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Tuesday, October 11, 2022

How and why the man apes separated from the rest of the apes.

 

Okay, we go back in time to where in the record we find the first ape-like 
creature.  Now we know there was, at some time, a community of apes
that somehow supported a branch that became man.  So then the
question is why would apes living together suddenly begin to separate
into different groups?  Well, one answer is that as they mutated one
group would look or act differently than the others and that might cause
them to stop caucusing with the main group.  But, I'd venture that
it's more likely that it would take more than mere appearances to 
cause a group to separate, mainly because of the safety provided by
numbers.

Instead, I'd propose that a few members of the group of apes, which 
had a language of perhaps 10 words, found that they could understand
and use a few more words and that over the course of months their
vocabulary began growing to perhaps as many as several dozen words.
Some of the other apes would have been unable to understand the new words
or keep up with the growing vocabulary.  That would have made attempting
to speak with the larger group something like talking to trees. That would
be frustrating enough to cause the "speakers' to keep themselves apart
from the "non-speakers" who could still only utilize the same old 10-word
vocabulary.  Over time the separation would grow greater as the number
of "speakers" grew to a size where numbers were sufficient to provide
protection of group. 

It wouldn't take very much in the way of a leap of intellect to begin this
separation. All it would take is a slightly increased ability to comprehend
more, that would be enough to cause proto-humans to separate from the
apes and begin a new branch of its own. Actually, you can easily imagine
yourself as a member of such a group.  As the vocabulary of some began
to grow, imagine yourself not being able to understand the new word or
two. Confused you'd find yourself unable to respond appropriately. Now
imagine yourself as one of the apes with the growing vocabulary.  As you
spoke to the group you'd find that some responded appropriately while
others drew a blank. You'd find yourself gravitating towards those who
could grasp the meaning of the new words. Gradually those who could
communicate easily would coalesce into a new group and begin to grow
apart from the larger society.  A few friendlies would come along, even
though they could not understand the most spoken words, and some
of these go-alongs might even get to breed with the new group. 

Over tens of thousands of years the division would grow larger and
larger as the increasingly complex language facilitated the rapid advance
of technologies, eventually, the species "bridge" would break and the
parties could no longer breed. Homo sapiens would be on their way to
the future.


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