It can well be imagined that the first humans were better equipped to survive than the apefolk in whose midst they appeared. It can also be imagined that no love was lost between them. The more intelligent humans would come to despise their primitive brothers, keeping themselves apart and growing as a separate and distinct species. The apefolk would be envious, resentful and afraid of these interlopers, but as they far outnumbered the humans they were able to drive them out of Central Africa, apparently to the north. The apefolk already occupied territories to the north - the more temperate parts which were still quite favourable to their survival - but although they had been relatively succesful against the rest of the animal world, it is likely that owing to their wasteful habits their population had reached a maximum long ago and might now be declining because of fighting amongst themselves and disease.
The humans would be much more adept with hand and eye than the apefolk. To defend themselves they must have quickly become expert in fashioning and wielding better weapons, which would also make them superior hunters so that they survived more successfully wherever they went and increased in numbers. I calculate that out of one mated pair from the original mother's offspring, an increase of 50% every fifty years (not out of the way in the circumstances perhaps) would produce a quarter of a million humans in two thousand years. Thereafter, as long as their success and rich opportunity continued, the increase would be much more dramatic. Humans became ever more successful as they learned more skills - the making of fire, trapping and herding animals, catching fish, erecting shelters and making clothes.
During this period humans became more erect and lost much of their body hair. They and the apefolk would keep their distance, but it was inevitable that in due course they came into conflict over game, watering places and territory, especially the best land which the apefolk occupied. As time went on the number of skirmishes must have increased, so that soon there was virtually a state of war between them. The humans were still outnumbered but they had much better weapons, and the best weapon of all - their high intelligence. I do not think that humans would eat the apefolk they killed because they were too sensitive of their close relationship, nor that they would molest the females of that species because they despised them, but I imagine the apefolk would have no such scruples. To take baboons as an example once again, where they have come into close contact with humans in South Africa and have been fed attractive junk foods, they have turned to stealing with violence and have been hunted down and shot. For these reasons it seems to me likely that the humans deliberately turned on the apefolk with the intention of exterminating them. They hated the apefolk and wanted to rid themselves of their presence, but they also must have felt an instinctive desire to get rid of their main competitor.
I am inclined to believe that as many apefolk died of some such terrible disease as AIDS as were hunted down and killed. If they were so unfortunate as to be riddled with it, this would be added reason why they should be hated and exterminated. This might also have a bearing on our ancient sexual taboos. However it was, they were overcome, their territories taken over by humans, perhaps the last of them retreating into the Himalayas, and known as Yeti. Humans now separated roughly into three divisions, First, Second and Third. The First were the most aggressive against the apefolk perhaps, becoming the most competitive and ambitious, occupying the more fertile territory, establishing the Machine and forming the patterns of civilisation, in such countries as Egypt, China, India, Greece, Italy, South America, Spain. Then there was the Second division of humans who were driven, or retreated, into the wetter, colder, more northerly lands. Toughened by the harsh conditions, they eventually overtook the rest and set in motion the accelerating expansion of the Machine which has engulfed the whole world, resulting in the facts and concepts of today's reality. These two divisions will be dealt with in the next chapter.
Finally there was the Third and more passive grouping of humans, who occupied the less accessible plains and jungles, such as the Red Indians of North America, the Aborigines of Australia, but particularly the Bushmen and Baka people of Africa and the Incas of Peru. The significance of these large and once flourishing communities is the lesson they offer. Whilst we share with them the same ancestor and the same mental capacity, their philosophy is, or was, very different from ours. This implies that the modern human nature and state is not inevitable; that happiness and satisfaction may be attained by following the true reasoning of intellect by way of the simple answers and solutions that lead to that goal. It also indicates that the alternative way of energetic application of intellect to ruthless pursuit of instinctive drives by way of every possible complex discovery and technological achievement clearly does not bring happiness and satisfaction.
The Bushmen probably came down from the north to occupy Africa some 22,000 years ago. If they had to fight and kill off the apefolk who were already there, it can only be assumed that this action so horrified as to determine them against such behaviour thereafter, unless absolutely necessary, for it was not subsequently characteristic of them until they fought and lost the battle with their recent invaders. This question does not arise, of course, if it was the case that some unknown catastrophe, which the humans were able to survive, wiped out the apefolk. The Bushmen flourished until those recent invaders, 'civilised' humans invading Africa from north and south, steadily killed off or neutralised them, not without difficulty but evidently without the slightest compunction or regret, until, earlier in this century, only a few of them were to be found living in the traditional way, in the inhospitable Kalahari desert.
