Nordrhein-Westfalen - The Descent of Man

Although the coal-mining industry is in decline in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, the cultural and sociological impact of mining is still felt, even in the 21st century, whether it's through the physical effect that mining has had on the landscape, or the legacy of rapid industrialisation that has left the Ruhr/Rhine valleys with significant conurbation, the current population of the Ruhr/Rhine metropolitan area being around 11 million people.  It reminds me a lot of similar conurbations in England - Birmingham, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire - also a result of 19th century industrialisation.

The Origins of Man

Skulls of Homo Erectus, Neanderthalensis and Sapiens

One indirect result of mining in the 19th century, as I learned when I was blogging about dinosaurs, was the discovery of fossils and dinosaur bones, which coincided with a growing interest in Richard Owen's terrible lizards, but no doubt also sparked renewed interest in the origins of man/woman.  The Neanderthal Valley, just outside Dusseldorf, is most famous for the discovery, in 1856, of a now extinct species of human being we call Homo (Sapiens) Neanderthalensis.  I've put the Sapiens in brackets, as we're still not 100% sure whether Neanderthal man/woman was a different species of human or a sub-species.

Actually, as with the Iguanadons of Bernissart, the Belgians probably have more right than the English or Germans to claim the discovery of dinosaurs and homo neanderthalensis.  The first Neanderthal skull was actually found in Belgium in 1829, although it wasn't recognised as a Neanderthal skull until much later, in the 1930's.

Neanderthal Man by Matt Celeskey

The New Man of Dusseldorf

By some quirk of history, the Neanderthal Valley was named after a 17th century protestant theologian from Bremen, Joachim Neander (thal actually means 'valley', so it's 'Neander's Valley').  It was a place that he loved to visit and a source of inspiration for the hymns that made him famous. 

Neander's grandfather was also a musician and changed the family name from the Germanic Neumann (Newman) to the Greek Neander, as was fashionable at that time.  So the extinct human species that populated much of pre-historic Europe is, ironically, called 'new man'.

I'd imagine that the Greek meaning hidden in Neanderthal wasn't lost on 19th century scientists who would also have been, no doubt, versed in the Classics.  Perhaps this influenced the permanent choice of name for this creature which was, by the way, first proposed by the Anglo-Irish geologist, William King.  I must admit that I'm slightly amused by the alternative name for homo neanderthalensis, proposed by the German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, which was homo stupidus!  Say it like it is, Ernst!

Darwin and the Caveman

On a more serious note, our understanding of Homo Neanderthalensis has interesting things to say about modern human culture and how we feel about Darwinism and the theory of evolution.  Traditionally, Neanderthal man/woman has been depicted as a kind of 'caveman/woman' - slightly bigger than modern man/woman, with a pronounced forehead - a bigger brain, yes, but definitely stupider than us.  In popular culture, the Neanderthal man/caveman is depicted as very definitely not us - we're obviously much smarter, more modern and only distantly related, as though Neanderthal man/woman was the result of a bad marriage.

Exhibit comparing skulls by Matt Celeskey

The reality is that Neanderthal man/woman may not just be a distant relative but may, indeed, be part of our ancestry.  The relationship between homo neanderthalensis and homo sapiens (ourselves) still seems to be a controversial one - traditional schools of thought say that Neanderthal man/woman was overpowered by the superior homo sapiens and became extinct, essentially because of their stupidity or inability to adapt to the changing political landscape.

As I hinted at in my blog post about the Celts in England, I can't help wondering whether the reality wasn't more complicated than that - perhaps rather than one species/tribe replacing the other, they somehow merged and we are actually part Neanderthal, part Sapiens.  I can sense that you're squirming after having read that last sentence, the question is why?

The Descent of Man

By coincidence and unrelated to my research on Nordrhein-Westfalen, I've started watching the 1970's BBC documentary The Ascent of Man, presented by the wonderful Jacob Bronowski.  The series assumes that man/woman have ascended, in the pyramid of species, to the superior position we see ourselves in today.  However, a lot of what I've been reading recently (The Naked Ape, When Languages Die . .) has made me think more about what I would call The Descent of (Wo)man - a descent in two senses:

1. Descent from the trees - the way we've evolved has been influenced by our decision to come down from the safety of the trees and fight for survival on the open plain.

