Tracing down the ancestors

So, here I am talking about ancestors while my Mom - my immediate ancestor - grumbles at me to leave this writing to help her with household stuff. Let me assist my immediate ancestor first and we will discuss our common ancient ancestor in detail. Just a moment...

Okay. I am back. Let's dive deep.  

If you have to imagine the ancestor of the Universe itself, what would that be?

Common, think!

The big bang? The infinitesimal particle? God himself?

Indeed there are different hypotheses on how the universe was formed. One that I found peculiar is the 'Lee Smolin's model'. It embarks on the idea that the universe gave birth to the daughter universe inheriting its laws and constants with possibility of small random change and variations. Just like the recombination of the mother gene and father gene that give rise offspring with slight variations. What a biological interpretation. I was fascinated to imagine.




Switching the context from the universe to the animal ancestry; the domestic dogs were actually the descendants of the wild grey wolves. In ancient times, wolves took scavenging around human encampments. With regular encountering, humans might have ended up domesticating them. It's not just a theory but researchers have carried out an actual experiment for the proof. Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyayeva Russian geneticists took modern-day silver foxes and set out a systematic breeding procedure for tameness. He mated the tamest individuals of each generation of fox for an astounding 20 years. He produced foxes - which were originally a wild species that actively seek human company, wagging their tails when approached just like dogs.

 Belyaev with his selectively bred foxes (Source)

Our ancestors didn't just change the species encountering us like the wolf into a dog, but we, our genes, have been changed in the process. It is actually the reason how humans developed lactose tolerance. We were initially lactose intolerant and genes for lactase enzyme production used to shut down at age four. But now, most people in the world from many countries are lactose tolerant.

Evolution of tameness in wild fox, increased milk production in domesticated livestock, and developed lactose tolerance all can be relatable to how environment shapes for the fitter and better offspring in the provided environment. We might have developed a higher tolerance for wheat and rice as a result of consumption.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari, in his finest work in human history, "Sapience: A brief history of Human", contemplates:

"Agriculture was, in fact, an adjustment. It supported a large population with less nutrition. But large populations harbored many vicious diseases through parasites. Early agriculturists and the hunters had gathered knowledge of wild plants and animals. Hence they might have over-exploited the environment to the best of their abilities. Those gatherers were probably responsible for the recent extinction of large mammals." It seems our ancestry wasn't that decent as it sounds. The ancestors had already committed unforgiving crimes before they were ever documented. Who shall be convicted? Whom shall we punish? 

If we get into a time travel ship (just suppose) and rewind 10,000 years back (trust me, I am not going to leave you there) in the neolithic age, you will be encountering professional farmers in regions like China, along the bank of Nile river and New guinea. But in other parts of the world, you might encounter pro hunters: the Australians, Native American tribes, South African tribes.

40,000 years back, you will encounter humans working in shaping some sharp stone tools, and weapons out of bamboo. It's supposedly an age of consciousness initiation. No wonder you will encounter exquisite cave painting. Well, plenty of Picasso's there.

Going back 300,000 years, you'd meet some of our ancestral colleagues struggling to survive in the ice age. Our Archaic ancestors: the Neanderthals and the Heidelbergs.

Homo heidelbergensis first adapted living in cold climate. They were short and wide: reminds me of a friend - Ashok, though he is sensitive, not so robust. With the skill of using wooden spears, Heidelbergs were the first human who routinely hunted the large animals. Fearless, quite the opposite of what Ashok is.

On the other hand, Neanderthals were our cool counterparts. Arising out of the cold archaics of Europe, they migrated to Europe from Africa and adapted becoming a different hominid. Well, their short but heavy and stocky body  reminds me of  another friend Bikash - but they had huge nose for warming the cold air (though Bikash hates big nose – typical sapiens). Give some time for nature and it can invent anything. I mean big nose for natural ventilation. How cool is that!

Then, are we descendants from Neanderthals? Do modern Europeans inherit any Neanderthal genes?

It turned out that Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA is quite distinct above all surviving human genes, suggesting they were no close to humans. But even if only one Neanderthal male from Europe bred into sapiens population, he got a good chance of being a common ancestor to all Europeans alive today. It's obvious that Europeans are quite distinct from the Asians. Big muscles, big bodies. Is it fair that we, Asians, have to compete against the Europeans for awards and trophies? FIFA are you getting the point? No wonder, why Asians like watching world cup but never like winning it. We just don't have the same gene, dude. Composition defect.   

Source: Smithsonian

Going back a million years we will encounter Homo erectus, the immediate predecessors and partial contemporaries of the Archaics from Africa. Africa is actually the cradle of human evolution because native Africans have tremendous genetic diversity. If you wipe out sub-Saharan Africa from human history, you would lose most of the genetic diversity whereas you could wipe out everywhere except Africa and nothing much would be changed. Diverse genes are good at programming bodies in surviving, in making children, grandchildren, and their grandchildren. Just like Rajesh Hamal is all about,"Dushman ko lagi yo hath falam", nature is all about one dialogue all the time: "Survival of the fittest" - a code that's written in every single living documents.

Erectus were the first lineage in the Hominid line. The fossil analysis of bones and near by fire-burnt soil indicates the Erectus first used fire for light warmth and later modified for cooking. They might have communicated by language as well. I just wonder about the kind of jokes they might have shared together. Imagine meeting an Erectus back in 2 million years and hanging around:

Erectus: "It's funny, how you guys make use of those tiny ears to cover your mouth."

Sapiens: "Its called Mask, dude."

Erectus: "I thought, the ear is used for hearing."

Sapiens: "Yes, it is. But, I am afraid there are still corona viruses here as well. We wear mask to fight the virus. The virus is the enemy, Man."

Erectus: "Show me the enemy, I will kill it with a single spear."

Sapiens: Stares disappointed. "Oh, how I wish."

(Though I doubt them understanding English.)

Going back 3.2 Million years, we will meet Lucy and her colleagues: The Australopiths. Will they be able to talk? I doubt. Whether they greet you excited or run away scared, they will run bi-pedally with their hips and knees slightly bent confusing you of thinking: Are they really Human? But they don’t look like chimps as well. Lucy has a human name but it's a misery that even if you call her by name she will be confused about the way you produce complex sounds so fluently. You are meeting the first ancestors that separated humans from the chimpanzee that don't know the use of verbal language.

I mean, had they ever imagine that one day their successor would invent time-travel machine to go back millions of years to greet them? I find it dumb-founding to imagine how they might imagine. Don’t let Netflix read this blog, I can’t risk going through another 'Dark' tunnel. 

But, it's intriguing that chimpanzee-like ancestor walked in 4 feet but nature ultimately drove us, the human, to Bipedalism. Not for running, we were never destined to be fast-runner. Probably for freeing of hands.  We were actually adapted to 'Squat Feeding' consuming insects and worms while turning rocks, stones, and leaves of the surface. For which we needed flatter feet, longer hands, lighter shoulders, and freer pelvis. Freeing of hands brought a world of possibility inside the limitless brain.


Ultimately if we keep on tracing ancestors for a long time, it goes back like mammals to reptilians to amphibians to fishes to unicellular animals and ultimately to biochemicals. Richard Dawkins, in his finest work, 'The Selfish gene' puts something similar. "The human body is in-fact like 64 code-words of DNA dictionary with 20 biological amino acids which are strung into sequences of typically few hundreds. Each sequence yields particular proteins. United, these proteins then build organs and the whole body. So all in all, we are all just biochemicals, that activates and deactivates based on the code written in one of the oldest document of the Earth, the DNA".

Every individual within its body consists a long detailed text; a written document of DNA handed down through time. It allows minor random changes here and there, often enough to improvise and furnish distinct labels. Those labels become features, the characters. See, nature is indeed the best programmer, amazing coder. It's the reason we live carrying its program, its loop: Never revolting, always surrendering. Nature, the grand ancestor of all. Cheers!


(For this article preparation, I took the reference of  'The Ancestors Tale' by Richard Dawkins, 'Sapience' by YN Harari and 'humanorigins.si.edu' website.)



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