Vermin has a very negative connotation social to refer to species that are very hardy and adaptive to thier environment.  Rats, Mice, and Crows all fit into this group and all have different and very successful strategies for survival.  Are you suggesting that we have become very successful or that we are undesirable to even other people?

Are you asserting that human's interaction with wolves helped them learn about tribalism is a matter of mythology (nothing wrong with that) or a matter of fact?  If you are asserting it is fact, I would as that you cite your sources.  A good deal of work has been done on primate social behavior, and while I am not familar with all of it, I understand that is largely suggests that much of human social behavior is an extension the general great ape social behavior.

Domestication is a process by which people make a home for an animal or plant, so it can live.  This process generally has the effect of pushing humans (or at least their society) and the domesticate biology into symbiosis with one another.  Are you simply asserting that the land scape manufactured by this process tends to be alienating from the rest of the natural world, or are you suggesting that there is some sort of inherit evil in the process of domestication itself?

I guess I've already internalized the information and am content with symbol rearrangement and symbol flashing.

Having read the hard evidence, the story makes a lot of sense, and so perhaps I am the one with the baggage of assumptions.

so here's me, with my internalized systems of understanding, scoffing at your challenge, which is a simple request of facts.

I'm juat in a funk right now, I apologize for my lapses in communication. Did you enjoy the links I threw at you at least?

In respose to primate problem solving, we are more related to bonobos, than chimps, from my other internalized readings. Who do in fact, blow each other, for fun and problem solving! 

In hopes of better communication tomorrow...

Tony

1) Point one: Urban populations have approached near or over 50%.  Cities, as a unit, are required external input in order to keep functioning.  Hence, urban populations do not commonly act as hunters, chasing down life food, nor as gatherers.  Instead, they 'prey' upon food that has been hunted or gathered by others and then presented to them in a different context.  The closest category for this would be detritivores, animals that feed on decomposing organic material.  In a number of modern cultures, the detritivore is associated with what we call vermin and has a negative context.  I am using the term as a cultural reference not in its biological sense.

2) Point two: Culturally, human consider themselves alpha predators.  Scientifically, they meet the definition of it (as apex predators), even without the tools of modern civilization.

3) Point three: Drawing on college anthropology courses, and the occasional National Geographic updates, early homonids bore teeth sets similar to their chimpanzee cousins, whose diet tends to be omnivorous with lots of foraging and (relatively) little hunting.

4)  Point four: The earliest two-legged skeleton of what would later become a hominid has now been set to six million BCE, as opposed to the previous guesstimate of 2 million BCE.  This means we evolved with two legs in a forest region, as opposed to later in the plains.  A special on the National Geographic channel commented on how there are modern chimps that can walk two-legged and that it's an adaptation that doesn't really cost them anything but doesn't offer huge benefits either.  Its utility only really comes into play when you don't have trees to hide from big predators.

5) Point five: While I do NOT believe in the aquatic ape theory, I couldn't help but consider what kind of advantage living near water would give to early man.  It would slow down the sprinting cats and also serve as a source of easy protein.  Coming from my biology of psychology courses in college (+ some added research later on), it's well known that our particular brains require a lot of protein to grow.  In addition, we show a great love for the Omega-3 fatty acid, found in abundance in fish.  Defense + food = good environment to start growing in.

6) Point six: There was an anthropology article arguing that the institution of 'grandparents' occurred during the ice age.  I want to thing it was up to 40,000 years ago (but I can't verify that so treat it with a grain of salt).  This would indicate that the meme of grandparenting was not tied to agriculture but to a different stimulus.

7) Point seven: When I read Godesky's articles on wolf co-evolution, here's what made sense to me.  There would be a long period of observance and influence that would not be recorded in the fossil record because it would contain no meaningful significance.  You could identify that humans and wolves hunted in the same region but not their level of non-violent interactions UNTIL that threshold was reached when the two species started working together.

8) Point eight: There's a point when man stopped being Homo Erectus and started being Homo Sapiens.  My hypothesis is that this most likely occurred by groups copying the actions of successful non-human hunters around them.  The earliest evidence of human culture -- painting -- began about the same time as Archaic Homo Sapiens 400,000 BCE) arrived so there is evidence of a significant shift in social and mental strategies.  Culture indicate a different level of social strategy, one that could have come from group practicing a new technique they picked up -- one from wolves.

Of course, one can argue that perhaps humans had it all along (despite their origin in matriarchal or patriarchal hierarchies) or perhaps they made it up (convergent evolution).  But I tend to think that humans thrived by paying attention to the world around them and that this attention paid off in the wolves, which ultimately came to co-evolve with us.

Point 8 is a hypothesis framed as part of a narrative most of which is comprised of pre-existing scientific data.  I apologize for the fact that I don't have all -- or even most! -- of the links.  Lately, I let others do the hard science part while I weave the narrative structure.  My purpose, if any, is to weave it together into a story my kids and my friends will remember, regardless of the state of the world.

Part of this narrative is to encourage the re-capture of positive memetic structures.  Perhaps it's because of the psych degree, perhaps it's because I'm a bit crazy , but I do see the current culture is a result of a society-wide PTSD, most likely starting when a forced exodus pushed a bunch of gardeners into an unfriendly biome and these hominids, under stress, reverted back to behavior that might have made Homo Erectus proud but which, 10,000 years later, would prove potentially lethal to any Homo Sapiens descendants we'd like to see born.

Best

<> Bill Maxwell 

"Change comes from giving up the myth that you are in control."

I agree, the more I learn about living less harmfully the more it seems bio-mimicry is a great way to shape a lifestyle. This includes living like vermin, predator, grazer, etc. when necessary.

Excellent points!

Take Care,

Adam Hintz