2. Descent into system-slavery - rather than living a natural life, in tune with the rhythms of the universe - the moon, stars, sun, animal and plant life - we have created systems - clocks, computers, calendars - which control our lives and reduce them to unnatural rhythms, bringing us down into a kind of slavery, over which we have little control.

I'm beginning to think we really are homo stupidus after all.

You can watch Part 1 of The Ascent of Man - Lower than the Angels below:

A note on the sexism of the Homo Neanderthalensis discussion

Homo Neanderthalensis is very much a man!  Everything you read or watch in relation to the origin of our species, talks about man or cavemen, rather than woman or cavewoman.  There is an inherent sexism in this area of science that is very difficult to get away from, although I've tried!

Image credits:

For this blog post, I wanted to highlight the photos of Flickr member hairymuseummatt a.k.a. Matt Celeskey who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  These photos were taken at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in the University of New Mexico, as well as the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio.

You can see more of Matt's photos on his photo stream.  Thanks Matt for sharing these images with us, using the Creative Commons license. 

Korea - Is Man a Dog's Best Friend?

When I was researching for my blog post on Korea - the Google Instant Test, I noticed a lot of interest from Western readers, as to whether or not Koreans eat dog meat.  It got me thinking, in a much broader sense about the human-dog relationship, probably one of the most important inter-species relationships/partnerships on our planet and how this key relationship matters to us, even when we are assessing our relationship with humans from another culture. 

My experience of dogs

I've always liked dogs.  Being Irish, I grew up in a society where dogs were everywhere.  We had a Jack Russell for many years and she produced several litters of pups, some of which became household pets.  I now live in England, where people seem to be obsessed with dogs.  People allow dogs to sleep in the same bed as them - people take their dogs to groomers, costing up to £50 a session!  Just take a walk through an English park in early summer and you'll begin to understand the important place dogs occupy in English society.

When I was growing up in Ireland, dogs were mostly kept outside, as yard pets.  This now seems to be changing and I sense a general evolution in people's attitude towards dogs - they are no longer animals, but part of the family, companions, man's best friend . . . Dogs may be a man's best friend, but I'm beginning to wonder whether the opposite statement is also true - ie. Is Man a Dog's best friend?

Just another consumer product?



Dalmatian on Cable Beach, WA

In a way, dogs are evolving, or being shaped, to meet the demands of human consumerism - we're breeding them smaller and cuter into all kinds of freaky shapes and sizes, some of which are physically debilitating, even unnatural.  It's as though dogs are replacing a human need for control that has long since been blurred by the fast pace of modern living.  They've become another symbol of our desire to be a master over the natural world - to see unconditional love reflected in the eyes of another creature.

A new way of thinking about dogs

One of the things I love about doing this blog is that I read things and learn things which change my perspective on the world.  Like many people reading this post, I've previously just accepted man's relationship with dogs and never really had a reason to question it.  Now, just as many people wonder why Koreans would want to eat dog - I'm beginning to wonder why people would want to own a dog, to keep it in their house, feed it, groom it, entertain it, exercise it and pay expensive veterinary bills when the dog gets ill?

As part of my research, I've read an eye-opening book called Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behaviour and Evolution (The University of Chicago Press, 2002) by Raymond Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger.  For anyone interested in dog behaviour and the origin of dogs as a species (and they are a relatively new species), then I would highly recommend getting a copy of this book (although I had to order it from the United States).  Raymond and Lorna are biologists and champion sled-dog trainers and I think their explanation of the role dogs play in human society makes a lot of sense. 

Dawn of the Dog

The Gamekeeper by Richard Ansdell

One of the main arguments they make is that man didn't somehow tame wolves and therefore produce dogs.  Wolves are wild animals and are not tameable - even after several generations, they are genetically programmed to behave in a certain way.  It's more likely that dogs tamed themselves, by modifying their behaviour and, ultimately, losing their fear of the human race.  Modern dogs are descendants of wild dogs (or perhaps wolves) who saw an opportunity in the new ecological niche that was created when humans first changed their nomadic lifestyles, turning to agricultural and settling in small villages based on clans. 

With agriculture and the first human settlements came food surplus and the first village dumps.  The Coppingers argue that the ancestors of dogs were scavengers at these village dumps (not only dogs, but also rats, domestic cats and other animals).  They became attracted to the constant source of food at these 'new' settlements and evolved their behaviour in a way that brought them ever closer to the ultimate source of food, humankind!  Over the years, dogs have become man's true companions and, as a species, they are flourishing with an estimated 400 million dogs worldwide, compared to 400 thousand wolves. 

