A Roadmap for Primates?

An olive baboon contemplates the importance of being a primate -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Candidate Mike Huckabee was recently quoted saying "if you want to believe you came from a primate, that's your business". The irony here is that humans are primates. We are in the same lineage as lemurs, monkeys and apes. What features do we share with other primates? Here is a short list:

• five fingers on each hand
• generalized dental pattern
• primitive (unspecialized) body plan
• opposing thumbs
• forward-facing color binocular vision
• adaptive to many environments; not overly specialized, omnivorous
• nonaggressive physical build (no fangs, claws or hulking muscles)

The primate's "primitive" body type is what made him the master over other animals. The primate's hands were never transformed into flippers or hooves. Some mammals sacrificed their front limbs for use in locomotion. Carnivorous mammals developed dagger-like teeth and sharp talons for bringing down prey. Primates maintained their hands for multi-purpose tinkering, and their fore limbs were never sacrificed to a single-minded purpose. Oddly, two lowly non-primates, squirrels and opossums, have a survival advantage over more sophisticated creatures like horses and dolphins. Their advantage is from having digits that can grasp, like those of a primate.

What does any of this matter? It has philosophical and theological implications for the amateur naturalist such as me. Neo-Darwinists loathe believing that Evolution moves in any direction, much less in a progressive way towards an 'end game'. The pattern of Evolution suggests that there truly is a direction. Look at our taxonomical system: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Starting from species and working backward, each stratum's most recent entry is further and further into the remote past. Humans (a 'new' species) date back @ 2 million years and a new order probably hasn't occurred in tens of millions of years.

Many religions including Christianity detest believing that humans came from apes. The fossil evidence is overwhelming that we did come from apes and it doesn't particularly bother me to think we evolved that way. In your mother's womb, you progress from a zygote, to a fish-looking embryo, to a squalling newborn. That progression is more dramatic than ape evolution and it happens before our very eyes.

ON BECOMING A NON-PRIMATE

What bothers me is not the idea of 'evolution with purpose' or proximity to apes. What stokes my curiosity is how animals with which we share ancestry branched away from us at some point in time. Dogs and humans probably share an ancestor with a primitive "prosimian" mammal. Humans even share an ancestor with snakes if you travel as far back as the age of salamanders. But at critical junctures, some species forsook the very features that made them potential primates. A lizard mutant lost its legs to become a snake. A prosimian traded hands for paws. It's all neither here nor there you say -- water over the dam.

Let's move the clock forward to more recent evolution. Baboons are a large, successful breed of monkeys -- they rival apes in their intelligence, dexterity and social structure. But the baboon has a dog-like snout, canine teeth and even a bark of sorts. It's also comparatively aggressive. Gorillas are also a very recent evolution. The silverback male can tear a man from limb to limb if so inclined. What strikes me with these two examples is that they violate the "nonaggressive" criteria laid out above. It's as if the primate features serve as a sort of guideline, and straying far in any direction condemns a species to “animalhood”.

Could it be that the “lost souls” of religious stories are not figures burning in Hell, but instead they are the animals that we have as pets and livestock? If Evolution is continuing along this track, there are probably human subspecies that risk spinning away from the primate evolutionary roadmap. Humans have added verbal aggression and lying to the “fangs and claws” listed above as non-primate qualities. Lawyers and car salesmen come to mind. There are also humans who tend toward overspecialization in particular areas (avid swimmers?) or particular diets (vegans?) or particular trades. Could it be that the winnowing process continues its selection based on the primate roadmap?

THE AVATAR

My guess is that the winnowing process is still at work. In describing it, one has to be careful not to slip into the quicksand pit of racism or eugenics – I’m hoping to steer clear of that. My conjecture is that Evolution will continue to refine and define what is to become the “ultimate human”. This process might work in conjunction with man’s own technological achievements. Possibly at a time when man is nearly immortal and no longer even needs to reproduce, the ultimate human will arrive. It won’t be a race or subspecies but precisely one person. In Scott Adam’s “Dilbert Principle” he describes the concept of an Avatar – one wise, knowing man. I’m conjuring to mind a very similar thing.

Religions have this concept particularly in the idea of a Messiah. However the Avatar will most likely be a person with modest mannerisms – not any type of public, bombastic or bragging individual (primate principles, remember). This person will keep his special designation to himself, assuming that he has any outright awareness of it.

AND IN CONCLUSION…

We live in a strange world where religion and science are at irresolvable loggerheads with each other. It’s unlikely that any religion will be proven to be ‘the real’ one. Equally unlikely is that scientists will convince believers that Evolution really occurred. Theists will never convince agnostic scientists that any type of God exists. What is more likely is that each group will go confidently and serenely about its business, tuning out anyone who disagrees. And that one who possesses an ultimate Truth will go quietly about his or her business – making no waves for people who have already decided what the case must be.

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