Introduction

 

While researching my latest book (gratuitous plug), one of the concepts I kept running into is the idea that humans are in some way special. We are different from animals and above them in some way. If you ask the average man on the street, he will probably agree with that statement, but may not be comfortable with it – we are after all, animals.

 

But what is it that makes us different? Making a bigger mess of the planet than any other animals hardly demonstrates we are smarter. Neither does beating the crap out of each other for no good reason on a regular basis.

 

We are clearly different, however. We are sentient. We have a level of consciousness and self-awareness that seems to make us different from animals. But the true nature of that difference, and how it came about are harder questions to answer than one might think.

 

William John Jones, 1919-2003

 

My father was a great man. He was kind, patient, dignified, hard working, honest and down-to-earth. I miss him terribly. He died at 83 from his third bout with cancer, and so his death came as no surprise on the one hand, but was still a shock when I got the news.

 

I remember crying frequently, unexpectedly and uncontrollably. The slightest thing could set me off. And yet the things that I expected to ‘get to me’ did not. When I saw him lying in his coffin at the undertakers, I felt nothing. And I remember saying to my mother that ‘he wasn’t there anymore’.

 

What did I mean by that? What was there of my father that was more than flesh and bone and nerve and sinew? Why do I still think he sees me? Why do I still want to make him proud of me?

 

Most people who have lost a loved one will tell you they feel the same way. They feel that somewhere, somehow, those that have died are still ‘checking in’ on them every now and then.

 

This is not a modern concept. The idea of the dead watching over us can be traced back through our literature to the Babylonian “Epic of Gilgamesh” written around four and a half thousand years ago on clay tablets.

 

Long before the age of the written word, examples of our earliest beliefs in life after death may be seen in ancient burial sites. Strange as it may seem, however, people were not originally buried because they had died. It is believed humanity started burying people because they were still alive.

 

To understand this, we need to go back about 50,000 years or so, to a time when homo neanderthalis (our cousin on the evolutionary tree) came up with the ingenious idea of burying members of their tribe before they died.

 

Ancient Burial Practices

 

Back then, Man was just another animal fighting for a place in the planetary pecking order, and was just as likely to make a good meal for a predator as the predator was to make a good meal for Man.

 

From time to time, hunters or other tribes members would get severely injured. Lacking the medical knowledge that we possess today, little could be done by the Neanderthals to help the injured party except maybe provide herbs, a little food, and shelter.

 

For much of human history, man was nomadic, following the grazing and migratory patterns of animals. We were a nomadic people and didn’t stay long in one place. Because the animals were always moving, the tribe had to be always moving. So when someone was seriously hurt and couldn’t go on, they would be placed in a cave or a hollow, with their weapons, possessions and a little food, in the hope that they could be protected from predators long enough to heal up and regain their strength.

 

Presumably this worked for some, not so much for others. It seems likely that, over time, any member of the community who became incapacitated would have been treated this way, whether they were injured in battle or just very old. From this may have come our first ideas about resurrection, and from that in turn may have sprung thoughts about the after life, reincarnation and the circle of life.

 

Certainly by 40,000 years ago, we see evidence of ritual burial of those who were clearly understood to have died. Mungo Man, excavated in 1974 in the New South Wales territory of Australia, was recently dated to 40,000 B.P. At death Mungo Man’s body was covered with red ochre. If this was deliberate (as it appears to have been) , then it is significant, because it may represent the earliest known use of pigment for artistic, philosophical or religious purposes.

 

Art is one of the ‘markers’ for the species known as homo-sapiens. Cro-Magnon Man  (our prehistoric ancestor) was the first and (as far as can yet be proven) only species on the planet to create artwork.

 

You may be familiar with the expression “Art for Art’s sake” – meaning Art usually has no purpose other than to be itself. You cannot eat it, or use it as a shelter (except some of the larger Van Gogh’s, which tend to have pretty hefty frames). It adds nothing to the day’s hunt, yet takes time to prepare. So what is Art? How do you define Art?

