Review of Pandora Seed: The Unforseen Cost of Civilization

I am going to use an acronym CRITIC to review the new book by Spencer Wells entitled Pandora Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization. This is based on the article in Skeptical Inquirer by Wayne R. Bartz: Teaching Skepticism via the CRITIC Acronym and the Skeptical Inquirer from the September/October 2002 Skeptical Inquirer.
C-Claim; what is the claim made? The overall claim of the book is Humanity needs a new mythos of learning to live with less if we are going to continue as a species, our greed "for more" fuels fundamentalism, mental illness, obesity, climate change, and the current issue of modernity. Dr. Wells is not advocating going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle but through development of civilization from Agriculture, we have develop languages, science, cultures, etc. that can not only influence our genome through Eugenics but also, as the last 10,000 years have shown, has given humanity resources and more importantly the responsibility for the sustainability of our species and planet.
R- Role of Claimant; who is making the claim? Dr. Spencer Wells is a Geneticist and residing director of the National Geography Genographic Project.
I- Information Backing Claim, what is it?
1. Modern anatomical Homo sapiens (i.e. modern humans) evolved in Africa 195,000 years ago and left Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago to populate the rest of the world. Other Hominid species like Homo erectus, Homo Ergaster which evolved into Homo neanderthalensis left Africa as well much earlier. Homo sapiens are the only Hominid species left, with Neanderthals dying out approximately 25,000 years ago in Europe.
2. Starting approximately 10,000 years ago Humans invented agriculture (probably a woman, since women did most of the gathering in hunter-gatherer societies) and replaced a hunter-gatherer diet with a sedentary agricultural diet high in Carbohydrates which is a contributing factor in our present problem of obesity. Obesity plays a significant role in diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases.
3. It was through agriculture that communities formed once there was enough food to sustain the community. Over the past 10,000 years these agricultural communities evolved into villages, villages into towns, towns into cities, cities into strong -centralized states that developed non-agricultural specializations like art, languages, religion which required priesthood,craftmen,merchant class, that is, all the hallmarks of what is now called civilization.
Test - Can the claim be tested? Dr. Wells shows how our DNA has for 6 million years, when human split from other primates, lived as hunter-gatherers and how when comparing actual data early hunter-gatherers to early agriculturalist lived longer, where taller, etc and for the last 10,000 years we moved from to a more sedentary life-style that is not necessarily conducive to a DNA and body that evolved from a hunter-gatherer life style. Obesity, other cost of civilization is what we are experiencing and living with today. The reason agriculturalist gained an advantage over hunter-gatherers is because they were able to have more offspring, and evolution is about passing on genes and whoever does this more successfully will have more offspring in future generations.
I- Independent Testing: Have the claim been tested by others? Yes, Jared Diamond have made similar claims in his books, Gun, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies and Collapse: How societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
C-Cause: What explanation, if any, is being proposed? The cause is agriculture. Agriculture taught humanity that we can control our resources to a certain extent. Through agriculture we developed food storage, which lead to surpluses, this lead to gains in status by bartering and selling the surplus. With the sedentary lifestyle people were less likely to give up their resources therefore there was more widespread warfare over limited resources. Agriculture in controlling our resources created civilization and the idea that we are the masters of our own fates, but we have over-extended ourselves by the greed "for more", moving ever increasingly to a world of haves and haves not and the cost of civilization (fundamentalism, global warming, war etc.).

John D. Socrates

Faith , Suicide Bombers, and Doubt

Most believers I know don't believe what they profess to believe, they are the first to go to the doctor, they take advantage of the medicine and technology of a modern secular society while they bash secularism and science. They do all this while claiming to believe in Divine protection and healing. It would seem that of all people on earth who should not be afraid of harm or death it would be some one who believes in an afterlife. You have to admit that suicide bombers seem to believe in what they profess. The suicide bomber wants certainty or to be in control and so they take a leap of blind faith into the most uncertain or uncontrolled event there is, death, and what happens after death. In their leap of faith in trying to prove they are certain they do the most intolerable act there is, they kill and maim others; all in the name of their god. It is ironic that suicide is as Schopenhauer wrote "Suicide may also be looked upon as an experiment, as a question which man puts to Nature and compels her to answer. It asks, what change a man's existence and knowledge of things experience through death? It is an awkward experiment to make; for it destroys the very consciousness that awaits the answer." I think a suicide bomber shows us what a leap of faith is(it is the desire for certainty in an uncertain world), it is a conclusion that the individual has made about the value of their life and its worth to them, and based on the results it is not much. Like I wrote in my certainty in uncertainty blog. Our greatest fear is death because 1. we cannot control it and 2. of what may or may not happen after death, these two things are uncertain variables in our existence. I like all people want certainty but I will settle for reasonableness. I think reasonableness is the balance between certainty and uncertainty, it is the give or take or tolerance that is innate in the universe itself, at least according to the Principle of Uncertainty, which essentially means we cannot know everything just some things, you can know either the momentum of something or its location but not both. As I stated earlier, I like other people want certainty or to be in control, but I am skeptical that I am. Did I determine the day I was born, my gender, sex, name, or ethnicity? I think I can be aware that I am not in control or that there is a place for doubt, especially in a time where everyone are so damn certain. Think about it...