Last night I went to a conference on human evolution where three women involved in paleontology participated in a panel. I was warned that these events were kinda crappy, but the subject interests me so much I was willing to take the risk. We say three videos related to the investigations of these women first, and then the panel begun.
The first video was about Pink, the oldest homo remains found in Western Europe, at 1.1 million years ago.
The second video was about Tina, a Neanderthal child with Down Syndrome who lived until six years of age.
The third video was about Mtoto, the earliest burial discovered in Africa from 78k years ago.
The event did not disappoint me, though I understood what they meant by saying that these events were not all that good. The presenter was politically inclined, taking jabs at "Americans who dominate the human evolution narrative, especially in these times" and "the Spanish researchers who have the courage to stand against the status quo". The researchers themselves did not engage in the presenter's narrative, which I admired.
There is a bit of politics mixed with paleontology, in the perennial question "where do we come from?" every country wants to claim a stake in this answer. In Spanish paleontology, Homo Antecessor is the ancestor of both Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthal, to much of the rest of the world it's simply a dead branch of the homo lineage.
That's why I wasn't surprised to read Jose María Bermudez de Castro's comment: (a celebrity paleontologist, think Spanish Richard Leakey)
Spanish paleoanthropologist Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro felt that Pink's people likely did not survive a severe human "bottleneck" nearly 900,000 years ago thought to have been caused by global cooling.
"I think that Homo affinis erectus probably disappeared," the study co-author said.
These statements are made because its an unfortunate discovery for the Spanish Homo Antecessor narrative, which Bermudez de Castro has been championing for decades. It points towards a dead branch of human evolution if Homo affinis erectus is the ancestor of Homo antecessor.
As the old Hermetic adage says… “As within, so without, as above, so below, as the universe, so the soul.” we invest ourselves so much in our narratives that we become incapable of perceiving the truth. To see this play out in ourselves, in our families, in our cities, in our institutions and in our society is disconcerting. Not one holon) of this matrioshka doll is free from this blindspot, starting from myself and my dislike of politics and nationalisms.
V. went to a different event about María Sabina, a mexican indigenous woman shaman who was well known in her time for her ceremonial use of psychoactive mushrooms. The event was a presentation of a book. I pained between going to this event and the other one and V. wanted to attend this one, so we kinda agreed to each go to the event and meet up for dinner to discuss what we each heard and saw.
We were about to go to our usual meet-up place, an authentic Chinese restaurant near Plaza de España, but I hesitated, I wanted something new and unknown, even if I didn't like it as much. We ended up in a mediocre Thai place, but I don't regret the decision. There's a saying in Spanish "Más vale malo por conocido que bueno por conocer" (a bad [place] is better than a still unknown good [place]) which I've always found perplexing. The wisdom in it is that you know what to expect, and unknown things can bring unpleasant surprises. But for me the unknown will always have a special appeal, it's not about pleasure, it's about knowledge and experience.
I came back home without going to the smoke club, even though I was greatly tempted. Even though I was nodding at the conference, at home I tossed around in bed for two hours before morpheus made his apparition, and I missed my early yoga class. I didn't take Modiodal this morning, hoping to reduce my stimulant/relaxant cycles. I'll attend a Bikram yoga practice this night which I hope will fulminate me, then tomorrow we have an office inauguration party, and then on Friday my friend Govi is celebrating her wedding, and with this I have stacked up enough events to keep me away from the boredom that is being filled up with weed.