30229YuNoHa27 The SapiensTreeOfKnowledge And So On

Q
MOST LIKELY, BOTH THE GOSSIP THEORY AND
THE THERE-IS-A-LION-NEAR-THE~RIVER THEORY ARE VALID?
Yet the truly unique feature of our language is nòt ìts ability to transmit information about men and lions!
Rather, it's the ability to transmit information about things that do nòt exìst at all? As far as we know, only
Sapiens càn tàlk abóut entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled! Legends,
myths, gods & religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution. Many animals & humans
could previously say, 'Careful! A lion!' Thanks to the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens acquired the
ability to say, 'Thd lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.' Thìs ability to speak about fictions ìf THÉ MÓST
UNIQUE FEATURE ÒF SAPIENS LANGUAGE?! It's relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can speak
about things that don't really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast!? You could never
convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven!
But why is it important? After all, fiction can be dangerously misleading or distracting! People who go to the
forest looking for fairies and unicorns would seem to have less chance of survival than people who go there
looking for mushrooms & deer? And if you spend hours praying to non/existing guardian spirits, aren't you
wasting precious time, time bètter spent foraging, fighting & fornicating? But fiction has enabled us not
merely to imagine things, but to dó só COLLECTIVELY! We càn weave common myths such as the
biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, ànd the nationalist myths of modern
states. Sùch myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers! Ants and
bees can also work together in huge numbers, but they do so in a very rigid manner & only with close
relatives? Wolves & chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small
numbers of other individuals that they know intimately! Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways
with countless numbers of strangers? That's why Sapiens rúle the WÒRLD, whereas ants eat our leftovers &
chimps are locked up in zoos & research laboratories!
20 dec 2017 - bewerkt op 22 dec 2017 - meld ongepast verhaal
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