Pushed our ancestors

What were the psychological characteristics of our ancestors? What has led them to change their relationship to the environment, particularly through agriculture? This is a question whose answers are still in their infancy.

A century ago, men of origin were portrayed as dark brutes, hirsutes, violent, without language, intelligence, love… This image of Epinal has undergone several corrections since then, but little is yet known about these distant forefathers. There are the cave paintings, which are found all over the world, which bear witness to a certain sensitivity, and to an amazing pictorial art, without knowing what their true role was in life then.

These vestiges date back to a few tens of thousands of years, but nothing tells us what the first Neandertalians, let alone the first pithecanthropists descended from the trees, could live and think. Strangely enough, we do not readily compare with the most often peaceful creatures of the Orangs-outans, the Gorillas, the Chimpanzees, and especially the Bonobos whose loving manners leave us pantois.

However, all these species, including the human species before civilizations, do not seem to have caused any harm to the planetary ecosystem. It is “civilized” men who can claim a monopoly. Is it only due to technological advances that allow for faster and easier destruction than before, or to psychological and behavioural changes?

Both causal chains are not exclusive. On the contrary, technical inventions and their generalization can be explained by psychic changes, and these innovations have been able by their nature to induce new psychic changes which in turn have favoured new artifacts and so on. It is most likely that there has been a step-by-step evolution that has led to what we now call civilization, with its plethora of ecological nuisances.

For example, the shift to the agricultural era, which is about ten thousand years old, seems to have been made very gradually. Is it the agricultural context that has allowed men to eat differently, or rather some food transformations that have demanded new ways of growing: this is a bit the problem of eggs and chickens. Both processes were mutually maintained and strengthened, leading to a diet focused mainly on cereals and animal milk.

Should the engine of the process be sought in convenience, in fear of famine, or in the proper qualities of this new diet? A factor that is never taken into account, but could have prevailed over the other co-factors, could be the presence of exorphins in cereal gluten and milk proteins. Research is needed to assess the role these euphoricists have played in the ascent to civilization, by insidiously changing behaviors, and that they may still play today in the obvious dependence that humanity shows for these food classes.

If this hypothesis were to be demonstrated, the psychological change induced by the food changes of the neolothic should be seen as the main engine of environmental degradation, as a result of the deforestation required for crops and overgrazing, which are major causes of desertification. Such a finding, confirmed by an ad hoc experiment, would not only make it possible to understand the psycho-ecological mechanisms that have led to the present situation and which make us prisoners, but also to correct the shot by reforming the eating habits of this awareness. This, as it would become more widespread, would give a spontaneous blow to agricultural degradation in the biosphere, or at least facilitate the acceptance of coercive measures.

The same reasoning may apply to many other psycho-ecological mechanisms leading to environmental degradation. The aim of ecogenetics is to highlight them, thanks to the combination of existing scientific knowledge and specific experimentation. We will thus be able to better understand the reasons why our ancestors have embarked on the adventure of civilization of which we are the heirs or accomplices, and whose planet is now at risk of making the cost…