 

In ‘The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature’ (2002), Steven Pinker writes:

 

“Art is in our nature…in the brain and in the genes….Though the exact forms of art vary widely across cultures, the activities of making and appreciating art are recognizable everywhere. The philosopher Denis Dutton (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) has identified seven universal signatures:

 

1. Expertise or virtuosity. Technical artistic skills are cultivated, recognized, and admired.

2. Non-utilitarian pleasure. People enjoy art for art’s sake, and don’t demand that it keep them warm or put food on the table.

3. Style. Artistic objects and performances satisfy rules of composition that place them in a recognizable style.

4. Criticism. People make a point of judging, appreciating, and interpreting works of art.

5. Imitation. With a few important exceptions like music and abstract painting, works of art simulate experiences of the world.

6. Special focus. Art is set aside from ordinary life and made a dramatic focus of experience.

7. Imagination. Artists and their audiences entertain hypothetical worlds in the theatre of the imagination.

 

The psychological roots of these activities have become a topic of recent research and debate. Some researchers, such as the scholar Ellen Dissanayaki, believe that art is an evolutionary adaptation like the emotion of fear or the ability to see in depth. Others, such as myself, believe that art (other than narrative) is a by-product of three other adaptations: the hunger for status, the aesthetic pleasure of experiencing adaptive objects and environments, and the ability to design artifacts to achieve desired ends. “

 

My own belief is that art has another purpose. Depending on the kind of art produced, it can be a way of storing and then transmitting information and/or emotions. Art can record history and pride, such as soldiers raising an American Flag over Iwo Jima. It can serve as a trigger to release emotions at times of great sadness – for example ‘Amazing Grace’ played on the bagpipes. Art can capture and play back emotions such as isolation and fear – for example Edward Munch’s ‘The Scream’.

 

But Art cannot do any of these things unless you have a mind capable of processing what you are seeing or hearing. In order to have an existence after you die, there needs to be something that is uniquely ‘you’ to be preserved. In other words, Life after Death implies sentience – the human ego, the ability to think abstractly and conceptually and to understand the idea ‘I think, therefore I am’.  To the best of our knowledge, humanity is the only species on the planet capable of this kind of mental exercise. So, we can say that the kind of mind that can appreciate Art for Art’s sake (like that of a human) is the kind of mind that has the ability to survive beyond death in some meaningful way. But is Art truly uniquely human? And if so, is it the only characteristic that separates us mentally from animals?

 

What makes Humans ‘special’?

 

Various markers have been used in the past to demonstrate man’s uniqueness, including:

 

1) Burial & grieving for the dead.

 

This would probably be a good place to start, since we’ve just been discussing it. The idea that mankind is the only species on the planet that buries it’s dead then stands around the graveside looking sorrowful is understandable - but wrong.

 

Elephants are of breeding age when they reach 14 or 15 years old, and they may breed until they are as old as 50 years. They are huge animals with large brains. Males can weigh up to 6 tons, and be from 10 to 11 feet tall and up to 23 feet long! They live to be about 70 years old.

 

Man has had a long association with elephants, usually using them as beasts of burden and (with our usual charm) failing to pay any real attention to them. Consequently, it is only in recent years that we have begun to understand how truly fascinating these noble animals really are.

 

There are legends about Elephants Graveyards, a kind of Holy Grail for ivory poachers. Supposedly when an elephant knows it is going to die it heads off to this magical place to die with its ancestors. There is no evidence to support this legend however.

 

What has been observed (as early as the first century AD by the Roman chronicler Pliny) is that Elephants cover their dead with twigs and leaves. They will often stay by the dead for several hours or days, and return to the burial site months or years later. It has also been recorded that elephants will police bodies of other elephants that have died, taking the bones and carrying them away or hiding them under the brush.

