Chapter 14

Chapter 14. The Problem of the Origin of Typological Differentiation

(a discussion of Chapter 16 of “Lucy” and of selected passages from “The Civilization of Cannibals”)

To the same degree that the elementary psychophysiological functions have remained unchanged in the course of historical development, the higher functions — verbal thinking, logical memory, concept formation, voluntary attention, will, and so on — have undergone deep and comprehensive change. — L. S. Vygotsky

Everything has been confounded forever, and now there is no telling where the beast is, where the man. — A. Akhmatova

Aushra held that the TIM is half innate — connected, as she thought, with heredity or with a genetic predetermination of the dominance of the left or the right hemisphere — and half acquired under the influence of external factors, among them the image of the parents and their formative influence. At present there are considerably stronger grounds for holding that the TIM is entirely innate. What remains a problem, however, is at what moment in the formation of the human being the division of people according to features of IM appeared.

At least two fundamentally different approaches to the problem of the origin of the TIM are possible: 1) explanation by means of natural causes, and 2) explanation by means of supernatural causes. I personally would not want to set these approaches against one another. I think they can be used in various combinations: in parallel (each gives its own independent explanation), in complementarity (each makes its own contribution to the problem), in opposition (they exclude one another, or either one alone suffices), and so on. Besides this, an approach is possible in which no distinction is drawn between natural and supernatural causes at all, since the world is one and all its levels constitute a single whole, while what we designate as supernatural operates on the basis of laws of Nature that are as yet inaccessible to man.

One explanation relying on supernatural causes holds that intellect was implanted all at once into the psyche of anthropoid apes by some Higher Powers. Besides supernatural and possibly Omnipotent Powers, these could also have been some highly developed extraterrestrials. Such an intervention led to a growth of the brain unmotivated by natural causes. If these were Omnipotent Supernatural Powers, then it is altogether unclear why they needed evolution at all, since a single act of creation would have been quite sufficient. But the Ways are inscrutable… If, on the other hand, these were perfectly natural extraterrestrials, then it is unclear how they came by a highly developed brain — assuming, of course, that they use a brain at all. And here again two variants are possible: either there too there was an intervention of supernatural forces, or they were helped by other extraterrestrials. The extraterrestrial variant may turn out to be merely a re-addressing of the problem of the emergence of rational beings from one planet to another, and so on ad infinitum. Of course, one can propose many more or less plausible hypotheses developing these two themes, but why not try to find natural explanations, if Nature has provided for them? The history of science shows that scientists sometimes succeed in finding experimentally grounded answers to problems that had seemed insoluble. And although it would be interesting, from a logical point of view, to discuss the “preternatural” variants of the emergence of life and reason — for instance, as a demonstration of impartiality — we shall not consider that version here, since science does not make use of the hypothesis of the existence of supernatural forces.

What is the history of the human psyche? Is it possible to trace it? What sense can be put into this question? How did intellect evolve in man, and the emotional sphere, the capacities of the sensory system, and finally intuition? Or perhaps intuition did not evolve at all? As it was in the beast, so it remained. Can the question of the evolution of consciousness be posed at all? When did typological differentiation occur in man as a psychic being? Or was it perhaps there from the very beginning? But what does from the very beginning mean, if even the problem of the origin of man has not been fully solved?

That domestic animals such as cats and dogs possess at least the rudiments of character is obvious, although special research would not go amiss here. There are, for example, the well-known observations of fur breeders on silver foxes in attempts to breed a domestic variety. These observations show that at least some wild animals of a single species can be quite definitely divided into three typological groups: 1) the viciously aggressive; 2) the timidly evasive; 3) the communicatively experimenting. In the last group, by comparison with the other two, an exploratory component dominates in the character. They also respond to non-hostile treatment with non-hostile treatment, which makes them suitable for domestication and for breeding on special farms. This division of animals of one species into three groups can be linked with innate temperament, though depending on one’s basic definitions various points of view are possible here.

Of the more or less similar definitions of temperament that can be found in various psychology manuals, the one that suits me best personally, as the fuller one, is the definition from L. D. Stolyarenko’s psychology textbook [7]. He holds that “temperament consists of innate features of a person which condition the dynamic characteristics of the intensity and speed of reaction, the degree of emotional excitability and equilibrium, and the features of adaptation to the surrounding environment.” Of course, this concerns the human being, but since the dynamic characteristics of intensity and speed of reaction can, on the example of the silver foxes, be extended to animals as well, the hypothesis that animals within a species may differ in temperament is entirely acceptable. I know of no experimental data confirming the existence of temperamental differences in all species of animals — in flies, say, or fish, or crocodiles — but it appears that this holds for warm-blooded animals.

That temperamental differences do exist in populations of warm-blooded animals is indicated by studies of the “pecking order” in domestic fowl and of the division of animals by degree of dominance in laboratory groups of rodents. One may therefore suppose that temperamental differences between people go back to the very emergence of the species Homo sapiens, and that their roots must be sought still deeper — in the animal foundation. But whether there exist any psychological differences at all between individuals of one species in cockroaches, oysters, frogs, lizards, snakes or even sharks, it is difficult to assert anything definite without special research. At the same time, in ants and bees, for example, intraspecific differentiation is vividly expressed and genetically programmed. This gives grounds for supposing that any variety and any degree of intraspecific differentiation, if it is bound up with the evolutionary strategy of the species, may be determined genetically.

One may suppose that if there exist between individuals of one species even the slightest phenotypic differences — some, even very subtle, anatomical or physiological distinction — then this, by the principle of through-action, will necessarily manifest itself in features of behaviour as well. Let such a difference be very small; what matters is that it could exist. It is also known that it is not uncommon for puppies of one litter to display noticeable differences in character very early — one turns out to be more playful, another more aggressive, and so on. Apparently this must mean that such differences are genetically programmed.

From a socionic point of view, it would be important to establish experimentally which case obtains with the TIM: a) it is not inherited but is formed entirely under the influence of the environment; b) the irrational characteristic is inherited, while the rational characteristic is formed under the influence of the environment, in particular of the parents or other close relatives; c) the rational characteristic is inherited, while the irrational characteristic is formed under the influence of the environment, in particular of the parents or other close relatives; d) the TIM is inherited entirely, and the influence of the environment shows itself in the fact that some of its features are strengthened and others weakened; e) the TIM is genetically programmed and as such does not change under the influence of circumstances, remaining a “constant quantity,” yet its perception from outside and its own manifestations may vary greatly depending on the informational filling of the functions and on fractal modifications.

Let us formulate the presumed problem as closely as possible to the interests of socionics. If the socionic types correspond to a real differentiation of people, then when did this differentiation arise? Are there any special causes for the emergence of socionic differentiation? The problem of typological differentiation can probably not be counted among the most urgent in socionics, but it is unquestionably interesting.

One of the methodological principles worked out by materialist dialectics asserts that human institutions have a historical character. According to this principle, there are no extra-historical truths concerning human society. And assertions about the nature of man that are true in one place and at one time may turn out not to correspond to truth in another place and at another time.¹ Let us add: and under other circumstances. Therefore, observing modern man with all his numerous peculiarities, one may always suppose that these peculiarities were not inherent in our ancestors in the same form as in us, and perhaps were absent altogether, but that gradually, in the process of evolution, they first arose and then over some period acquired their present form. Such a general regularity ought to apply to the appearance of human types as well. But perhaps, above all, it ought to apply to the particular characteristics of man as a biological, psychic and spiritual being.

Let us begin with what scientists have managed to establish about the appearance of man on earth in those times so remote² that no imagination is capable of encompassing them even approximately. Only the scrupulous labour of scientists over many decades has made it possible somehow to restore what accompanied the unfolding of human prehistory.

Here I shall rely on two books, each remarkable in its way — Lucy, written by Johanson and Edey, and The Civilization of Cannibals, written by Boris Andreyevich Didenko on the basis of the researches of the remarkable Russian scientist Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev (1905–1972). The text that follows is a discussion of these two books, and therefore makes massive use of direct and indirect citation of both sources, with parallel and embedded commentary.

The book Lucy rests on field materials from excavations and contains information about the authors’ own work and that of their predecessors. One of the principal themes of human archaeology is bound up with the so-called “missing link,”³ which could reliably fill the gap between modern man and his hypothetical ancestor. This ancestor might have been some anthropoid apes, but by no means those that live in the tropical forests at present. The modern anthropoids are man’s “cousins” or “second cousins,” who lagged behind him in their development, although the starting conditions were apparently the same. The point is that the modern anthropoid apes are not the direct ancestors of man but represent some side branch from those apes that were the common ancestors of both them and man.

Fossil remains gradually filled this breach, inserting into it Neanderthal man, Cro-Magnon man, Pithecanthropus, Australopithecus, Sinanthropus and others; but it seems that it was precisely Edey and Johanson who reconstructed, to the maximum degree possible at present, the initial stages of the formation of man, by discovering the bones of a creature already fully human yet at the same time bearing the marks of the closest connection with ape ancestors. This was a creature of the female sex, and the authors named it Lucy, considering with good reason that this might be the Eve from whom all humanity descended.

The whole book reads in one breath, but for our theme the sixteenth chapter, “Why did Lucy walk upright?”, is especially good. In it a hypothesis is developed and discussed about the very earliest stage of the appearance in nature of those special qualities that set man apart from the animal world. One such quality is upright walking.

The book gives instructive information on the theory of locomotion — that is, on the modes and mechanics of the movement of animals — without knowledge of whose principles it is impossible to form a correct conception of how an animal’s musculoskeletal apparatus evolves, and hence impossible to understand how, for example, upright walking could have arisen. Without a knowledge of the theory of locomotion, in the words of Lovejoy, one of the colleagues and interlocutors of Johanson and Edey, “even teachers of biomechanics display a staggering ignorance in this question.”

Very briefly, the following may be said about locomotion. Locomotion is the manner in which an animal’s body moves. The body must move in order to obtain food or to avoid the attack of an aggressor, and perhaps for something else besides. Food and the mode of defence are elements of the ecological niche which influence the mode of locomotion. The weight of the body, its predominant disposition in space, the arrangement of the limbs, their articulation with the body — all this is the result of locomotor adaptation. To move the body an animal may use various devices: fins, tail, legs, arms, wings; it may simply bend the body purposefully, as snakes do, or surrender itself to a moving medium, for example a sea current. The generalizing concept for any devices by means of which animals can move is the concept of the musculoskeletal apparatus, or musculoskeletal system.

Man moves on two legs, but his musculoskeletal apparatus admits of other possibilities as well. Man can walk on his knees, on all fours, can hang by his arms and by their means move along a branch or a rope, can even walk on his hands, can crawl on his belly and on his back. Man’s capacities for movement are considerably more varied than the capacities of any animal. Man can run in several styles, can jump and skip, including on one leg, can walk sideways and backwards, can somersault and roll, can swim in several styles and dance, performing movements utterly inconceivable for animals. Many of his motor capacities may remain unclaimed in a given individual, but all of them constitute a resource that considerably broadens the potential possibilities both of the particular personality and of the species as a whole.

Individual elements of the musculoskeletal apparatus may perform several functions. Thus the legs can move the body and can support it. In the crocodile, for example, the legs serve mainly for movement, but it is no easy matter for it to prop itself up on them. Try doing push-ups with your arms splayed out to the sides, crocodile-fashion, and you will feel how energetically disadvantageous this is. Therefore, in order to become good runners, many species of animals evolved in such a way that their legs turned into springy shock absorbers positioned beneath the body, while the functions of the hind and fore limbs became divided so that the hind legs are able to provide a powerful thrust and the fore legs to support the body without extinguishing its inertia. Man, having gone over to two-legged walking, loses to many animals in running speed. However, other two-legged animals, ostriches for instance, run very fast.

The mode of locomotion corresponds to the general evolutionary strategy of the species and can be understood only within the system of all the animal’s adaptations. The crocodile swims splendidly underwater and can easily catch a horse that has come to drink or is fording a river. The horse will easily outrun the crocodile on land, but competing with it in underwater swimming is beyond her. Locomotor capacities find their exact correspondence in the structure of the limbs and are bound up with specific expenditures of energy. If the crocodile or the horse took it into their heads to walk on their hind legs, they would lose to man in that art.

To understand how an animal’s energy is realized in the use of its musculoskeletal apparatus, one must take into account the various functions performed by the separate parts of that apparatus. Among such functions are: static support, dynamic support, pushing off, shock absorption, gripping, pulling up, swinging, and others.

In order, for example, to act as an effective shock absorber, the fore limbs must not be rigidly joined to the skeleton of the body. And in many running animals they are in fact held in place only by musculature. If these limbs were fixed more rigidly, the muscles could not softly resist the pressure of the body descending downward. Then the absorption of kinetic energy would be accompanied by a crushing jolt. Thanks to the fact that the fore limb is separated from the axial skeleton (rather than fixed in a bony socket, as the hind limb is), the absorption of energy at each step of a running animal proceeds smoothly.

The hind leg of a mammal, by contrast, must not play the role of a shock absorber. Its function consists in converting the animal’s potential energy into kinetic energy, providing the necessary speed. As a result, the evolution of this link of the musculoskeletal apparatus took shape in such a way that the upper end of the femur enters directly into the acetabulum and is held there by tendons and ligaments. A direct articulation is stronger, but for the fore limbs it will not do, because of the necessity of softly dissipating the energy transmitted to them. The direct connection of the femur with the pelvis and the straightened knee sharply reduce the dissipation of energy during the thrust.

A knowledge of the mechanics of the musculoskeletal apparatus of a typical four-legged mammal makes it possible to understand what stands in the way of an attempt to begin walking on two legs. One such obstacle is the necessity of making the hind limbs capable of shock absorption; and for this an engineering problem must be solved which requires maximal conservation of kinetic energy and at the same time the acquisition of the ability to dissipate it, so as to neutralize a possible impact. Anyone can easily feel the sense of this problem by jumping down from even a small height without bending the knees and landing directly on the heel. The author, however, advises no one to do this, since it may end dramatically. Quite enough are those unpleasant sensations that arise when one happens accidentally to stumble.

A well-grounded theoretical irony with respect to the idea of a possible gradual evolution from a four-legged creature to a two-legged one shows through in Lovejoy’s question: “What was the intermediate stage supposed to be — three-legged?” Conditionally, the running of a kangaroo may be called three-legged locomotion, when it rests substantially, as on a third leg, on its powerful tail. True, the kangaroo’s movement can hardly be called running; it is rather jumping. However, such locomotion is not an intermediate but a final stage of the kangaroo’s adaptation.

Only by considering the whole complex of the means of evolutionary strategy used by an animal can one understand its separate components. In particular, Lovejoy concludes, with good grounds, that a substantial (but not the sole!) role in the evolution of upright walking was played by the strategy of care for offspring. In view of the opinions about upright walking that can still be met with in biology textbooks, this conclusion may seem strange and at any rate to require well-grounded argumentation.

One might think there could be no connection between upright walking and typological differentiation; but in the context of the palaeontological problems which the authors of Lucy examine, upright walking is one of the links in a complex system of species parameters, not one of which may be neglected. Each of these parameters depends so much on every other that considering them in isolation can hardly guarantee the truth of the result. In this connection I should like to note the high methodological level of the palaeontological research conducted by Edey and Johanson. At the basis of their approach lies something that can be linked with the concept of multiple causality, as opposed to “mono-causality,” in which some phenomenon is regarded as the consequence of one single cause.

The concept of multiple causality may also be interpreted as nonlinear (in the mathematical sense) causality — that is, a complex dependence of a phenomenon not only on other factors but also on itself. The latter may be understood in the sense that a phenomenon, being a relatively independent entity, possesses some aggregate of parameters. This aggregate is a wholeness, and not a collection of elements indifferent to one another. As a result, the joint dynamics of the phenomenon’s parameters may generate such structural changes and such external features as cannot be described as a consequence of linear continuity. In particular, one of the manifestations of a phenomenon’s wholeness is its possession of a more or less definite tendency, which may be evaluated by an observer directly or with the use of various instruments, including theoretical ones. However, such a tendency, being itself a relatively independent phenomenon, secondary to or derivative from the original one, may in turn have its own tendency. In this case one may speak of a tendency of a tendency. And if this last is not taken into account by the observer, then the evolution of the original phenomenon may prove unpredictable for him. For example, the tendency may indicate positive dynamics of some parameter, while the tendency of the tendency is bound up with its weakening. As a result the control parameter turns out to be in the zone of negative values. One need not go far for examples, since in society such “paradoxes” are encountered fairly often, when the forecast result does not coincide with reality, and at times quite strongly. A good hint at the possibility just analysed is the famous phrase uttered by one post-Soviet politician: “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always.” Obviously this phrase describes a case in which the expected result differs considerably from what actually happens. But of course longer sequences of derivative tendencies are also possible.

One of the manifestations of nonlinearity, strange as this may seem, may turn out to be biological inertia, when some biological mechanism, having once switched on, continues by inertia to operate although this may already be not merely unnecessary for the species but even harmful. Thus it happened, for example, with the Irish elk, with Uintatherium, and with the sabre-toothed tiger. Inertia is, conceptually, easier to evaluate as a manifestation of linearity; but the point is that in the case of biological inertia only the inertia itself, as a tendency, looks linear, while the parameter on which it acts does not remain constant.

The methodological apparatus of the authors of Lucy may also be characterized as systemic causality. True, the authors themselves designate their methodology by no special term, but we shall do so in connection with the methodological dominant of our own investigation. It is precisely the conception of multiple causality that gives grounds for speaking of the combined influence of many factors on the appearance of typological differentiation.

Before the works of Johanson and Edey, the opinion prevailed that upright walking was the response of our ape ancestor to the exit from a diminishing forest range into a gradually expanding savannah, when the “still-ape” was supposedly compelled to stand on its hind legs in order to survey a space covered with tall grass. This, as some scientists suppose, became that elementary act with which upright walking began. There is something in this assertion that makes it attractive and plausible, and because of which it is easy to accept on faith. But does it correspond to reality? It is precisely with this dramatic moment that the sixteenth chapter of the remarkable anthropologists’ book begins.

A considerable part of the text that follows reproduces the reflections of Owen Lovejoy — one of the interlocutors of the authors of Lucy and the author of a fundamentally new idea about the connection of upright walking with the strategy of reproduction of the species.

“For any quadruped to stand up on its hind legs and run would be sheer madness,” said Owen Lovejoy, a specialist in locomotion. “From the point of view of pure efficiency, running on two limbs is absurd” [1]. Attempts to explain upright walking by a spontaneous impulse of an ancient ape seem to Lovejoy preposterous. In such an explanation one may see signs of anthropomorphism, when forms of behaviour more or less inherent in man are ascribed to animals. Yes, people can commit unconsidered, preposterous or absurd acts, since man possesses reason, and it is not known how it — reason — will behave in an extreme situation. The animal, however, is in the field of instinctive causality, and its actions are far more rigidly determined by the system of ecological connections. Apparently, reasoning from thermodynamic positions ought also to lead to the conclusion that a sharp replacement of an energetically more advantageous locomotion by an energetically more costly one is unfounded. For this to happen, systemic causality must be at work, imperatively compelling the animal to develop a new and in some respect more progressive adaptation.

Lovejoy goes on to argue against the current assertion that man, being compelled to migrate from the forest into the savannah, began to stand on his legs in order to survey the terrain above the tall grass. Lovejoy says that this could have been so “if he already knew how to do it” — that is, if he had already become an upright-walking creature while still in the forest. If, however, he came out of the forest on all fours, then with the utmost degree of probability he would have developed the skill of hiding in the tall grass, not of sticking up out of it. But the human researcher, intuitively putting himself in the animal’s place, may explain its acts by his own readiness not so much to take a risk as simply to make use of the upright walking now inherent in him. And it required the profound penetration of Lovejoy, who had thoroughly studied the locomotion of animals, first to doubt the already existing hypotheses about the emergence of upright walking, and then to propose a systemic explanation of this phenomenon, unique in the animal world.

One more argument in favour of upright walking — the use of the upper limbs for the manipulation of tools and objects — Lovejoy assesses as a necessary but insufficient condition. He refers to the finds of fossil creatures from Laetoli and Hadar. These creatures already walked on two legs but did not yet use tools. Archaeological data showed that they moved in this manner possibly a million years before their descendants began to use tools. This means that one can be an upright-walking creature and yet not use tools. And this is a vivid example of how plausible hypotheses can be advanced on the basis of one set of empirical data — tools are found next to the bones of upright-walking creatures — and of how such hypotheses can be doubted when one has at one’s disposal other empirical data obtained later: next to the bones of more ancient upright-walking creatures no tools are found. Besides, the very concept of a tool stands in need of refinement.

Some animals use technological devices not built into their physiology, but this is only the rudiment of an instrumental relation to the environment, since in this relation there is no instrumental generalization and universality such as obtains in man. Moreover, the instrumental relation to the environment bears a social, not a biological character, and this is the chief distinction of tools of labour from the convenient devices that animals may use. And such devices constitute what may be called “exosomatic organs” — that is, non-physiological devices fixed in instinct. To such devices belong, in particular, burrows and nests, whose construction proceeds in a fundamentally different way from the building of various structures by man. Nevertheless, “exosomatics” may be regarded as the rudiment of what in humanity turned into technology. One may suppose that technology is an aromorphosis — that is, a progressive, manifold and large-scale development of exosomatics. Apparently, in the case of man too one must speak of a gradual formation of the instrumental relation to the environment. The quantitative accumulation of individual technological discoveries and skills at some stage in man’s formation acquired a new quality and turned into labour activity, distinguished by universality and by the possibility of unlimitedly expanding the technological toolkit, which permits an ever greater mastery of the forces of nature.

