On the slow rate of acceptance of theories that change how we see the world

This is a cut and paste job from https://www.facebook.com/MegafaunaDotCom/ because I believe it should be more widely read than the small but dedicated audience of this FB page, and this seems to be the only way to get to BUFFER it to my favourite social media.

Megafauna.com

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The long delay between the appearance of PaulTom Martin’s 1966 article and the acceptance of his global overkill theory (which still has not, of course, taken place) is comparable, in some ways, to the half-century delay between the 1915 appearance of Alfred Wegener’s book on continental drift and the final acceptance of that notion in the 1960s.

The main reason for the delay in Wegener’s case appears to have been his inability to identify the force driving the “shifting” he was arguing for. Even after Arthur Holmes correctly identified that force in the 1920s, as convection cells in the earth’s magma created by radioactive heating, the scientific community wanted the details of this mechanism spelled out for them before they would accept the idea of moving continents. It was, therefore, only after the phenomenon of sea-floor spreading and subduction had been fully elucidated in the early nineteen-sixties, that Wegener was finally vindicated.

So what, one might ask, is holding up the full acceptance of Paul’s insights? What essential element of that theory remains undiscovered and undescribed?

Paul’s insights will undoubtfully be fleshed out with plenty of new facts and details in the coming decades, and some of his conclusions may well be modified in the process,[60] but I do not expect that any of the essential elements of his overkill theory will be called into question. Like John Alroy I believe that the overkill hypothesis has “already… been ‘proven’ as thoroughly as any historical hypothesis can be.”[61]

"All of the key evidence was available years ago, and all of it firmly refutes competing, ecologically-oriented hypotheses. The event’s timing, rapidity, selectivity and geographic pattern all make good sense according to the anthropogenic model, and no sense at all otherwise. To my eyes, this assessment is so clear that further “tests” are not really necessary."

No intellectually respectable objections are raised, nowadays, against the proposition that the arrival of our species on New Zealand during or near the 13th century AD[62] was the cause of the disappearance, within a few centuries after that arrival, of New Zealand’s avian megafauna. The approximately 38 bird species that were swept away by the first wave of human settlement on those islands included the world’s largest eagle, nine species of moa, the largest of which stood more than 10 feet tall, and two unique “adze-bill” predator/omnivores.[63]

Nor does any scientific doubt remain that the combination of human predation, human-caused habitat alteration, and human-introduced species which caused the New Zealand collapse, caused similarly sudden and catastrophic species-losses on Madagascar and on the Hawaiian Archipelago[64] after humans reached those islands some five hundred years before their arrival on New Zealand.

Astonishingly, however, the clear and undisputed fact that these Early Medieval megafaunal collapses were caused by humans, has not been used as a “Rosetta Stone” to decipher to the general satisfaction the meaning of the similarly catastrophic losses of megafauna which took place earlier in the Holocene and in the late Pleistocene; losses which took place on all the islands[65] ─ and indeed all the regions and continents ─ which were (like New Zealand, Madagascar, and Hawaii) being settled for the first time by the genus Homo.

All scientific paradigm shifts are disconcerting and uncomfortable to one degree or another. Wegener’s theory itself provoked bitter resistance, involving personal ridicule as well as threats to careers and to funding. Paul’s insights touch, however, on issues which are even more unsettling than the geomorphological truths Wegener was urging upon the scientific community: the global overkill theory implies a great many controversial things about the evolutionary history of our own species, and human evolution is a notoriously emotive subject in its own right. Paul’s insights bear directly, moreover, on the even more fraught issue of the enormous human-caused extinction our planet is presently undergoing. What effect would Paul’s new ecological history have on our attitude toward that extinction? What would result, for instance, from its collision with the ideas of someone like the Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki who believes humans can stop exterminating other species by re-establishing the “sacred balance”[66] that “pre-industrial” or “indigenous” peoples are thought to have maintained with the natural world?

