I come from a long line of Europeans. Everyone I know with any certainty is from British Europe. There is one, however, who we all know is not British at all. This is the mitochondrial Out-of-Africa Eve described in Stephen Oppenheimer’s book ‘Out of Africa’s Eden’.
The theory goes that a migrant band of fewer than a hundred souls were forced out of its homeland by increasing salinity in the Red Sea. This would have been around 80 000 years ago. The mitochondrial evidence seems to indicate that all non-Africans today are genetically connected to a single woman from that group.
If we include Africans, the DNA traces back to a woman from over 150 000 years ago. This means that, after a good 70 000 years of staying put, a small group finally decided (or was forced to decide) to leave Africa for greener pastures. I might explore the implications of that someday, but what I would really like to know, is what possessed my father to bring our bit of the line back to Africa.
There can be no doubt that the 80 000 years have taken their genetic toll. Even dogs seem capable of discerning the physical differences between Europeans and Africans. It would seem, however, that the differences are all cosmetic. I don’t believe there is any evidence to prove that either set of racial groups is, other than superficially, genetically poorer than the other. Culturally, however, we tend to be very different indeed.
I think we often overlook just how powerful a tool our imaginations are. We forget that everything we know, or believe that we know, is a construct of this mental faculty. We know nothing of the world other than what arrives as impulses from our varied sensory equipment.
We have built ourselves external sensors which prove that our built-in sensors are severely limited. Our eyes detect only a particular range of colours, our ears only certain frequencies, and taste is additionally limited to particular areas of the tongue.
As new-born infants, trying to make sense of the world, we know nothing of these limitations. The world we build in our imaginations using the data at hand, is the whole world and nothing but the world. The foundations built here and over the next few years of our lives will be difficult, if not impossible, to change. We are not only creating the world we will spend our lives living in, we are also creating ourselves and our own personal methodology for relating to that world.
The environment in which we make these cognitive connections is crucial to the process. More so, in fact, than I believe we are capable of comprehending. I heard a story I haven’t verified, but true or not, it will illustrate a point.
The story is about a man who is blind from birth. As an adult, he agrees to a surgical operation designed to restore his sight. The operation is a physiological success, but a cognitive disaster. The blind man has never learned the cognitive processes that make sense of the swirls of colour and light, and is too old to ever do so. He spends the rest of his life wearing a blindfold to keep out the light he experiences as pain.
Unless we have religious beliefs to the contrary, it should be obvious that we come to consciousness in a sea of seemingly random sensation. It is initially a cognitive process which allows us to detect the patterns which make our senses sensible, but it is imagination with which we create meaning for those patterns.
We often think of the imagination as a process for the fabrication of previously non-existent material. In fact, the best we are able to do, however great our imaginations may be, is to reconstruct existing material in new ways. The process is entirely empirical. It begins with the cognitive process of transforming seemingly random sensation into an ordered interaction with our environment.
It would initially be much like seeing things through a very powerful pair of binoculars. We would see more of the detail than of the object the detail makes up. The precise details, and what those details make up, will influence the cognitive process. I believe the process begins in the womb, but let’s conjure up a couple of scenarios.
A newborn has left the hospital in its mother’s arms and is tenderly transported to the mansion it will learn to call home. It is placed in its pristinely white crib with all its silk and satin and is allowed to drift off to sleep to the sound of gentle classical music. Try looking at this through your sensory binoculars.
Now, without removing the binoculars, turn 180 degrees. You’ll see another newborn without the need of any such trip. This child was born at home in a corner of a makeshift, tin-and-lumber, smoke-filled shack. It is lucky to be alive at all, and lies in a cardboard box filled with newspaper. Three other families live in the shack and, now that the excitement of the birth is over, they have returned to their squabbling over whose turn it is to fetch water from the dirty stream almost a mile away.
The cognitive processes in each case will probably be similar, but will yield completely different perceptual results. Allow them to develop in those environments for fifteen years and then swap them around. Neither one will be comfortable in their new environment. It will be a long time before either one even begins to understand their new environment. The longer we leave it before making the switch, the less likely it will be for either to make a successful transition.
The examples are purposefully extreme to illustrate my point, but even mild differences would make a difference. Take the first scenario, and change the colour of the crib to a bright red and switch the Beethoven to Leonard Cohen. Now take another look through those binoculars.
Even as we build our cognitive foundation, we are building a perceptual framework. The perceptual realities of our immediate family and later our peers will hang from this framework like drapes. As adolescents we’ll begin the process of rearranging these drapes. We may even attempt removing them altogether, but it will be with limited success. At best we’ll hide some behind others while rearranging those others in previously unthinkable ways.
We are influenced by the paradigms of our parents who are, in turn influenced by those of their parents. I come from a long line of Europeans who started out to wander and explore the world 80 000 years ago. My father wandered us back home where my flesh and blood family has been tending the home fires for 150 000 years. Other prodigal sons arrived before me bearing, not gifts, but war and enslavement.
Why do we find it so surprising that my local brothers and I seem to have a little trouble understanding one another? Why am I here at all? How did I get to be this unwanted, uninvited guest in the country of my birth? What was my father thinking?