 

In an interview for National Geographic in April 1999, Katy Payne (author of ‘Silent Thunder: In The Presence of Elephants’) observed "What I have seen though is that whenever an elephant comes to the bones of another elephant, it will stop and sniff and touch and roll over and fondle and carry and move and displace and pick up again and again those bones. And particularly tusks. Whether there's individual recognition of the source of the bones I don't know, but the bones are very interesting to other elephants. How they respond when other animals die is with obvious symptoms of grief, despair and distress initially. They are called back and back to explore the corpse, called back by their own desires to return. And eventually when they leave the corpse there is obvious evidence of grieving. A female having lost a calf stayed with the herd which accompanied her near to standing next to the corpse for several days and left reluctantly with a herd and then fifty kilometers away, turned back and went back to the calf. So there's all this kind of memory and grief.”

 

2) Brain Size

 

Around the 1900s, brain size was considered a good indicator of intelligence, until it was discovered that several remarkable minds had quite unremarkable sized brains. If brain size were a true measure of intelligence, then humans would be the 6^th most intelligent animal on the planet:

 

Approximate brain weights and body weights of some mammals, 

in order of brain weight.

Species                 Brain Weight   Body Weight

                        (approx.)      (approx.)

                        grams          tonnes

1. Sperm whale (male)     7,820        37.00

2. African elephant       7,500        5.00

3. Fin whale              6,930        90.00

4. Killer whale           5,620        6.00

5. Bottlenose dolphin     1,600        0.17

6. Human                  1,500        0.07

7. Cow                    500          0.6

 

Other brain related measurements, such as brain quality, and brain size in proportion to body size, have also been suggested as possible measures of intelligence, but none have been found to be valid.

 

3) Tools

 

Our ability to design, manufacture and utilize tools used to be touted as a symbol of our place above all other animals. Like brain size, tool making and use is also not a valid marker.

 

When marine researchers recently saw something strange on the snout of a dolphin in Shark Bay, Western Australia, they thought it was a massive tumor. On close examination it turned out to be a marine sponge that the dolphin was using as a protective glove while it fished.

 

Cetaceans are only the most recent of species to be added to the tool-users club.  Wolfgang Kohler was a psychologist who studied learning and thinking among animals. In the 1920s, he conducted a series of experiments to test the ability of chimpanzees to use tools. He found that the chimps were capable of some quite complex tool use. They used sticks to pull in bananas placed out of reach; as clubs to bring down fruit hung overhead, and sometimes they stood long sticks on end and climbed up them to grab the bananas before the stick fell over! In the wild, chimps have been observed breaking branches from trees and using them in a similar manner – effectively creating their own tools.

 

Some birds use tools also. Woodpecker finches and green jays will use a cactus spine or twig to pull grubs and insects from holes in trees. Egyptian vultures will pick up and throw rocks at ostrich eggs to break them.  Some green herons use ‘bait’ when they go fishing, dropping a small object onto the water to bring a hungry fish to the surface. The heron then snatches the fish for its dinner.

 

Tool use is not necessarily ‘encoded’ into a species behavior pattern. In the case of the sponge-using dolphins and the fishing herons, not all members of these species demonstrate this behavior. This suggests that tool use is acquired through cultural learning (meaning the animals teach it to one another) rather than genetics.

 

A crow once lived in the laboratory of psychologist and animal behaviorist Benjamin Beck. The crow's food needed to be moistened before he could eat it, and on one occasion someone forgot to provide water to moisten the food. The crow had a cup that he'd been given as a toy, so he used the cup to carry water from a trough on the other side of the room for his food.

 

In the wild, this behavior would not have occurred. This one crow learned to use this one tool for a specific purpose.

 

4) Monogamy

 

Primarily a European measure of civilization, monogamy is the practice of maintaining a sexual relationship with only one partner, originally intended to serve as a stable family unit for the raising of young. During the expansion of the British empire, polygamous natives of other lands were seen as ‘animals’ in part because of their non-monogamous behavior.

