Wiley High Human Intelligence: Evolutionary Origins, Destiny, Extinction

Surviving evolutionary lines of animals and plants all had their adaptive keys for flourishing in the long run. In the case of humans, a lack of primate specializations opened the door to unique evolutionary possibilities. From the Miocene Era about 20 million years ago, nature began to offer new possibilities to creatures with larger brains and the behaviors that tempted curiosity. From that broad panorama of decisions, the future said “hold up, wait a minute.” A new menu of life plans and structures determined hominid interests and possible opportunities. The passage of time saw movement away from anthropoids who did not migrate east towards south Asia, if they were not pushed into African extinction by other proto-hominids. At the end point of millions of years, migration towards modernistic dominance of the hominids was located in Eurasia and Southern Africa, the former probably a product of the early migrations of the European ancestors of the Heidelberg type. Today, the remnants of the artistically talented human originating in Southern Africa are holding on. By contrast the Cro-Magnons, who were pressing the Eurasian Neanderthals and Harbin Asians humanoids into extinction 40,000 years ago helped carry a small measure of their genes into the contemporary populations of the world. The powerful modern human brain power revealed its worldwide potential in the last 10,000 years following the abatement of the Ice Age. With this universal cultural expansion came an optimism and expansive sense of futurity, as well as an attitude of “we can do no wrong.” With this outlook, the demographics of expansion flooded the landscape – at least until our times, with pandemics, the Holocaust, atomic power, threats to the environment, and bloodshed without end. Could it be time for Homo sapiens to say ""our time is up?” We have been around, from the evolutionary timetable, for a rather short try out. Maybe we should take another look at what our Cro-Magnon ancestors created with very primitive tools, inside a frosty cave.