Lovejoy goes on, relying on the theoretical propositions of the doctrine of locomotion, to refute the possibility of a transitional state in which “man for some time moved about resting on his bent fingers, like the gorilla and the chimpanzee, and gradually stood up on his legs.” He holds this to be impossible, since “knuckle-walking is a strictly specialized trait bound up with adaptation to a definite mode of life, and it cannot lead to upright walking.”

And then follows the chief methodological message that can be used to explain upright walking: “To make sense of modes of locomotion, one must see in them not simply elements of cause-and-effect connections but part of a general strategy directed at the survival of the species.” And Lovejoy is set in opposition to the one-sided approach in which scientists of adjacent specialities — palaeontologists or anatomists, for example — are inclined to single out some one characteristic trait in an animal’s structure and then to proclaim the animal its bearer. Incidentally, such a variant of scientific argumentation may be considered a sign of a scientist’s methodological immaturity, when he takes any insight bound up with his often stubborn and strenuous work for the truth. In doing so he may, as a rule, have certain grounds which he tacitly accepts as sufficient. In a systemic consideration of the formation of an animal species, “an animal’s locomotor system, like its reproductive system and indeed all its other systems, constitutes part of a complex adaptational complex bound up with a specific ecology.” As a rule, a species has not some one adaptational trait but a whole group of adaptations functioning jointly. And, for example, if you want to “make sense of the chimpanzee’s locomotor system, you must understand what the general strategy of this animal is, directed at survival.”

The methodological approach used by the authors makes it possible to include typological differentiation as well in the system of adaptations directed at the survival of Homo sapiens.

A more or less complete list of the adaptations with which man’s ancestors had to deal, according to Edey and Johanson, looks as in Table 14.00.

The authors’ methodology rests on the fact that all the adaptational parameters are united by feedback links, and that a change in the magnitude and tendency of one parameter leads to the strengthening or weakening of other parameters, which in the end leads to their qualitative changes.

Table 14.00.

1. Mode of life.
2. Strategy of continuation of the line.
3. Parental care.
4. Number of offspring.
5. Frequency of birth of young.
6. Play.
7. Belonging to a group.
8. Social behaviour.
9. Various kinds of cooperation among members of the group.
10. Duration of childhood and learning — social transmission of useful skills.
11. Cephalization (increase in the size of the skull and brain).
12. Increase of mental capacities.
13. Epigamic differentiation. Individualization of sexual attractiveness. Formation of the basis for stability of sexual partnership. Development of individual love.
14. Pair bonds and the formation of the family.
15. Readiness to share food.
16. The emergence of individual care of males for females.
17. Formation of stable family groups.
18. Restriction of the mobility of females with young.
19. The character of motor activity and the dynamics of the life-support range.
20. Division of family labour and intra-family cooperation directed at raising the level of survival of offspring.
21. Lengthening of the ovarian cycle in females and lengthening of the period of reproductive capacity.
22. Typological specialization (the appearance of stable types already among human beings).
23. Use and manufacture of tools. Manipulation of objects.
24. Upright walking.
25. Other adaptations.

Commentaries on Table 14.00

1. The hominids led an exclusively terrestrial mode of life. The anthropoid apes occupied different ecological niches, differing in the proportion of terrestrial and arboreal components: some of them spend more time in the trees, others on the ground. Retention of the arboreal component blocked the possibility of having more than one infant. A fully terrestrial mode of life did not prevent having more than one infant and a greater frequency of births, but for this the species had to master additional adaptations. The systemic connections of the adaptations pushed the species in this direction.

2. Evolution has disclosed two polar strategies of reproduction: the discharge into the environment of a large quantity of fertilized eggs, which mechanically raises the chances of survival of the species (r-strategy), and a high level of care for offspring with a small number of them (K-strategy). The first, the r-strategies, are energetically wasteful. Too much energy goes to the preservation of the species and there is not enough energy for accelerating the tempo of progressive (that is, complexity-increasing) evolution; but on the other hand they do not require much intelligence. The K-strategy leaves more energy for adaptation to a wide range of physical conditions, but requires a high level of care for offspring. Parental care presupposes the development of the emotional sphere, including parental love. An example of the r-strategy carried to its maximum limit is the mode of reproduction of oysters, each of which discharges into its habitat around half a billion eggs a year. Alas, out of this number only a very small percentage of eggs — about a dozen — turn into full-fledged oysters. The species survives, but too much energy is spent on this. As a result the species does not develop.

An example of the other extreme is the mode of reproduction of gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans, whose females can allow themselves to have only one infant, and that only once in five or six years. Between these extreme variants one may place the reproductive strategies of all other animals. The effectiveness of each strategy has its own parametric limitations. The oyster cannot “just like that” increase the quantity of eggs it produces — this is determined by the thermodynamic balance of its biological energetics. One of the axioms here might be that the energetic possibilities of a species are used to the maximum, and that in order to change this maximum something else must be changed — some other parameter. If the oyster, for example, doubles the number of eggs while preserving the total biological energy that can be expended on this process, then the specific energy falling to each egg will correspondingly be halved, and hence the viability of each egg will decrease, and with it the probability of its turning into a full-fledged oyster. In a certain sense (a sense that needs to be specially refined in each concrete case), the reproductive strategy of the oyster species may be assessed as ineffective. Why produce such a quantity of material aimed at reproduction if only about a dozen eggs will become mature oysters? It turns out that the remaining mass of eggs proves to be merely a protective background for an extremely small number of successful specimens.

Ought we not to assess the results of such a strategy as an evolutionary dead end? After all, there are no visible means by which this species could change the state of affairs. There is no brain, the organs of perception are barely sketched in, locomotion is absent — or rather, close, if one may put it so, to zero; no care for offspring whatever is provided for — after all, one might at least, in the end, place the eggs in a safe spot, but the species does not know how to do this, because it has no brains. And if, as a result of changes in the environment, the probability of an egg’s turning into an oyster decreases still further, then the species may even disappear. True, it has survived now for many hundreds of millions of years. Consequently, for the preservation of the species this strategy is suitable — that is, it is successful. And it appears that the oyster species has “chosen” a course toward domestication by man, since it enjoys success with gourmets. And if this becomes an additional guarantee of its survival, then is that not a way out? It is not excluded that people will take up the selective breeding of oysters, and then one may expect a selectional aromorphosis — that is, a burst, in this case, of intraspecific diversity of forms.

For the anthropoid apes, on the other hand, their reproductive strategy has been carried to a dangerous minimum, at which, owing to chance circumstances — an epidemic, famine, a climatic fluctuation, an ecological catastrophe of any nature — the species may find itself on the brink of survival and quickly vanish. The reduced effectiveness of the anthropoid apes’ strategy of continuing the line shows itself also in the fact that their total number has been gradually declining over millions of years, and now they are on the verge of extinction. That is, in this case the K-strategy is no longer advantageous to the species, but changing it is not so simple. Whereas in the case of the lower apes, with their intermediate strategy, one may speak of flourishing.

3. The extreme variant of the K-strategy, when a single infant is born and several years go to caring for it, lowers the female’s reproductive productivity and makes the species vulnerable. In this case the death of a single infant becomes a heavy loss for the species as a whole and may put it on the brink of survival. Such a loss is in no way comparable to the loss of a single oyster egg. And if such a loss is repeated even two or three times, the species genome may suffer, since some female, the bearer of a unique combination of genes, will pass beyond the limits of reproductive age.

In the evolution of the primates there was a period when a gradual strengthening of K-strategies began. This period, according to palaeontological data, lasted from the beginning of the Cenozoic era to the middle of the Miocene. Thus it began approximately 70 million years ago and lasted 2–3 million years, which is incomparably longer than the entire history of human civilization. With an arboreal mode of life, females could not allow themselves to have more than one infant, and hence could not give birth to the next until the previous one had become sufficiently independent. This term amounted to 5–6 years. Such a strategy could justify itself only on condition that the females increased their care for offspring. It is interesting to note that the young of modern anthropoid apes are born with an instinctive ability to cling with their fore limbs to the mother’s fur and thus hold on to her. In doing so they try to be in the upper part of the body, closer to the breast. They are also helped in this by an instinctive reflex of pushing off with the hind — or rather, lower — limbs. And they are always oriented with their head in the direction of the mother’s head.

The human child immediately after birth possesses a ready reflex of clinging with the hands and pushing off with the feet. This is a strong argument in confirmation of the fact that the infant of man’s nearest ancestors had to hold on to the mother’s fur by itself, so that her hands would be free for moving through the trees. This is an important circumstance that strengthened the K-strategy. It is hard to imagine that many young could be located on the body of a mother leaping through the trees. Hence it follows that such species of animals are compelled to strengthen the care of their offspring. If one looks over the series of animals from oysters to anthropoid apes, the strengthening of the K-strategy in connection with the increase in brain size will be obvious. True, one may ask whether these two adaptations are connected with one another. It appears that they are: an animal with a large brain will with greater probability possess more developed capacities for caring for offspring.

4. Upright walking allowed the hominids to solve a problem with which the other K-oriented anthropoid species did not cope. The female anthropoid ape usually gives birth to one infant. The process of caring for it requires so much energy that for a fairly long interval of time she cannot allow herself to have another. During the time of caring for the infant such a female turns out to be withdrawn from the reproductive process. The female chimpanzee, gorilla or orangutan can give birth only once in five years — that is, only after her infant becomes, by the norms of the species, sufficiently independent. Physiologically such a “blocking” of the female is formalized by the impossibility of the onset of oestrus, that is, of sexual readiness. The species as a system sought a possibility of shortening the intervals between successive births. As species ascend the steps of evolution, one may observe a rejection of the extreme forms of r-strategies, for which the species is indebted to the appearance in its arsenal of more effective instruments of adaptation — a more developed nervous system, brain, sophisticated locomotion — as a result of which animals acquire the capacity and the possibility of caring better for their offspring.

The frog, by comparison with the oyster, is able to choose safer places for its offspring — grass-grown marshy shallows — which permits it to get by with only two hundred eggs a year. And one is simply astonished when one sees a film in which one of the varieties of African toads works a passage from a full-flowing body of water to a drying-up puddle overcrowded with tadpoles that have found themselves on the brink of survival. With its head the toad presses out, in fairly dense soil, a channel 30–40 cm long, about 7 cm wide and about 5 cm deep. As a result the whole mass of suffocating tadpoles “flows over” from the drying puddle into a body of water with a sufficient quantity of water. This toad, in the literal sense of the word, performs a feat; but for this one must identify the situation as dangerous for the offspring, assess the possibilities of a positive solution of the problem that has arisen, choose an optimal variant of solving an “engineering problem,” and finally purposefully carry out the necessary work! Looking at all this from the side, it is hard to shake off the impression that the toad is guided by a reason quite comparable to the human.

The hare brings forth 12 leverets a year — very few by comparison with the oyster. And the hare cannot lead them about with her: such a family would be too vulnerable from the point of view of a predator’s attack. And the species finds its own solution. The leveret’s scent is so neutral that a predator cannot detect it by this sign even at very close range. The white leverets are “dispersed” over a large area covered with white snow and lie quietly under bushes, almost merging with the surrounding background. Any female hare feeds any leveret that happens upon her — species cooperation. The lioness limits herself to two cubs a year, but then they are well protected.

Biology knows cases in which the negative sides of both strategies are combined, and this becomes the cause of the disappearance of a species. It appears that this is one possible explanation of the disappearance of the dinosaurs: they laid few eggs (the negative side of the K-strategy) and they, like many reptiles, did not care for their offspring (the negative side of r-strategies). This strategy was sufficient under one set of ecological conditions, but became fatal when those conditions changed.

From a methodological point of view, it would be incorrect to assess any one of these strategies as more effective or less effective. Such an assessment depends on the criterion chosen. At some stages of a species’ evolution one strategy will be effective, at others another, or possibly some combination of them. The strategy of reproduction is merely an instrument of species adaptation.

5. If the female rears her young alone, then it is hard for her to give birth often. Here the species may seek a way out in various forms of intraspecific cooperation. Other females may help her — partly taking on the care of her offspring, thereby unburdening her. Males may take on the food provision of the female and the young, which may reduce her energy expenditures. In the animal world all forms of intraspecific cooperation may be met with.

6. Care of offspring is partly ensured by instinct and partly guaranteed by social learning, one form of which is play.

7. Instructive play requires the presence of a group and of a sufficiently developed brain.

8. Belonging to a group forms social bonds and socialization. More complex and subtle kinds of intra-group cooperation become possible, but this requires greater tolerance and psychological compatibility.

9. The most frequently encountered kind of cooperation in the animal world is simply living together in a group. In some cases this increases protection.

10. The necessity of assimilating an increasingly complex social experience requires a more prolonged childhood, so that there is enough time; but the brain too must be larger for this.

11. More complex forms of care for offspring require a more developed brain. The brain, having begun to develop, may under suitable conditions switch on the mechanisms of encephalization — that is, growth of the brain and correspondingly an increase in the size of the head, cephalization — and over some stretch of evolution this process becomes inertial. So it was, apparently, with the antlers of the Irish elk, the horn of Uintatherium and the fangs of Machairodus, when a further quantitative increase of the trait was harmful for the survival of the species, but the species could no longer do anything about it. In anthropoid apes the brain does not increase.

12. Apparently the increase of the brain in man’s ancestors was accompanied by an increase⁴ of mental capacities. Of course there is no direct proportionality here, but all the same animals with a larger brain have a higher IQ. Among the top ten most intelligent animals are elephants, horses, dolphins, bears, dogs, cats. What matters is not only the absolute size of the brain but also its mass relative to the mass of the body — that is, the number of neurons falling to one cell.

13. In baboons there is presumably sexual attraction but no feeling of love for the sexual partner. They enter impulsively into sexual relations with any receptive — that is, ready-to-be-fertilized — female. Here any male is ready to mate with any female, and as a result of the struggle among males for the continuation of their own genome, a high level of aggression exists. The appearance of epigamic differentiation in man’s direct ancestors leads to the development of individual love on the basis of a mechanism of selective sympathy. As a result, conditions are created for the formation of stable marital pairs and the emergence of the institution of marriage.

14. Epigamic differentiation — that is, the appearance within the species of such specific differences between individuals as ensure the selective attractiveness of both females and males. As a result a stable sympathy becomes possible within a separate pair consisting of a male and a female, which leads to the formation and strengthening of stable pairs. Among anthropoid apes, with the exception of gibbons, there are no pair bonds.

15. The emergence of individual sympathy raises the probability that the partners will share food. If the male could bring the female food, she could devote more time to the infant and could increase the frequency of births. Anthropoid apes lack any inclination to share food. However, not all of Lovejoy’s interlocutors agreed that the skill of sharing food could have had any significance in the development of upright walking, since the necessity of carrying objects, young and food might well have served as a sufficient cause for it.

16. Individual love and sympathetic attachment create the basis for individual care of males for their females, and this in turn reduces the energetic load on the female and contributes to raising her reproductive rate.

17. The appearance of the rudiments of family relations and of stable family groups creates the possibility of strengthening the primary division of labour — the males hunt and bring food, the females feed the young and care for them.

18. If the species could allow females with young to lead a less mobile mode of life, this could contribute to increasing the safety of the offspring, and the females could give birth more often and simultaneously care for several young. At the same time the possibility would arise of creating a permanent dwelling. In anthropoid apes the females constantly move about in search of food and carry the young with them, and they have no permanent place of residence.

19. The character of the females’ motor activity could over time change thanks to intraspecific cooperation. For example, a female could for a time leave her young with other females and herself go off to obtain additional food. As a result the life-support range, after its narrowing owing to the restriction of the females’ mobility, would begin to expand again.

20. The males cooperate and obtain food over an enlarged range; the females can devote more time to the children and to emotional communication with other females.

21. In most animals the reproductive period within the year is limited by conditions favourable for rearing offspring. Man’s ancestors managed to overcome the seasonal limitations bound up with the possibility of conception. Thereby the species raises the probability of the female’s becoming pregnant, and the offspring can now appear more evenly throughout the year, which gives the females better conditions for cooperation among themselves.

22. Epigamic differentiation, having become hereditary, and the complication of the forms of socialization create conditions for various varieties of typological specialization. Part of such specializations, as a continuation of epigamic differentiation, may be partly fixed genetically, and part could be reproduced socially, which creates conditions for the appearance of social types — to begin with, leaders, priests, workers, defenders, and later others as well.

23. The use and manufacture of tools and the manipulation of objects is an essential trait of man as a species, but this would have been impossible or extremely difficult without upright walking.

24. Figure 14.01 makes it possible to compare the speed capacities of the four-legged and two-legged modes of locomotion. The sharply thrown-forward body of a cheetah or an antelope rests springily on the fore paws with almost no loss of impulse.

Upright walking is a special kind of locomotion (movement), not characteristic of mammals, since it requires large expenditures of energy for supporting the body and sharply limits the speed of movement. In contrast to support on four legs, in the case of upright walking the weight of the body is transferred to two legs, and to this is added the weight of the upper limbs as well. Fast running requires a strong forward inclination of the body — to maintain maximum speed, as in the dog, horse, antelope or cheetah, it must be parallel to the ground; but for this support on the fore limbs is necessary. Without this the runner’s speed will not reach the limit possible for his energetic potential.

Why then may a species prefer upright walking, if it is energetically disadvantageous? Only because this adaptation might bring some other advantages. The first hypotheses of scientists who tried to explain this phenomenon emphasized the connection of upright walking with the use of tools. However, the use of tools is a particular case of the manipulation of objects. A broader spectrum of manipulation of objects, besides the use of tools, may include the gathering and carrying of food — two free hands facilitated these operations. But there is something else to which no one before Lovejoy paid attention: the possibility of carrying one’s young in one’s arms and leading them by the hand. Anyone who has even once in his life led a small trusting creature by the hand could feel how deeply such a possibility is fixed in the human being. It turned out that such an improvement proved so important for the species that for its sake it was worth changing the locomotion — simply by strengthening an already existing tendency — and going over to upright walking. All the more so since almost everything was ready for this. Let us note that Lovejoy, while setting out his idea, advancing ever new arguments, relying on new finds of bone material, constantly emphasizes the hypothetical character of his reasoning and his readiness to renounce this idea, so dear to him, if more convincing grounds appear for how upright walking arose.

Fig. 14.01. Mode of locomotion and speed.

25. In other arboreal animals, such as squirrels, the hands and fingers did not develop, because climbing and running were always more important for them than grasping. These animals feed on nuts, pine cones, seeds — motionless objects which can be plucked without haste and gnawed in time free from the search for food. Primates, on the contrary, managed to adapt to an arboreal mode of life and at the same time to preserve their predatory inclinations.

26. The necessity of successfully jumping and grasping prey entailed the development in primates of binocular vision, in which both eyes are centred on an object, providing the perception of depth. Here we encounter a subtle difference between the geometrical characteristics of the predominantly two-dimensional space in which terrestrial animals live and the predominantly three-dimensional space in which apes live. In such a space binocular vision becomes an essential adaptation. Now the eyes must be located on the front side of the skull rather than looking to the sides, as in the squirrel. The skull of primates acquires a rounded form corresponding to the new position of the eyes. In connection with this the capacity of the skull increases and a potential possibility is created for the development of a larger brain. At the same time the jaws become shorter. With the formation of the hand, teeth cease to be the chief organ of hunting and food gathering, and they become fewer. Modern lower and anthropoid apes, like human beings, have sixteen teeth in each jaw. In their ancestors this number reached twenty-two.

Species differentiation among the primates

A vivid example of species differentiation may be furnished by the adaptation of apes to close but nevertheless different ecological niches. In a certain, perhaps very conditional sense, this differentiation may be a prototype of epigamic and then of typological differentiation. Biological species of animals may, from a psychological point of view, be regarded as behavioural types. Incidentally, here one may see a basis for an “animal” typology of people, such as obtains, for example, in the Eastern horoscope. Animals unquestionably possess a vividly expressed behavioural dominant, whereas people on the whole display varied forms of behaviour; however, for various reasons a behavioural dominant may appear in a particular person which is in some way analogous to one of the numerous “animal” dominants. Moreover, such an animal dominant may quite naturally, and in accordance with the definition given above, be matched with the concept of temperament. Then each species of animal, besides emotional temperaments, is characterized by its own particular ecological temperament. On this basis a person with some “animal” dominant may be assigned to the corresponding animal type. Thus, for example, real rats are distinguished by an ability to orient themselves easily in the underground labyrinths of their burrows, which is without doubt an essential cause in the formation of their relatively high intellect among animals. Besides this, they accumulate stores of food “against a rainy day.” An analogous dominant may be discovered in a large number, though not in all, people, and on this basis they may be assigned to the type “rat.” Such people will be characterized by a heightened capacity for combinatorial thinking and by thriftiness, but this of course does not mean that such people are born exclusively in the “year of the rat.” What interests us here is not the statistical invariants of the birth rate of “animal types” by year (for this special research is required), but only the fundamental possibility of a psychological typing of people according to the presence in them of an “animal” dominant. It will therefore be useful to make at least a brief survey of the species differentiation of apes.

To the higher apes, the primates, belong the chimpanzee, orangutan, gibbon, gorilla, tarsier and others. Despite the similarity of their habitat, they use different kinds of locomotion and their ecological niches are also different.

