The answer is language. The Neanderthals had not developed a language sophisticated enough to describe the physical world, while Homo sapiens had. Language was key in this changing of guards.
Having held forth on the emergence of primordial organisms, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the transition from Neanderthal to Homo sapiens, there is one more hypothesis that I would like to offer.
Whether we are talking about the birth of primordial life, the organ called the eye, or language, given that they all create new information, the same mechanism may have been in play in each instance. It makes sense for us, then, to seek the answer to the mystery of how life evolved on this planet by examining the most recent analogous event — the acquisition of language. Simply put, it is easier for us to examine what occurred 50,000 years ago than 3.9 billion years ago. We are unlikely to ever find the truth by stirring some primordial organic soup in a lab.
If the same mechanism was responsible for the extinction of both the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals, then the question is why they had to die out.
What the birth of the eye prepared was brain development. With the eye, it is as though brain matter forged a path through the skull. Visual perception of external stimuli precipitated further evolution, eventually leading to a brain complex enough to handle language.
What the extinction of the dinosaurs prepared was mammals’ prosperity, which is tantamount to brain development. Dinosaurs are reptilian creatures, born from eggs. Mammals, on the other hand, spend a period of time before birth developing within wombs. This difference is crucial as gestating in ample amniotic fluid promotes brain development. Birthing via eggs places a limit on the evolution of reptiles’ brains.
The key in the transition from Neanderthal to Homo sapiens was acquiring language.
We’re seeing that evolution was led toward the development of a brain capable of using language. When a undesirable swerve from that path threatened, a form of orbital correction took place. The guiding force pulling strings from behind the stage is light.
But why has the universe/god arranged this course leading to the development of a language-capable brain? There is only one answer: the universe/god hoped to be described via language, including the one called mathematics. Absent that, the universe could not extend, evolve, grow.
From a young age I have always been perplexed by why it is possible for us to describe our universe with numbers. When a natural phenomenon is described beautifully and wins the consensus of the totality of DNA, on occasion the universe provides what is perhaps a reward in the form of evidence.
Through pure internal brainwork, Einstein interpreted distortions in time and space caused by matter and energy as gravitational fields in his Theory of General Relativity. Four years after it was established, the universe fixed a seal of approval by showing how the sun bent light during a solar eclipse over West Africa. Seven years after Friedman used reasoning alone to conclude that the universe was not still, James Webb learned through spectral analysis that the further you look into space, the faster it is receding. The discovery of background microwave radiation thirty-three years later also provided an imprimatur to Friedman’s theory. Not long after Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter through calculations, the universe produced positrons for him. When described in the language of mathematics, the universe alters its physical constants and gives rise to new phenomena and matter. Thanks to its reciprocal relationship with language, the universe evolves and grows as well. I could almost believe that it was not until Copernicus’ famous revelation that the earth actually began to revolve around the sun.
The universe needs its mathematical description and gave DNA the potential for language.
We look up to the countless stars in the night sky and dream of life forms unlike ourselves on some other planet. Alas, the only life that exists in our universe is DNA. If intelligent life other than humankind exists, they do in a universe other than ours and beyond our perception. In their own ways, in concert with their own universe, they partake in a different world.
After the Big Bang, our universe began its inexorable outward expansion. If it has an edge, it recedes from us with every second that passes. This growing distant sometimes seems to me like a flight from the cognitive ability of DNA, a game of tag tempting us to give chase.
The importance of the relationship between subject and object is no different in human society. Mutual support and cooperative growth bring about progress, and that’s why the structure’s collapse is a fiasco. If our description of the universe is erroneous and the contradiction begins to spread, our counterpart may not know how to respond, and panic. It may even drop its eternal game of tag, giving up on us.
It’s just as it is with people. If a rift between husband and wife deepens and each side only makes contradictory demands of the other, the relationship fails and ends in divorce. It becomes necessary to dissolve the relationship, in other words to reset.
Say that a man loses his sight from accident or illness and has to go about as a blind person. If he accepts the loss and adjusts his relationship with his environment accordingly, daily life could proceed with few inconveniences. If he chooses to ignore his loss, however, and tries to continue as he always has, then immediately inconveniences would arise. Bumping into the corners of tables, falling off stairs due to missteps, and run over by vehicles, his life would come to a standstill.
Even when the conditions of existence change, there will be no problem if subject and object are ably reconciled. If not, the relationship collapses and life is plunged into a crisis.
The relationship between DNA and cosmos is no different.
The universe is not structured as an existence of steadfast things. It is a network of flowing phenomena that come in and out of being and is neither perfect nor unchanging. For that matter, there is no guarantee anywhere that physics and mathematics are correct; they’ve merely withstood scrutiny until now. All is hypothesis. And that is why we must not spare the effort to describe nature accurately and beautifully through language, if the relationship is to be maintained.
Is the writing on the Gateway of the Sun such a description?
As I think this, purely by chance my bag, sitting on the table next to the word processor, opens its mouth, and a few Polaroids slide out. By force of gravity, they glide down the surface of my sketchbook which rests at an angle. I pick up the sketchbook just as they’re about to fall, put the photos aside, and turn to the page with my sketches of the gate. When I place on the page a few of the Polaroids and compare them to the sketches, my line of sight increasingly favors the photos.
Depicted at the gate’s center is a figure that appears to be a sun god, arms raised and sending rays of light from its angular face. It must be a version of Viracocha. To either side are three tiered sets of squares containing images of beasts. They all look similar, like a bird flying with its wings spread. Below these a fourth tier features geometric patterns mainly consisting of straight lines.
Although the images look alike, there are slight differences in detail. The direction of the bird’s face depends on which side of Viracocha it is, and the wings are extended to varying degrees.
Apart from these is another relief of a bird that seems to be hanging behind for some chance. The more I look at this point, the more it seems to destroy the composition of the whole. More hulking than the other birds, it’s only slightly smaller than Viracocha himself.
The wings look like two boomerangs set in an X shape. It has a head and arms and legs, the limbs more human than anything, the impression that it’s a bird owing solely to the odd wings it carries on its back. Horn-like shapes protrude from the top of its slick reptilian face.