Paul’s insights need not, in my opinion, replace the Rousseauian myths propagated by those who share Suzuki’s beliefs with a Hobbesian caricature of a species burdened by an aberrant level of cruelty and aggression. Humans beings — subject as they unquestionably are to the normal complement of mammalian drives — clearly do a great many things which fall foursquare into our conceptions of “cruelty” or “aggression,” but the exceptional intelligence which makes humans so much more destructive than other animals, also allows them to experience something that is literally inconceivable for other animals: concern for the survival of other species.

While I was writing this, the BBC ran an item about the survivor of an attack by a great white shark, who now campaigns for the protection of the species that nearly caused his death.[67] It’s unthinkable, of course, that a baboon which has survived an attack by a leopard, could be motivated by that attack to make efforts to protect leopards. It is only “man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends… to the humblest living creature,”[68] that could react in such a biologically anomalous way.

“Save the whales” became something of a joke among those who deride “tree huggers,” but it is momentous, of course, rather than funny that Homo sapiens has developed enough understanding to step back from the edge of wiping out the planet’s very largest megafauna.

Human erosion of the biosphere has, however, gone far beyond the overkill of large species. It has developed via agriculture — i.e. the elimination of unwanted life-forms on given tracts of land to create monocultures — into a great many other diversity-threatening activities. These include wholesale habitat destruction, the witting and unwitting introduction of alien species, and the alteration of oceanic and atmospheric chemistry by mining nitrogen from the air and fossil fuels from the earth. With the best will in the world, we may simply not be able to identify and ward off enough of the “thousand cuts” by which biodiversity is dying. It’s by no means impossible, therefore, that the anthropogenic extinction-spasm could continue, despite our best efforts, to the point where it degrades the biosphere’s ability to provide us with food, clean water and air.

* * *

The German word for despair is Verzweiflung. Maybe because it’s got Zweifel, “doubt,” as its root, it feels like the best label for the of the blend of perplexity and dismay I used to feel, before my exposure to Paul’s thinking, about the rising tide of extinctions my species is causing.

Paul’s insights didn’t lessen the dismay part of my Verzweiflung, but they did clear up some of the perplexity. On the most simplistic and emotional of levels, they brought me to the realization that my species wasn’t “bad” or “unnatural.” Homo sapiens has unquestionably had a tragic impact on the biosphere, but it, and the devastating level of its intelligence, are no less products of nature — of natural selection — than the coral-reef communities and rainforests whose existence it is currently threatening.

In order to survive on the Pliocene veld two and a half million years ago, our ancestors had to defend themselves against and compete with a formidable suite of big predators. The outcome of that struggle was by no means assured: the only weapon those hominins possessed to counter the all-too-tangible teeth, claws and horns of their antagonists was an abstract and rudimentary ability to think up useful new devices and behaviors. Today we are involved in another struggle with an uncertain outcome: to prevent that ability from making the earth unlivable for other organisms, and, indeed, for ourselves.

The only weapon available to us in this latter-day struggle is, ironically, the same one that enabled our destructiveness in the first place: the power of the human brain. But that brain cannot, of course, come to grips with the forbidding complexities of this problem if it’s not in possession of the relevant information.

The real facts of our species’ ecological history are an indispensable part of that information, and nobody has done more to make them available to us than Paul Martin.

From http://megafauna.com/tribute-to-paul-s-martin/. Follow up the footnotes there if you're interested.

What are we going to do about Mom?

Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies - Research

Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies - Research: "Love Unlimited
A poem-plea (through paired rhymes) by Francisco Gomes de Matos

We may learn to classify
But have we learned to dignify?

We may learn to dare
But have we learned to care?

We may learn to insist
But have we learned to assist?

We may learn to obstruct
But have we learned to construct?

We may learn to cope
But have we learned to hope?

We may learn to self-actualize
But have we learned to the OTHER-realize?

We may learn to reject
But have we learned to protect?

We may learn to humiliate
But have we learned to commiserate?

We may learn to repudiate
But have we learned to appreciate?

We may learn to computerize
But have we learned to humanize?

We may learn to philosophize
But have we learned to philanthropize?

We may learn to distrust
But have we learned to co-trust?

We may learn to exclude
But have we learned to include?

We may learn to abstain
But have we learned to life-sustain?