The ancestors of the primates managed to adapt to life in the trees. Not the least advantage of the arboreal environment was protection from terrestrial predators. Adaptation to the environment presupposes, among other things, an optimal size of the animal. Some primates became larger than their species ancestors. Together with divergence in modes of locomotion there also occurred a dietary divergence — part of the future primates began to feed predominantly on fruits and berries, and another part on leaves alone. The lower apes preserved the mode of movement on four legs, although they developed the hand and foot characteristic of primates, with a more or less flat sole and tenacious fingers. They walk along branches, whereas part of the anthropoid apes move from branch to branch by brachiation, that is, using the upper limbs as their basic device. There are higher apes that climb trees. For the lower apes it was important to descend to the ground and, in case of danger, quickly to run off toward the nearest tree, and therefore they retained the capacity for running, and this was possible only with the preservation of a sufficiently long spine. It is important to note here that movement on four legs separated the lower apes from the anthropoids.

The tarsier is a primitive nocturnal animal leading an exclusively arboreal mode of life. It jumps and clambers along branches and has entirely renounced running. These primates have short fore limbs and long hind limbs, and a hand with long fingers with flat nails. Its finger pads are strongly widened, which helps it to hold on in the trees.

The gibbon also lives in the trees, but unlike the tarsier it uses for movement not climbing but brachiation: holding on with its upper limbs to a branch, it, like a pendulum, accelerates its body with a “swinging” motion and at a suitable moment releases the branch that was its support in the initial phase of the movement. Having flown in free flight a distance considerably exceeding the length of its body (when necessary — more than three metres), it grasps a new branch, changing the support of the pendulum motion. This is a very convenient mode of movement, in which a high speed is attained at the expense of the “pendulum effect.” Since the inertia of the body is thereby conserved, the speed of movement attains the maximum possible under the given conditions. The whole aggregate of the gibbons’ living conditions contributed to their arms becoming very long, their hands and fingers tenacious, their legs short, and their body light. The gibbon has long strong fingers which during brachiation play the role of hooks. The gibbon is the best brachiator. This is a good example of how an aggregate of adaptations attains a functional maximum expressed in the species and typological definiteness of the animal. Gibbons almost never descend to the ground. If this does happen, they move on two legs. However, their legs are short and weak, and therefore their gait, from the point of view of the human ideal, is not distinguished by perfection — they maintain vertical equilibrium with difficulty, waddling from foot to foot and helping themselves with widely flung, extremely long arms, which, in the apt expression of the authors of Lucy, recalls a tightrope walker balancing with a pole.

Fig. 14.02. Examples of species differentiation. 1. Gibbon. 2. Orangutan. 3. Chimpanzee. 4. Gorilla.

Orangutans, like gibbons, also live in the trees, but represent an entirely different functional maximum. Their limbs have attained such perfection that they may equally be considered both legs and arms, and orangutans use them almost identically. At any rate, the orangutan can with any of its limbs pluck, for example, a banana and bring it to its mouth. The point is that it can extend its “lower” legs-arms not only at any angle to the side but practically press them to the body in the direction of the head from the front, the side and behind. This is the only animal with four arms — though at the same time with four legs. Still, there is one subtle nuance here: when it needs to move on the ground, which happens rarely, it goes on all fours. And it is here that the difference between its hind and fore limbs shows itself — the hind ones have a sole, while the hands of the fore ones it curls into fists and to a greater or lesser degree rests on the phalanges of the fingers. It is able to hang by any one of its limbs, by any pair or triple of them, and of course by all four at once. And it can with any limb pluck a fruit and bring it to its mouth to eat. On the ground it moves slowly and cautiously and, by human standards, awkwardly.

The gorilla has almost entirely gone over to a terrestrial mode of life. It eats coarse plant stems, roots, bamboo shoots, berries. It can easily move on two legs, but not infrequently moves resting on the bent fingers of its hands. The gorilla has almost lost the capacity for running, and this useful adaptation of other animals it compensated for by an increase in size, enormous strength and ferocity, to which, possibly, a raised content of testosterone in the blood corresponds. In the literature one meets mentions of the fact that a male gorilla is able to bite through a rifle barrel. A relic relation to the arboreal mode of life shows itself in them in the fact that young gorillas play on branches and can hang from them; but as they grow up and put on weight they lose mobility. If low-lying thick branches convenient for sitting come their way, gorillas may make use of this, but as a rule not singly but as a group. However, there is no preference in this, and they can just as freely settle on the ground. Confident of their strength and sufficiently well protected from the predators usual in their ranges, they prefer to live in one place and only in rare cases, under the influence of special circumstances, migrate short distances.

Chimpanzees, by comparison with other anthropoids, are distinguished by a lesser ecological specialization — their set of adaptations permits them to solve a broader class of problems. The chimpanzee is a partly arboreal, partly terrestrial animal. Gathering fruit in the trees, they are able to climb very high. This is facilitated by their long, strong and dexterous arms, capable even of manipulating crude tools. In the chimpanzee even the thumb can be opposed to the others, as in man, but its relatively lesser length limits the instrumental possibilities of its owner. With their relatively short legs chimpanzees are able to run quite fast — faster than man. Their favourite food is figs, but when there are none they eat what can be found on the ground — insects and their larvae, berries, roots and buds of plants. One aspect of their group behaviour consists in the fact that they can to some degree cooperate for the hunting of young or small apes, driving them onto an isolated tree. After this they catch the prey and eat it.

The lower apes are true quadrupeds. They have no potential capacities for maintaining an upright posture, a capacity which to one degree or another all anthropoid apes possess. On the other hand they have retained the capacity for fast running, thanks to their long limbs and elongated spine, and also to their hands, which at each step come down flat on the ground.

Thus all anthropoid apes can walk on two legs, although they do not always, and even not often, make use of this mode of movement. And only man’s direct ancestor once, millions of years ago, resolved to use upright walking as his basic mode of locomotion. In complex causal dependence on upright walking, the thumb of the hominids became far longer and turned in the direction of the index finger, as a result of which the manipulatory capacities of the hominids increased considerably.

Summing up this brief survey of the differentiation of the primates, one may say that their ancestors, being predators, managed to become dwellers in the trees and at the same time preserved their predatory inclinations. This became possible thanks to a whole series of coordinated adaptations. Among them are two-legged walking with a more or less straightened position of the body, the development of the capacity for brachiation, which entailed the development of the hands and the transformation of the spinal column, binocular vision, formed above all in an environment of three-dimensional locomotion, and a considerable increase in the size of the brain, which became possible thanks to the switching on of the process of cephalization, which at a definite stretch of hominid evolution became inertial.

One of the subtle conceptual nuances in biology is bound up with the “chicken and egg” problem, in the sense of who, in the process of the preservation of the species, is the subject of the species’ stability and of its variability. The original assertion supposedly belonging to Herbert Spencer — “a chicken is a device by means of which an egg produces another egg” — expresses the possibility of a radical change of view on this problem. Despite the paradoxicality contained in this assertion, or more precisely the unaccustomedness for common sense of the angle from which the “chief participants of the process” are considered, biologists may yet have to reckon with the necessity of changing the theoretical accents in the definition of the subject of a biological species depending on the degree of theoretical generalization. At any rate, a point of view is logically quite possible in which the subject of the species is recognized to be the species genome, while its particular realizations in the form of concrete individuals are regarded not at all as the goal of the species’ existence but only as a means of representing the genetic material and an instrument of its evolutionary dynamics.⁵ Reversing the causal chains, one may say that the genome governs the adaptational strategies. The species as the bearer of the genome, as its protective envelope, must be sufficiently reliable from the point of view of the preservation of the genome and of its dynamics. In order for the genome to be able to evolve, the species must reproduce. In order for the species to be able to reproduce, it must feed. In order for the species to be able to feed, it must move within its range. Movement (locomotion) is one of the adaptational parameters depending on the strategy of reproduction and influencing it.

Fig. 14.03. On the examples of the skeletons of the macaque, the gorilla and man one can see how the character of locomotion changed in the process of evolution.

Comparing the evolutionary results of the anthropoid and the lower apes, one is compelled to conclude that the survival strategy of the latter proved more effective, since they have increased numerically while the former have come to the brink of extinction. Between these two populations there are at least two essential adaptational differences. The anthropoids carried their K-strategy to a dangerous limit. Their females give birth to one infant once in five or six years and spend much time and effort caring for it. The females of the lower apes give birth once in two years, but care less for their offspring. “Less” here is not necessarily to be understood as “worse.” It means, above all, that their specific energy expenditures are lower. Be that as it may, the balance of adaptations in their case proved a fortunate one.

The locomotion of the anthropoids is a combination of brachiation or climbing in trees with the possibility of two-legged walking, which is used by them as an additional and not as the basic means of locomotion. The anthropoids surpass the lower apes in mental capacities, but the latter reproduce faster and thereby considerably compensate for the difference in intellectual development. How did it come about that the more “intelligent” species began to use a strategy capable of leading it into a dead end? The point is that when the species was going over to the mastery of a new adaptation, that adaptation was useful and permitted the mastery of new ecological niches. Therefore, although two-legged movement is energetically less advantageous than four-legged, in combination with other adaptations it might at some stage of evolution become a useful instrument of survival. But of course this is not obligatory. And it appears that the anthropoids did not make full use of the potential possibilities inherent in upright walking.

The possibility of upright walking appeared in the common ancestors of the anthropoids and the hominids. This may be explained by the action of two factors. On the one hand, brachiation created a new mode of using what were now upper rather than fore limbs. This subtle moment is bound up with a change in the character of the use of the limbs. At the same time, for anthropoid apes with the possibility of living in the trees, running, which would come into conflict with upright walking, was not much needed. The new mode of using the upper limbs contained within itself the potency of becoming the basis of a complex of new adaptations, among which belongs first of all the possibility of using tools and effectively manipulating objects. In particular, the possibility appeared of holding an infant in the arms or leading it “by the hand.” A mere trifle, one would think; but in the strengthening of care for the “rising generation” this could become, and did become, an important element in the optimization of the K-strategy. It was precisely this, it appears, that the hominids made use of, making upright walking their basic kind of locomotion, whereas for the anthropoids it remained something secondary. When, in time, the aggregate ecological conditions changed, the ancestors of the anthropoids, having gathered adaptational inertia, already proved incapable of changing the parameters of their strategies, and began gradually to lose numbers and to reduce the ranges of their existence. But in man’s direct ancestors, the hominids, upright walking above all helped to reduce the energetic expenditures on care for offspring. As a result of this, the females could allow themselves to give birth more often, to rear two and more young of different ages, and thus to avoid the danger of the extreme variant of the K-strategy. The exact formula at which Lovejoy arrived sounds more rigorous: “given a complex specialization orienting the animal too strongly toward the K-strategy, upright walking is a way of reducing such an orientation.” This is because, leaping through the trees, one cannot allow oneself to have more than one, at most two, young simultaneously, whereas moving on two legs along the ground this becomes possible.

This is one of the conclusions at which Lovejoy arrived as a result of his theoretical searches. But for a long time he had no palaeontological confirmations of such a variant of the development of evolutionary events, and other anthropologists, especially the authoritative ones, considered his arguments unconvincing. Lovejoy’s convictions began to acquire flesh, including in the literal sense of the word, when Donald Johanson in 1974 found at Hadar the knee joint of an upright-walking creature that had lived three million years ago. Now upright walking could be dated a million years earlier; and combined with the fact that these creatures did not yet have tools, one could conclude from this that upright walking acquired a tendency to strengthen for some other reason, and not as a result of the use of tools. This reason, in Lovejoy’s opinion, was the necessity and the possibility of strengthening care for offspring. Now he could assert on sufficient grounds that Lucy, one of the foremothers of humanity, walked upright because it was easier that way to care for her children. Theoretically this could be understood as meaning that the potential connection of the mode of locomotion with the strategy of reproduction had been actualized. And when Johanson found well-preserved parts of the skeleton of a whole individual, and then of a whole family, Lovejoy’s theoretical position was strengthened still further. The bone remains found were older than any known tools, and this required a different explanation of how the possibility of upright walking, which had arisen in the primates, turned into the basic kind of locomotion in the hominids. Of course, theoretically one may suppose that the hominids could have renounced the extreme variant of the K-strategy by returning to the four-legged mode of walking; but the systemic causality among their adaptations created an inertia of upright walking, and a return became impossible, or at least difficult.

And only in the further course of hominid evolution did upright walking become for them one of the adaptational elements facilitating the use of tools of labour, of defence and of attack. And this in turn, combined with the development of intellect, became so powerful an adaptation that it outweighed all the disadvantages that might be bound up with upright walking. It must also be noted that the use of tools and the development of intellect are two adaptations capable of reinforcing each other. Therefore, as soon as they became the leading ones for the hominids, a further aromorphosis, a progressive flourishing of the species, acquired for them a very high probability. This does not mean that they could not have fallen into some other dead end, but the results of evolution show that they were able to make use of this probability. Let us note in passing that by the beginning of the 21st century the birth rate in the leading ethnic groups of Europe has begun to decline, which may end in their being displaced by peoples that preserve a high fertility. Such a use of fertility in the penetration of one ethnos into another may be regarded as a demographic weapon. Thus, for example, in France the Arab and Negro ethnic groups have considerably strengthened their positions at the expense of a birth rate raised by comparison with the French. Analogous processes, perhaps in a less pronounced form, may be observed in other countries of Western and Eastern Europe as well. Thus the nuances in strategies of reproduction continue to play a role for humanity at the present stage of its existence too.

But why did upright walking become for the hominids a source of progressive adaptations, while for the anthropoids it ended in an evolutionary trap and dead end? As always in evolutionary events, it is not some one, even very vivid, cause that is realized, but a system of interconnected adaptations and tendencies. This may be characterized as systemic causality. Now, in the anthropoids the combination of adaptations and tendencies remained centred predominantly on arboreal life, and the combination of upright walking with care of the young did not come about. The hominids, on the other hand, renounced arboreal life and managed to optimize their K-strategy by becoming upright-walking, which permitted them to perfect their care of the young by carrying them in their arms or holding them by the hand. As a result they succeeded in avoiding the evolutionary trap into which the ancestors of the anthropoids fell. The combination of upright walking with care for offspring proved so effective that it became fixed as a species characteristic. Subsequently, developed upright walking became the basis for the use of tools. At any rate, such is the hypothesis of Lovejoy, one of the interlocutors of Edey and Johanson [1].

The chain of feedback loops

Here it is the right moment to reproduce the chain of logical reasoning on which Lovejoy relied. If a system contains several elements, then, interacting, they strengthen or weaken one another. In this the principle of feedback manifests itself. In systems theory and cybernetics the weakening action is correlated with positive, and the strengthening action with negative, feedback. “If care for offspring is a useful trait, then selection will favour its preservation, since females with more developed maternal qualities will have better chances of success in rearing their young.” This means that “the genetic tendency existing in the population toward the development of maternal instincts will increase.” This in turn will require a series of additional qualities. “The mother needs a higher level of mental capacities, since otherwise she will hardly be able to provide better care for her young.” And this will entail “the development of the brain — and of the brain not only of the mother herself but also of her daughter, who will one day become a mother too.” On the other hand, “the infant will not be able to learn anything if from the very beginning it does not possess a developed brain.” At the same time, “with a congenital underdevelopment of the brain no compensation occurs subsequently.” And this requires that “by the moment of birth an infant with a large brain be sufficiently developed; it is necessary, in particular, that the maturation of the nervous mechanisms be in the main completed.” Here it must be taken into account that “the gestation of young with a large brain requires intensive consumption of oxygen and the transfer through the placenta of a considerable quantity of energy, i.e. large energy expenditures on the part of the mother.” This means that “the mother’s organism is responsible for the full-fledged formation of the infant.” But then “her possible energy expenditures are always limited (just as are the expenditures on the production of eggs in oysters).” As a result it turns out that “with a larger brain one has to have fewer young.” And since the number of young is smaller, then “one has to have a larger brain in order to care for them better.” The circle of feedback has closed. Thus Lovejoy shows that all the “tendencies are interconnected, depend on one another and reinforce one another.” However, “in the case of the evolution of the primates we are dealing not with a simple feedback, in which two factors act upon one another, but with a multifactorial circular system that includes several mutually reinforcing components.” The infant’s possession of a large brain requires more time “in order to learn to use this brain before the infant comes face to face with the surrounding world.” This becomes one of the systemic causes of the fact that “the infant must have a prolonged childhood.” One of the kinds of learning in childhood is play. Play “presupposes the presence of partners.” The presence of partners presupposes “a group social organization.” Such an organization is impossible if its members are not able to “assimilate the foundations of social behaviour.” And the foundations of social behaviour can be assimilated “only at a certain level of mental capacities.” Here the feedback loop again closes on mental capacities. As a result a whole group of factors turns out to be connected in such a way that they all reinforce (or weaken) one another. Let us number (conditionally) some of these factors (see Table 14.01).

Of course, one must understand that many of the adaptations listed here are, as Lovejoy says, “side results of a single process which consisted in the improvement of the strategy of reproduction.”

Table 14.01.

1. The possibility of reducing the number of young.
2. The volume of care for the infant.
3. The mother’s energy expenditures.
4. The mother must be more intelligent.
5. The daughter must be more intelligent.
6. The brain must be larger.
7. Lengthening of the period of childhood.
8. Development of play as a social mode of learning.
9. The necessity of play partners.
10. The emergence of a social structure.
11. Assimilation of the rules of communication.

Now, in the form of a “tournament table,” the interconnection of these factors may be displayed (see Table 14.02).

Table 14.02.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
1		1+2		1+4		1+6
2	2+1		2+3	2+4	2+5	2+6
3				3+4
4	4+1				4+5	4+6
5		5+2				5+6
6	6+1		6+3	6+4	6+5		6+7	6+8	6+9	6+10	6+11
7	7+1							7+8	7+9		7+11
8	8+1				8+5		8+7
9					9+5			9+8		9+10
10						10+6					10+11
11						11+6				11+10

Table 14.02 shows that the systemic factors of adaptation singled out have a complex structure of connections, but that no factor turns out to be isolated. It is also not excluded that some connections of factors are not reflected in the table. The joining of factors by a plus sign indicates their direct connection. Thus, for example, the combination 1+2 means that with a smaller number of young, more care is needed in order to rear them. But the converse is also true (2+1): the more care is devoted to one infant, the fewer of them one can have without damage to the further existence of the species. However, the point here is not simply that there should be more or fewer young. Apparently it is optimal to have exactly as many young as are necessary for the flourishing, or at least for the survival, of the species. But how is this quantity to be determined? In the animal world it simply happens. It happens within the framework of a balance of biological possibilities. The species works out its own strategy of reproduction, which is a response to the conditions of its existence. If, however, the strategy proves too specialized, then the species in the end falls into an evolutionary dead end.

The combination of factors 2+1, understood as “the more the parents care for their children, the fewer of them they can have,” apparently explains why in more civilized communities the number of children in families may decrease. More care in this case means also greater capital investment; but the child too can achieve more in this case.

It is also not excluded that the peculiarities of the structure of the table under consideration are bound up with the choice of factors. Possibly a well-grounded change in the list of factors would lead to a more even filling of the table. Of course, with respect to some combinations of factors in this table different researchers may have different opinions. Thus, for example, it is presumed that if “the brain is larger,” then the intellect too will be greater; but this is true only on average and only within the framework of a concrete species.

If one considers another set of adaptational factors (see Table 14.03), then to it will correspond another “tournament” table (see 14.04). Table 14.04 shows the connections among yet another subset of hominid adaptations. For example, 13+14 may be understood as “if less time is spent on the search for food, then there are more possibilities of finding a sexual partner.” Despite the trivial character of such axioms, the very work of identifying their complete list is unquestionably useful. Besides, such assertions may be regarded as atomic, or almost atomic, though this needs additional investigation. If such assertions are atomic — that is, not further decomposable into simpler assertions within the limits of the chosen subject area — then the theorist obtains basic data to which, given appropriate justification, one may attempt to reduce all the remaining empirical facts.

Table 14.03.

12. Belonging to a group.
13. Optimization of the expenditure of time on the search for food.
14. Optimization of the expenditure of time on the search for a sexual partner.
15. Protection from external aggression.
16. Optimization of the expenditure of time on care for offspring.

Table 14.04.

	12	13	14	15	16
12			12+14	12+15	12+16
13	13+12		13+14
14	14+12				14+16
15	15+12	15+13	15+14		15+16
16	15+12	16+13	16+14	16+15

The converse combination of factors, 14+13, may be understood as “if less time is spent on the search for a sexual partner, then there are more possibilities of finding food.” Quite trivial; but this may push the species toward group life. 12+13: “if you belong to a group, then you spend less time on the search for food.” Conversely, 13+12: “if you want to optimize the time spent on the search for food, join a group.” Such an assertion may be regarded as an expression of ecological pressure on the individual. There exist species that have coped with this form of environmental pressure. For example, many species of felines. Why, for instance, do snow leopards or cheetahs not unite into packs, whereas lions make quite effective use of group cooperation? Why do eagles not unite into flocks, while vultures do? Why do hares, being relatively weak animals, prefer a solitary mode of life? A quite possible answer is: because in their ecological niche food is always close at hand and help from a group would be ineffective here. But it is obvious that this is only part of the answer. It is an atomic part of the answer to an atomic part of the question concerning the food strategies of different animals.

The connection 14+15 is hard to interpret, and therefore it is omitted from the table. At the same time the connection 15+14 might be understood as “if you want to reduce the degree of external danger, find a sexual partner — it is easier for two to forestall the onset of an extreme situation.” However, such an assertion does not seem reliable, and hence it is not trivial either. But this is precisely the type of assertion that stands in need of confirmation or refutation.

