disorder

An anthropologic approach may be helpful to shed some nuanced light on Genesis wisdom.  Many people feel the two vantage points of science and religion are inherently antagonistic.  But if they are read and interpreted on their terms in their contexts (not on our terms or our expectations on what we think they should say), I think we would find that utilizing both together could shed much light on understanding our present situation.  The archaeological records provide some clue as to the diets that human ancestors consumed, though because those records have holes in them, a lot of what we deduce from them is conjecture.  But that is how we use science: taking available information and explaining the story that correlates with the data.  So it would be a worthwhile exercise to consider the different relations between what the fossil record indicates and how those conclusions relate to our world today.

            The fossil records indicate that hominoid ancestors lived as vegetarians over 20 million years ago.  One of the more obvious indications of such is their dental structure.  They had flat molars with a large grinding surface and thick enamel, and large incisors, which are good for grinding nuts and plants.  Carnivorous animals had sharp molars and underdeveloped incisors, which is more suited for tearing into flesh.   Later hominoids (Ramapithecus) developed the ability to chew laterally and vertically, as opposed to the strictly vertical movement of the ape jaw, which is also a noted feature of carnivores.  This would suggest more specialization in the ability for rotational chewing which would be even better suited for crushing hardier plant foods, likely more abundant than softer more exotic foods during the Miocene Ice Age.  So that development perhaps was more a result of a climatic shift forcing adaptation for available foods or extinction, the appearance of hardier nut- and grass-containing savannah lands and less forested ones.

Other differences between hominoid ancestors and carnivores exist.  Hominoids did not have the clawed structure that carnivores did, neither the ability to sprint at 60 mph for brief spurts.  Their gut, like herbivores, was much longer to allow slower digestion required for the breakdown of fibrous foods.  That of carnivores is notably shorter, which is quite important for them in order to expel waste promptly through shorter bowels, as animal is more toxic than plant waste.  Carnivores also had smaller salivary glands, good night vision, a rasping tongue, and skin without pores, features that would aid in the hunting, consumption, and processing of flesh for food.

As time progressed, some of our more recent ancestors continued to rely on primarily, if not solely, various plants like fruits, roots, and leaves.  A very famous fossilized hominin, Lucy, was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.  She is estimated to have lived around 3.2 million years ago, and her scientific name is Australopithecus afarensis.  Her structure suggests she was bipedal, which would be more important for leaving the forests to live in the expanding African savannahs around this time in history.  A similar relative, Australopithecus robustus, arrived almost a million years later and was similar to afarensis except that it was larger and had a remarkable crest at to top of the head, allowing for powerful jaw muscles to originate from that ridge.  That plus the fact that it had thick, large molars suggest it also ate mostly roots, bark, seeds, and grains, which would have required such an oral structure for pulverization.  While meat could have been a part of their diet, it likely would have been miniscule as there is no evidence that they used tools and did not have the strength to kill other beasts (Lucy was 3’7” tall).  The dental remains strongly shows they consumed a varied plant diet.

Around 2 million years ago is when homo habilis arrived, the next of kin so to speak of the genus Australopithecus.  Remains from this species reveal a larger brain and primitive small tools, mainly axes.  They were likely scavengers rather than hunters, feasting upon the remains left by more adept killers like felines, and they could climb trees to reach the remains left by cat predators.  From habilis came Homo erectus.  Evidence reveals they utilized more varied tools.  Fossils of both smaller and larger animals have been found at H. erectus excavation sites in East Africa.  These appear to be the first hunters and regular consumers of meat, and their dental records show that the large grinding cheek teeth are gone, and the front teeth are sharper.  The fact that meat became a more regular dietary staple may in fact have enhanced both brain development (though encephalization was already advanced well before evidence of hunting was found in the fossil records, putting that idea into question), and provided a highly dense energy source that would allow them to develop skills other than food gathering.  But food gathering was still a significant portion of the diet, still more than half, according to Rosalind Miles Women’s History of the World.