We may learn to ignite
But have we learned to unite?

We may learn to conspire
But have we learned to inspire?

We may learn to say
But have we learned to pray?

We may learn to withstand
But have we learned to understand?

We may learn to live
But have we learned to give?

We may learn to live
But have we learned to love?

We may learn to do well
But have we learned TO DO GOOD?

We may learn love to limit
But have we learned LOVE to UNlimit?

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Bush Eyes - A Visitor's Guide to the Kruger National Park (en route to the FIFA World Cup)

When you enter the Kruger National Park (Kruger) for the first time, do not be deceived by the well-maintained paved roads, road signs and visitors’ facilities. You are entering primitive Africa. The bushveld looks just like it does in the wildlife programmes on TV: tall, brownish “red-grasses”, bushes with vicious thorns, scrappy looking trees, and magnificent umbrella thorns. This is not an ancient, carefully manicured forest surrounding a Buddhist temple in Japan, nor the proud display of exotic specimens collected by British explorers where Londoners now go to picnic on a sunny summer Sunday.

If you arrive with a pre-constructed wish list of what you want to see, put it away now. Commonly, new visitors want to see “The Big Five”, and many do. Some tour operators even issue “I’ve seen the Big Five” certificates and T-shirts, to commemorate the achievement of that goal. Kruger is about so much more than the hyped-up Big Five. The diversity of life that surround you are too great even to see, far less to absorb or understand.

There are things that are in many ways far more fascinating than watching a sleeping pride of lions hidden far off in the long grass in the shade of an acacia tree. Open your mind rather to “The Little 27”. There are far more than 27 special experiences awaiting you in the bushveld of Kruger. This is just a figure of speech, though, because, to absorb them, you need to develop a pair of bush eyes. Bush eyes, bush ears, bush nose: bush consciousness.

Having ‘bush eyes’ has nothing to do with 20/20+ vision. There is a way of observing and a way of thinking in the African bush. Yes, eyesight is a distinct advantage, but your sense of time has to change. Your sense of smell has to change. What may smell disgusting in New York may smell exotic or enticing in Kruger. Let the slow, uneventful tranquillity of the scenery and the climate descend upon you.

Once you learn to use your senses intuitively and in unison, you’ll have acquired bush eyes with bush consciousness. You’ll see and enjoy things other people aren’t even aware of. At the same time, your chances of seeing the high-profile creatures like lions and leopards will increase because you will be on bush-time rather than home-time. By spending time watching a herd of impala, you’ll develop a disturbing sense that a predator may be heading your way. By hearing the go-away bird (grey lourie) give its raucous call, combined with the impalas’ behaviour, you’ll start checking the grass beyond the antelope for the movement of a predator – the sloping shoulders, the open, panting maw, the intent stare of yellow eyes.

If you’ve never seen African animals in their natural habitat, you don’t really know what to look for. You’ll see only the obvious: the impala herd blocking the road, the glossy starlings and hornbills waiting to steal the crumbs off your plate at the Shingwedzi Camp restaurant, the rhino asleep by the side of the road, the elephant herd at play in the Letaba River.

Its impossible to see everything that Kruger has to offer, no matter how many times you may return. What is possible, however, is to develop a way of noticing things.

Deep in the bush, hidden by a myriad of grasses, shrubs and trees, a slight movement may catch your eye. Scan the scene. Your eyes search for the obvious, but you see nothing. In the shimmering heat, there is one patch of grass that seems to be slightly browner, slightly greyer than the rest. Concentrate on just that spot. Suddenly a tail twitches and a zebra comes clearly into focus. She’s not brown or grey at all, as you well know, but her black and white stripes, which are oh so obvious when she’s in plain sight, render her invisible to the untrained eye. She shimmers uncannily in synch with both the grass and the heat. Her stripes blend fully with the landscape. She is invisible to the untrained eye.

The best way to train your senses to find animals and birds in the bushveld is to watch them whenever the opportunity is there. If your attention is focused simply on photographing what you see, you will see only the superficial image you capture in the photograph. By all means, take the pictures, but then put the camera away, and watch. Relax. Let your mind drift. It will initially drag you home, to your day-to-day interests and worries. Relax some more, and gradually you will notice the way the individual animals in the herd behave.