Let us note also that adaptations 13, 14 and 15 are bound up with the “motivational triangle” known in biology: hunger, fear, sexual pressure. Fear suppresses sexual pressure. Sexual pressure suppresses hunger. Hunger suppresses fear.

Interpretations of more complex combinations are quite possible. For example, 12+13+14+15 might mean: “if some animal belongs to a group, then the time necessary for it to find food, to detect the proximity of a predator or to find a sexual partner may decrease precisely thanks to its belonging to the group.” Then 16+8+10+12 might be understood as “more time will remain for care of offspring (16), play (8) and social activity (10), because the individual belongs to a group.” If we now imagine that a chimpanzee infant has grown up outside its group (−12), then it cannot be integrated into the community of individuals of its own species. At the receptive age it was not taught how to behave in such a community, and it will no longer be able to learn this — the channels through which the corresponding information is assimilated are now closed. It does not know how to climb trees, does not know how to pluck edible fruits, does not know where they grow. It knows nothing or almost nothing of what an adult chimpanzee is “supposed” to know. It does not know what it must do and how to behave. It does not know how to fight and does not know how to play, does not know how one should behave toward elders. And, strange as it may be (though of course it is not strange at all), young males who have lived apart from their population do not know how to mate. And, as the authors of Lucy write, in order “to teach such an ape normal behaviour, one has to show it the appropriate films.”

Of course, the connections among the “elementary” adaptations need to be investigated carefully and deeply by experiment, since theoretical reasoning alone is insufficient here. For example, can one unambiguously assert that the K-strategy leads directly to a raising of mental capacities? After all, the anthropoid apes carried the K-strategy considerably further than the hominids, but in intellectual respects did not become superior to man. It is highly probable that the K-strategy compels a species to “grow smarter,” but only up to the level that ensures sufficient care for offspring. And if at some moment the additional action of a suitable adaptation does not appear, then a powerful development of intellect, such as occurred in the case of man’s ancestors, will prove impossible. It appears that the significant development of intellect in the case of man’s ancestors was influenced by the joint action of several adaptations which modern apes no longer possess.

The structure of the table of connections of factors suggests the possible existence of a subtle theoretical problem bound up with those cells of the table that ought to correspond to the interaction of a factor with itself. In other words, what might formulas like 1+1, 2+2 and so on mean? A simple answer might be: “they mean nothing at all.” And then it is correct that the corresponding cells remained unfilled. But here one may also see a problem and understand such combinations, for example, as the inertia of a factor. This may be understood in the sense that if a factor already exists, then it does not simply go anywhere. Its very existence not only has this or that adaptational significance for the species, but the factor may be assessed by the tendency it possesses toward strengthening, weakening or stability. And although such parameters of a tendency depend on the aggregate systemic causality arising in the interaction of all the adaptational factors, under certain conditions the tendency of a concrete factor may be assessed and must be taken into account in theoretical constructions as a relatively independent quantity.

Thus the K-strategy in the anthropoids at some stage of their evolution acquired a tendency to strengthen. And in some species its inertia became so strong that it reached a limit that places the species on the brink of extinction. One may, for example, imagine how the inertial self-reinforcement of brachiation proceeded as soon as the ancestors of the primates “felt out” this mode of locomotion. Of course, an “abundance of opinions” is possible here, and therefore a deep theoretical elaboration of such concepts is necessary.

All the same, it is by no means simple to assess, for example, the connection between social behaviour and, say, the development of mental capacities. Probably on average such a connection obtains; but then, on the other hand, in any community intellect is distributed unevenly, and alongside intelligent and very intelligent individuals one may meet a large number of stupid people. But here exact definitions are already necessary, bound up with what is to be counted as stupidity, and whether it is to be referred to the distribution among individuals of a species or to the species as a whole.

Let us also not forget that one and the same adaptational factor may manifest itself very differently in different species. Thus, for example, in one species of antelope the female cares only for her own young, and it is very sad to see in a film how, during the migrations of these beautiful animals, an infant is left without its mother, but other females, even those who have lost their own young, do not take on the care of it, and thus it turns out to be doomed to death. Possibly here the species has chosen a strategy of selecting for young that do not lose their mothers.

Neither is the connection between the mother’s energy expenditures and the level of her care for offspring unambiguous. On the one hand, it is clear that the more the mother cares for the offspring, the greater her energy expenditures. But on the other hand, the mother may expend much energy entirely uselessly for the offspring. At any rate, in human beings this is met with quite often. Be that as it may, the system of connections among adaptations requires a subtle theoretical elaboration. The cases encountered in the literature show how differently individual researchers assess one and the same phenomenon.

Thus, for example, Sherwood Washburn, who at the beginning of the 1960s conducted research at the University of California on the evolution and behaviour of primates and enjoyed great authority among colleagues, held that the key to the mystery of upright walking lay in the mode of locomotion of the chimpanzee and the gorilla, which when moving on the ground rest on the interphalangeal joints of the fingers. His logic of reasoning compelled him to think that this mode was an intermediate step on the path to true bipedalism, that is, to full-fledged walking on two legs. If one follows his logic, the ancestors of the hominids at first walked awkwardly and rested on their knuckles. And later, as their supporting apparatus became more and more adapted to the new kind of locomotion, they gradually ceased to help themselves with their hands while walking. Very logical; and who knows, perhaps that is how it was. He even, as an argument, referred to certain habits of modern man. For example, some people, standing at a table or bending over it, may rest on their interphalangeal joints, which slightly recalls the locomotion of gorillas and chimpanzees. And one can imagine with what pride he told colleagues and students of his discovery. But new arguments appeared, in the light of which Washburn’s hypothesis came to look doubtful.

Washburn also saw a connection between upright walking and the use of tools. And as late as 1974 he wrote (quoted from [1]): “The mode of locomotion and the use of tools are for one another simultaneously both cause and effect.” This may be considered an indication of the existence of a feedback link between two adaptations. But the existence of such a link by no means denies or limits the possibility of other variants. One such variant may be the use of tools by upright-walking creatures considerably later, after they had already mastered upright walking, so that upright walking was not only not a direct consequence of the use of tools but, on the contrary, facilitated the use of tools. To this theme Lovejoy’s statement adjoins directly: tools “led to the emergence of Homo erectus, but not of Homo itself.” A subtle thought.

The problem of upright walking arose before anthropologists at the end of the 19th century, when a femur was discovered in excavations whose structure showed that it must have belonged to an upright-walking creature. However, since this bone was found next to a very primitive skull, from which a corresponding antiquity of upright walking would have to follow, such a conclusion seemed improbable to many scientists. Suppositions were advanced that these two parts of the skeleton were not connected with one another, and that possibly the femur belonged to a comparatively late man-like creature and had accidentally turned up next to the skull. The skull was assigned to the Javanese ape-man, who, as scientists believed, could not move on two legs. They had no real facts with which to deny this, but they drew their conclusion from the fact of the absence of proofs. And even in the 1960s, many years after the world had been compelled to recognize the australopithecines as upright-walking primates, anthropologists still asserted that they moved with a shuffling, unskilled gait. All these vicissitudes with upright walking show how difficult the path to truth may prove in science.

There was in the chain of argumentation bound up with the problem of upright walking one more important episode. Among anthropologists the idea took shape and became established that two-legged walking, a large brain and the use of tools developed in parallel. Here everything fitted beautifully into a logical scheme of feedback links. If the ancestors of man began to use tools, then this “must have become” an additional factor influencing the development of intellect, “and hence” the increase in the size of the brain. I here delimit with quotation marks the sense of logical obligation and consequence, because in each concrete case logical and factual connections must be grounded experimentally and not used by default as self-evident. After all, the brain might have begun to increase for other reasons too. For example, by virtue of the inertia of a process of cephalization that had somehow begun. The influence of the use of tools on the development of intellect is grounded well enough in psychophysiology [8], but this does not mean that such an influence took place in reality — it could have taken place, but precisely this must be confirmed by empirical data. Without such confirmation one can speak only of a hypothesis.

If, however, everything was just so — that is, upright walking helped the beginning of the use of tools, the use of tools contributed to the development of intellect, and the developing intellect helped to create tools and to perfect their use — then a need might have arisen to carry these tools from place to place, and this might have served as a stimulus for the development of an upright gait. In this chain of logical reasoning one may catch hold of any link, but the weakest link here is the concept of a tool, and yet the whole argument rests substantially on it. Archaeological excavations (Olduvai) uncover something that with a certain imagination may be called tools, since, if these were tools, they were so primitive that they can be assigned only to the very lowest boundary of what could in general be called by that name. But the point is not only this. What is needed is a full-fledged explication and at least a working definition of so important a concept, on which the scientific reasoning rests. For it may turn out that what some scientists take for a tool, others assess as “merely” an exosomatic device, that is, no more than a mechanical continuation of an anatomical organ. In that case even such developed objects as the structures of beavers are no more than a supplement to their bodies programmed in instinct, which grows beside them almost in the same way as fur grows on them. Of course, such an exosomatic formation has its own specificity; but it is precisely this that needs to be sorted out.

One of the arguments in favour of upright walking in a savannah covered with tall grass was considered to be the possibility of a better survey of the terrain, which of course might have been useful in the search for food and the detection of danger. But many arguments of this kind seemed extremely unconvincing to Lovejoy, then a young scientist who had only just finished his postgraduate studies and was interested in all aspects of locomotion. He was constantly troubled by the idea that “the hominids would never have dared to go out into the savannah if they had been poor walkers and could learn to walk properly only there. Had they not been adapted for moving through the savannah on two legs, they would not have come there. And if they had come, they would not have been able to survive.” Reasoning of this kind led Lovejoy to the conclusion that “when the hominids migrated into the savannah, they already walked on two legs.” He held that upright walking had nothing in common either with life in the savannah or with the use of tools. The influence of tools on upright walking could not be included in the system of argumentation, since upright walking was mastered by the hominids long before such tools appeared. The answer to these reflections had to be sought in excavations. And Lovejoy waited patiently for it.

In the case of the hominids, besides the adaptations already considered, there were others as well. The female, for example, may reduce her mobility and use this as an adaptation. By this means safety for herself and her offspring may be increased. For, as Lovejoy explained, “the more movements the young have to make, the more dangers lie in wait for them: they may get lost, fall from a tree, fall into the claws of predators. When the mother carries the infant, it holds on to her, or she supports it. If she climbs a tree where ripe figs grow and reaches for them, she may drop the infant.” Lesser mobility, given greater safety, increases the probability of upright walking, since one need not run away from anyone too quickly, and the energy saved may be used to carry a greater quantity of food in order to feed a greater number of young.

If a population leads a settled mode of life, then adaptations may appear that are inaccessible to migrating animals. The females, caring for the offspring, may remain together with the young in a “camp” more or less protected from predators, however primitively it may look at first. The probability of an infant’s death of course remains, but it is considerably reduced. The patronage of the group is essential when moving too, but in the case of a settled life new possibilities of cooperation may appear.

In this case the females may remain in one place altogether, while the chief concern bound up with obtaining food may be taken on by the males. In the end this is how it turned out with the hominids. The females may jointly look after the children, from time to time affording one another the possibility of attending to “household affairs.” Knowing well the territory nearest to the camp, the female spends less time on the search for additional food of plant origin. Fruits, roots, herbs — everything is here at hand.

If the female can move about less, she will be able to allow herself to have more young. It is interesting that the tendency to give birth more and more often exists in itself. This is a tendency directed from K-strategies toward r-strategies. But this tendency, unsupported by other adaptations, cannot be put into practice. Thus, if the female is not helped, the tendency to have more children and to give birth more often will not develop. In particular, because it will be difficult for her herself to feed the rising generation.

Can systemic causality lead to adult animals beginning to share food with one another? For example, not only baboons but even chimpanzees, which are more like people, do not share food. But then, on the other hand, the tendency to share food in the animal world not only exists in itself but is widely developed. After all, in many species adult animals feed the young. And in the case of the hominids nature found a way out, which consisted in the fact that the male could share food with the female — if only with his own. However, for this individual love had to develop. And for this, in turn, epigamic differentiation had to develop, that is, the appearance of such individual features in males and females as would make them pairwise and selectively attractive to one another. Within such a pair the partners may experience so strong a sympathy for one another that they are ready to feed one another, which is not infrequently met with among people as well. Psychologically this may be explained as a self-identification of one individual with another and the extension of one’s own egoism to that other. Biologically, however, it may be explained as the egoism of the genome, whose imperative pressure on its immediate bearers manifests itself, strange as this may sound, in their love and care for one another. This becomes the basis for the formation of stable sexual pairs, out of which in time the institution of the family develops. Among vertebrates one may meet any forms of distribution of parental duties. In some cases the basic duties of caring for offspring lie wholly or almost wholly on the females; but there are also cases in which a considerable part of the care falls to the male. Thus, for example, in some species of ostrich the incubation of the eggs in special heat mounds is carried out by the males.

The high behavioural plasticity of the primates increases the probability of the hypothesis of such an epigamic change of the individual characteristics of hominid males and females as reduced the intra-population competition of males for the “promotion” of their genome. This became possible because the majority of them could now find females attractive only to them. And although epigamic differentiation reduces the number of males who may become interested in a concrete female, this by no means reduces the probability of her being fertilized, because “admirers” will always be found for her. In the end, if only once.

It is not excluded that one of the forms of epigamic differentiation was the formation of socionic types. Since the primary type of a being with a relatively developed and differentiated psyche developed in the hominids on the basis of the positioning of the psychic functions (see the chapter on the semantics of the functions), for epigamic differentiation “it was enough” that within this functional construction the informational accents of the primary functional fields should change. Taking into account the high functional plasticity of the primates in general and of the hominids in particular, one may suppose that as soon as intraspecific systemic pressure reached critical values, individual behavioural dominants became the basis for the formation of types of information metabolism. Now the mechanisms of socionic relations could come into action, facilitating biological bonds or hindering them. In this case the individual features of a concrete female were attractive to a smaller number of males, which reduced the number of fights on a sexual basis. But perhaps what is still more important, now a greater number of males, and not the leader alone, as is the case in some primates, gained access to the reproduction of their genome, which is of course more democratic.

Now, notwithstanding the sexual undercurrent which nevertheless remained, the constant bodily and psychic qualities of the female become important for the male. They acquire the character of signal features supporting his interest in the female. And this is very like what we see in people. Men and women during the reproductive age preserve sexual attractiveness at any time of year. It is not hard to understand that other mammals could not allow themselves this because of rigid ecological limitations which man does not have. And although it did not come to strict monogamy, as for example in swans, the primary promiscuity, disorderly mating, was replaced by a strong preference for only one partner with an inclination to create a stable pair, in which conception is guaranteed by mating with a permanent partner. Now, when the choice becomes limited, the male is sexually dependent on one female, which becomes the basis for subtle manipulation on her part. Let us note all the same that some socionic types prefer sexual freedom more than others, and this may turn out, when a need for it appears, to be the rudiment of an advantageous species strategy.

In the hominids yet another adaptational factor developed which is almost absent in other animals. The point is that in most animals the mating period is tied to seasonal cycles. Their females are receptive, that is, ready for mating, only in a narrow interval of time. This is quite explicable by the conditions of rearing offspring. For example, the receptivity of the female porcupine during the course of a year lasts only a few minutes [4], and no attempts by the male to approach her outside this quite small interval of time will be crowned with fertilization. And only when the egg takes the position necessary and sufficient for fertilization does the female “make” herself available, and nothing remains for the male but imperatively to fulfil his appointed task.

But the ancestors of humans managed to achieve a state in which the possibility of conception ceased to depend on the season. This adaptation permitted a more even distribution of the replenishment of offspring over time, and together with this an optimization of the joint kin-group care for offspring. Besides, this gives the female the possibility of keeping the male near her all year round, since the female’s biological task consists in becoming pregnant at the first opportunity.

Concerning the fact that the physiological signs of the female’s readiness for fertilization are very important, Lovejoy says: “The sole purpose of the sexual signals of a female in a state of oestrus is to attract the attention of males and to ensure from their side a maximum of sexual activity, so that the egg cell forming in her organism should be fertilized. If the female does not vigorously hang out her flags, the moment may be missed. All mammals demonstrate their sexual readiness very effectively. That is what the period of heat is for — to guarantee sexual activity. If it did not exist, ovulation would end in vain. For anthropoid apes, already too far deviated toward the K-strategy, this would reduce their already small rate of reproduction. In the interests of the whole species the female during heat must be fertilized at once.”

Of course, the change of the hominids’ habitat also belongs among the factors of systemic pressure on the species. Thus the shrinking of the zone of tropical forests may have compelled the hominids to master the open spaces of savannahs and semi-deserts; but they went there already well prepared for survival in the new conditions.

It must also be taken into account that the “social” innovations that arose in hominid populations necessarily led to a lowering of the level of aggressiveness and a raising of the level of tolerance, although even at present one cannot say that humanity has attained an ideal in this respect.

Sometimes Lovejoy had to answer questions such as: “if everything depends on everything, then what plays the role of the trigger mechanism?” In this case Lovejoy answered: “There is no trigger mechanism. Everything happens smoothly and gradually. Do not forget that we are speaking of an enormous interval of time, perhaps hundreds of millennia. Environmental conditions in different places are somewhat different, and therefore the significance of different forms of behaviour is not quite the same either. It also matters that we are speaking of animals highly developed in mental respects. They are observant, they can imitate one another and even experiment.” “An animal is never even dimly aware of itself as a participant in the evolutionary process. Evolution proceeds by insignificant shifts. The slightest change in some section of the feedback loop, if it is advantageous, exerts an influence on the whole loop.”

Gradually there occurred a change in the sexual strategy of females with respect to males. If, for example, in baboons the signal for mating is oestrus, manifested among other things in the swelling of the female’s genital organs and a change in their odour, then the hominids, alongside these, gradually began to use subtler signals bound up with mutual sympathy and love. The immediate ancestors of humans attained a level at which the females developed in themselves numerous capacities helping them to hold the male’s attention all year round. The ancient female, becoming ever more civilized, had to develop in herself new qualities, “since her capacity for conception was limited to approximately three days,” which greatly worsened the K-strategy of the species because of the low probability of fertilization. The important element of the female’s strategy — “to become pregnant as soon as the possibility appeared, having reared the previous infant, to nurse the next” — was thus realized. One of the achievements of this strategy was that there gradually developed “a system of relations which compels the male constantly to return back to one female.”

When the hominids mastered the new mode of continuing the line, their numbers began to increase. In the forest, overcrowded with other anthropoid apes, and not with them alone, there was less and less room; and the two-legged mode of walking turned out to be not at all bad for travelling, especially if there was no need to run fast, and the hominids began to master new spaces suitable for life. Incidentally, the forest was becoming crowded also because the area of forests was shrinking. At the same time the area of savannah was increasing, opening new possibilities. Gradually the hominids settled the savannah, and the species prepared itself for settling any territories fit for life. Ahead lay a couple of million years, during which the Earth could be settled by advancing only a few metres a year. But that is quite another story.

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Porshnev: adelphophagy and the four species of humanity

There have always been people who supported any misanthropic ideas and used the cruellest means to embody these ideas in life, solely for the satisfaction of their own primitive egoism.

An entirely different approach to the formation of humanity, and one that is also well argued, at least at first glance, is contained in the works of Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev. The key motif of his researches is the exceptional cruelty and bloodthirstiness of a certain type of people. His researches gave him grounds to assert that in the evolution of humanity there was a dramatic moment when, under the pressure of severe ecological circumstances, there separated out of the general mass of proto-humans a stratum which, having become cannibals, went over to feeding on their own kind. And this occurred, in particular, because reserves of protein-rich food, that is, of meat accessible to people, had catastrophically diminished. In search of an evolutionary way out, future humanity, in the person of its most cruel representatives, invented an “original” mode of self-salvation for humanity by going over to devouring part of itself. As a result of this demographic cataclysm there began an intraspecific stratification of the species Homo sapiens into reproductively compatible species with physiological and anatomical differences hard to fix, since they touched predominantly the structure of the brain and thus acquired a psychological character. Here yet another possibility of explaining the appearance of typological differentiation is outlined.

Below, in combination with embedded commentary, the basic propositions of Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev’s hypothesis are given in B. A. Didenko’s exposition (quoted from [2]).

Porshnev begins with the obvious, though before him unemphasized, assertion that what distinguishes man from the animal is above all a boundless cruelty toward his own kind. The almost unceasing violence of some people over others — wars, mass destruction of people, murders with special cruelty, sophisticated tortures in which the executioners experience sadistic pleasure, mockery of people and ill-treatment of them — all this has no analogues in the animal world. Porshnev chooses examples that characterize the species Homo sapiens as unreasoning, and humanity as a cancerous tumour on the surface of the Earth.

He says that “man himself proclaimed himself the ‘crown of creation’ and appropriated to himself the right to the undivided use of the whole world of living nature accessible to him and of the resources of the Earth. As a result humanity is compelled to pay for this wholly unfounded idea of the supremacy of man, with the simultaneous proclamation of himself as ‘king of nature,’ with all the prerogatives of an insolent and cruel impostor.”

The obvious nightmare of human history cannot be justified by anything. The simplest explanation of the pathological cruelty and predatory malice widespread among people is the thought that humanity as a biological species has “not fully” overcome the beast in itself, and that intellect is merely a cosmetic superstructure over the abyss of the animal unconscious — it helps to justify and legitimize any violence and terror. The wild impulses, restrained for a time by the Freudian superego, are only waiting to break free and realize themselves in the most horrifying and unsightly forms. And there will always be found perfectly cultivated theorists who will explain why this is right and what it is needed for.

