KJ kjinkhoo at gmail.com
On 1/1/06, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk> > wrote:
>
> On Sat, 31 Dec 2005, KJ wrote:
>
> > The current story of human evolution suggests that human beings
> > almost didn't make it -- the line that became homo sapiens was down to
around 7000 individuals -- and that the 'secret' of pulling
> > through was learning to be cooperative, to work together, and not
cut-throat competition. The only other line that survived, it now
> > appears, were the Flores hobbits; all the other lines just died out.
>That's a great story, KJ. Do you know of a good cite that sums it up as
sharply as you just did but with more footnotes?
I got this from a documentary I happened to catch some time back. The near extinction thesis comes from David Goldstein and Stanley Ambrose's work, and Ambrose takes up the cooperation theme.
Kj
^^^^^^^ CB: I claim my descent from this group (Pace: Hobbits). If some evolutionary psychologists or Naked Apists want to say they descended from those primates fighting and beating each other up and forming little male dominance hierarchies, naturally aggressing all over the place, fine. Let them claim their ancestry and I'll claim mine. My primate ancestors were from the "see-no-evil/hear-no-evil/speak-no-evil/ DO NO EVIL" group. :>)
Probably, "Yes", on the "almost didn't make it " hypothesis. Necessity is the mother of invention; that's materialism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys
Three wise monkeys
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The three wise monkeys (in Japanese ÈýÔ³, sanzaru, or ÈýÆ¥ ¤ÎÔ³, sanpiki no saru, lit. "three monkeys") are a pictorial maxim. Together they embody the proverbial principle "to see no evil, hear no evil, and to speak no evil". The three monkeys are Mizaru (ÒŠÔ³), covering his eyes, who sees no evil; Kikazaru („¤«Ô³), covering his ears, who hears no evil; and Iwazaru (ÑÔ¤ï Ô³), covering his mouth, who speaks no evil.
The Three Wise Monkeys carved above the entrance to a stable in the Nikk¨ T ¨sh¨g¨± shrine in Japan.The source that popularized this pictorial maxim is a 17th century carving over a door of the famous Tosho-gu shrine in Nikko, Japan. The maxim, however, probably originally came to Japan with a Tendai-Buddhist legend possibly from India via China in the 8th century (Yamato Period). Though the teaching most probably had nothing to do with monkeys, the concept of the three monkeys originated from a word play on the fact that zaru in Japanese, which denotes the negative form of a verb, sounds like saru, monkey (actually it is one reading of Ô³, the Chinese character for monkey). The saying in Japanese is "ÒŠ¤¶¤ë¡¢Â„¤«¤¶¤ë¡¢ÑԤ虜¤ë " (mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru), literally "don't see, don't hear, don't speak".
They have also been a motif in pictures, e.g. ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock printings, by Kesai Eisen. Today they are known throughout Asia and in the Western world, but in the West generally the monkeys are See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil.
The idea behind the proverb was part of the teaching of god Vadjra, that if we do not hear, see or talk evil, we ourselves shall be spared all evil. This is similarly reflected in the English proverb "Talk of the devil - and you see his tail."
Sometimes there is a fourth monkey depicted with the three others, the last one Shizaru (¤·Ô³), covers his abdomen or crotch and symbolizes the principle of "do no evil".
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