There is a place in Kenya, about 50 miles southwest of Nairobi, called Olorgesailie, where evidence of humanoid activity is found. The activity was making stone axes. The stones from which these axes were made were carried from mountains several miles away. The stone axes themselves were too large and rather awkward to be of any known practical use.
The humanoids who made them were of a type we call homo erectus – about the size of chimpanzees and as smart as a two-year-old modern human. They had organized this activity rather well. Axes to be sharpened were brought to one area, and discards were placed in another area. All of this was done along the side of a lake, a rather pleasant environment.
None of their bones have been found. Apparently, they went elsewhere to die.
As best we can tell, they were doing this for approximately a million years, vastly longer than our species, homo sapiens, has been in existence.
According to my source – A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson – this group of homo erectus were eventually replaced by homo sapiens. I disagree. I believe this group of homo erectus became homo sapiens.
Over the course of a million years, these creatures became bigger, stronger, smarter. Not through the inheritance of acquired characteristics – a process that has been proven not to occur – but through the process of natural selection. Bigger, stronger, smarter males have more success with females. Bigger, stronger, smarter females have more success bearing and caring for offspring. Those males and females who are smaller, weaker, dumber produce fewer offspring. These creatures experienced the value of prolonged exercise, lifting and carrying stones for miles, cooperative behavior, and perseverance. And those who had learned these lessons well passed them on to their offspring.
Those members of the species homo erectus who had migrated elsewhere and had not benefited from this million-years-long activity were not as big, strong and smart as those they had left behind.
As we know from the geological record, there are recurrent disasters in the history of our planet. As awesome as the eruption of millions of cubic miles of magma over a period of over a million years which produced the Siberian traps 250 million years ago, as awesome as the six-mile-diameter asteroid that produced the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs and most living species, as awesome as the eruption of the Toba super-volcano almost 75,000 years ago that exterminated almost 99 percent of the human beings living at that time, as awesome as the Tunguska incident, in which a small asteroid or similar object exploded over a remote region of Siberia in 1908 with a force a thousand times that of the Hiroshima A-bomb, or merely as awesome as the small asteroid that exploded over a Russian city a few years ago, injuring some 1,500 people but killing no one.
What happened to homo erectus? Perhaps, one giant catastrophe exterminated all or almost all of them some 200 or 300 thousand years ago. Or perhaps, there have been several catastrophes, in various parts of the world, ultimately leaving no survivors of that species – except the bigger, stronger, smarter creatures of Olorgesailie, who became our ancestors.
Why did they do it? Why were they carrying stones for miles and beating them into a shape that was barely useful?
I don’t think they knew.
Do bees know why they do what they do? We don’t ask, because the answer seems obvious to us, and because not only do the bees benefit but we benefit as well, from their honey.
But look at the squirrel. My car is bearing down on the creature, and it zig-zags. It could easily dash across the road and survive. But it zig-zags, and gets hit. Does the squirrel know why it does that? We tend to liken the squirrel to human beings who often behave stupidly when we are terrified, but I don’t think that is the case. Squirrels that live in the woods are most often threatened by foxes. Zig-zagging confuses the fox – who is distracted by the bushy tail – giving the squirrel time to get to a tree, which the fox cannot climb.
I’ve noticed that squirrels in settled areas are more likely to dash straight across the road. Squirrels are too dumb to learn this behavior. What happens is that squirrels that zig-zag get hit by cars and die, producing fewer offspring (or none). Squirrels that dash straight across the road live and produce offspring with the same tendency.
In wooded areas, squirrels that dash straight ahead get caught and eaten by the fox, and produce fewer offspring (or none). Squirrels that zig-zag are more likely to escape from the fox and have babies who are more likely to zig-zag also. A selection process, not learned behavior.
Like the bee, the squirrel does not know why it does what it does.
I have done things in my life without knowing why I did them – good things, from which I have benefited, and from which others have benefited as well.
When I was five years old, I had started taking piano lessons. I remember the teacher – her mother was a foster-grandmother to my brother and myself – but I don’t remember any of the lessons. What I do remember is my strong desire to get home from kindergarten and practice. On cold winter days, I was so anxious to practice I would dunk my frozen hands in hot water because I could not wait for them to thaw out. I don’t know why, but practicing the piano was important to me. I liked what it was doing to my fingers.
In the 16th soorah of the Qur’an, the 68th and 69th aayaat, Allah tells us that he inspires the bee to do what she does, and that from the belly of the bee comes a fluid that benefits us.
I believe that the creatures at Olorgesailie were inspired by Allah to do what they did, without having any idea why they were doing it. But if they had not done it, we would not be here to scratch our heads about it. The answer is simple: It is the plan of Allah.
I did not know when I was five years old that I would eventually learn the fundamental importance of music to human life. Not for entertainment, but to create the beings Allah intends us to be. But, alas! People don’t know. So, I have much work, much teaching, much demonstrating to do.
I did not know when I started learning to read-recite the Qur’an the fundamental importance of the Qur’an to the survival of humanity.
We need to read-recite the Qur’an – even if we are a small minority of the human population and even of those who call themselves Muslims (without knowing what the word means). The Qur’an changes us, and we may be acquiring the qualities needed to survive the challenges that humanity faces.
We are facing multiple challenges. The challenge of a group of people, coming out of Europe a few centuries ago, who kill and exterminate, enslave and oppress, without regret or remorse, who invent weapons capable of killing millions or even billions with their blasts and radioactive aftermath, who pollute the environment, and cause catastrophic climate change. They pride themselves on incredible technological advances even while hundreds of millions of their own people suffer from acute psychological disorders. They are an extinction level event from which they themselves and all of humanity may not survive.
Read-reciting the Qur’an may seem as useless to you as carrying stones from distant mountains and beating them into pointless shapes. But it is not the seemingly useless activity that is crucial. What is crucial is what it does to you.
Which Way Is Up? 