Porshnev proposes his own view of the formation of humanity — a view that might explain the tragic inevitability of what is happening to human society. His version unquestionably constitutes a hypothesis, which he furnished with a developed argumentation but which nonetheless stands in need of palaeontological, genetic and psychological verification.

Not in everything can one agree with the remarkable scientist. For example, when he asks the question “why did man begin to labour, to make tools, to think?!! What did he need all this economy for?! What was wrong with life as an animal?!”, then the simplest, though extremely general, answer here is a reference to the systemic causality governing evolutionary processes. And there was no separate “why,” still less a “what for” — for a species does not set itself goals. Systemic causality “squeezes” the species in one direction or another, and the species can respond only with an automatic change of its evolutionary strategy.

In Porshnev’s assessment of the whole body of the humanities a negative intonation clearly shows through, recalling a reproach of bias in the establishment of the truth concerning man. This bias is expressed in the fact that scientists refuse to recognize and accept the truth about man if it looks “indecent” and “casts a shadow” on the “crown of nature.” The scientist holds, for example, that man’s nearest ancestors were necrophages, or devourers of corpses. But since the scientists on whom the recognition of this fact depended adhered, consciously or unconsciously, to the attitude that such a fact is humiliating for modern man, this became one of the roots of “the false postulate identifying the troglodytids with humans, which consists in ascribing to them the hunting of large animals.” In that case our ancestors, whoever they may have been, are turned into “noble” hunters, and the honour of humanity is saved — whereas in fact our ancestors ate the remains of meat food abandoned by predators. Concerning corpse-eating Porshnev wittily remarks that “it is impossible to eat a corpse in general — unless one sucks living blood from the veins or parasitizes on the internal organs.” Thus modern man too is a necrophage.

Fig. 14.04. The ancestors of modern man were different (reconstruction).

Reproaching the humanities with bias, Porshnev expresses the hope that the humanists will sooner or later understand the unproductiveness of anthropocentric dogmatism, and that “the riddle of man, which consists in the riddle of the beginning of human history,” will be uncovered. Porshnev proposes his own variant of understanding the beginning of human history and adduces a whole system of arguments in its favour. In essence what is at issue is the argued support of three theses: 1) humans are the only species within which mutual killing is systematically practised, and in enormous quantities; 2) humans are the only species capable of absurdity, while logic and syntax, practical and theoretical thinking, are its “de-absurdization”; 3) humanity is not a single species but a family consisting of four species. The scientist holds that these three facts are not only interconnected but wholly mutually conditioned, since they grow out of one and the same terrible phenomenon — “adelphophagy, or the killing and devouring of part of the representatives of one’s own species. It was this that led to the emergence of the human race — Homo sapiens.”

When scientists, trying to define the specificity of man by comparison with animals, name, for example, such a feature of his as intellect, this may be regarded as an inadequate simplification — there is not some one distinction but a system of interconnected distinctions. All such distinctions have the character of adaptations that developed in the process of evolution, and some such adaptations may, on a superficial view, coincide in man and in animals. For example, bipedia — walking on two legs. Besides man there exist other animals that use this kind of locomotion — birds, for instance. However, on a deeper comparative analysis of the two-legged walking of birds and of humans we discover essential differences that make two seemingly, if not identical, then at least similar phenomena far from the same. Consequently, in such cases one must speak of terminological homonymy — the terms are the same, but their content is different. Therefore anecdotal is the situation in which, in answer to the definition of man as a “biped without feathers,” one’s interlocutor brings in a plucked chicken. This case occurred among the punctilious ancient Greek philosophers, and the comedy of the situation arises from a homonymic shift. This example shows that an attempt to confine oneself to the surface layer of concepts conceals within it the danger of a distortion of truth.

In view of what has been said, in setting problems of distinguishing complex objects one must take into account the whole spectrum of concepts used and the whole spectrum of essential distinctions. Observing animals, it is hard to shake off the thought that they have intellect. It is another matter that the average IQ of this intellect differs considerably from the same indicator in man. But this criterion too is not entirely unambiguous. For one may set intellectual tasks which an animal will solve faster and perhaps more effectively than a human. Probably a rat in a complex underground labyrinth, and in complete darkness at that, will not only find the goal sooner but will memorize the route faster; and if the features of the route permit, it will also optimize it by some criterion, choosing out of all possible routes the most convenient, the shortest, or for example the safest. The examples adduced show that the ideas and judgments of scientists may bear a superficial character.

To avoid the trap of frivolity, in answer to the question of the difference between man and animal one ought to give a complete list, though of course with regard to the level of generalization. Such a list might include the following: humanity disposes of and commands developed technologies providing food, dwelling, transport, protection from cold and heat; developed social relations, a developed social infrastructure, a complex spoken and written language, developed means of instruction, art, religion, science and philosophy. However, all this became possible thanks to highly specialized upper limbs, which were able to attain their perfection because man mastered a special form of upright walking which no other animal has. Thanks to the whole aggregate of his adaptations, man mastered an instrumental relation to nature, which corresponded to the parallel development of the hand and the brain. One may therefore say that it is precisely in the instrumental relation to nature that all the differences between man and animal are concentrated and most vividly expressed. The instrumental-technological relation to nature, as a powerful amplifier, sharply changes the scale of all man’s potential possibilities — both good and bad. For example, everything an animal does on an ecological scale, man is able to do and does on scales that damage the ecology. Therefore, as an essential difference of man from animals one may name the destruction of the ecology. One may ask the question: “Surely he does not do this consciously?” Apparently this question differs from the question: “Is he aware that he is doing this?” But he — who is that? A difficult question. Individual people? Individual groups of people? Humanity as a whole?

There are probably people who behave ecologically. Probably a whole people can behave ecologically. This might apply to primitive peoples at least. However, ecological catastrophes occurred in antiquity too — presumably such a thing happened in the place where the Sahara desert now lies.

On the other hand, it is highly plausible that there exist concrete people ready right now to destroy the Earth together with everything that populates it. And they are ready to do this consciously. There are scientists ready to supply a theoretical basis for it. And the means for this have already been created by humanity. But perhaps such questions ought to be analysed somehow differently? Possibly one ought to speak of an evolutionary inertia that acts independently of people’s will. Imagine a group of people pushing a large stone in the direction of a mountain slope. Up to a certain moment they are able to control the stone’s movement, even when it begins to roll downhill. But as soon as the stone’s speed has reached the value critical for the given case, nothing any longer depends on the people.

Probably one may try to explain people’s inability to withstand the ecological crisis by the inertia of technogenic complexes. But how is one to explain the “inhuman” cruelty of people? Everyday experience shows that not all people are ready to display cruelty. There are people who are compassionate, kind-hearted, peace-loving, soft, yielding, ready to make a compromise, who, it seems, even under “special circumstances” could not kill anyone, still less torture anyone to death. Nevertheless this is only a supposition, which ought to be grounded by a controlled laboratory experiment. And such experiments exist. There are cases in which people, men and women, quite peace-loving but driven to despair or embitterment, took up arms and mercilessly destroyed their enemies, and this can be understood. However, such cases contain a hint that one cannot judge people’s hidden possibilities by their behaviour in ordinary life. On the other hand, there are people who are aggressive, malicious and frankly cruel, for whom killing a person not only costs nothing but, as follows from their statements, even gives them pleasure.

Porshnev explains the pathological cruelty of a certain percentage of people by the fact that humanity is not homogeneous in species respects. The scientist holds that it consists of four different species which are, however, quite capable of interbreeding. This must presumably contradict the biological definition of a species, which states that interspecific crossing is impossible. However, Porshnev proposes in the case of man to modify the purely biological definition of a species somewhat, adding to it the necessity of taking into account people’s psychic features. He holds — and this looks quite plausible — that innate psychic qualities must have a quite definite anatomical and physiological expression. Possibly there are anatomical features in the structure of the brain, if only at the cellular level, and possibly there are some stable typological differences in the course of physiological processes not merely in individual people, which is obvious, but in large groups of people, which makes such groups typologically homogeneous by this criterion. Porshnev holds that these are not merely types but considerably more — species.

Here we encounter a subtle theoretical problem: are stable anatomical and physiological differences between two very similar populations sufficient for regarding them as different species, notwithstanding that they can interbreed without any special limitations? For example, females and males in many species have many anatomical and physiological differences, but this is no ground for assigning them to different species. Porshnev argues this by saying that “the human differences described relate to the morphology of the cerebral cortex, which after all has a certain specificity and a number of essential differences from the corresponding organ in animals, and therefore the manifestations of these differences too have their own peculiarities.” And since these peculiarities relate “chiefly to mental activity, to morality, i.e. to parameters that have hitherto had no classification other than an emotional attitude toward oneself and prejudiced assessments in the channel of subjective interpretations of the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’,” this may become a sufficient ground for refining the concept of species as applied to the assessment of essential differences among people.

The most important conclusion from Porshnev’s theoretical researches is that “Humanity constitutes not a single species but already a family consisting of four species, two of which must be recognized as predatory, and with an unnatural orientation of this predatoriness upon other people.”

Despite the fact that the four species composing humanity are capable of interbreeding, their species psychic and anatomico-physiological characteristics are not averaged out and, as a percentage of the total number of people, preserve a relative stability. All this quite admits of experimental verification, which it would be worth carrying out.

According to Porshnev, the four species composing humanity are: superanimals, suggestors, diffuse people and neoanthropes.

Superanimals

Superanimals — the direct heirs of the palaeoanthropes (or neotroglodytes) — were “gloomy, malicious creatures fixed in human memory from the earliest times, in particular in the legends that have come down to us about evil sorcerer-cannibals.” The palaeoanthropes possessed the capacity of suppressing the psyche of other people by means of suggestion, whose basis is interdiction — literally, prohibition, but conceptually the ability by intonation and special sounds to compel other people to submit to their will. This was a predatory species distinguished by cruelty, by the absence of any moral limitations whatever, and by a will to unlimited self-assertion. The descendants of these first murderers firmly entered the composition of the human race as a result of primitive promiscuity at the very earliest stage of humanity’s formation: the adelphophagic stage.

The superanimals preserved the animal qualities of the palaeoanthropes but added to them the “refined” manners proper to humans. Extreme cases of psychological identification of individual people with palaeoanthropes, which is what makes them superanimals, are met with among executioners, sadists, serial killers, terrorists of various kinds and so on. Descriptions of episodes of this kind in the open press are more than sufficient. In wartime the display of pathological cruelty is facilitated and masked by special circumstances. In documentary literature an enormous number of cases have been described in which “soldiers,” either on orders or on their own initiative, destroyed the peaceful population — children, women, the aged — and did this with a special cruelty unmotivated by “pragmatic” tasks. And this bloody trail of cruel lawlessness stretches from prehistoric epochs right down to our time. This cruelty has never ceased and flourishes in our day too.

Superanimals ought to be characterized as non-humans, which in common speech is in fact done, despite the absence of a corresponding juridical norm. Besides, there exists the presumption of innocence. They may be considered moral degenerates, scum, men without limits; but in the majority of cases they successfully mask themselves for a time among respectable citizens, and often occupy a high social position and lead the masses.

Behaviour normal for superanimals, as for palaeoanthropes, manifesting itself in murderous aggressiveness, is identical with the behaviour of a predatory animal, but is accompanied by rational activity and a mass of “cultured” habits. And although the majority of superanimals no longer practise literal cannibalism, nevertheless it is from time to time registered even now. Thus, already “in the re-renamed Leningrad, in St Petersburg, they caught red-handed the cannibal Igoryok, occupied in marinating with onion the pieces of his former friend Vladik.”

“In superanimals the species self-consciousness is the most vivid, and it has entirely different forms, which are derivatives of the feelings of dominance and aggressiveness. For them those around, including women, constitute something like a disobedient, constantly straying herd which must be held ‘in the bridle,’ ‘in line,’ but best of all — ‘in an iron grip.‘”

Porshnev holds that the “biological palaeoanthropes — intraspecific aggressors and first murderers — were themselves destroyed in the course of the avalanche-like formation of ‘reasoning man,’ but their descendants remained within the composition of the human race, just as their aggressiveness toward people remained.” Their behavioural parameters remained built into the genome of humanity.

Intraspecific aggression is widespread among higher animals. It is chiefly bound up with the distribution of food and with access to females. Its formal manifestation is intra-population hierarchy, one variety of which is, for example, the so-called “pecking order.” There are special conditions in which intraspecific struggle sharpens; but “only in the later hominids (troglodytes), the forerunners of humans, did this ‘hierarchical construction’ reach stable murderous aggressiveness, which led to the realization (already by man!) of the real mortal danger emanating from a creature outwardly the same as himself.”

Constant life under conditions of extreme intraspecific aggression was imprinted in people’s subconscious as a natural norm, and this is “the highest price paid by people for their acquisition of reason.”

The settling of people over the whole Earth, including the occupation of territories unfavourable for life, occurred, Porshnev holds, as an attempt to distance themselves from their cannibal brethren; but to run away from them did not succeed.

Despite the fact that the coefficient of intelligence in man became, in the process of hominid evolution, considerably higher than in his nearest kin, all the same it did not attain the level that would ensure a careful attitude toward Nature, which “proved defenceless before armed man.” Bernard Shaw’s famous paradox, asserting that the only lesson of history is that people draw no lessons from it, is the equivalent of saying that humanity continues its evolution by trial and error, and that the development of science has changed little in this respect.

Perhaps the most paradoxical of Porshnev’s ideas is the assertion that it was precisely adelphophagy that provoked the sharp growth of intellect in the forming species of humans. It switched on the mechanism of counteraction to the interdiction and suggestion coming from the side of the palaeoanthropes, and this proved sufficient to switch on the biological mechanisms of the formation of speech zones in the brain of the future human.

“The majority of ethnic groups had within their composition representatives of the predatory species, and the aggressiveness of the palaeoanthropes and suggestors shifted onto neighbouring ethnic groups. Their daily need for violence (their ‘duty evil’) was sublimated into satisfaction with the attributes of cruel power” over their own people.

Leaders and their henchmen “are always superanimals-neotroglodytes and suggestors. Any other species belonging of rulers, as a rule, made such a power structure unstable and short-lived.” Recall at least Allende, the humane president of Chile, who was unable to withstand the superanimal Pinochet.

All antisocial elements — rebels, brigands, gangsters, revolutionaries, “thieves-in-law” — are those predators for whom “there was not enough room in the official social hierarchies.”

“But even into the most humane, spiritual and intellectual spheres of human activity predatory hominids did not fail to insinuate themselves. It is precisely from them that all religious intolerance emanates, the confrontation of faiths and confessions, for in their hands are all the authoritative hierarchical structures of official churchliness. The offspring of their deft hands and cunning heads is the abundant froth of ubiquitous charlatanry. By them too is organized the fanatical sectarianism with the gloomy ‘gaping summit’ of Satanism.”

“Thus the basic, cardinal difference among people and the division of humanity occurs not by racial or national signs, which in the species perspective appear secondary. There exist white and black palaeoanthropes-superanimals (neotroglodytes), yellow and coloured suggestors, American and Russian neoanthropes, and also the diffuse majority of all countries and peoples. The numerical correlation of these four species in all communities is different, and this determines the degree (frequently only potential) of belligerence, cunning (perfidy), peaceableness and reasonableness of a nation, a people, a tribe, a state.”

Porshnev speaks of the ethical incommensurability that exists “between predatory and non-predatory human individuals,” which permits one to speak of their species difference. He also supposes that there exists a stable hereditary structure conditioning all these species differences.

“And if racial hostility can somehow, if not be justified, then at least be explained by personal lack of culture and social underdevelopment, then between a decent, honest person and a sadist who has murdered his children one must already draw a clear (species!) boundary, even if they are of one nationality.”

“In former times predatory individuals among people were in percentage terms far more numerous than today, and violence was a habitual and everyday occupation for societies. The further back into the depth of centuries and millennia one mentally transports oneself, the more terrible the daily relations of people appear before one’s eyes. Murders, cannibalism, human sacrifices, including of children, were ordinary cares of the day.”

“Beasts, extremely dangerous — ‘second-signal beasts’ among people.”

This is an intraspecific aggressor, and he is not subject to re-education. Such is the conclusion at which Porshnev arrives with respect to the superanimals.

Suggestors

Suggestors are creatures “successfully imitating the actions of the ‘palaeoanthropes,’ but themselves nonetheless incapable of withstanding the psychic pressure of the latter.” This too is a predatory species. Being very strongly similar to humans, they are distinguished by cunning, often by a high but soulless intellect, by the absence of conscience and by an inclination to base intrigues and manipulations.

This species Porshnev characterizes as werewolves. They are able to mask themselves as humans to perfection, but their activity is always permeated by a boundless egoism. Their typical slogan is: after us the deluge. At present old spheres of “werewolf” activity are preserved and new ones have appeared: werewolf ministers, werewolf politicians, werewolf policemen, black lawyers, black archaeologists, black physicians and even black pedagogues. “And this ghastly ‘werewolf position’ is taken up by them subconsciously; for them it is natural, requires no learning and is therefore so successful.” They are distinguished by an “innate artistry,” a “pathological mendacity” and an absence of conscience, of which, however, they have no suspicion.

“The basic mass of suggestors took the path of conformism and deception; their ‘professional orientation’ became trade in others’ labour, embezzlement, swindling, political careerism, and so on.”

In science, art and other spheres of culture the suggestors occupy a duplicitous, hypocritical position; covering themselves with any high-sounding slogans or simply masking themselves, they are ready for, and do commit, any baseness for the sake of self-assertion.

“The suggestors who have taken up work in the field of science have ‘blessed’ the milieu of scholarly communities with the successful introduction of a jackal methodology of scientific searches with a complete disregard for the consequences of their ‘scientific activity,’ both in the technical sphere (the approaching ecological catastrophe) and in the humanitarian, where there are also their own ‘summit achievements’: the world-famous fanatical experiments on people in the concentration camps of the Second World War and — classified — in today’s ‘scientific-medical’ testing centres.”

I shall never forget a scene from a documentary film about the activity of Special Detachment 735 of Japan in the 1940s, where in one scene they show how along a corridor, on a medical table, they wheel a thirty-year-old woman with a child into some room where an “experiment” is to be performed on them. The mother sits on the table, pressing her little girl to her breast, and looks around in despair. It turns out they are being wheeled into a gas chamber, in order to determine “exactly” how much time is needed to kill them. It turned out that the girl died in 2 minutes 15 seconds, and the mother lived a minute longer.

I shall never forget how the German fascists kept captive children of 8–12 years at a military hospital in order to take blood from them, and when they could no longer give blood, they shot them. And there is described a concrete episode when a fascist soldier leads an eight-year-old boy off to shoot him somewhere nearby, and the boy says: “Uncle fascist, don’t kill me, I can still give blood.”

I shall never forget how the communist executioners beat the world-famous director Meyerhold with rubber hoses, and when his body swelled from the beatings they beat him on the swollen body, causing unbearable pain; and when it seemed to them that they had “punished” him enough, they killed him by driving a long rusty nail into the crown of his head. Who supported Pinochet’s executioners not only “morally” but with concrete actions and financial injections?

And when voices are raised saying that one must not compare people with beasts, that this is politically incorrect, that there is a presumption of innocence and that until a court declares a person a criminal he is considered innocent, then I think that such people are in league with the superanimals who soullessly and cruelly destroy those who are inconvenient to them. As for the presumption of innocence, it ought to relate only to ordinary people, and not to those who rule them. Here, on the contrary, the presumption of guilt is valid. The overwhelming majority of these people commit crimes that remain unpunished. For example, by the end of Soviet statehood a conviction had formed among the people that the director of any large institution could, after three years in the post, be put in prison without trial or investigation. Post-perestroika exposures showed that this was 90% true. As for the post-perestroika directors, that percentage is even higher.

“In the process of species formation the suggestors separated out at the second stage of anthropomorphosis, already after the formation of the diffuse group of ‘feeders.’ The suggestors ‘successfully’ budded off from this — all too obviously ‘unsuccessful’ — group, taking the path of imitating the interdictive actions of the palaeoanthropes, the intraspecific aggressors.” One of the test signs of suggestors is their inherent insolence, effrontery and perfidy.

“Throughout the whole history of humanity the suggestors were the only one of the four species the majority of whose representatives lived for their own pleasure in practically any conditions. The suggestors always form the social stratum of the so-called ‘exulting’ in this world. It is precisely they who make up the overwhelming majority of the monstrous conglomerate of the ‘powers that be,’ constituting by themselves the toadying and ‘undermining’ frame around those who are ‘in strength,’ ‘in the law.’ Having no conscience, incapable of having it initially, a priori, the suggestors can suffer and grieve only from satiety and from the abuse of one or another ‘joy of life.‘”

The black professional activity now blossoming in full flower — black jurisprudence, black advocates, black judges, black police, black PR, black political technologists, black medicine, black pedagogy, venal journalists, bribe-taking bureaucrats, werewolves in all spheres of human activity — is always the work of the hands of suggestors.

One of the external signs of suggestors is an irrepressible striving for “kicks,” pleasures, bliss, which for them are a substitute for the satisfaction of natural needs. And this constitutes the meaning of their life.

Porshnev holds that “the psychological core of this species, according to the typology of C. Jung, is constituted by ‘sensory extraverts.‘” He applies to them the assessment “extremely loathsome subjects, striving for refined and sophisticated pleasures.” Here people who know socionics can hardly agree with such a generalized assessment. The point is that “extremely loathsome subjects” are met with in all types; but in order to say whether there are in this respect any reliable quantitative differences among the socionic types, sound statistical studies are needed. Therefore let us not hastily identify people’s negative and positive qualities with a person’s belonging to this or that type. However, it is not excluded that different negative qualities are differently distributed among different types. It would therefore be useful to identify the whole spectrum of psychological qualities and establish their socionic correspondences. This, incidentally, might become material for raising the reliability of testing. If it should turn out that there are no reliable differences in such a distribution, then this too might become a ground for serious reflection. As for the species differences according to Porshnev, they may be regarded as a special typological spectrum of depravity which, by the principle of fractality, makes its own contribution to the characterization of a person.