Ways of interpreting the human-dog relationship

We've taught dogs to care for other animals, to guard our properties, guide blind people, rescue human beings trapped in the snow, pull sleds . . . you name it!  But what is the true relationship between humans and dogs?  The Coppingers' posit several different ways of understanding this relationship:

Dogs learn to respond to human needs from an early age

Commensualism: ie. where one species benefits (dogs), but the other doesn't (humans).  This would fit the mould for dogs scavenging at the village dump.  Whilst, in the West, we tend to think of dogs as pets, the reality is that most of the world's dogs are village dogs, belonging to no-one in particular and scavenging off the leftovers of human meals. 

Mutualism: ie. where both species benefit from each other.  Most people would assume that this is the proper interpretation of the human-pet dog relationship - ie. we feed them, they love us!

Parasitism: ie. where one species benefits at the expense of the other.  This is probably a truer reflection of the human-pet dog relationship.  In Western society, pet dogs cost a lot of money, giving us, arguably, very little in return.  The reality is that pet dogs are needy, expensive to feed and live short lives, often beset with health problems because we've bred them into unnatural forms!

Dogs as modern-day slaves?

Think about how we treat dogs - is it really love, care and loyalty?  Or consumerism, degradation and enslavement?  The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that man is not dog's best friend, but that we are somehow locked in a parasitic relationship that is degrading to both species! 

Dogs have evolved because of changes in the way humans live - they are a species that mostly owe their existence to us - if humans suddenly disappeared off the planet, most household dogs wouldn't survive.  Conversely, humans would survive without dogs, although I imagine the loss of dogs would have a great impact on our collective cultural psyche. 

I find the human-dog relationship endlessly fascinating and I'm sure I'll come back to it in future blog posts!

Image credits:

Both photos were taken by me - the first in Australia, the second in Russia. 

The painting is by Richard Ansdell and depicts a typical scene from the human-dog relationship.  It's in the public domain and therefore copyright-free. 

Dorset - How the English invented Dinosaurs

It was only when I first visited Dorset that I heard of the county's 'Jurassic Coast', one of the UK's 28 UNESCO World Heritage sites.  It starts in Devon, actually, not far from Exmouth and continues all the way to Swanage in East Dorset.  It includes geological wonders such as the Isle of Portland, which is a tied island, ie. only linked to the mainland by a spit of gravel, known as a tombolo.  Portland is famous for its limestone and Portland stone has been used in important buildings like St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace and the UN world headquarters in New York.

Remarkable Creatures

The Jurassic coast became the haunt of geologists and palaeontologists, in the 19th century, when scientists became interested in fossils of 'remarkable creatures' that were abundant along this coast, notably in the area around Lyme Regis.  I've just finished reading a wonderful book called Remarkable Creatures by the London-based US writer, Tracy Chevalier (she also wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I really loved, about the life of Vermeer).  

Mary Anning and the fossils of Lyme Regis

Dinosaurs at Musee des Science Naturelles

Remarkable Creatures brings to life the story of Mary Anning, Lyme Regis' most famous fossil collector and her close friend Elizabeth Philpot.   Anning came from a very lowly background and started off fossil-collecting as a child, earning money to keep her family out of the poorhouse.  She had an incredible talent for spotting and preparing fossil specimens and, as she gained more experience, she herself became a leading expert on the fossils she was collecting and selling - her advice was sought after by prominent geologists such as William Buckland and the Reverend William D Coneybeare. 

Of course, in the 19th century, the doors of Scientific institutions were completely closed to women, even more so to working-class women with no education and, towards the end of her life, Mary Anning felt aggrieved by the lack of recognition she'd received in a male-dominated world.  In her novel, Chevalier very cleverly explores the tensions between Anning and Philpot who, despite coming from different social classes, had an incredible friendship and united against the adversity they both faced, as women working in a new scientific field. 

The Englishmen who invented the Dinosaur

The work of Mary Annings and other scientists paved the way for the work of early palaeontologists such as Richard Owen and Gideon Algernon Mantell.  I mention Owen and Mantell in particular, as they had a rivalry which was every bit as fractious and intense, as the friendship between Annings and Philpot.  When I say the English 'invented' Dinosaurs, what I mean is that Owen and Mantell were amongst the first scientists who tried to conceptualise dinosaurs.  Considering how little material they had available to them at the time, the work of the first palaeontologists was both revolutionary and visionary.

Owen v Mantell

Richard Owen coined the word Dinosaur

Richard Owen first coined the word dinosaur from the Greek for terrible lizard in a publication in 1842.  The -saur part had already been used for the first specimen found by Mary Anning, the Icthyosaur or fish lizard.  Owen's conceptualisation of dinosaurs was of large, slow-moving, elephantine creatures that walked on four column-like legs.  This conceptualisation was popularised by his dinosaur models at the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace in the 1850's.  Largely ignored by his contemporaries, Mantell's conceptualisation of large, fast-moving, two-legged creatures, turned out to be a more accurate conceptualisation, backed up by further fossil finds in later years.

Nowadays, thanks to a myriad of books and movies, an image of dinosaurs is well-and-truly imprinted on our minds.  It's hard for us to imagine the difficulty of trying to conceptualise what a dinosaur looked like, but it's worth bearing in mind that early palaeontologists were working with often incomplete fossils, pressed into rocks, with no obvious indication of what these creatures might look like, if they were stood upright.

The influence of Australia?

Something that really interested me, as I was researching all of this, was how the conceptualisation of dinosaurs co-incided with the colonisation of Australia and the 'discovery' of lots of new creatures, like the kangaroo which had never been seen by Europeans before.  Early examples of dinosaur skeletons were often juxtaposed with skeletons of Australian animals, like the wallaby and cassowary and I can't help wondering whether or not the physiognomy of these Australian animals influenced palaeontologists like Mantell, as they tried to conceptualise the stature of dinosaurs?

In his book, A Very Short Introduction to Dinosaurs (part of the OUP series), David Norman outlines the importance of paleobiology as a branch of palaeontology that can clearly inform, not only the stature of dinosaurs, but also their eating habits, sex and movement patterns. 

Dinosaurs and Darwin

It's also hard to imagine the societal attitude towards palaeontology at that time.  For many people in the 19th century, the idea that creatures existed before Noah's Ark was inconceivable.  Not only did the study of dinosaurs challenge the widely held belief in Bishop Ussher's biblical theory about the age of the Earth (ie. that the Earth was created on the 23rd of October 4004 BC!), but the idea that God would create life and then let it become extinct was considered sacrilegious.  The dinosaur debate fed into and supported Darwin's theory on Evolutionary gradualism, an even greater discussion that was to revolutionise 19th-century thought. 

Why are we so fascinated by dinosaurs?

Some dinosaurs were quite small!

Accepting the idea that God might let the dinosaurs become extinct, opened up the possibility that some day God might let humans become extinct.  A lot of the 19th-century anxiety around the study of dinosaurs was tied up in greater concerns about the fate of the human species.  Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the eternal fascination we have with dinosaurs.  Very few branches of science have captured the imagination more than the study of dinosaurs - what they were, what they looked like and what happened to make them 'suddenly' die out. 

It's also interesting to note how fascinated children are by dinosaurs.  As part of my research, I visited the famous Bernissart Iguanadons in the Musee des Sciences Naturelles in Brussels and I realised I'd never seen a reconstructed dinosaur before.  It's a fantastic place to bring children and their awe of dinosaurs reminded me that, even today, the conceptualisation of living dinosaurs requires a lot of imagination. 

Did dinosaurs have wings?

Dinosaurs and Dragons

I also think that there is something deep in the human psyche that 'remembers' a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  Of course, we know that this is impossible, dinosaurs became extinct long before the human species had evolved.  But how do we explain the stories of dragons and mythical beasts in many world cultures?  Isn't there something in our 'ancestral memory' that haunts our dreams and children's fairy tales?  It's quite apt that the English invented dinosaurs, a symbol of St George conquering his dragon!

Dinosaurs today

Something that I didn't know, before I started researching this topic, is that birds are believed to have evolved from dinosaurs!  Studies of bone structures show amazing similarities between dinosaurs and birds and it's quite possible that when the continents moved and the Earth flooded, dinosaurs simply became smaller and took to the skies to survive.  I don't think I'll ever look at birds in quite the same way again!

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me at the Musee des Sciences Naturelles in Brussels.  Please feel free to reuse these images under the Creative Commons license:

- Attribution (especially to this blog)
- Share Alike
- Non-commercial