What Technology Wants (5 page)

A few scientists believe that, in fact, it was technology that sparked language. To throw a tool—a rock or stick—at a moving animal and hit it with sufficient force to kill it requires a serious computation in the hominin brain. Each throw requires a long succession of precise neural instructions executed in a split second. But unlike calculating how to grasp a branch in midair, the brain must calculate several alternative options for a throw at the same time: the animal speeds up or it slows down; aim high or aim low. The mind must then spin out the results to gauge the best possible throw before the actual throw—all in a few milliseconds. Scientists such as neurobiologist William Calvin believe that once the brain evolved the power to run multiple rapid-throw scenarios, it hijacked this throw procedure to run multiple rapid sequences of notions. The brain would throw words instead of sticks. This reuse or repurposing of technology then became a primitive but advantageous language.

The slippery genius of language opened up many new niches for spreading tribes of Sapiens. Unlike their cousins the Neanderthals, Sapiens could quickly adapt their tools to hunt or trap an increasing diversity of game and to gather and process an increasing diversity of plants. There is some evidence that Neanderthals were stuck on a few sources of food. Examination of Neanderthal bones show they lacked the fatty acids found in fish and that the Neanderthal diet was mostly meat. But not just any meat. Over half of their diet was woolly mammoth and reindeer. The demise of the Neanderthal may be correlated with the demise of great herds of these megafauna.

Sapiens thrived as broadly omnivorous hunter-gatherers. The unbroken line of human offspring for hundreds of thousands of years proves that a few tools are sufficient to capture enough nutrition to create the next generation. We are here now because hunting-gathering worked in the past. Several analyses of the diets of historical hunter-gatherers show that they were able to secure enough calories to meet the U.S. FDA recommendations for folks their size. For example, anthropologists found the historical Dobe gathered on average 2,140 calories a day; Fish Creek tribe, 2,130; Hemple Bay tribe, 2,160. They had a varied menu of tubers, vegetables, fruit, and meat. Based on studies of bones and pollen in their trash, so did the early Sapiens.

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes claimed the life of the savage—and by this he meant Sapien hunter-gatherers—was “nasty, brutish, and short.” But while the life of an early hunter-gatherer was indeed short, and often interrupted by nasty warfare, it was not brutish. With only a slim set of a dozen primitive tools, not only did humans secure enough food, clothing, and shelter to survive in all kinds of environments, but these tools and techniques also afforded them some leisure while doing so. Anthropological studies confirm that present-day hunter-gathers do not spend all day hunting and gathering. One researcher, Marshall Sahlins, concluded that hunter-gatherers worked only three to four hours a day on necessary food chores, putting in what he called “banker hours.” The evidence for his surprising results is controversial.

A more realistic and less contentious average for food-gathering time among contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, based on a wider range of data, is about six hours per day. That average belies a great variation in day-to-day routine. One- to two-hour naps or whole days spent sleeping were not uncommon. Outside observers almost universally noted the punctuated nature of work among foragers. Gatherers may work very hard for several days in a row and then do nothing in terms of food getting for the rest of the week. This cycle is known among anthropologists as the “Paleolithic rhythm”—a day or two on, a day or two off. An observer familiar with the Yamana tribe—but it could be almost any hunter tribe—wrote: “Their work is more a matter of fits and starts, and in these occasional efforts they can develop considerable energy for a certain time. After that, however they show a desire for an incalculably long rest period during which they lie about doing nothing, without showing great fatigue.” The Paleolithic rhythm actually reflects the “predator rhythm,” since the great hunters of the animal world, the lion and other large cats, exhibit the same style: hunting to exhaustion in a short burst and then lounging around for days afterward. Hunters, almost by definition, seldom go out hunting, and they succeed in getting a meal even less often. The efficiency of primitive tribal hunting, measured in the yield of calories per hour invested, was only half that of gathering. Meat is thus a treat in almost every foraging culture.