“The absence of conscience in them extends to its extreme form: to physiological shamelessness, frequently becoming for them an indispensable technical device in their fussy, buffoonish activity.”

“All of them are without fail immoral in one form or another: hypocritical or open.”

“In the absence of ‘protruding’ talents and abilities the suggestors strive to make their way to power, to find a place in its echelons, and in doing so they no longer reckon with any of their additional ‘absences,’ either physiological or mental.”

“That is precisely why in power structures uncontrolled by society there are so many monstrously defective personalities of every kind, striking terror into subordinates with their unique insolence and unthinkable baseness.”

“Suggestors and superanimals are frequently excellent orators of the ‘tribune’ type. The point here is that speech for superanimals and for the majority of suggestors is the limit of the functioning of their brain. Many of them think only when they are speaking — either with themselves or before a crowd. For them the behaviourists’ assertion that ‘thinking is inner speech,’ i.e. the soundless mechanical pronouncing of words and nothing more, is valid in its extreme, obvious form.”

“Words for them are significant, ‘enormous,’ and they feel them physically, with predatory precision.”

“Therefore they cannot rise ‘above’ words: with an insignificant content of the thought expressed, and often with a complete ‘emptiness’ of it, they invest their chief efforts in the verbal formatting of their pearl and in the obligatory emotionality of the exposition.”

“…a peculiarity of scoundrels ‘as a class’ is their extraordinarily rapid adaptation to any situation…”

Diffuse people

Diffuse people are human beings “possessing no means of psychological defence from the action of the impulses of interdiction, ghastly for them and paralysing the will to resist.” They are not predators and, according to Porshnev, are precisely the species to which the name “reasoning man” applies.

“The diffuse species made up the amorphous mass, easily yielding to any topical agitation. This species of people has in different times and in different parts of the Earth been named differently, but always and everywhere equally disparagingly: the rabble, and the herd, and the crowd, and the masses, and finally — the people (semantically and etymologically something close to the animal-husbandry term ‘offspring’).”

“By virtue of their extremely pronounced conformity, diffuse people throughout the whole of human history have always and everywhere been at the complete disposal of the predatory species — the superanimals and the pseudo-humans.”

“It was precisely their bodies that were used as ‘cannon fodder’ in the battle amusements and martial diversions of predatory rulers.”

“The diffuse species is the most fertile — this is its second quality, which was ‘cultivated’ in it alongside suggestibility. Besides, it is little subject to the influence of such trappings of the predatory species as ‘love’ and ‘canons of beauty.’ ‘One gets used to it and comes to love it,’ ‘you don’t drink water from a face’ — such is approximately the sexual credo of diffuse people. All this explains the heightened, again ‘unreasoning,’ birth rate in the poorest conditions, which has become the basic cause of the demographic explosion.”

“Unfortunately, this species of people possesses a deplorably hypertrophied conformity.”

“They are just as capable of predatory learning as of any other. One must always give oneself an account of the fact that the diffuse species — essentially, the people — is the majority of humanity, and it is precisely this species that is the sole guarantor and foundation of the future.”

“The basic distinguishing sign of the diffuse species is suggestibility, or in modern current parlance, conformity.”

Neoanthropes

Neoanthropes adjoin the diffuse species directly, but “formed somewhat later. They are more advanced in the direction of sapientation, of becoming reasonable, and are able — now consciously — not to yield to the mesmerizing psychological action of interdiction.” Neoanthropes are the natural product of the development of the diffuse species in the direction of reasonableness.

“Neoanthropes deal predominantly with Nature, occupy themselves with science, technology, spiritual searches, and are always in a state of intellectual detachment from the ‘world scuffle’ surrounding them.” “Cognition of the World and of themselves has become for them a guiding star. But for the most part these are honest, unvain people.”

“And moral progress is accomplished precisely by means of the unshowy activity of such people, who acknowledge the Higher Meaning of the World (or else relate to life with quiet sadness), and by no means by the efforts of the power-loving, vindictive, maliciously merrymaking predatory scum.”

Porshnev holds that the neoanthropes deserve the fullest identification with the concept of the human being “in the true sense, as far as possible, of that word, and taking into account, of course, concrete life conditions and the path chosen by the personality.”

He says that this is “already a sufficiently numerous human species, at present numerically exceeding the summed quantity of superanimals and suggestors.”

The chief peculiarity of the neoanthrope is that this is “a spiritually evolving human being.” In species respects, as Porshnev understands it, the chief feature of the neoanthrope is a “genetically fixed predisposition — to self-critical thinking (and ideally to behaviour as well), which is not only a wholly independent form of thinking but is besides a necessary condition of HUMANENESS as such, of the arrival at it without external instruction, and even in defiance of predatory influence.”

“A reasoning being is incapable, of its own will, of creating conscious, deliberate evil!”

Apparently this conclusion does not withstand logical analysis, since reasonableness is here identified with humaneness. History is full of examples in which obviously reasoning people step across the boundary of humanism and consciously create evil. For, in the end, Porshnev’s suggestors are capable of attaining high levels of intellect.

The species typology of women

As B. F. Porshnev holds [2, 3], the species division of women into predatory, manipulative, diffuse and neoanthropic, which occurred in the process of the formation of the species Homo sapiens, has a secondary character. The genotype of predatoriness/non-predatoriness is carried by men, which constitutes part of the phenomenology of sexual dimorphism, so vividly manifested in the human race both in the external appearance of individuals of different sex and in their everyday and professional behaviour. In the literal sense of the word, woman, passing genetic material through herself, somewhat smoothed out and levelled the excessive differences between the representatives of the four basic types of which, in Porshnev’s opinion, humanity consists. So that even the descendants of the biological palaeoanthropes, who devoured the representatives of weaker species — mainly of the diffuse species — gradually acquired the capacity for rational behaviour. The remarkable scientist holds that the main part of this process took place in the interval between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago. Possibly this process has not ended even now, but it is not so intensive. Woman partly transmitted to the superanimals the hereditary morphological changes that had occurred in the frontal section of the cerebral cortex in the representatives of the diffuse species. However, in that period these morphological innovations could be transmitted only partly, which is explained by the simpler structure of woman’s own brain. The brain of women is arranged and works with certain differences from the male brain. The more refined brain of women presupposes a far greater significance of emotional factors in the structure of the female personality, in the first place the factor of reproducing offspring and preparing it for adult life. From this the role and significance of sexual activity for women is comprehensible — here too much is not as it is in men. In Porshnev’s opinion, the greater simplicity of women’s brain is preserved in the historical period as well. Of course, what is meant are average indicators. And this simplicity of the brain in the majority of women, remaining unchanged to this day, “became fatal for humanity, since because of it the predatory hominids proved ‘deprived of moral consciousness,’ not having managed to overcome the genetic barrier of reasonableness, of the third signal system.” In Porshnev’s opinion, the priority of the sexual-reproductive sphere in women manifests itself in a wide range from nymphomania and bisexuality to frigidity — these are merely various modifications of it. A somewhat greater simplicity of the brain and the sexual dominant “make the species identification of women simpler too,” that is, the determination of their species belonging in Porshnev’s species coordinates. “Indeed,” the scientist writes, “species belonging in women manifests itself far more vividly than in men. Modern psychology draws a distinct division of women into four types.”

“Among women, unlike men, predatory individuals are relatively more numerous…, especially widespread is the predatory orientation of women…, but female predatoriness has a mediated character…, it is hereditarily acquired…, it is merely an ‘unintentional derivative’ of the adelphophagic excesses…, nevertheless, in its external formation female predatoriness was transformed into practically the same forms as in men: authoritarianism, cruelty, greed, perfidy…, an ‘extenuating circumstance’ is that a considerable part of women’s predatory energy was sublimated into the channel of the maternal instinct, strengthening the function of preserving children, in particular extending in all women maternal love to the hour of death…, certain essential features of predatory behaviour are inherent in non-predatory women too…, with the difference, however, that predatory women can even hate their children, and not infrequently — mortally…, essential too is one more difference — precisely with respect to cruelty…, women of three species yield considerably in this quality to predatory men, though they surpass in it non-predatory men, while one species — women-suggestors — surpasses all men in cruelty…, to women of all four species there is inherent in one or another form and degree that famous feature of theirs, mendacity, understood by women as an unquestionably positive property…, coquetry, feigned mysteriousness, ‘intriguing’ are its most harmless manifestations…, a property common to all female species, besides mendacity, is their suggestibility…, women’s suggestibility easily explains, given the sexual dominant noted earlier, the heightened erogeneity in them of such an organ of sense as hearing: ‘women love with their ears’…”

“One more considerable species peculiarity of women consists in the fact that the difference between diffuse women and neoanthropic women has in them a striking character, in contrast to the smooth junction of non-predatory men.”

By varying the degree and form of authoritarianism, and also the type of erogeneity, one may obtain four species characteristics of modern women (Table 14.05).

Table 14.05.

Authoritarianism	Erogeneity	Species
Authoritarian	Clitoral	Palaeoanthropic women
Authoritarian	Vaginal	Suggestor women
Anarcho-democratic	Clitoral	Neoanthropic women
Anarcho-democratic	Vaginal	Diffuse women

Palaeoanthropic women. Here belongs the sadistic and actively homosexual stratum of women, “…in childhood they do not play with dolls, later they display an interest in purely male professions and occupations, in an administrative career…, they are often rude and unceremonious and, as a rule, are not subject to feminine bashfulness…, this is the female variety of the Bully, according to Shostrom, the Woman-Saw, the shrew…, such individuals were most often to be met with in the ‘pre-perestroika, stagnation’ period among the salespeople of the conflict-prone departments of shops, such as, for example, the notorious wine-and-vodka ones…, especially many palaeoanthropic women were numbered in those times among the middle (lower nomenklatura) level of the authorities — party officials, or else at the level of some petty directors: of vegetable depots or small enterprises of unintelligible production…, at present this is a relatively small stratum…”

Suggestor women. “…a highly ‘representative’ species; moreover it is also the vanguard species, as it were ‘setting the tone’: i.e. it works out the female mentality…, this predatory, suggestor species, together with the diffuse women who orient themselves on it, constitutes the numerical majority in all so-called civilized countries that have undergone female emancipation…, authoritarian women, but with an expectant (‘vaginal’) sexuality…, outwardly soft, feminine, sensual, frequently fragile, such women are capable of any dissembling, of any baseness whatever and even of crime for the sake of attaining their goals…, these ‘weak’ creatures possess an innate artistry (as a rule, subconscious)…, this innate artistry is directly connected with the so-called ‘pathological mendacity’ widely described in psychiatry, whose basic sign is belief in one’s own lie, complete conviction in one’s ‘legends,’ which permits the attainment of incredible levels of naturalness in the depiction of sincerity, truthfulness…, women-suggestors manifest themselves as swindlers, intriguers, blackmailers, and so on.”

“Many of them become actresses, always talented ones. In youth such persons are quite often so-called ‘tease-artists’ — pseudo-virgins. Practically all of them are distinguished by an inclination to sophisticated sexual practices, and in general their ‘sexual’ career has a dizzying character. Among them there exists a relatively small ‘authoritarian-anal’ subspecies, easily identified and recognized by their moist, as it were misty, and — if one looks closely — pitiless eyes.”

“‘A woman’s strength is in her weakness’ — these words of Karl Marx are wholly and entirely applicable precisely to the representatives of the predatory, suggestor species.”

“Potentially — and given the corresponding life orientation and in conditions suitable for it, also in actuality — women-suggestors really do surpass in cruelty predatory men, both suggestors and superanimals.” Nevertheless, in questions of cruelty the “personal record” invariably belongs to men. “In the overall team standing,” on the contrary, the advantage is always with women — such is the regularity (men are the “operative memory” of humanity, and women the “permanent”).

“In the general case, with respect to male cruelty one may say that superanimals are more ‘straightforward,’ they operate more simply, without those flourishes so characteristic of suggestors with their craving for sophisticated tortures and torment. At low levels of sociality a retreat into primitive asociality, criminality, is more probable, or else into monstrousness. But in the main these are the numerous semi-literate soothsayers, clairvoyants, healers, fortune-tellers, sorceresses… war has precisely a female face! it falls wholly and unconditionally on the predatory species of women-suggestors. This is that very ‘female ferment’ in all social upheavals…, to this species of women-suggestors is so characteristic a downright irresistible tendency to fall in love with men who are murderers…, to them too is inherent a craving for obtaining pleasure from the contemplation of scenes of cruelty and bloody violence (executions, tortures and so on). In particular, they find it extraordinarily pleasing when men fight and kill one another precisely because of them. On this ‘weak spot’ of theirs were once based knightly tournaments and the majority of society duels. True, such a quality is characteristic of women in general; this bloody train of the ‘strategy of choosing a possible partner’ trails after them all the way from the animal world; but all the same such preference in the choice of men by women is qualitatively different for different species (predatory and non-predatory).” “Prostitution — in the understanding of a ‘profession,’ a ‘business’ — is entirely ‘farmed out’ precisely to women of the suggestor species. Moreover, a considerable part of prostitutes are oligophrenics.”

“If venal suggestor women always have an insolently depraved expression of face, then diffuse women have a guiltily depraved one, or else simply a guilty one, especially when sober. And they nevertheless are burdened by their position, unlike suggestor prostitutes, who flaunt their ‘body business.‘”

The diffuse female species. These are “women both socially and sexually uninitiative. They are those very famous so-called ‘peasant women,’ of whom, in Russia in particular, it is said that ‘they carry water on them’! It is precisely they whom drunken husbands mock, it is they who are driven out with their children into the street, who are beaten, and so on and so forth. As a response measure these unfortunate creatures ‘wail,’ cry, howl, ‘complain’ to the neighbours, but nevertheless endure everything, bear it and quickly come round, forgetting wholly or for a time the whole weight of the offences inflicted on them. They are often distinguished by an extraordinary — even by Russian standards — stupidity; sometimes by a practically animal dullness. Here the most illustrative are the ‘average American women’ — indeed, differing little from trained animals drilled by advertising to the ‘voice’ of consumerism. Among women of the diffuse species a widespread phenomenon is frigidity, combined at the same time with a very late climacterium — right up to fertility (potency for childbearing) in deep old age.”

“Alongside the palaeoanthropic species, representatives of both these species are named among the people by the approving nickname ‘horse-woman.’ True, unlike the palaeoanthropic women, diffuse women never attain commanding heights here; many of them in general ‘find themselves’ only in physical labour: rails and sleepers, ‘up-and-down’ and other frankly unfeminine occupations. Diffuse women are in principle unmalicious, often uncomplaining; for their children they do everything in their power and even more, by which in the end they also spoil them. But the uncomplainingness noted in diffuse women is cultivated solely on condition of keeping these women in an ‘iron grip’ — of the type of permanent or preventive beatings of them. It was precisely this, in essence, that was practised in old patriarchal, Domostroi and nevertheless wise Russia. Sometimes even a single simple ‘admonition,’ or intimidation, is sufficient. But all the same this means does not always work; besides, there always remains the danger that diffuse women may feel a real ‘weak spot’ in the ‘master,’ and then they will at once ‘sit on his neck.’ But in the majority of cases the patience of diffuse women is nevertheless preserved, extending to the sexual sphere as well. They unconditionally accept sexual claims in the whole range, and moreover even without the merely gradual widening of it (habituation) recommended by sexologists.”

“For diffuse women a change of partner is, generally speaking, a relatively difficult matter, and this phenomenon is rare; they are rather characterized by a slavish devotion — but with the obligatory presence of a ‘whip’… If such a change nevertheless occurs, by force of some circumstances, then they display an undisguised conservatism — in those cases where the new ‘master’ possesses different ‘manners’ in his copulative (sexual) behaviour. This conservatism is expressed in the fact that they do not accept any innovations whatever, or on the contrary, any limitations. This too may be considered a manifestation of their stupidity.”

The neoanthropic species. “These are ‘anarcho-clitoral’ women, and more rarely, these are already superwomen — ‘anarcho-vaginal’ individuals. Independent, in many respects frank, they do not like to be ordered about, though they may allow themselves such a whim for variety’s sake; they change men like objects of everyday demand. In the traditional, in many ways outdated conception they are bad wives, but as mothers they are in any case magnificent. Often, not yet having children of their own, they nurse nephews or the neighbours’ children with genuine pleasure.

“Their sexual behaviour is without limitations, but it is always unvulgar, and the main thing — very tactful with respect to men, which permits them to ‘twist’ the latter however they please. Among the people they are frequently called by a coarse word for loose women, but only in the direct sense, i.e. exclusively in the sexual one, and, generally speaking, without condemnation, but even somewhat as it were ‘enviously,’ which is not so very offensive; but all the same — by and large — it is unjust, and even mistaken.”

“Most legitimate will be the use of this polysemantic folk term with respect to the suggestor species of women, for this definition is valid for them also in the plane of purely everyday relations, and this ensures the ‘fullness’ of the definition used.”

“The behaviour of neoanthropic women with men looks from the side the most challenging and at the same time the most spontaneous, and this sharply distinguishes them among all women (both predatory and diffuse). This is explained by the fact that they are more intelligent than other women, and than many men too, and moreover they understand this intellectual superiority of theirs, although they do not flaunt it.”

“…neoanthropic women are practically always distinguished besides by an extraordinary decency…, very many women of the neoanthropic species realize themselves in life in quite another way as well: in particular, this is the so-called ‘blue stocking,’ not infrequently — nuns who are hierarchs…”

Neoanthropic and diffuse women, unlike superanimal and suggestor women, carry within them the germs of kindness, altruism, compassion, love of humanity, and under certain conditions realize the corresponding programmes in concrete actions.

Hybridization and degeneration

Why then do the non-predatory species not succeed in separating themselves from the predatory ones, and what genetic processes accompany the tragic symbiosis of humanity?

“All the human species are wholly sympatric, i.e. their ‘ranges,’ or areas of distribution, not merely intersect but are in essence one and the same.” Nevertheless, in Porshnev’s opinion, a complete hybridization of the four human species does not occur, since a whole series of blocking mechanisms is triggered. If the mechanisms of direct warning that before you is an intraspecific enemy do not work, “then post-zygotic prohibitive and restrictive mechanisms come into action, frequently affecting the physiology of the organism as well.” As a result genetic deviations may arise, leading in subsequent generations to miscarriages, impotence, infertility. “Here belongs also the absence of the paternal and, what is still more terrible, of the maternal instinct in the parents.” Here one may already speak of an effect of species difference — they can mate, but the offspring is either absent, or defective, or neglected.

“But in general it must be noted that the inevitable genetic degeneration and dying out of subsequent generations of hybrid descendants (from the crossing of predatory and non-predatory species) is not the sole ‘tactical move’ of Nature. Frequently these processes of hybrid degeneration proceed far more quickly, but in complex, specifically human, i.e. already ‘socially framed’ conditions and mediated forms, which though generally known have never before been examined in such a species perspective, and are therefore in no way singled out in the general picture. At the same time, the process of this ‘social’ degeneration constitutes an extraordinarily variegated and broad spectrum of most diverse and extraordinary psychopathological phenomena.”

“Since the species differences directly affect the morphology of the cerebral cortex, the processes of degeneration of hybrid offspring — the result of interspecies, so-called ‘exquisite’ mixing of predatory and non-predatory human species — are formed in considerable part not according to the physiological type but are accompanied chiefly by rational pathology. Most often this is a splitting or some inadequate displacement of consciousness, a pathology or hypertrophy of aggressive potentials. This is all that which is named madness, or otherwise, in common speech, ‘being shifted,’ ‘touched,’ ‘abnormal.’ The existing medical classification of such phenomena of pathology of the human psyche has never taken the species factor into account, and therefore stands in need of essential correction.”

In many cases “exogenous, external factors come into play, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, immoderate pressure of the social environment, to say nothing of social cataclysms and upheavals accompanied by the ubiquitous appearance of all sorts of inadequate personalities: psychopaths, pseudo-holy-fools, prophet-paranoiacs and so on.”

“Hybrids, however, combine within themselves the incompatible. And this tragic self-discord leads to the most unexpected and unpredictable consequences.”

“All this extremely distorts the general nosological picture of the course of the noted processes of hybrid degeneration.” However, a considerable part of the hybrid offspring in the first generations does not attain obvious forms of degeneration, which creates conditions for increasing the range of defective genes. “To the phenomena of degeneration of hybrid descendants from the mixing of the suggestor species with the diffuse or the neoanthropic species belong, in particular, the well-known cases of frankly inadequate and therefore inexplicable suicides, with a not so very rare additional complete destruction of the whole family, including the children. This may be defined as the ‘socio-rational’ formalization of the processes of dying out of the hybrid descendants of the mixing of predatory and non-predatory human species.”

“The violent derangements, malicious maniacality or absolute homosexuality encountered in such cases are always merely additionally provoked either by hereditary alcoholism or by drug addiction.”

Facts of this kind may be understood as meaning that “the hybridization of two predatory species with one another (‘wolf-jackalization’) is the least promising” — that is, there is hope that crossing of the predatory species with one another will contribute to their gradual dying out.

As a result of his researches Porshnev arrives at the conclusion that “one cannot in any way manage without an extension of the framework of the taxonomic concept ‘species’ to such a degree that it can include within itself human specificity as well” — man’s possession of a developed intellect. “And only with such an extended understanding of the term ‘species’ — taking into account rationality and reasonableness — does it become entirely comprehensible that the roots of a certain part of the cases of schizophrenia, psychopathy, paranoid syndromes and so on lie precisely in species hybridization, in which there occurs a superimposition of seemingly wholly incompatible orientations: predatory aggressiveness and non-predatory non-acceptance of it.” In the end, after all, all this mental pathology has no analogues in “unreasoning” animals. And if, at least partly, it is explained by mental-species differences, then the problem is worth finding an adequate solution to.

“Present-day humanity is rather a family consisting of a genus which includes within itself the species of suggestors and the non-predatory species of humans, and also of a genetically more distant species, or even genus, of superanimals (non-humans, neotroglodytes): animals possessing reason, ‘second-signal’ ones.” This is a strong assertion standing in need of conscientious verification. It is by no means obvious. It does not accord with widespread biological views. But this is a scientific challenge, and honest science must accept it, despite the “signs” of social “political incorrectness” contained in it. For if “black professionals” take it up, it will cost them no effort to adopt any manipulative decision that will express not the truth but their class-species interests.

Can a part of the citizenry possessing a mass of the signs of a human being be recognized as non-humans? Incidentally, facts in which non-humans denied humans human rights are far from few in the history of humanity. Did not English gentlemen in colonial Australia shoot down “black swans” in night hunts — whole settlements of Australian aborigines — denying them the right to be considered human? Did not the American pioneers exterminate the American Indians, pushing them into reservations inconvenient for life? Did not the American hawks pour napalm on Vietnamese villages and jungles, purposefully exterminating everything living? Did not fascist and communist functionaries deal with people inconvenient to them by the most inhuman means, evidently denying them human rights? But it is precisely citizens of this type who will hinder an honest investigation.

Porshnev holds that “it is precisely this classification that is the cardinal, species typology of people.” All other systematizations of human types from Hippocrates to C. Jung, E. Kretschmer and T. Adorno, in Porshnev’s opinion, “classify people only by secondary and mediated characteristics.” Here, obviously, the problem consists in the choice of the criterion of classification. Porshnev chooses as such a criterion an extreme ethical spectrum, at one end of which are murderers without limits, and at the opposite end people striving for spiritual perfection. Between them are located unscrupulous manipulators for whom nothing is sacred, and people who are conscientious but distinguished by heightened suggestibility and relatively easily losing positive life orientations. Of course, such a classification is of exceptional significance for the moral purification of humanity. And possibly, until it overcomes the tragic symbiosis of bearers of ethically incompatible life dominants, all other problems will bear a secondary character. However, it is natural to ask the question: who will solve the chief problem, and how?

Here we again encounter the riddle of the variegated many-sidedness of human nature. Is this variegation and many-sidedness really so unsurveyable? Perhaps in fact the whole diversity of human characters reduces to four basic behavioural attitudes fixed in the genome of humanity and “surfacing” in ever new generations, obeying Mendel’s law or something close to it? Or is everything really far more complex, and do there coexist in a person species dominants, typological structures, Hippocratic temperaments, manipulative stances, seasonal influences presumably fixed by astrology, randomly forming complexes, various psychological accentuations and psychic disorders, concrete and generalized professional qualities, social-role forms, communicative overlays?

Proceeding from Porshnev’s hypothesis, one may allow that the adaptational attitudes of the four reproductively compatible species do in fact constitute the primary background against which all the remaining psychological phenomenology unfolds. These basic attitudes are inherent not in some separate people but in whole populations distributed throughout the whole society. Bestial cruelty and boundless manipulative baseness on the one hand, soft pliancy and kindness or searches for spiritual self-perfection on the other — these features of human behaviour are conditioned genetically, and they enter into the structure of the character of a concrete person, constituting one of its fractal components.

The troglodytids and necrophagy

Porshnev proposes the following scheme of the final part of the formation of man. Out of the lower apes there develop the common ancestors of man and of the pongids, at present represented by gibbons, orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees. The pongid phase is replaced by the phase of higher upright-walking primates, the earliest of which are represented by dryopithecines, ramapithecines, udabnopithecines, proconsuls. These are followed by the family of upright-walking speechless higher primates, the troglodytids, or hominoids, represented by three genera: 1) australopithecines, 2) archanthropes, 3) palaeoanthropes (Neanderthals). The australopithecines are more like apes, but already strongly advanced in respect of intellect. The palaeoanthropes are more like humans and larger. Porshnev emphasizes that these creatures were no longer apes, but they had not yet become humans either. As the key sign distinguishing man from the animal, Porshnev considers the presence of speech and reason.

Porshnev criticizes the former thesis of the palaeontologists that worked stones are evidence of the use of tools, and that this, by default, could be done only by man. He holds that these were not tools in the human sense of the word but exosomatic devices for crushing bones with the aim of extracting marrow and for scraping meat off the bones, which differs almost not at all from exosomatics in other animals. And hence those who used these stones cannot be considered humans.

The hominids were not hunters but occupied their place in the niche of corpse-eating. The subconscious attitude of ennobling the image of man pushes palaeontologists and other humanists to advance plausible but reality-non-corresponding theories. The true image of our ancestor is “carrion-eater,” “corpse-eater,” “necrophage.”

Part of the primates at some moment in the evolution of the animal world “began to specialize predominantly in the splitting of the bones of large animals” and must have become “by their morphology upright-walking.” Porshnev grounds the necessity of this by the fact that “in tall grass and in bushes it was necessary to straighten up in order to survey the terrain, all the more so in order to throw back the head, when by the flight of birds of prey the location of the sought-for remains was spotted.” Apparently this last argument of Porshnev’s, relating to upright walking, comes into contradiction with the argumentation of Lovejoy adduced earlier. However, both hypotheses might be reconciled by recognizing that man’s ancestors became upright-walking, and after this began to specialize in the splitting of bones, and here upright walking too proved a useful adaptation. Besides, “this primate also had to carry either bones or stones,” and this too accords well with upright walking. However, when Porshnev says that “two-leggedness ensured a high speed of running, the possibility of moving well in rocks, of swimming in water, of jumping over something,” then, taking into account the principles of locomotion, one cannot agree with all of this. For example, movement on four legs would be capable of ensuring a higher speed of running; but all the same one must acknowledge that people run not badly, though considerably worse than dogs, horses and cheetahs.

The immediate predecessors of humans, the troglodytids, “were omnivorous, to no small degree plant-eating, but predominantly flesh-eating higher primates.” And it is very important that “for the killing of animals they had no new formations — neither anatomico-morphological nor neurophysiological” — so that these animals obviously could not hunt large animals. This is an important argument for Porshnev, since it debunks the myth of the immediate predecessors of humans as hunters and prepares the theme of their dietary reorientation.

It is important that “the troglodytids entered the biosphere not as competitors of the killers but only as competitors of the beasts, birds and insects that ate carrion.” It is quite plausible that the troglodytids “were not in the least degree hunters, predators, killers, although they were from the very beginning to a considerable degree flesh-eating, which constitutes their distinctive ecological feature by comparison with all the higher apes.” They “preserved also a subsidiary plant-eating,” which distinguishes them from such predators as lions, tigers, cheetahs, wolves and so on. Porshnev emphasizes that “there exists no argumentation whatever in favour of the existence of hunting for large animals in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic.” Therefore one may quite agree with Porshnev when he says that the troglodytids, “beginning with the australopithecines and ending with the palaeoanthropes, were able only to find and exploit the skeletons and corpses of animals that had died or been killed by predators.”

For higher primates this was not a simple adaptation, since their dental system, nails, masticatory muscles and digestive apparatus were not adapted to obtaining and consuming meat in large quantities; but softer tissues, for example bone marrow and brain, inaccessible to other animals, might well become their prey. For this the species needed to invent a means of obtaining them. But since in many species of apes instinct ensures the breaking with stones of the hard coverings of nuts, molluscs, reptiles, it is quite possible that this ability was transferred by some of them to the breaking of bones and skulls remaining after the predators. “The troglodytids became highly effective and specialized splitters, breakers, dismemberers of strong organic coverings by means of still stronger and sharper stones. This was a purely biological adaptation to a fundamentally new mode of feeding — necrophagy.” Porshnev supposes that “the troglodytids not only did not kill large animals but had a rigid instinct on no account to kill, since otherwise their fragile ecological niche in the biocoenosis would have been destroyed.” The second part of this reasoning does not seem convincing — there are no grounds for supposing that “their niche was fragile”; and as for a rigid instinct “on no account to kill,” it is probably not necessary to formulate this thought so categorically. They simply had no instinct to kill large animals, since this was beyond their powers. Porshnev holds that, since this group of primates mastered the niche of “bone-breakers,” they now had to carry stones to the bones or, on the contrary, bones to the stones, which was possibly already not difficult, since they were upright-walking. Further on we again encounter an assertion of Porshnev’s which contradicts Lovejoy’s reasoning. “More precisely, it was for just this reason that the troglodytids were upright-walking: the upper limbs had to be freed from the function of locomotion for the function of carrying.” Contradictions of this kind reduce confidence in Porshnev’s other reasonings as well, but of course they do not prove that he is wrong in everything.

Porshnev’s idea that the stones “used by the troglodytids in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic were means of butchering the remains of large animals and absolutely nothing more” — that is, were not “tools of labour” but only “exosomatic organs” of the troglodytids — is unquestionably interesting. This is one of the arguments in favour of the view that those creatures which first arose from the apes were not humans, although they were already not apes either. These were troglodytids. From humans they were separated by several long periods.

Their “brain-obtaining” niche apparently took shape when there walked the Earth a large number of “predator-killers of the Machairodus (sabre-toothed tiger) type, highly effective killers who pierced the coverings even of thick-skinned elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses.” These creatures “used then not even the abundant reserves of meat left by the predators, but only the bone and brain marrow, for which it was required only to dismember and break bones.” Porshnev holds that “for this the use of ordinary, unchipped stones was sufficient.” That is why they cannot be distinguished among fossil remains from any other stones, although on them there may perhaps have remained, even if hardly distinguishable, traces of their specific use. Since the bone and cranial marrow of herbivores amounts to more than 5% of their weight, then, given an abundance of bones unused by predators, there was simply a great deal of this food. The brain alone of one ancient elephant weighed 200–300 kg, plus as much again in bone marrow. Probably the consumption of such food, rich not only in protein but in substances specific to the brain, could have had a special significance also for the launching of the process of cephalization. And, at least in that first period, this was enough also for maintaining at a high level the evolutionary tempo of that process.

The second period of the evolution of the troglodytids bore the character of a crisis and was bound up with a sharp reduction of the “free” food remaining from the predators, because their numbers sharply declined owing to extinction. “Only one branch of the troglodytids survived the crisis and gave an entirely renewed picture of ecology and morphology: the archanthropes.” These troglodytids survived because they invented a new way of finding a sufficient quantity of relatively fresh corpses in such places of rivers as bends, shoals, rapids, mouths and so on. The butchering of corpses with the help of stones made it possible to use as food not only marrow but meat as well, which somewhat changed the dietary niche and influenced the change of species characteristics. At this point Porshnev speaks of the archanthropes, who already used improved stones in the form of hand-axes.

The third period was still more crisis-ridden. The moment came when the rivers began to bring considerably less of the food that had already become habitual. Again the genus of archanthropes finds itself on the threshold of extinction. However, one of its branches — now these are the palaeoanthropes-troglodytes — finds a way out in symbiosis “with various species of predators, with herds of various herbivores, and finally with the inhabitants of bodies of water.” The archanthropes learned to find meat food considerably better than their predecessors and “as before hunting decidedly no one.”

Despite the fact that the descendants of the troglodytids, the troglodytes, learned to master new dietary niches flexibly and quickly, another crisis set in. This crisis, in Porshnev’s opinion, was precisely that “turning stage at which the ascent to Homo sapiens begins.” Meat food was becoming ever harder to obtain. “The new biogeocoenoses forming at the end of the Middle Pleistocene were crowding out the upright-walking flesh-eating higher primates, despite all their sophisticated adaptability.” Again they come to the brink of extinction. Up to now, in Porshnev’s opinion, they had killed no one. The scientist holds that the principle “thou shalt not kill” was fulfilled by them instinctively and “constituted the deepest foundation, the innermost secret of their sojourn in various forms of symbiosis with animals.” This was useful in the sense that, since they were “harmless and inoffensive,” no one hindered them from approaching the remains of dead meat. Here Porshnev’s arguments are not so easy to accept. Who could have hindered them from doing this? The predator-”feeder” had already left what it could not eat. Weaker competitors, such as jackals or birds, could be disregarded without any special “flirting” with them. And rather incomprehensible seems Porshnev’s idea that “the troglodytes had to remain even in some respects useful, for example signalling danger to their neighbours in the system of the biocoenosis.” Of what danger and to whom could they signal? To the relatives of the dead animal? Seemingly useless. To competitors? Seemingly pointless.

Nevertheless, since food might become not merely scarce but critically scarce, and the external resources of the species or genus were exhausted, the troglodyte species might desperately seek an acceptable way out. Porshnev holds that they did not go over to hunting large herbivores, which was possibly “not so very difficult,” but that the instinct “thou shalt not kill” prevented this. And here we come to the most doubtful of Porshnev’s reasonings. He writes: “And Nature prompted a narrow path which, however, subsequently led evolution out onto an unprecedented road. The solution of the biological paradox consisted in the fact that instinct did not forbid them to kill representatives of their own species. The ecological chink that remained for self-salvation for a highly specialized species of two-legged primates doomed to destruction, omnivorous by nature but corpse-eating by basic biological profile, consisted in using part of its own population as a self-reproducing food source. Something similar is not unknown in zoology. It is called adelphophagy.” Adelphophagy is the devouring of representatives of one’s own kind. In some species of animals it occurs, but is not the basic mode of feeding. According to Porshnev’s thought, the genus of troglodytes split into the devourers and the devoured, and this became not only a factor of their evolution but led subsequently to such historical projections as sacrifices, executions, endless wars and sophisticated cruelty in relation to one’s own kind. Incidentally, let us note that there are sadists who evidently derive pleasure from tormenting animals, but this never turns into anything resembling the sophisticated tortures that people apply to people. Be that as it may, a transition occurred to predatory behaviour with respect to representatives of one’s own species. Porshnev holds that as a result there occurred “an embryonic splitting of the species itself on the basis of the specialization of a special passive, devoured part of the population, which, however, then very actively buds off into a special species, so as to become in the end a special family as well.” In Porshnev’s opinion, modern science has not managed to detect this phenomenon, corresponding to biological and palaeontological truth, and it has yet to do so.

Porshnev refers also to the “signs of cannibalism in the palaeoanthropes known to anthropology, which speak directly of the post-mortem devouring of cranial and bone marrow, and probably of the whole corpse of creatures like themselves.” One may agree with him when he rejects the admissibility of appeals to morality in the assessment of biological phenomena, when he says that only “a moralist alien to biology, proceeding from certain norms that took shape immeasurably later, can see in this utilization of the available resources of meat food anything blameworthy.” Nor is there any doubt that cannibalism might have occurred among the troglodytes, since it occurred among some tribes even in historical time, and in the form of atavistic relapses occurs even “in a wholly civilized society,” especially in extreme conditions. Taking into account the whole system of the scientist’s argumentation, his thought looks quite plausible that our ancestors first adapted to killing representatives of their own kind, and only afterwards, on the basis of this precedent, began to hunt large animals. Porshnev says that “hunting for other large species became already the first substitution for the killing of one’s own kind.”

Here one wants to ask whether modern science is capable of confirming or refuting with argument precisely such a sequence of species adaptations in the formation of man. If everything was as Porshnev says, then it is comprehensible that, since the species could not go over entirely to feeding on itself, it split into two subspecies. They preserved the capacity for biological crossing, but gradually became an “ecological opposition” — some became cannibals and others their victims. Porshnev writes: “If the palaeoanthropes killed no one except those like themselves, then these others, let us call them Homo pre-sapiens (forming man), constituted an inversion: in the measure of their transformation into hunters, they did not kill precisely the palaeoanthropes. At first they differ from the other troglodytes only in that they do not kill these other troglodytes. And much, much later, having detached themselves from the troglodytes, they not only killed the latter, like any other animals, as ‘non-humans,’ but also killed those like themselves, i.e. other Homo pre-sapiens. This practice was inherited by Homo sapiens too, each time guided by the motive that those killed are not fully human, being rather closer to ‘non-humans’ (criminals, unbelievers).”

A complex and logically sophisticated thought; but does it correspond to reality? For other logically coherent explanations of the present state of affairs in human society are also possible. For example, people might have become hunters by developing their technological capacities. Possibly they had no instinct “not to kill” from the very beginning, for they did catch and eat all sorts of small living creatures, and predatory inclinations they did have. And hypertrophied hunting skills might then have been transferred by them to the destruction of their own kind. Of course, another scheme is also possible. Temperamental differences, which exist in animals too, might by the fractal type have been superimposed on professional and social skills, as a result of which special qualities began to form bound up with professional and social-role attitudes. For example, the specific contact of a hunter with the pursued animal might, by the type of attunement, have contributed to the appearance and consolidation of such qualities as a special, properly bestial cruelty, heightened persistence in attaining a set goal, bloodthirstiness. Such a hunter would think nothing of killing not only an enemy, but in a fit of practised fury he might kill a close relative as well. If modern people do this, then why could a savage not have done it? Possibly at that same time there began to form the clans and castes of warriors, workers, priests and jesters. This specialization might gradually have become more and more rigid, acquiring professional-typological features. The caste stratification of society has its grounds already not directly in the needs of the individual person but in group and, still more broadly, social needs. Probably this version is quite plausible, but all the same it remains unclear how such features could have been consolidated in the genotype. Or perhaps there is no genetic consolidation at all. It is enough that temperaments are genetically fixed. And then individual scatter and personal history in the end make the manifestations of temperaments moderate, socially acceptable or, on the contrary, accentuated or altogether going beyond the bounds of the average statistical human norm.

Within the framework of the principle of fractality one may speak of the caste structuring of society as a fractal analogue of the basic psychological structure: warriors — EGO, priests — SUPEREGO, jesters — SUPERID, and the labouring — ID. How far are such identifications legitimate? Are they not no more than formal analogies? That is precisely the problem.

Adjoining this problem directly is the problem of somatic typology. A scientific explanation of the origin of somatic types does not exist. In animals of one species a somatic typology, apart from that bound up with sexual dimorphism, does not exist. Porshnev’s hypothesis may quite plausibly explain the somatic differences of people. There are four human species, to which correspond four somatic types — muscular, respiratory, digestive and cerebral. But, alas, it is difficult to establish an unambiguous correspondence between the somatic types and Porshnev’s types. A certain tendency for the muscular to correspond to the superanimal, the respiratory to the suggestor, the digestive to the diffuse, and the cerebral to the neoanthrope may be discerned; but here, as always, deep experimental and theoretical investigations are necessary.

Porshnev also gives his own explanation of the sexual non-seasonality of the troglodytids. This is connected, in his opinion, with the more comfortable conditions of life, by comparison with animals, in a “heated” dwelling. The relic attachment of human sexual activity to the season manifests itself in the form of a heightened spring sexuality. Here we again see an attempt at an unambiguous connection between an adaptational and an ecological parameter. Without denying the existence of such a connection, let us all the same emphasize that the methodology of systemic causality requires taking into account the influence of all the adaptations constituting the base of the species’ evolutionary strategy. Sexual non-seasonality was a potentially useful adaptation, and the change of the temperature parameter in the ecological niche in the direction of greater comfort unquestionably facilitated its appearance; but it would have been impossible if other adaptations had hindered it.

The origin of language

And one more important theme in Porshnev’s theoretical reasoning is bound up with the origin of language. The scientist emphasizes that “the problem of the emergence of Homo sapiens is the problem of the emergence of the second signal system, i.e. of speech.” In science there are other points of view on this problem as well. In his time F. Engels [5] formulated the thesis of the role of labour in the origin of man from the ape, and in palaeontology the criterion that fossil bones are the remains of a human being is the presence of tools of labour beside them. Labour, or the instrumental-technological relation to the world, includes speech as well. In any case, in so complex a process as the origin of man, it was not some one factor, even a very important one, that acted, but a complex system of interconnected adaptations. Therefore the singling out of speech as the chief distinction of man from the animal looks like something of a simplification. Speech and language, as L. Vygotsky [6] in his time showed, are the result of the interiorization of the use of tools of labour. Of course, there might have existed other systemic factors of the emergence of speech and language as well, and therefore Porshnev’s opinion possibly sheds light on yet another aspect of this process important for people, one not singled out before him.

“The word is the sole sign and the sole true testimony of the thought hidden and enclosed in the body. And in this is the true difference of man from the animal. And thus it is not the word that is the product of thought, but the reverse: thinking is the fruit of speech.” Here the scientist, in my opinion, again exaggerates the significance of one of the systemic poles of a single process. Both these poles — word and thought — are so bound up in man’s intellect that it is by no means simple to separate them. But all the same it is difficult to place the word before the thought. One can quite well imagine how the necessity of conveying a thought to another seeks and finds verbal expression. Probably there exists a way of justifying both the thesis “thinking is the fruit of speech” and the opposite thesis “the word is the product of thought.” If, however, one proceeds from the definition that the product of thought is meanings, while words are merely the acoustic packaging in which they are transmitted, then the first thesis becomes unconvincing. Of course, the word may also be understood as the product of the vocal cords governed by thought. If, however, the word is understood as a synonym of speech, then to the latter the very same reasonings are applicable.

