming into Europe, and threatening to destroy its culture. They have evolved to try to exterminate a competing race, he says.

No comments: