New discovery - cavemen DNA linked to people today

When you are driving and think the person in front of you is acting like a Neanderthal you may be right. For anyone who has been reading this blog my theories are: our behavior is still tied to our days as cavemen and cavewomen. Yes our technology has advanced but has our behavior? I think not.

This just in, scientists in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, have decoded fragments of 40,000 year old DNA found in Neanderthal skeletons in Croatia and discovered that some of the genetic material exists in people walking around today. Anthropologists previously believed that early humans, who lived in prehistoric Europe and the Middle Ease until about 30,000 year ago simply died out, but the latest finding show that interbreeding must have taken place. And here we are today related to early man.

Yes folks, that is a Neanderthal driving in front of you talking on their cell phone and ignoring traffic all around them.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

Woman the Gatherer - Man the Hunter

Women have been gathering since the beginning. Ever wonder why women always talk while they work and men don’t. We just looked at why men are silent, so they don’t scare off the animals while hunting. Women on the other hand wanted to scare off the wild animals. While out in the field gathering they probably talked with each other in loud voices. This would scare off the animals and help them keep track of each other at the same time.

Gathering is much different than hunting. When hunting you focus on a single task and give it your all. But gathering is more like modern shopping; you have to look at everything before you decide what you really need. Modern shopping and early gathering are so closely linked to each other it’s real scary. Even the process has not changed with modern technology. Yes modern woman drive to the mall but the process has not changed one single bit!

My wife in her youth was subject to her mother’s habit of dressing up her girls in their Sunday best to go downtown to window shop. That was the common way to shop before the shopping mall was invented. It is also were the term window shopping came from. It was a rite of passage for the females in the family. My wife and her sisters hated it so much they never passed it along to their children. I am sure my Mother in Law learned it from her mother.

This may be the same reason that women go to the bathroom together. Men have better plumbing and can relieve themselves in short order. Women on the other hand need to take a moment and stoop down and in doing so would have put themselves in more danger from wild animals while they are off balance. Women probably went to relieve themselves as a group to provide some protection for each other and to warn off the animals.

A good friend of mine is a jogger and has been running though his neighborhood for many years. He is also an observant person. He runs in the city of Del Mar; a very up scale area north of San Diego in Southern California. Over the years he has noticed that men usually run by themselves and women run in groups. I am sure some of this is due to the need for personal protection, but Del Mar is a very safe area. I think women run today for the same reasons they ran together thousands of years ago.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

Sex is a big deal for our animal friends

We can learn a lot about ourselves from the behavior of animals. In looking at animal behavior it is much easier to be object and not cloud our impressions with all our human baggage.

Recent research on animal behavior has shattered the myth that animals are monogamous. For the longest time there was this romantic belief that once animals mate, it’s for life. Our only means of research has been to observe behavior. The new research is based on DNA and is much more scientific.

Of the 4000 or so mammals alive today only about a dozen are monogamous. We have always assumed that monkeys and Chimpanzees fool around, but this research has proven that Chimps copulate between 500 and 1000 times for each live birth, with every male in their group. The reasons are most interesting, food, power, protection and comfort, sound familiar? 

Yes, we are not primates but sometimes our behavior is closer to that of the primates than we would like to believe. It is common theory that early man behaved like animals in many ways. It is only since becoming “modern man” that we have taken to marriage and monogamous relationships. And not all marriages are monogamous, the divorce rate and extra martial affairs are quite common. My monogamous marriage of more than 40 years is unfortunately an exception and not the rule.

It is possible to have a relationship like mine but with early man living with the animals and probably learning some activities from them; it goes against thousands of years of our primitive behavior.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

For many men monogamy is very difficult - because it is so new

Monogamy, or having only one sex partner, has only been around for about 1900 years.  Even in the days of the early church priests had more than one wife, it was just what everyone did.

Thousands of years ago women often mated with several men in their tribe, that way no one knew who the kids belonged to so men took care of and protected all the children in the tribe. These cavewomen were smart and knew how to handle their men even back in the day.

Our male sex drive today is very strong and is ment to reproduce; it has kept us going for all these years. If we did not have this strong sex drive we would not have survived as a species. Also having large families were part of our survival because many children died both at a young age and in childbirth. So if we had a dozen or more kids we would ensure that at least a few children would survive and keep the linage going.

Today many men and women have one sex partner and a lot of us are happy with this arrangement. BUT after thousands of year of great sex with anyone in the tribe at anytime of the day or night,  it's hard to be monogamous. It's just not who we started out as.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

Our survival instinct has not changed since our cavemen days and we still fear new ideas

Thousands of years ago man walked the planet scratching out a living from the land. Survival was not just a popular TV show; it was everything.  Man was technologically challenged by today’s standards. Only the strongest survived, which is an adage still true today, especially on Wall Street.  Man learned and developed technology to make his life easier. Fire probably played a big role is making life better for early man. I believe when fire was discovered and harnessed by early man, many said it was only a fad and would never have an impact on people’s lives. The naysayers said it was a cheap gimmick and they would not be caught dead with such a dangerous evil thing like fire. Today the naysayers are still alive and well in Washington D.C.

Man usually reacts to new ideas in the same way. It would be my guess the common wisdom of the day for early man was; fire is evil, hard to prove, but a normal human reaction to the unknown concept of fire.

When electricity was discovered and harnessed for the first time the common wisdom of the day reflected human nature at its best, no one could see any use for electricity. Very similar to the reaction of IBM and AT&T when asked to help network computers together in the late 1960’s they could see no reason to have a computer network. The starting date of the Internet is usually considered January of 1983, but had IBM taken up the cause in the 1960’s they could have invented the internet instead of Al Gore.

Man has always feared the unknown, only with knowledge and understanding comes acceptance. The early men who used fire as a tool were way ahead of the others; they were the early adaptors to this new technology.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

Our Obsession with Stuff - But not to the level of the cable TV show "Hoarding"

We seem to spend our entire lives getting stuff, storing stuff, giving old stuff to the Good Will, organizing stuff, and passing stuff along to our children and just dealing with stuff.

We are pack rats and when you hear the term pack rats we probably learned to be pack rats from small furry animals. We are so into our stuff that I want to scream, it seems to go on and on. We even have storage areas we can rent to help us keep our stuff. People will put stuff away for years in storage and can’t remember what kind of stuff they have.

Some people are very obsessed by their stuff, but even the “normal” people get hung up on stuff. My Sister has a rule about stuff, it you haven't used it in a year get rid of it. It's a good rule, but most people can’t fight thousands of years of needing stuff to survive.

My theory on stuff comes from our early days of having nothing. Without our stuff like animal skins, stone axes, stone knives and such, we would not survive. I think it's really a survival instinct that goes way back in our subconscious and our early days as cavemen and cavewomen.

Today we can survive without a lot of stuff but we can’t change our subconscious impulses to collect it.

We are all still into our stuff. But most of us fall short of the current cable TV shows about hoarding, which I find just fascinating.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

Why men can't ask for directions

In the days before we had GPSs in our cars men could not stop and ask for directions. They could stop and purchase a map but not ask for directions.

It's an old joke but it's very true - "If men need to ask for directions they need to bring along a woman". Women today have no problem asking for directions and some prefer this over a GPS. For men, Map Quest and Google maps were a God send. Now the GPS is the clear winner and enables men to show no weakness. Because - it's all about not showing any fear or weakness. This does not apply to all men but most men, including me.

Remember, men the male animal, are hunters and for thousands of years have gone out to provide for their families. To survive back in the day, men could not show fear or weakness. That is weakness in front of wild animals or fear in front of caveman enemies. Even today if men are being audited by IRS they can't show any signs of weakness.

Today men may seem a little more sensitive then cavemen, but when push comes to shove, you can't take the caveman out of modern man. Modern man still can't ask for help or directions. It's still a sign of weakness that is not tolerated in today's society, either at the office or in a prison. Everyone today still respects a strong, self-confident individual who shows no fear or weakness.

The more we understand about our past the easier it is to get alone with others and members of the opposite sex.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist