Day: February 27, 2019

Our closest relatives are quite telling. I mean, they are not telling us as in writing us a book or anything. They are not speaking English to us. Maybe a little sign language now and then. Rudimentary stuff. Yes, No…Gimme’ banana. Stuff like that.

99.6% of our genome is shared with Chimpanzees, and now scientists have found, also with Bonobos, (pygmy chimps) although we share a different 1.6% of our genetics with Chimps than we do with Bonobos.

Monkeys and Greater Apes, like the Chimpanzees, are generally not pleasant creatures. Chimps especially will become very vicious creatures as adults. Just think back a few years when the poor lady in New York City got her face ripped off by one of her friends “pet” chimpanzees. Vicious.

My Father in law was a Veterinarian. Dr. L.J. Neurauter. He was an administrator, and after he retired from the Air Force, he ran the BIG primate center out in Davis, California. But he didn’t like monkeys. He certainly didn’t like the Chimpanzees. One time we visited them in Davis, and took a tour of the primate center. “Don’t get too near the Chimpanzee compound,” said Dr. Neurauter. “They’ll throw feces at you, and they are really accurate.” I took him at his word. He went on to tell us how none of the handlers would ever…ever…get in the chimpanzee compound with them out, unless they had a death wish. Vicious with each other, and vicious with human beings. Almost like a hatred of human beings.

Our closest relative, as far as genetics go. I know a lot of people are gonna’ say: “We didn’t evolve from monkeys!”

So true.

We had a common ancestor with the chimpanzees and bonobos about 4 million years ago, and the ancestor who eventually evolved into human beings split off from that common ancestor. I imagine they were pretty vicious animals. Out of the three most closely related Primates, the Bonobos, who are the smallest, are the least vicious. Humans and Chimpanzees….not so much.

Survival of the fittest…and the meanest.

As Anthropology major in college, I took a lot of classes in Physical Anthropology. Dr. Butler. A hard man to please if you didn’t study like you outta’. He once told me that early man was probably a vicious animal, but also a social animal. Conditions of living dictated that families stay together for protection from larger predators. Sabre tooth tigers, Cave bears. You know…all that Jean W. Auel stuff. Eventually families started hanging around together for even more protection. They became tribes. Tribes grouped together and became ethnic groups. Discovered agriculture. Started building small villages, towns, cities. Still maintained the viciousness. The aggression and the primal instincts of those first ancestors.

Survival of the meanest?

For how long?

The creator alone knows, and he ain’t telling.

Our closest relatives are quite telling. I mean, they are not telling us as in writing us a book or anything. They are not speaking English to us. Maybe a little sign language now and then. Rudimentary stuff. Yes, No…Gimme’ banana. Stuff like that.

99.6% of our genome is shared with Chimpanzees, and now scientists have found, also with Bonobos, (pygmy chimps) although we share a different 1.6% of our genetics with Chimps than we do with Bonobos.

Monkeys and Greater Apes, like the Chimpanzees, are generally not pleasant creatures. Chimps especially will become very vicious creatures as adults. Just think back a few years when the poor lady in New York City got her face ripped off by one of her friends “pet” chimpanzees. Vicious.

My Father in law was a Veterinarian. Dr. L.J. Neurauter. He was an administrator, and after he retired from the Air Force, he ran the BIG primate center out in Davis, California. But he didn’t like monkeys. He certainly didn’t like the Chimpanzees. One time we visited them in Davis, and took a tour of the primate center. “Don’t get too near the Chimpanzee compound,” said Dr. Neurauter. “They’ll throw feces at you, and they are really accurate.” I took him at his word. He went on to tell us how none of the handlers would ever…ever…get in the chimpanzee compound with them out, unless they had a death wish. Vicious with each other, and vicious with human beings. Almost like a hatred of human beings.

Our closest relative, as far as genetics go. I know a lot of people are gonna’ say: “We didn’t evolve from monkeys!”

So true.

We had a common ancestor with the chimpanzees and bonobos about 4 million years ago, and the ancestor who eventually evolved into human beings split off from that common ancestor. I imagine they were pretty vicious animals. Out of the three most closely related Primates, the Bonobos, who are the smallest, are the least vicious. Humans and Chimpanzees….not so much.

Survival of the fittest…and the meanest.

As Anthropology major in college, I took a lot of classes in Physical Anthropology. Dr. Butler. A hard man to please if you didn’t study like you outta’. He once told me that early man was probably a vicious animal, but also a social animal. Conditions of living dictated that families stay together for protection from larger predators. Sabre tooth tigers, Cave bears. You know…all that Jean W. Auel stuff. Eventually families started hanging around together for even more protection. They became tribes. Tribes grouped together and became ethnic groups. Discovered agriculture. Started building small villages, towns, cities. Still maintained the viciousness. The aggression and the primal instincts of those first ancestors.

Survival of the meanest?

For how long?

The creator alone knows, and he ain’t telling.

Often when I’m walking around on a day like today, and look up and see our moon, Earths very own personal companion, I am struck by a deep desire, almost a need, to take off up into the sky. I feel like I could just fly up there in the blink of an eye and make a soft landing, and just walk around and explore.

Two things for which I’ve always had an affinity. The moon, and exploring. I know it’s a silly thought to even imagine being able to have an out of body episode and go to our moon. At times I feel as though I might be able to one day, who knows. Who’s to say it’s impossible.

Man once did go there. We once had the technology to go there. Even more than that, we had the heart of explorers to get it done. We saw potential out there, out in the stars. Now, we are mired in the mundane muck of partisanship, which causes us to barely be able to get a trio of people together who agree on any subject, much less to make plans for the future of the survival of the human species.

Where once our schools and universities turned out graduates with high ideals and aspirations, we most often now turn out technocrats and bureaucrats who’s only wish is to line their pockets as easily as possible with other people’s money.

How’d we get this way? That question is less important than how we get out of being this way, and start again anew with people who wish to add and multiply, instead of subtract and divide.

To start again to learn simply for the satisfaction and for the beauty of knowing the truth. The truth must be sought out with singularity of purpose in this day and age. It must be sniffed out with the nose of a bloodhound. Why? Because non truth is so, so easy to find. It lays around on the ground, and on the pages of rags called newspapers, and on internet posts and “news sites” and memes, always conveniently right within reach. Right at our fingertips. It’s an easy, fattening fast greasy food, and it gets gobbled up like grass by sheep.

I know I ramble on and I apologize. I believe there are many more good people out there than I sometimes think. I know our younger generations will be wiser than we old ones. I sometimes think people of my generation got dropped right in the middle of this rapidly changing age of technology, and a lot of us have difficulties keeping track of it. The coming generations will have known nothing but the current and future technology, and hopefully will be able to make it work to their advantage. That’s my hope. That, and a trip up to the moon one day to explore.