When he is told that he can't make t'Kelans fight their own race, van Rijn twirls his mustache, grins and responds, "'Can't I just?'" (p. 22) Consecutive readers of the Technic History know that he speaks from experience, particularly on Diomedes.
Joyce Davisson is from the peaceful planet, Esperance, which will recur in The People Of The Wind, as will Ythri and Avalon. She asks:
"'...man started as a carnivorous primate, didn't he?'" (p. 23)
I thought that we were omnivores from the beginning - which would make us more versatile and adaptable.
Joyce says that the t'Kelans are not gregarious enough to form unified nations. Aldous Huxley argued somewhere that human beings are not "social," but only "moderately gregarious." This is nonsense. Social interaction is essential to language, which differentiates humanity from animality.
But imagine an ungregarious rational species. Would a universal ethic - "Love they neighbor"/compassion for all living beings - be unworkable for them?
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think I recall Old Nick saying in SATAN'S WORLD that the pre-hominid ancestors of mankind began as plant eaters who in time became omnivores.
I suspect Joyc'e naivete about the xenology of the t'Kelans sprang from the Esperancers (?) not doing a careful xenological study of the t'Kela.
And a TOTALLY ungregarious rational species does seem a contradiction in terms!
Sean
Humans evolved from a common ancestor with chimps; but the common ancestor was probably much more like chimps than humans, so that gives us some hints.
Chimps are predominantly herbivorous, but love meat and eat it when they can get it; sometimes they set out to hunt small animals, and BBC's (Big Boss Chimps) hand out the meat as a treat. They eat bugs, birds, eggs, etc., as well. (Incidentally, chimps don't need much physical activity to stay fit, unlike us. Lucky sods.)
You can tell that chimps ate mostly vegetation by the shape of their ribcage -- it flares out at the bottom to accommodate a large gut that can deal with a high-cellulose diet.
Australopithecines probably had similar diets -- the wear patterns on their teeth indicate that they did -- but may have eaten more meat, probably by scavenging.
The big difference comes with Homo Erectus, about 2m years ago. Almost all the differences between h. erectus and h. sap. sapiens are above the neck, apart from their skeletons being more robust than ours (bigger attachment areas for muscles.) We're the same size, have the same structures in our hips and legs and feet, etc.
The modern hominid body plan is a generalist one, but the thing it's best at -- better than any other mammal -- is long-distance running. We're not all that fast, but by Ghu we have endurance.
This is useless for evading predators, but it's ideal for a cursorial predator that hunts in packs and runs its prey down, like wolves or African jag hond.
H. Erectus also used more stone tools than previous hominids and almost certainly spears as well.
This shows up on the shape of the ribcage; the ribs are like ours, barrel-shaped, sloping in at the bottom instead of flaring out like a chimp's.
This means a smaller stomach and intestine, adapted to concentrated foods like meat.
Stable bone isotope ratio analysis shows that erectus and all subsequent hominids were ecologically predators -- some more specialized in big game (neanderthals) and some more generalist (our ancestors) and opportunistic.
We probably retained the capacity for plant foods to help with things like vitamin C, which we can't produce, and as a famine-era fallback capacity.
But basically we're a plant-biased omnivore that evolved into a "hunting ape", an omnivore biased towards meat.
(Mind you, they ate the whole animal -- much healthier, btw.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I love these short essays you sometimes give us! Many thanks!
Basically, h. Sapiens began as plant biased omnivores who evolved into hunting apes, and so on to us.
And I have read that organ meats like the liver, kidneys, etc., are better than simply the muscle meat alone.
Sean
"...the ribs are like ours, barrel-shaped, sloping in at the bottom instead of flaring out like a chimp's.
Ummm. Your ribs DON'T flare out? Do you folks have chins? Not much body hair? Fairly tall? I knew I was DIFFERENT, but.....
;)
-kh
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