            This jump from eating plants to hunting animals may have initially come not from the desire to kill for meat, but from the need to kill for plants.  In some archeological sites, baboon bones are found alongside Australopithecus bones, with the idea that Australopithecus killed baboons according to Peter Wilson (Man, the Promising Primate).  The idea is that early humans had to kill competitors in order to secure a food supply.  As they were not nearly as strong as their competitors, they had to use their developing brains and work together, with assistance of newly developed technologies, in order to have food.  Based on their biology, humans are built more for plant eating and not for direct competitions of strength with larger animals.  But because of the pressures of the environment, competition for food, and the attributes of encephalization, they were able to come up with ways to kill other animals in order to preserve their diet.

            Other than simply taking out competition, early human precursors Homo erectus and, to a more advanced degree, Homo sapien neanderthalensis also began migrating off the African continent.  As they could take advantage of more varied environments than other animals, yet were in many ways inferior in direct one-on-one combat, they were more suited for migration than other more specialized species.  Their developed brains permitted them to retain the necessary skills for successful migration.  Herbivores are committed to a specific niche, needing only to remember the seasonal cycles of blooming and ripening.  Nomadic life demands adaptability, extensive use of memory, acuity of senses, recall of detail, assessment of new landscapes, acquisition of new technologies (including fire), and sharing that data with others of the group in order to be successful.  The processing of large amounts of data is essential to surviving in an ever-changing environment with the ebbs and flows of migrating food sources and unfamiliar seasonal patterns of new plant life.  I like how Colin Spencer puts these new phenomena in the perspective of the developing mind:

Nothing is more comforting than the thought of power and control over one’s environment.  Not to make tools, not to migrate and trek, not to hunt and kill other creatures, would seem like a return to a lesser, more primitive state of development.

Such a perspective would be essential for Neanderthals to survive in the cold, barren northern wastelands during the Ice Age.  With limited plant life to consume compared with the temperate regions of Africa and the Levant, they would have to assert their will over their environment in order to survive.  A failure to control their environment would result in death.
            While obviously not a direct correlation, it resonates ideas of Genesis 3.  Humans are in the Garden, not in competition with other life forms because everything they could possibly need to thrive is set before them.  They are given a role as caretaker and meant to create order in the world.  Then the Fall happens when they see something that they consider good, despite being told it will kill them, and rely on their own wisdom and take the forbidden fruit, exerting their authority over their lives, and resulting in expulsion from the Garden out into the wastelands of the earth to wrench sustenance out of the ground.  It is as if humans were banished to the outer edges of an Ice Age world, out of a paradise and into a desert with severely limited food options and a requirement to in fact exert their superiority over the rest of creation in order to survive.

            This is certainly not an attempt to explain how early human ancestors ended up in the higher latitudes during a prehistoric Ice Age, or why they ended up living a lifestyle of meat consumption over plants.  Both the religious and scientific narratives are created from different sources and have different expectations of and from the reader.  But I think there are many areas of overlap between them, with this being one of them.  When we try to exert our will, our definition of what is good and bad for ourselves, and rule the earth according to our own wisdom, we end up where God never intended us to: in the proverbial desert struggling to survive, in our own version of a barren Ice Age, a place where we continue to reinforce our own law if we are to survive there.  To us, that seems like progress.  From another point of view, that seems like regression.  Is it better to live in the Garden under a better Wisdom or to live in the desert under our wisdom?  We see many examples in the Bible in which humans, in attempt to become God, become like the beasts of the field, the first example being when God covers humans’ skin with the skins of animals in Genesis 3:21.  Neanderthals did not result from reverse evolution; rather they were more advanced from those previous species that ate the plants.  And I don’t think the Bible is saying we need to be more simple creatures like the plant-eating precursors of Neanderthals.  There are some ideas that Neanderthals were not precursors of humans, but rather the end of a line that died out with no long-term progeny.  If that were true, it would make the correlation with the Genesis narrative even more curious.