The transition from ape to hominin began about six million years ago with the ability to walk upright.  This was not an easy accomplishment.  It creates major engineering conflicts and does not happen unless it offers valuable survival benefits.  The quadruped supports its internal organs with a robust abdominal wall.  The biped bears all that load on the pelvic floor, which has several essential openings.  These cause hernias, organ prolapses, and birth problems.  

Also, the quadruped has, obviously, four points of support, while the biped has only two.  Both must be under the body.  This creates an angle between the thigh bone and the leg bone, which causes the supporting tendons to bowstring and pop out of place.  It is called a patella subluxation, and today it requires a trip to the local ER.  However, if it happened while being chased by a saber toothed cat, it would be much more inconvenient.

There must have been some offset in survival ability to justify such maladaptive consequences of upright gait.  Initially, it was the ability to commit larceny.  Hominins learned to walk long before they made tools.  They were omnivorous primates, and there was a ready supply of dead meat stashed in trees by carnivores.  The great advantage of early bipedalism was the ability to carry heavy stuff long distances. The earliest bipedal hominins made their living by stealing carcasses cached by carnivores. 

Obviously, it was not safe to eat those carcasses on site.  The ability to move them, to carry them miles back to the tribe and away from the owner’s stash site would have been a huge survival advantage.  It was basically free meat for the family.  That was the first driving force for evolution of bipedalism. 

Other primates cannot do this.  The chimpanzee can only carry small items in one hand, while walking on the other three extremities.  The bonobo can carry items while walking on two feet, but only for short distances and with an awkward broad-based gait, like a raccoon and some other mammals.  Most animals carry resources with their mouths, stomachs, or prehensile tails.  Only bipedal hominins can heft the carcass of a half-eaten gazelle onto the shoulder and carry it for miles. 

The next chapter begins with those now idle hands.  It would not have been long before they were used to wield sticks and throw stones.  These are two separate technologies.  Modern apes use sticks as clubs in conflicts among themselves, and even as spears, sharpened on one end, to hunt small animals. Hominins began this practice well back in the Paleolithic Era.  Archeologists have found such weapons that are 400,000 years old. The practice continues among extant Neolithic tribes today. 

The throwing of stones led inevitably to the breaking of stones, beginning the slow progression of lithic technology.  The 2.6 million year old Oldowan tools are little more than broken stones, with sharp edges used for cutting and scraping.  About 1.8 million years ago, the Acheulean tools appeared.  These were hand axes flaked on both sides of one end, showing intentional flaking patterns.  Mousterian tools appeared 400,000 years ago, with complete blades worked on both sides by percussion.  Blade technologies began about 50,000 ago, with long, thin tools that could be hafted to stone and bone handles.  Pressure flaking appeared about 20,000 years ago, allowing refinement of shapes and re-sharpening of edges.  

As these technologies progressed, so did the hunting and larceny skills of Hominins.  This was the driving force for the next change in Hominins, the gradual increase in intelligence.  Hominins were omnivorous apes, eating nuts, berries, insects, small animals, and the occasional large animal that they could steal or kill.  Those food sources were not getting smarter.  Hominins got smarter because they were competing with each other, stealing from each other, and probably eating each other, just as humans today eat monkeys and apes. 

During this six million years, there occurred a succession of Hominins, overlapping in time and range.  The current count of extinct hominids stands at twenty-five species.  Today, only one hominin remains, Homo sapiens, the best of the lot.   H. sapiens persists because they were better at outsmarting and out competing the other hominids.  They were the most larcenous and the most murderous, 

The limbic system is the old brain.  It controls emotions and basic body functions.  It is the part of the brain that gives us greed, hunger, lust, desire, anger, fear, love, hatred, and all those basic feelings that rule our lives.  It evolves very slowly.  By the end of the Paleolithic Era, it had become well adapted for exploitation of our fellow hominids, including other H. sapiens.  When all other hominids were gone, we turned this well-tested and perfected limbic system on each other. 

Meanwhile, the neocortex became smarter.  It evolved rapidly, bringing increased intelligence, tool making, and language.  With development of language H. sapiens acquire a hierarchical knowledge structure.  They could build upon prior knowledge.  The arms race that began with Oldowan tools 2.6 million years ago grew exponentially.  It continues today in contemporary warfare.  Observe the weapon evolution of the past five years in Eastern Europe. 

Only ten thousand years have passed since the end of the Paleolithic Era.  That is not enough time for the limbic system to evolve.  Humans have the same violent aggressive emotions they had then.  As H. sapiens becomes progressively more capable of homicide and larceny, they will continue to prey on each other until they destroy their world and themselves.  The persistence of an ancient limbic system, armed with the exponential increase in destructive weapons, makes this inevitable. 