Then there are seasonal variations. Every ecosystem produces a “hungry season” for foragers. At higher, cooler latitudes, this late winter-early spring hungry season is more severe, but even at tropical latitudes, there are seasonal oscillations in the availability of favorite foods, supplemental fruits, or essential wild game. In addition, there are climatic variations: extended periods of drought, floods, and storms that can disrupt yearly patterns. These great punctuations over days, seasons, and years mean that while there are many times when hunter-gatherers are well fed, they also can—and do—expect many periods when they are hungry, famished, and undernourished. Time spent in this state along the edge of malnutrition is mortal for young children and dire for adults.

The result of all this variation in calories is the Paleolithic rhythm at all scales of time. Importantly, this burstiness in “work” is not by choice. When you are primarily dependent on natural systems to provide you foodstuffs, working more does not tend to produce more. You can't get twice as much food by working twice as hard. The hour at which the figs ripen can be neither hurried nor predicted exactly. Nor can the arrival of game herds. If you do not store surplus or cultivate in place, then motion must produce your food. Hunter-gatherers must be in ceaseless movement away from depleted sources in order to maintain production. But once you are committed to perpetual movement, surplus and its tools slow you down. In many contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, being unencumbered with things is considered a virtue, even a virtue of character. You carry nothing; instead, you cleverly make or procure whatever you need when you need it. “The efficient hunter who would accumulate supplies succeeds at the cost of his own esteem,” says Marshall Sahlins. Additionally, the surplus producer must share the extra food or goods with everyone, which reduces the incentive to produce extra. For foragers, food storage is therefore socially self-defeating. Instead your hunger must adapt to the movements of the wild. If a dry spell diminishes the yield of the sago, no amount of extra work time will advance the delivery of food. Therefore, foragers take a very accepting pace to eating. When food is there, all work very hard. When it is not, no problem; they will sit around and talk while they are hungry. This very reasonable approach is often misread as tribal laziness, but it is in fact a logical strategy if you rely on the environment to store your food.

We civilized modern workers can look at this leisurely approach to work and feel jealous. Three to six hours a day is a lot less than most adults in any developed country put in to their labors. Furthermore, when asked, most acculturated hunter-gatherers don't want any more than they have. A tribe will rarely have more than one artifact, such as an ax, because why do you need more than one? Either you use the object when you need to, or, more likely, you make one when you need one. Once used, artifacts are often discarded rather than saved. That way nothing extra needs to be carried or cared for. Westerners giving gifts such as a blanket or knife to foragers have often been mortified to see them trashed after a day. In a very curious way, foragers live in the ultimate disposable culture. The best tools, artifacts, and technology are all disposable. Even elaborate handcrafted shelters are considered temporary. When a clan or family travels, they might erect a home (a bamboo hut or snow igloo, for example) for only a night and then abandon it the next morning. Larger multifamily lodges might be abandoned after a few years rather than maintained. The same goes for food patches, which are abandoned after harvesting.

This easy just-in-time self-sufficiency and contentment led Marshall Sahlins to declare hunter-gatherers “the original affluent society.” But while foragers had sufficient calories most days and did not create a culture that continually craved more, a better summary might be that hunter-gatherers had “affluence without abundance.” Based on numerous historical encounters with aboriginal tribes, we know they often, if not regularly, complained about being hungry. Famed anthropologist Colin Turnbull noted that although the Mbuti frequently sang to the goodness of the forest, they often complained of hunger. Often the complaints of hunter-gathers were about the monotony of a carbohydrate staple, such as mongongo nuts, for every meal; when they spoke of shortages, or even hunger, they meant a shortage of meat, and a hunger for fat, and a distaste for periods of hunger. Their small amount of technology gave them sufficiency for most of the time, but not abundance.

The fine line between average sufficiency and abundance matters for health. When anthropologists measure the total fertility rate (the mean number of live births over the reproductive years) of women in modern hunter-gatherer tribes, they find it relatively low—about five to six children in total—compared to six to eight children in agricultural communities. There are several factors behind this depressed fertility. Perhaps because of uneven nutrition, puberty comes late to forager girls, at 16 or 17 years old. (Modern females start at 13.) This late menarche for women, combined with a shorter life span, delays and thus abbreviates the childbearing window. Breast-feeding usually lasts longer in foragers, which extends the interval between births. Most tribes nurse till children are 2 or 3 years old, while a few tribes keep children suckling for as long as 6 years. Also, many women are extremely lean and active and, like lean, active women athletes in the West, often have irregular or no menstruation. One theory suggests women need a “critical fatness” to produce fertile eggs, a fatness many forager women lack—at least part of the year—because of a fluctuating diet. And of course, people anywhere can practice deliberate abstinence to space children, and foragers have reasons to do so.