The African Bushmen found a perfect balance between duty and hardship, joy and relaxation, to which their expectations were exactly adjusted so that they were fulfilled, happy and contented (within the limits of their awareness.) They were territorial, but the very thought of hurting any of their own species was so distasteful that each group kept strictly within its agreed borders. Nevertheless, they killed unwanted babies, to which the mothers always agreed, however reluctantly, because of the strict necessity for keeping down numbers. They had religion, a deep belief in powerful 'spirits' which had strong influences and effects. Of course, it was not these 'spirits' but their own ancient belief and collective will which caused these effects and by which each individual, by self-subjection, was strongly influenced.
They were skilled hunters, with bow and poisoned arrow, trappers of small animals and birds, gatherers of fruits, nuts, and roots which they grubbed out with special sticks. They were great cave and rock-wall painters of animals and hunting scenes. They were musicians, carrying their instruments about with them and gaining comfort and inspiration from music and dancing in the cool evenings. They were story-tellers, with a great tradition. And they were healers, with wide knowledge of medical concoctions. They did nothing which was not needful or sympathetic to their unchanging existence alongside nature. Everything they did they endowed with feeling for its deepest significance, applied to it the utmost skill, concentration and energy, and endeavoured to bring to it joy and satisfaction.
They practiced equality, a society without leaders and authority, run by cooperation and shared responsibility, with no pecking order. They had very few possessions - only the absolute essentials - went practically naked, and built shelters which they occupied between walkabouts. They were gentle, always expressing regret at the killing of animals they required for meat, and would show communal sympathy with their sick, trying to comfort and cure them by the laying on of hands and invoking of spirits, their kind of faith healing.
The good example of the Bushmen might have been lost to us had not Laurens van der Post given an eye-witness account of them in his book 'Bushmen of the Kalahari' and on film. These people sustained their society for a very long time, and would have gone on doing so but for the invasion of 'civilisation'. The same can be said for the Incas of Peru, whose true morality was betrayed by superstition, then trodden in the dust by the blood and gold-thirsty Catholic Conquistadors.
There is yet more we can learn from the simple wisdom of the good Bushmen (and women). They achieved their satisfactory state and balanced society despite the fact that their brains were arranged as shown in Figure 8, just as ours are. They, however, applied themselves to the full range of instincts, putting the benign foremost as becomes the dominant species, and used their power of intellect to achieve satisfactory fulfilment in harmony with nature. They did not look for change for its own sake but were content with what they had, primitive as it might appear to civilised eyes, because it was a happy balance.
The Incas are included in the 'Third division' of human societies because although they developed a highly organised system of living it was not to the same pattern as the 'First division' civilisations. This appears to have been a benevolent society, not founded on the competitive drives; an economy which was not based on money. It may not always have been so, for the Incas had leaders, and formal religion, and went in for ceremonial splendour. But, partly because they were non-aggressive and trusting and partly because they believed their fate to be the fulfilment of a dreadful celestial prophecy,they allowed a handful of Spaniards to either massacre or enslave them. On the other hand, paradoxically, the Bushmen fought fiercely and to the death against their invaders. Perhaps that merely illustrates a basic difference in the concept of freedom between a 'wild' nomadic community and a static, organised and domesticated community.
I suppose it is possible for the conscious mind to draw contradictory conclusions from examples such as these. All that should concern us is that we draw true conclusions. It seems to me that the Bushmen maintained their unchanging ways because those ways appealed to the intelligence as good and fair, and for that reason had been agreed. The Bushmen also maintained their unchanging ways because those ways were successful, but it is important to consider what this means. The Bushman society was successful because it was not a structure superimposed on the people - it was the people, representing the principles to which each person had agreed in the common interest. This was not like our present society - a separate organisation exploiting the differing abilities of people in order to supply their various demands as consumers, while at the same time trying to control them as a conglomerate whole. This was the nearest human approach yet to the ideal society, in which each and every individual took responsibility for the whole - each gave effort and received benefit equally, willingly and cheerfully, and then, with responsible consideration, did their own personally fulfilling thing.
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