I suspect this is a common pathway for intelligent species.  They all develop intelligence for the same reason.  They are competing with other similar species.  I do not know of any other adaptive value for technical intelligence.  In the process, they all become proficient at larceny, exploitation, and fratricide. Once they succeed as the dominant species, they continue to prey on one another and exploit their planet, resulting in their own destruction. 

Organized religions have tried to combat these self-destructive tendencies.  They focus on expanding altruism and trust beyond the local family and community.  Religions teach people shared values and sets of behaviors that get their followers to work together toward a common good.  Unfortunately, the limbic systems often intervenes and gets large groups of believers working towards the same old fiercely competitive behaviors. 

There may be some intelligent species in the universe that escape this fate.  I suspect they are few and far between.  Most will follow the track that is carrying H. sapiens to their doom.  Some may succeed in transitioning from a larcenous fratricidal species into interstellar wayfarers.  They may find and observe us.   

They will immediately recognize us for what we are, and where we are in our evolution.  They will not welcome us to join them out in interstellar space.  We are not nice civilized creatures.  We would not make good neighbors.  They will likely observe and contain us, without contact, waiting to see whether we survive this critical stage in evolution.  

So, the explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that all intelligent species are highly competitive, fratricidal, larcenous, murderous creatures.  That was their drive to become intelligent.  The great majority of them kill themselves off before expanding into interstellar space.  Those that overcome these shortcomings avoid any contact with those that have not.  

If we hope to eventually expand into interstellar space and contact sentient aliens, we will first have to get our limbic systems under control and learn to behave like responsible adult interstellar citizens.  Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen.

This post will be unpopular to many readers.  I am an elderly white male, which will be obvious from the content, but not for the reasons you may think.  I believe in DEI, AKA affirmative action, but it must be done correctly.

I grew up poor and hungry.  I have a Russian surname and was a child during the Cold War.  My family moved from the Southern US to the North when I was seven, and my new contemporaries thought I talked funny.  I went to public schools.  My parents did not pay for my college education. I have Tourette’s syndrome.  I have experienced prejudice.

However, my parents were college educated.  They taught me to study and to think.  They gave me what I needed to succeed.  That was the advantage I had.  I read books constantly.  I worked hard, from the age of fifteen.  I learned construction and carpentry.  I paid for my undergraduate and medical school education by working as a carpenter.  I did benefit from what is now called “white privilege,” which is a remarkably racist term, since other groups have the same privileges.

Over the course of my medical career, I have taught many medical students and residents.  I have had students that came from every conceivable background.  I can say confidently that the Afro-American students I have had were, on average, academically inferior to Caucasians, Orientals, Middle Easterners, and all other categories.  And not just a little, but a lot inferior.

When DEI over-promotes people, it causes them to appear inferior to their peers.  This reinforces the very prejudices that that they are trying to reduce.  When DEI programs focus on the needs of a particular race, they are being inherently racist.  They are losing the political battle.

Jason Arday is a victim of DEI.  He was a delusional narcissist who created a completely false persona.  People ignored a host of red flags and over-promoted him.  They did so out of pride for their own personal DEI agendas.  In doing so, they put him in a position where he could not possibly survive.  He has been sacrificed on the altar of hubris and arrogance.  The result is horrendous damage to him, his family, his race, and the DEI agenda.

In the future, please realize that:

1.     Giving someone the benefit of the doubt because of their race, disability, or background is prejudice.  It is harmful.

2.     All people of all races, disabilities, and backgrounds face unfairness in life.  It is not limited to non-white non-males.

3.     When DEI focuses on race, it is racist behavior.

4.     Placing people above their level of job performance for reasons other than ability reinforces prejudice.

Jason was the victim of misguided DEI.  He is not the only one.

Evolutionary theory states any trait having a detrimental survival effect must also have an offsetting survival advantage in order to persist in the gene pool. This must be true for sleep apnea as well, but what could that possibly be?

Imagine you are a predator sneaking up on a group of ancient humans quietly sleeping in their rock shelter, home, or campsite. As you creep closer in the tense silence and prepare for the attack, a sudden

Zzz-honk-shoo

erupts from your prey. I think it would be unsettling.

Just think of all the humans lives that have been saved by people who snore. /s (or maybe not)

Edit: Epilogue: Reviewing the literature, it appears the advantage of sleep apnea is that the evolutionary changes in the throat that cause it also allow articulation of speech. Those evolving hominins with better language skills out-competed other hominins, at the expensive of shorter lives in their elder years. It was a trade-off that was acceptable when life expectancy was not as high as today.

I still like to think that loud snoring scared off predators. It belongs in a Mel Brooks movie.