They are affectionate. They are alert. They have issues. A mare with an overdeveloped sense of independence wanders too far from the herd and is nudged back by the stallion. As the zebras move around, the light catches their colours differently. They’re not just black and white. Look at those shadow stripes in the white – is that what gives them the brownish shimmer at a distance? How can a shadow stripe over-shadow the stark contrast between black and white? Some stand in pairs, head to tail, switching their tails to keep the flies off each other’s noses. What do you think the relationship is like between those two? Do they have a closer friendship than with the others? Do they always stand in the same pairs?

Gradually restlessness takes hold of the herd: they’re moving off. Why do they do that? They don’t seem nervous, so it must be for water or for different grazing. Where is the nearest water? Might they cross the road? Might you see your first live zebra crossing? Look! There are birds piggy-backing on the zebras – there’s one going right up the guy’s nose! Why does he put up with it?

When you see what appears to be a heap of elephant dung on the road, slow down and check. You may find that it is a guinea fowl searching for undigested seeds in a real heap of dung, or it may be small group of dwarf mongooses getting ready to cross the road. Or, sometimes you may be so deceived by your assumption that a greyish-brown mass on the road is elephant dung (because you are bound to see a lot of elephant dung) that you don’t slow down in time to avoid disturbing a snoozing young hyaena.

Often, by stopping to look at something small, you get to see something really big. Recently on a game walk at Biyamiti Bush Camp, we stopped to look at two golden orb spiders and their huge intricate webs. The main silk strand is a thick, golden yellow anchor line strong enough; it seemed to me, to substitute for the front end of a fly fishing line. Our guide pointed out the little males, waiting to have their way with the huge, ominously beautiful females before being eaten themselves.

In looking at the cobweb, my eye caught a shape on the opposite bank of a small ravine perhaps 40 meters beyond the cobweb. It looked like a big granite boulder. There was something to the shape and the colour of this mass that held my eye. The grey wasn’t quite the same as the other granite rocks in the area. I refocused back on the spiders and in that split-second the boulder moved ever so slightly. “White rhino” I muttered.

We ended up doing a 20 minute detour, following the rhino as he moved and grazed. Others on the hike took what must have been award-winning pictures. There was no need for zoom lenses here! Because it was quite a windy day, and we were downwind from him, with his poor eyesight and impaired-by-the-wind sense of smell, the rhino remained as blissfully unaware of us as we had been of him until we had stopped for the spider. My “bush eyes” were in top form. I wasn’t consciously looking for rhinos; I was simply in the African bush, ready to experience whatever opportunities might present themselves. One of my fellow-hikers whispered “no wonder they are so vulnerable to poachers – in a wind like this, a man with a gun can come within SUCH easy striking distance!”

In our average urbanised lives our noses are assaulted by so many aggressive and offensive industrial smells, some of them stinking like sulphur and diesel, some of them the sticky sweetness of artificial perfumes, that in self-defence, we tune out our sense of smell to a significant degree. My sister, a great yachtswoman in her day, told me that when you’re sailing the Indian Ocean, you can smell the Spice Islands days before you can see them. Similarly, she says, you can smell Africa long before it first appears on the horizon. I understood about the Spice Islands because I have been to Zanzibar, but “what does Africa smell like, then?” I asked. “Dust, heat, sweat, blood, musk.”

With all the conveniences of air-conditioning, CD players, coffee cup holders, 4-wheel drive, sunroofs and so on, it has become possible to visit all parts of Kruger even at the height of summer. It is indeed comforting to settle into an air-conditioned vehicle, with the windows up, driving through the sweltering bushveld, cocooned from the heat and dust. But, the closed windows, the noise of the air conditioner, even the delightful coolness of the vehicle, all serve to isolate you from the true bush experience.

