This work is licensed under
CC BY-SA 4.0
: also see my full Copyright statement.
Our nervous system evolved with mainly positive experiences – rather than being on red alert all the time
The final couple of million years human evolution saw us for the most part moving round as hunter-gatherers in small extended family units, usually between half a dozen and 20 or so adults and children. In this period before the world became overrun by human hominids we lived as just another animal in a world of animals in an environment that was mostly safe and abundant, so we were both predator and prey.
There is no doubt that it was to some degree un-safe. Bruce Chatwin describes in his "Songlines" a collection of hominid skulls in a cave in South Africa – each of which had a double hole in the back, made by the teeth of a Smilodon. The predator-prey relationship between apes and big cats can still be seen in the way that leopards prey on young baboons, yet the older baboons are capable of killing leopards - and do if they get a chance. But if modern hunter-gatherer populations are observed, this "red in tooth and claw" can be seen to be mostly a myth. Tool-making hominids are perfectly capable of defending themselves as a group – using thorn bushes, spears, traps, fire (all available to Neanderthals). And we were no longer vulnerable to being stalked at night when we domesticated the dog some 30-40,000 years ago. The dog is a symbiotic extension of our sensory system and much more, and before they were domesticated it’s not unlikely that wolves would travel alongside these super-predators to scavenge the remains of mammoths. Bird-calls are used today by the San bushmen to identify nearby lions (as they are also used by other animals – notice what happens when a blackbird or pheasant alarm-calls in the modern English countryside). The use of generic animal signals to protect against big cats and dire-wolves preceded domestication of dogs by millions of years. We have really just followed on from vegetable ancestors. Plants "know" that strong birdsong indicates dawn – a time when dew has formed on leaves – and so open their stomata to absorb this free moisture in response to the dawn chorus. And if acacia trees (i.e. the leaf stomata) detect chemicals in the air released by camels eating acacia – the amount of tannin in the leaves is increased to make them less edible.
In this kind of environment, efficient use of attention is not constantly "looking for danger", but rather is mostly "curiously engaged". The world is full of food, of beauty, of newness, of Gods small and large, smells, sounds and a myriad of things known and unknown. Again, referring to modern-day hunter-gatherer behaviour, each hunting or gathering journey is an epic story that unfolds itself in minute detail, its re-telling by each participant revealing a different view of the universe, new skills, the potential for a greater breadth of future action. It is not possible to be bored or preoccupied by thoughts because each moment of the immediacy, richness, serendipity and amicity of the living environment demands total attention. It is only in a human-built environment that we can learn to be bored as a normal state of mind (because most things are so predictably static and uncommunicative). And almost only in a human culture (full of super-predators) in which we are isolated and unsupported – might we even consider that continual focus on the possibility of danger is a sensible option.
Thus, the human nervous system evolved with a capacity to be on high alert and face extreme danger if necessary … but with most of the time filled with very resourced normal background states such as:
social-relational-play in a supportive community in which the extended family and non-human animals are experienced as an extension of self
attentive curious engagement and interest in the detail of a nearly-safe landscape
participation with awe-reverence in a numinous universe – one in which stars can be heard to sing