Besides, the word is by no means “the sole sign and the sole true testimony of the thought hidden and enclosed in the body,” as Porshnev insists. A considerably weightier testimony of “the thought hidden and enclosed in the body” is the technological transformation of the habitat. One may, without uttering a word, knit a sweater, build a house or draw a cow — will that not be a testimony of thought? But for this one may also dance or by means of pantomime depict some scene. In any case, thought must be intelligent enough to invent a means of speech-embodiment for itself.

“In the human brain there is no centre or zone of thought, but centres or zones of speech there really are — in the left hemisphere (in right-handers), in the upper and lower frontal lobe, in the temporal, at the junctions of the latter with the parietal and occipital.” Here what is meant are the zones of Broca and Wernicke. It is curious that Porshnev does not notice the obvious, namely that there is no zone of thought in the brain because the brain in its entirety is the organ of thinking. The assertion that it is not speech that is the product of thinking but thinking that is the product of speech looks categorical and one-sided. Modern methodology relies on the dialectical approach, whose more developed form is the conception of systemic causality. Speech and thinking are closely connected and mutually depend on one another. Of course, there exists an extra-speech, archetypal thinking which can only approximately receive verbal formatting. And apparently it was precisely this that became the basis of the simplest speech constructions which, in developing, began to exert a powerful reverse influence on thinking. And it is difficult to agree with Porshnev when he says that “thinking, consciousness, will, personality are not other names of the speech function, but are its complex derivatives.” Thinking, consciousness, will, personality and so on are structural-functional complexes of the psyche which in man of course have a connection with speech, but by no means reduce to it. Of course, here as always basic definitions are needed. If thinking is understood as the psychic modelling of the habitat, then it exists at the pre-speech level as well, while speech in primitive man appears as a response to the need to exchange operative information; but of course all the remaining adaptations and the general strategy of the species must have contributed to this.

Consciousness has to this day received no more or less adequate scientific explanation, and it is of course inherent at least in all animals in which waking alternates with sleep. But it is natural to suppose that consciousness is possessed by all that is living — it is another matter that the levels of consciousness may be very different. The level of consciousness of man is bound up with his intellect, more developed by comparison with animals. Will, however, understood as the capacity to govern one’s energy, is in general connected with speech only indirectly. As for personality, being a social phenomenon, it has a direct connection with speech, since personality in society is formed with the direct use of speech, and speech is one of the aspects of the self-expression of personality; but of course personality by no means reduces to speech.

Porshnev’s central thought relating to the origin of speech rests on the thesis that, just as “an act of thought is an act either of objection or of agreement, so speech is an act of inducement or of objection.” Here too the scientist’s tendency is noticeable to limit the concept, singling out some of its facets and omitting others. Having stated the thesis, he then adduces many arguments in its support, but they serve equally well to support broader theses.

Of course, damage to the “frontal lobes of the brain (which received powerful development only in man, in Homo sapiens, and occupy in him up to one-third of the whole mass of the cerebral hemispheres) leads to a disturbance of complex and purposeful activity, a sharp fall in all forms of active behaviour, an inability to create complex programmes and to regulate activity by them”; but this does not mean that thinking, and consequently an act of thought, cannot be directed, for example, at orientation and investigation, and not only at objection or agreement. And if Porshnev says that in “the case of damage to these brain structures a person loses the capacity to follow verbal instruction, and this means greater or lesser destruction of the mechanism of second-signal control of perception,” then this after all relates not only to inducement and objection.

Yes, “the word has power over almost all reactions of the organism.” Yes, “in hypnosis the word can act on changes in the composition of the blood and other biochemical shifts in the organism, and by means of establishing conditioned-reflex connections the word can act on almost any physiological processes — not only on those that can be directly verbalized (designated by a word), but on all those to which a chain indirect connection can be linked to verbal action, even if they are not directly conscious.” All this confirms the important and special role of the word in the human psyche, but does not deny the other facets of thinking and speech. Therefore when Porshnev says that from all his preliminary arguments “there follows inexorably the conclusion that the famous philosophical ‘psychophysical paradox’ (the question of the relation of soul and body) proves on examination to be nothing other than yet another contrived pseudo-problem,” this can be accepted only as his private opinion.

“The school of I. P. Pavlov established a fundamental physiological fact: the second signal system exerts a constant negative induction on the first. The word invisibly performs an inhibitory, always somehow prohibiting work. The verbal system exerts an inhibitory influence on immediate, i.e. first-signal, reactions. This inhibitory function of the word is normally clearly detected only in early childhood, later becomes hidden, but may be observed in cases of disturbance of neurodynamics and in certain special situations.” Here Porshnev argues in favour of the thesis of the antagonism of the first and second signal systems. The discovery of such an antagonism is an idea valuable in itself. But this is only half the matter. There is also a second half — their synergetics, a subtle and complex interaction whose result proves to be an ever more complex attunement of humanity to Nature and of the individual to the social environment. Socionics proposes a more differentiated answer relating to the interaction of the first and second signal systems. The hard-to-control first-signal impulses coming from the unconscious into the conscious region of the psyche are here sorted and assessed in at least two instances: SUPEREGO and EGO. SUPEREGO is more connected with the social parameters of the personality’s existence, while EGO is predominantly connected with the spiritual ones. Both SUPEREGO and EGO of the personality are programmed and work with both signal systems. In SUPEREGO restrictive imperatives predominate, directed at holding the personality within limits acceptable for the survival of society. In EGO a considerable part of the imperatives is directed at the self-assertion of the personality. Both the one and the other occur only because such is the evolutionary strategy of the species Homo sapiens. This strategy is not conscious to individual specimens, but the complex system of first-signal and second-signal commands coming from all the structural complexes of the psyche holds the individual within the framework of the species strategy. The structure of these connections is probably simpler than the structure of the genome; however, it is to this day known to science only approximately. Yet this whole complex system developed out of initially simpler structures. In the simplest animals the sensory neurons are directly connected with the motor neurons, which ensures a high speed of reactions. Such, for example, is the connection of the sensory neurons of a frog’s eyes with the motor neurons of its tongue. Therefore, when the frog sees a moving small object, its tongue is instantly thrown out in its direction, seizes it with sticky saliva and dispatches it into the stomach. Therefore of the frog, when it catches insects with its tongue, one may say that it thinks with its eyes. Incidentally, the eyes in all animals are a part of the brain pushed out to the periphery.

The fact that “the second signal system exerts a constant negative induction on the first” need by no means be interpreted as their antagonism. A more complex organization of the nervous system, such as man for example possesses, presupposes the presence of interneurons located between the sensory and motor neurons. This gives the living being the possibility of building more complex models of its habitat and, in particular, of its ecological niche, and together with this more complex strategies of behaviour. In particular, in this case the animal acquires the possibility of postponing an immediate reaction to the action of the first-signal flow. The second signal system corresponds to the possibility not only of building more complex models of the environment but also of transmitting information about them, at least partly, to others.

Proceeding from what has been said, one can understand Porshnev when he says that “the frontal lobes (properly, the prefrontal part) not only inhibit first-signal reflexes, and in general direct reaction to the environment, but also transform speech into behaviour, subordinate behaviour freed from direct reaction to a task, a command (extero-instruction) or a design (auto-instruction), i.e. to a speech beginning, a plan, a programme.” Yes, the frontal lobes inhibit first-signal reflexes. But this may also be understood as an element of the process of governing first-signal reflexes. A wholly normal property of the central nervous system (CNS).

“An important palaeontological conclusion is that in all the troglodytids, even the highest, the palaeoanthropes (Neanderthals in the broad sense), the architectonics of the brain lacked all the upper prefrontal formations of the cerebral cortex, and also those zones of the temporal and parietal regions which carry out second-signal control both of behaviour and of perception and of all the functions of the human organism. They are inherent only and exclusively in Homo sapiens. This conclusion permits us to establish with high definiteness the boundary separating man from his nearest ancestors.” This is a valuable observation. The features of the cerebral cortex of the palaeoanthropes noted by Porshnev are a serious argument confirming the absence of speech in them; but the absence of speech is in high correlation with the absence of a developed technological relation to the habitat, which of course must also be borne in mind.

All the preliminary reasonings are needed by Porshnev in order to ground the repressive role of the second signal system. He holds that at the basis of the second signal system lies interdiction. Literally, this word, translated from Latin, means prohibition. Porshnev puts into the concept of interdiction a broader sense bound up with the suppression by the troglodyte-devourer of the will of his fellow-species-member doomed to be eaten. This suppression was effected by a special intonation, possibly resembling a ghastly growling, which paralysed the will of some australopithecine. After this the cannibal-adelphophage devoured his bewildered fellow. Very convenient: no need to go far and no need to take risks hunting wild beasts. Porshnev holds that in time the superanimals in a more or less human guise might even keep diffuse young in pens, like domestic cattle — something like primary concentration camps. There might have been other mechanisms too, such as the collection of tribute in living people. Such a possibility finds its confirmation in fairy tales about giant cannibals and various dragons devouring beautiful maidens. All this became possible on the basis of interdiction. It too, in the scientist’s opinion, became the impetus for the development of speech, in which interdiction is combined with suggestion, which in modern society has turned into the coercive programming of whole peoples. This interesting conclusion of the scientist’s possibly does in fact have a direct relation to the formation of speech in man’s immediate ancestors, but all the same it is more plausible that this was not the sole factor which provoked and activated this process. It is hard to believe that speech in an animal could have arisen only under the influence of interdiction, if this interdiction had only an intonational formatting and a speech formatting was absent from it.

Porshnev compares the last stage of anthropogenesis to an explosion, so quickly, in his opinion, was it passed by man’s ancestors. True, the scientist emphasizes that “no ‘usual’ tempos of the formation of species exist.”

The scientist holds that as soon as the palaeoanthropes, using interdiction, went over to devouring representatives of their own species, in the latter the process of the formation of speech sharply accelerated. The devoured part of the species, as a result of the growth of its intellect, began rapidly to gain taxonomic distance and soon became already another species — the pre-sapiens, that is, the immediate predecessors of man. The logic here is approximately this: interdiction acts on the frontal lobes; they inhibit the first-signal reaction of the victim to aggression; as a result it cannot defend itself and is eaten. Possibly the author of this idea supposes that as a result of the repetition of this procedure many times upon the representatives of the devoured species, there begins to form in them a new useful adaptation — counter-suggestive auto-suggestion, and that is impossible without speech. As a result, speech is formed. All the same, something is lacking here, or something here is superfluous — if only I have understood everything correctly in Porshnev’s theory. Incidentally, some analogy may be drawn here with the actions of snakes when they hypnotize their victims. True, there interdiction is effected not acoustically, but the action is produced on the place where the frontal lobes should be located. Does this contribute to the development of the species intellect of their victims?

A certain definiteness in the understanding of Porshnev’s connection between interdiction and the development of intellect may be introduced by his conception of reason and rationality. “The rational faculty arises on the basis of the constant forcing of the instinct of self-preservation, as a result of acquiring the capacity of mental anticipation of bodily sufferings and of mortal danger.” But does this not relate to all species of animals? “Reason, however, grows on the soil of already spiritual, meaningful psychic sufferings of the highest level and intensity.” These sufferings, already not bodily but moral, arise in the soul “of an individual potentially ready for reason: i.e. of a sufficiently highly intellectual diffuse person, understood as a non-aggressive possessor of the rational faculty.”

Porshnev holds that after the victim-species began sharply to grow more intelligent, a rapid divergence of the troglodytes and the pre-sapiens began. The taxonomic distance between them increased first to the level of subspecies, then of “species, genera, families and finally to the distance of two different levels of the self-organization of matter — the biological and the social.” Apparently what is meant is that after the genetic mixing of the species, they, although they proved to be members of human society, nevertheless preserved their species definiteness, and their ethical incompatibility remained unovercome.

The relative speed of the process of the formation of human intellect may be additionally explained by the fact that, first, what is at issue is the bifurcation of a single species, and second, that intellect is so powerful an adaptation that it is capable of influencing a sharp intensification of this process. Porshnev writes: “It was precisely by wholly ‘unconscious’ and spontaneous intensive selection that the palaeoanthropes singled out from their ranks special populations which then became a special species. The form isolated from crossing evidently answered above all to the requirement of pliability to interdiction. These were the ‘large-browed.’ In them it proved quite possible to suppress the impulse to kill palaeoanthropes. But the latter could devour part of their brood. The ‘large-browed’ were even induced to overpower the instinct ‘not to kill,’ i.e. to be compelled to kill for the palaeoanthropes, as a ‘ransom,’ various animals, at least sick and weakened ones, in addition to the former sources of meat food.” Thus arose hunting.

Subsequently, as a result of the use of women as genetic intermediaries, a genetic mixing of superanimals with diffuse people occurred while species belonging was preserved. The “tragic symbiosis” thus arisen “in the course of time turned into social relations.”

Despite the fact that Porshnev’s palaeontological arguments do not always seem convincing and unquestionably stand in need of verification, the pathos of his work, directed at the exposure of the tragic incompatibility of clearly identifiable parts of the human population, retains its force and ought to be used for the correction of humanity’s evolutionary strategy. Perhaps it is not so very important what is the cause of the tragedy of the human race; what is important is that “the differences indicated between non-predatory people and suggestors and, still more, neotroglodytes, are so essential and significant in their social consequences that it is precisely they that prove today the decisive factor in the question of the survival of humanity.”

If one agrees that the concept of species as applied to people may be supplemented by taking into account essential psychological characteristics, then one may quite speak of predatory and non-predatory species within humanity. And then one may fully agree with the remarkable scientist that “to the predatory species the basic human qualities are inapplicable: morality, conscience, compassion,” since these “creatures introduce into the world inhuman cruelty, dishonesty and unscrupulousness.” Porshnev insists that “from a humanistic position they cannot in principle be called people.” “These are cruel and perfidious animals, though very intelligent ones. And if one is to call things by their proper names, then it will be most correct to define the representatives of the predatory human species as predatory hominids. Or, still more precisely, the palaeoanthropes (neotroglodytes) are superanimals, while the suggestor-manipulators who imitate and ‘echo’ them are, as it were, certain werewolves, or pseudo-humans.”

Fig. 14.05. Palaeoanthrope and australopithecine.

“And it is precisely species heterogeneity that makes the life of humanity so unstable and fraught with the most terrible consequences. The predatory hominids today are the so-called ‘powers that be,’ and their unreasoning dominion has brought everything living on Earth to the brink of destruction.”

“The predatory hominids are the direct ‘thoroughbred’ descendants of the initiators of adelphophagy, of cannibalism. Properly speaking, they have not ceased this occupation of theirs but have merely ‘slightly touched it up,’ modified it in the more complex social conditions. For indeed, any form of exploitation of man is a reduced slavery, which in its turn is also an ‘easing,’ a softening of the practice of killing and devouring prisoners. So that if one looks the truth in the eye, one cannot but acknowledge that our earthly civilization, both in its origin and in its essence, was formerly and continues to remain a cannibal civilization.”

Porshnev states with regret that the social theories and recommendations of his time ignore the question of anthropogenesis, and that the differences among people are declared inessential.

Casting a glance over the work he has done, the scientist for a moment, it seems, begins to doubt his own rightness and says that there arises in him “a feeling of disbelief in my own theory: one cannot believe that such a thing is possible in reality — that humanity is not a single species. One experiences a certain relief of soul, a sensation that this whole anthropological theory of yours is nothing other than a certain near-scientific, quasi-literary curiosity, an essayistic far-fetched nonsense, and that humanity is, of course, a single fraternal species, all people are approximately the same, innate differences are negligible, while all the existing distinctions among them are determined by environment, upbringing, the influence of society; that there is only a difference in temperament, in intellect — and it is from this that all the behavioural deviations from the statistical norm in certain adult individuals arise. Of course, there are also degenerates, perhaps mutants; but at the same time, involuntarily recalling that whole unceasing succession of violence in the world, its bloody tread, imagining the ghastly leapfrog of power-wielding monsters of all times and peoples, all the monsters in human guise, one likewise has willy-nilly to acknowledge that, unfortunately, everything really is so.”

All the same Porshnev hopes that the collective reason of humanity will manage to discern its internal enemy by his “cruel and cunning expression of the eyes, by his natural, unfeigned domineering behaviour, by the sensation of psychological pressure on their part…”

“Predatory hominids are morally non-accountable, and the fact that they are shot, put in the electric chair, hanged, guillotined is, from the position of non-predatory people, wholly just.”

In his passionate and polemical theory, whose pathos is directed against the horror of human existence, Porshnev does not stop before the most categorical conclusions. Having posed the question “can one consider a human being a non-accountable fanatic, an unquestioned ruler, an implacable, fearless leader or general,” and also serial murderers, terrorists taking women and children hostage and so on, he answers it unambiguously — NO! “For this is nothing other than a manifestation of behaviour that is precisely non-human!”

Evidently understanding the unpopularity of such an answer among those not interested in the exposure of superanimals and suggestors, he says that attempts at “declaring someone among people a non-human are at present cut short by public opinion,” and that such “inappropriate tabooing exists even in spite of the fact that human society is positively teeming with monstrous facts and bloody consequences of the ghastly activity of all these monsters in human guise.”

His hypothesis was, naturally, met with hostility by “interested parties” and designated as “ethical racism.” But Porshnev speaks not of races and does not divide people by racial sign into “bad and good.” Racist theories justifying genocide with respect to large groups of people are precisely the invention of those whom Porshnev, on the basis of his palaeontological researches, proposes with good grounds not to consider people. Recall the defendants at the Nuremberg trial, the Nazis, the ringleaders of the mass destruction of people; recall the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Recall Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Recall the unmotivated cruelty toward innocent people. Recall at least the case mentioned in the press when in England two sadists, a man and a woman, murdered children with special cruelty, recorded their dying cries on tape and then listened to them many times over. Surely after this you will not seek justification for degenerates? And yet these two were not destroyed but put in prison, and not even for life, but for 25 years. Their advocates saw to a softening of the sentence. That is very humane toward murderers. And when they had served 20 years in the quite comfortable conditions of an English prison, their advocates filed a petition for their early release, since all this time they had, if you please, “prayed and fully repented.” Hearing such things, one is simply astonished at how humanity cares for the rights of obvious degenerates. And of such examples, each more terrible than the last, the periodical press and television are full. The thin veneer of civilization peels away like plaster not only from representatives of the poorly educated strata of the population, but bloody crimes with special cruelty are committed by representatives of medicine, education, art and children’s institutions. It is clear that there are different cases. There are crimes which can be understood and even justified; but why is the status of a human being preserved even for those who do not deserve that title? Who lobbies for bloody and cruel crimes?

Porshnev speaks not of races but of species living jointly, but behaving so differently that their joint life is simply inadmissible. Two predatory species cynically destroy the representatives of the non-predatory species. But evidently there is no way out, and this tragic incompatibility will never end. Or else Homo sapiens will manage to change its species strategy in order to emerge from the evolutionary dead end that is taking shape, as the hominids once did by weakening the pressure of the extreme variant of the K-strategy and mastering a variant of locomotion unprecedented for mammals — upright walking.

Well, and what if Porshnev is not right, or not wholly right, and everything happened not as it appears to him, and humanity is a single species? And then serial murderers are not degenerates at all but perfectly ordinary people, only their life turned out unusually. A hard childhood, social injustice, chance circumstances, whatever. And then non-predatory people, covering themselves with the fig leaf of non-resistance to evil by force, will have to reconcile themselves to their position as victims, hoping that the evolutionary path of development will sooner or later free them from the necessity of compensating by their sacrificial long-suffering for the moral inadequacy of moral monsters.

Conclusions to Chapter Fourteen

1. There exist plausible natural-scientific explanations of the origin of man from the ape, but work on their deeper grounding must continue.

2. Man differs from the animal not by some one property — for example, speech, or a level of intellect high by comparison with animals, or an ability unprecedented in the animal world to kill his own kind in unlimited quantity — but by a whole aggregate of interconnected species adaptations.

3. The appearance of psychological and psychic differentiation must be regarded as one of the evolutionary adaptations of the species Homo sapiens.

4. If B. F. Porshnev is right, and humanity really does consist of four reproductively compatible species, and this manifests itself in such stable adaptational attitudes of significant numbers of people as bestial cruelty, boundless manipulative baseness, soft pliancy, kindness or searches for spiritual self-perfection, and if these features of human behaviour are conditioned genetically, then their distribution among people may be described as the result of a fractal superimposition of species, typological and other components.

Literature

1. Johanson, D., Edey, M. Lucy. Moscow, 1984.
2. Didenko, B. A. The Civilization of Cannibals. Moscow, 1997.
3. Porshnev, B. F. On the Beginning of Human History. Moscow, 1974.
4. Carrighar, S. Wild Heritage. Moscow, 1985.
5. Engels, F. The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. Moscow, 1975.
6. Vygotsky, L. The History of the Development of the Higher Psychic Functions. Collected Works in 6 vols. Moscow, 1982.
7. Stolyarenko, L. D. Foundations of Psychology. Rostov-on-Don, 1997.
8. Milner, P. Physiological Psychology, 647 pp. Moscow, 1978.

Notes

Footnotes

1. All the same, this principle too has its limitations. For example, the assertion that all healthy people have two arms and two legs does not fall under historical limitations. ↩

2. About three million years, and perhaps more! ↩

3. Missing link. The English term, which appeared earlier than the Russian, testifies that this problem troubled the minds of many scientists. ↩

4. At least an average one. ↩

5. This idea lies at the basis of sociobiology. ↩