 

In reality, monogamy is not a very good measure of cultural advancement, and certainly is not a trait unique to humans. Ninety percent of bird species (Lack, 1968; Moller 1986) are monogamous. Although no-one can say for certain why most birds mate for life, an hypothesis that seems to have a lot of supporting evidence is that paired birds are able to dominate unpaired birds, and therefore win out in the fight for food and resources.

 

Monogamy is also found amongst Gibbons, Ravens and Penguins to name a few examples. Some animals actually put us to shame in their monogamous behavior patterns, for example: a species of hamster.

 

The male Djungarian hamster actually serves as a midwife, assisting in the delivery of the young from the mother. According to studies by Dr Katherine Wynne-Edwards and her colleagues at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, the male hamster pulls the birthing baby out of the female’s birth canal, then clears its air passage. This does not happen with the males of the closely related Siberian hamster, who only appear on the scene well after the birth (although the study does not state whether or not these males turned up smelling of beer and handing out cigars…).

 

5) Language

 

Once thought to be the exclusive domain of man, researchers are now finding that there is more complexity in animal vocalizations and body movements than was previously thought. Songbirds in particular have been shown to share the same genetic markers with humans that allow speech to occur. To the best of our knowledge, all life on Earth is made up of DNA – strands of genetic material that determine what we look like, how we breed, even how we eat, drink and think. Animals and humans share a lot of the same genes; in some cases as much as 97%. Many of these genes have been identified in terms of their function, while many more have not.

 

Research by a team led by Stephanie White, UCLA assistant professor of physiological science, supports the theory that two genes shared by humans and songbirds may play a critical role in human speech, and speech disorders. These genes are labeled FoxP1 and FoxP2.

 

A study published in 2001 revealed a single genetic mutation in each member of a family in England with a severe speech disorder; many members of this family, over three generations, have the speech disorder, and each of these family members has the mutation, while those family members without the speech disorder do not have this mutation. The mutation occurs in FoxP2, suggesting this was related to the speech disorder. White and her team also found that FoxP1 and FoxP2 overlapped in the same regions of the human brain as in the songbird brain. The suggestion then, is that both humans and songbirds have the capacity for speech because of the genes FoxP1 and FoxP2.

 

However, while this suggests that humans and some birds share the same basic capacity for speech, it does not mean that song birds talk, gossip and complain in the same way humans do. We do not know that they don’t, but it seems unlikely.

 

We should also note that language is not limited to sounds. Complex language can be just as effective visually; sign language and the page you are reading now are two examples of this. In the animal kingdom for example, worker bees dance to give detailed instructions to one another about the location of a particularly plentiful supply of pollen.

 

Language can also be transmitted through touch, as is the case with Braille, and through smell. We know that pheromones play an important role in providing information to us through our nostrils.  Hive animals such as Termites and Mole Rats use pheromones to transmit complex information and instructions rapidly throughout the hive, similar to the way commands are often relayed vocally amongst soldiers in combat, in a kind of ‘cascade’ effect.

 

6) Farming & Animal Husbandry

 

Keeping animals and growing crops so that we have a localized food source that we can control was long thought to be a behavior exclusive to mankind. In the 19^th century, a British mining engineer called Thomas Belt discovered this was not the case.

 

In his efforts to rid his garden of leaf-cutting ants, he noticed they carried slivers of green leaves into their underground nests.

 

In his book, A Naturalist in Nicaragua he notes that while others had guessed that they ate the leaf bits, or roofed their nests with them, he believed “the real use they make of them is as a manure, on which grows a minute species of fungus, on which they feed;—that they are, in reality, mushroom growers and eaters."  A century’s worth of study by other scientists has continually supported the conclusion that ants were farming long before man came up with the idea.

 

Ants also came up with the idea of herding cattle, except they use aphids instead of sheep. A variety of ant species rely for some or all of their food on the excretions of aphids. These aphids feed on the sap of plants, and their sugary excretions are known as honeydew.