Maybe from 100Kms offshore Africa does smell of dust, heat, sweat, blood and musk. However, when you’re right here, surrounded by the African bush, the smells are far more complex and thrilling. The gentle sweetness of the fine purplish blossoms of the apple leaf tree (Lonchocarpus Capassa) evokes memories of tea under a wisteria trellis with a favourite grandmother. The potato bush will catch you unawares. There will be a strong, very familiar smell that reminds you of food without immediately letting on what it is. You will cast back in your memory and will suddenly remember the fresh raw smell of peeled potatoes, perhaps being cut up as French fries (or what in South Africa is known as “slap chips”). THAT is the smell of the potato bush.

But, the most awesome smell is that of a bull elephant in musth. If you’re driving along with the windows open, the air-conditioning and the CD player silent, idly watching the landscape drift by, and then gradually a feeling of dread and thrill, revulsion and desire wells up within you, it will have been brought on by this smell. Slow down and look out carefully for a large elephant. And, when you find him, notice the streams of fluid running down the sides of his face. They start at his temples, sort of midway between his eye and his ear canal. THAT is the source of the smell.

Imagine, if you can smell it long before seeing him, and if it causes such feelings of arousal and revulsion and restlessness in you, a member of a totally different species, what effect that smell must have on other elephants. From the simple act of driving with your windows open, you may see an elephant you may otherwise not have noticed, and you are lead into pondering the lives of elephants as you drive on, rather than dwelling on the normal worries of your civilised world.

Even if you visit Kruger in the winter months, you may find your car’s air conditioner a welcome relief in the middle of the day. The argument for opening up to the smells and sounds of Kruger is not an argument for punishment through heat exhaustion. By all means enjoy the mod cons of your car if you’re travelling in the heat of the day, but allow yourself the luxury of the smells and sounds in the early mornings and late afternoons. In this way, you will hear the excitable chatter of the arrowmarked babblers long before you see them clustering in a tree by the side of the road.

Or, if you visit during their mating season, you may hear the very strange clack-clack-clack-peep-peep-peep of the redcrested korhaan. And, once you hear it, stop the car and look around quickly, not at the ground, but in the air above where the sound came from. Chances are that you will see a male korhaan shoot straight up in the air, and then suddenly drop, as though shot. He tumbles to the ground as you watch, aghast, and then you thrill as he opens up his wings at the last possible moment, and stops the free-fall. What woman can resist a courting ritual like that?

Upon your return to camp, someone will likely ask you whether you’ve “seen anything”. They probably mean lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos. You say “yes, a redcrested korhaan and some arrowmarked babblers and a chameleon crossing the road. (And, what you think was a 2000-year old ironwood tree (Combretum Imberbe), with its organ-pipe branches pointing up into the sky, evocative of a Bach fugue playing full blast in a glorious European cathedral.” They say “Oh. Bad luck: we saw LIONS.”

Where we explore the wonderfulness of serendipity and synchronicity

A friend of mine decided, about 10 years ago, to close down his specialised legal practice in Vancouver in order to take up writing as a profession. He was a guru in the negotiating and drafting of technology transfer agreements and he lived in a lovely lovely apartment in Kitsilano where one could see Mount Baker from the window, in its various daily avatars.

He had always had a passionate interest in natural history and the natural sciences but somehow first had to become a lawyer. Having done that, he sought fulfillment in fishing trips to wild and distant places - Northern Canada, South Africa, Suriname, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Plettenberg Bay, Cape Breton Island, Vancouver Island, to name a few. Stimulating as that was, he still had this nagging thing in him - his deep curiosity about animals and human evolution would not be shut up for the catching of a lake trout or a tarpon or the signing of a sophisticated agreement in Texas (also influenced by fishing, by the way). He decided to take time out of being a lawyer to write a book on the extinction of the megafauna (large mammals).

I persuaded him to abandon Mount Baker, Wreck Beach and Robson Street and to return to South Africa. My sense was that the book would come alive in the dust and musth of Africa - where we evolved, where the majority of the world's modern large mammals live. He took up my offer and returned to South Africa to research and write this book. Although he met people like Richard Leaky and Ian Player, and animals like Clive Walker's orphan black rhino, Bwana, those meetings (except for kissing Bwana on his snotty snout) did not influence the content of the book in anyway but rather gave him a greater sense of urgency to tell the story the way HE sees it.