Child mortality in foraging tribes was severe. A survey of 25 hunter-gatherer tribes in historical times from various continents revealed that, on average, 25 percent of children died before they were 1, and 37 percent died before they were 15. In one traditional hunter-gatherer tribe, child mortality was found to be 60 percent. Most historical tribes had a population growth rate of approximately zero. This stagnation is evident, says Robert Kelly in his survey of hunting-gathering peoples, because “when formerly mobile people become sedentary, the rate of population growth increases.” All things being equal, the constancy of farmed food breeds more people.

While many children died young, older hunter-gatherers did not have it much better. It was a tough life. Based on an analysis of bone stress and cuts, one archaeologist said the distribution of injuries on the bodies of Neanderthals was similar to that found on rodeo professionals—lots of head, trunk, and arm injuries like the ones you might get from close encounters with large, angry animals. There are no known remains of an early hominin who lived to be older than 40. Because extremely high child mortality rates depress average life expectancy, if the oldest outlier is only 40, the median age was almost certainly less than 20.

A typical tribe of hunters-gatherers had few very young children and no old people. This demographic may explain a common impression visitors had upon meeting intact historical hunter-gatherer tribes. They would remark that “everyone looked extremely healthy and robust.” That's in part because most everyone was in the prime of life, between 15 and 35. We might have the same reaction visiting a trendy urban neighborhood with the same youthful demographic. Tribal life was a lifestyle for and of young adults.

A major effect of this short forager life span was the crippling absence of grandparents. Given that women would only start bearing children at 17 or so and die by their thirties, it would be common for children to lose their parents before the children were teenagers. A short life span is rotten for the individual. But a short life span is also extremely detrimental for a society as well. Without grandparents, it becomes exceedingly difficult to transmit knowledge—and knowledge of tool using—over time. Grandparents are the conduits of culture, and without them culture stagnates.

Imagine a society that not only lacked grandparents but also lacked language—as the pre-Sapiens did. How would learning be transmitted over generations? Your own parents would die before you were an adult, and in any case, they could not communicate to you anything beyond what they could show you while you were immature. You would certainly not learn anything from anyone outside your immediate circle of peers. Innovation and cultural learning would cease to flow.

Language upended this tight constriction by enabling ideas both to coalesce and to be communicated. An innovation could be hatched and then spread across generations via children. Sapiens gained better hunting tools (such as thrown spears, which permitted a lightweight human to kill a huge, dangerous animal from a safe distance), better fishing tools (barbed hooks and traps), and better cooking methods (using hot stones not just to cook meat but also to extract more calories from wild plants). And they gained all these within only 100 generations of beginning to use language. Better tools meant better nutrition, which could assist in faster evolution.

The primary long-term consequence of this slightly better nutrition was a steady increase in longevity. Anthropologist Rachel Caspari studied the dental fossils of 768 hominin individuals in Europe, Asia, and Africa, dated from 5 million years ago until the great leap. She determined that a “dramatic increase in longevity in the modern humans” began about 50,000 years ago. Increasing longevity allowed grandparenting, creating what is called the grandmother effect: In a virtuous circle, via the communication of grandparents, ever more powerful innovations carried forward were able to lengthen life spans further, which allowed more time to invent new tools, which increased population. Not only that: Increased longevity “provide[d] a selective advantage promoting further population increase,” because a higher density of humans increased the rate and influence of innovations, which contributed to increased populations. Caspari claims that the most fundamental biological factor that underlies the behavioral innovations of modernity may be the increase in adult survivorship. It is no coincidence that increased longevity is the most measurable consequence of the acquisition of technology. It is also the most consequential.