 

‘Wild’ Aphids either kick away the honeydew droplets with their hind legs or squirt the drops away as they excrete them. ‘Tame’ Aphids attended by ants, however, drop them in such a way as to make it easy for the ants to lap up the honeydew. In some cases, the aphids have stiff hairs called setae that form a basket to hold the honeydew until the ants eat.

 

 7) Construction

 

In animal architecture, form follows function. We all know what a bird’s nest looks like, and this is certainly a good example of animal construction. But animals also build roads, wells, tunnels, heating and air conditioning systems, stairways, ramps and doors with hinges and handles. Many of these are built by ‘hiving’ animals, such as ants, termites, mole rats and bees. In the societies these animals operate in, there is usually one head animal (e.g. Queen Bee, Queen Mole Rat etc) that makes the executive decisions, and the rest of the society is expected to carry out those decisions, whatever the personal cost.

 

The doors with hinges and handles are built by Trap-Door Spiders, a shy relative of the tarantula. The female builds a burrow and often lives there her entire life. The burrow has a trap door, hence the common spider name. The spider waits for prey and then opens the door, ambushing the small invertebrates that serve as its food source.

 

Finally, perhaps the strangest example of animal construction is the Theater and Revue. The male Bower Bird will construct an amphitheater of sticks and branches and leaves, then decorate it with anything colorful he can find. The female Bower Bird then sits in this construction, and watches the ‘stage’ where the male performs an intricate song and dance in order to win her over.

 

Construction, Tools, Language, Monogamy, Burial, Farming - all have their counterparts in the animal kingdom. So what makes humans different? Perhaps the following story will help answer that question.

 

Celtic Warrior by Theodor de Bry in 1590

 

It was just before that mighty confrontation, known as the Second Battle of Moytura, where the Tuatha De Danann met the Fomorians face to face that Lugh, the deity after whom Lughnasad is named, first comes to Irish Celtic consciousness. He showed up at the walls of Tara during the celebration of King Nuada's reinstatement.

 

"Who are you and what is your purpose?" was the challenge from the doorkeeper.

"Tell King Nuada that Lugh Long Arm is here. Take me to the King for I can help him."

"And what skill do you have, for no one enters Tara without qualifications," replied the man at the gate.

"Question me doorkeeper, I am a carpenter."

"We have one already."

"Question me, I am a smith."

"Sorry, we have one of them as well.

"I am a champion warrior."

"We've got our own."

 

At this point, it appeared that anything that Lugh might offer, the gateman would reject, but Lugh persisted with a list of his qualifications - harpist, poet, sorcerer, one skilled in the strategies and tactics of war, cupbearer, metalworker and physician. In each case, the gateman replied that they already had one.

 

Finally Lugh said, "Then ask the good King if he has anyone who has all of these skills. If he does, I will not enter Tara."

 

When King Nuada heard these words, he sent his best chess player to the main gate of Tara to challenge Lugh to a game of chess. Lugh firmly trounced him. At this, Lugh was finally welcomed to Tara, and went on to lead the warriors as Battle Chief of the Tuatha De Danann to victory over Eochaid and the Fomorians.

 

Humanity is not unique merely because of one quality that we possess that animals do not.  Our uniqueness comes (at least in part) from possessing multiple remarkable skills whereas most other species may have only one or two.

 

The possession and effective use of these different skill sets requires a brain of cognitive abilities unlike any other we know of in the Animal Kingdom. We are, each of us, like Lugh the Long Arm with our myriad abilities. It is this then, perhaps, that makes us different, and human.

About the Author

Vaughan Wynne-Jones is author of "Being Human – A Guide to Metaphysics" and various articles on spirituality. If you have any questions about this article or wish to publish it elsewhere you may contact him via vwj@pagannews.com. This article is extracted from his new book, What Happens When you Die (working title). Potential publishers contact vwj@pagannews.com for more information.