He spent time in the Kruger National Park, researching in the wonderful library at Skukuza and travelling many many miles over numerous trips, observing animals, birds, insects and learning about trees and grasses. Each trip we took to Kruger made its own contribution to THE BOOK, which we started referrring to as Megafauna. When we travelled to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and explored the ancient river beds of the Auob and the Nossob he realised that he had to add a chapter on the Ice Age. When we stopped over in the Karoo National Park that belief was strengthened and the structure of the chapter fleshed out. When he met Bob Brain he had to revisit the matter of fire - when and where did Humankind learn to control fire? While I was watching the herd of elephants bathe and play in the Sabie River, he was watching the fabulously diverse microcosm of insects on a small bush just next to the car, making notes, thrilling at the biodiversity of it all, at peace with the world in a way that a deal to sell onboard computers to London taxicab companies could never do.

When he visited the Bryanston Organic Market (which is where I'm on my way to right now) he met a man who spins yarn from rabbit fur. In their discussion, his insights into the power of ontogenetic innovation, already thrilled by Clovis spear points and the mammoth hunts stepped forward to the making of thread and cloth and the creative power of human communities moved him to think more deeply about how human techniques of communication and social structuring must have served to contribute to the killing off of the large mammals of North America. He went home, pulled some tufts of hair from Kodiak, his favourite Siberian husky, and rubbed and pulled the strands of fluff together until he had made a piece of string, respectable in length and breaking strain. With that he disappeared into his study to map out his 'String' chapter and to make some modifications to his chapter on 'a radial different kind of faculty'.

The book eventually got a name: "Megafauna: First Victims of Human-Caused Extinction". He took on the popular sentiment that aboriginal peoples were uniquely attuned to nature and did it no harm, commonly advocated by well known folk like David Suzuki and more recently again trotted out in the sci-fi 'noble savage' myth movie, Avatar. (Which I loved and am definitely going to see again despire the sentimental story line.) He also took on the equally entrenched although somewhat less known myth that the last ice age caused the death of the ancient megafauna. He takes a dispassionate and in-depth look at the evolution of homo Sapiens and the impact we've had on our environment since we started walking on our hind legs, using our hands to make things, talking to figure things out and pass messages on.

The thing, as I understand it, is that from the very beginning, from when we were homo Erectus we started shaping the world - plants, animals, river courses, pathways, food, to suit our species' needs. We did so unconsciously, without ill intent, by just being alive - wanting to eat, sleep, procreate and enjoy life within the constraints we faced. By the time we became homo Sapiens the ecological impact of our species radically sped up - ethnicity, spirituality and political orientation had nothing to do with it. The only difference from then to now is that now we have the consciousness about the consequences of our behaviour - our natural behaviour in the interest of our own self-preservation. It isn't our fault that we're so highly evolved and that we've been destroying species for upwards of 13,000 years, but it surely is our fault, once we recognise the truth about our powers, if we continue to do mindless damage and fail to use our powers to preserve and protect what's left. The story of Adam and Eve comes to mind - our job is to take care of and nurture our planet, either because God will be angry if we don't or because we'll destroy ourselves in the process of destroying it.

And then, to get the book published. Everybody wanted to know what Baz's qualifications were. Somehow a degree in English and Fine Arts and two law degrees and a book encompassing evolution, paleontology, archaeology, linguistics, zoology and geology, not to mention climatology and some personal anectodes (in which I feature regularly) didn't seem to be a match. So we put it on the Internet, where it developed a small but loyal following from Australia, Russia, Germany and South Africa. Gradually it has taken off - the number of hits and downloads and the amount of emails now coming from that site is quite phenomenal - from all over the world. It is sort of working like compound interest - initially the growth was so small as to be barely noticeable; now as the visits increase they are triggering an even great increase in visits. These are exciting times.

And so who is this friend? Baz Edmeades, father of Eric Edmeades and Nik Edmiidz. Previously married to Delphine du Toit, when we were both much younger.

As for the book - where to find it? Well, for now, most of it is still downloadable/readable at www.megafauna.com