Ergaster's Children

(Picture from here.)

 

When I first moved up here to Massachusetts, I did what I always do, I went to the science museum. 

 

There was an exhibit of the cave paintings. The docent talked about them and said (as close as I remember): "Who were these wonderful artists? It certainly wasn't these folks. They just weren't capable." With that he brandished a Neanderthal skull.

 

That ticked me off. First, because the cave paintings were made long after the Neanderthals had died out. So, while it's true they didn't do the work, since they were already dead it was a meaningless point. Second, it was a snide way at taking a whack at Neanderthals as brutes—an odd sort of racism. Translated: "They weren't us so they couldn't have done this."

 

It's not an accident that my first published story, "A Capella", is about a Neanderthal cave artist.

 

Nothing sparks discussion like the Neanderthals. Were they brutes? Were they not so brutes? Clearly, we succeeded when they failed. How did we do that? Or, translated, in what way were we preternaturally superior to them? After all: we're here. They're not. We must be better.

 

There have been lots of hypotheses on the Neanderthal demise—most of which involve some sort of compare/contrast relationship with competing humans. They had bigger brains than ours so that had to be addressed—and it has, a few times. One study suggests that their brain organization is substantially different than ours. Neanderthals have a larger visual system than that of modern humans and that reduced the available space for cognitive systems. Another one implicated bunnies in their demise—or, rather, their inability to catch them. Modern humans will eat anything: bunnies, squirrels, birds, each other. The Bunny Hypothesis suggests that Neanderthals did not have the capacity to be this flexible.

 

As time has gone on the differences in capability between Neanderthals and modern humans has diminished.

 

Do Neanderthals have complex tools? Check. There's one tool—a lissoir—was invented by Neanderthals before the tool was used by modern humans. In fact, there's a distinct possibility that humans learned about the tool from Neanderthals. Did Neanderthals have art and culture? Check, check, and check. Neanderthals buried their dead with ornamentation, wore jewelry and make up. Did Neanderthals eat things other than big mammals? (I.e., the Bunny Hypothesis.) Check. Neanderthals ate fish and birds, processed wood and hides and ate their vegetables. They may also have understood that some plants had medicinal values. (See here.) Now that's pretty sophisticated.

 

It's not clear that they ate or didn't eat bunnies. It's also not so clear from what I've read how much small game there was to eat or when modern humans learned to catch it. Paleo-Indians subsisted largely on now extinct mega-fauna: giant beaver, ox, mammoths, etc. Not much different from Neanderthals.

 

A good deal of new information has been showing up since the Neanderthal genome was fully sequenced. Interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans has become pretty definitive now—to the point a hybrid may have been found. (See here.)

 

A problem with understanding Neanderthals comes from mis-connecting our own tribe with Neanderthals. For one reason or another, Neanderthals have become defined by their opposition to human beings. There are differences between Neanderthals and modern humans. Possibly the ocular system as mentioned above. The olfactory neurological system in modern humans is 12% greater in size than in Neanderthals. (Which, of course, could not reflect any cognitive deficit comparing modern humans to Neanderthals. Right? Right?)

 

To me, the most interesting news that is coming out regarding Neanderthals is that they may have largely died out long before they met humans. There was little or no competition between the two groups, though there were enough encounters for interbreeding.

 

New radio carbon dating techniques (see here) make the time overlap between modern humans and Neanderthals problematic. This is interestingly corroborated with some DNA evidence (see here and here) suggesting that Neanderthal populations may have crashed prior to modern humans came to Europe. In fact, it may have been the sheer dumb luck of timing that a population of modern humans didn't buy the farm right alongside Neanderthals.

 

There's this concept of refugia in ecology. A refugia is a place of relative calmness when everything else is crashing down—usually because of either local or global climate change. When the fewmets hit the windmill a hundred thousand years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, modern humans hadn't moved north. Their refugia were safer than those of Neanderthals so much farther north. (See here and here.)

 

Neither group could protect the future. Things were going downhill—I suspect both groups knew it. They both went where it looked like things could remain if not okay, at least survivable. But the range of choices between the two groups was different. Neanderthals got nailed. Modern humans fared better. When modern humans finally did get to Eurasia the remaining Neanderthal and Denisovan groups were tiny.

 

As they say, it's better to be lucky than smart.

 

Which brings us to the question of how did humans really evolve? Annalee Newitz suggests its a crooked, branching road that brought us to now, filled with little groups (such as the hobbits) that didn't quite make it to modern times.

 

There may even be a new addition to our ranks, the Red Deer People of southwest China. The find there dates to between 14,500 to 11,500 years ago and the skeletons show an intriguing mix of modern and primitive human qualities. Too soon to tell anything about them. But they did clearly overlap humans in time. Were they a relic population of humans? Were they a different sub-species, as were Denisovans or Neanderthals? Were they a completely different species such as Homo floresiensis? We don't know yet.

 

I wonder sometimes if our continuing defining of other species, even those related to ourselves, only in opposition to what we consider human is a relic of our essential loneliness.

 

Some authorities consider Homo ergaster the founding species of us all. The more sophisticated descendant of Homo habilis. Of ergaster's children, only we, of mixed heritage, remain.

 

Notes on the Plagues in SF Arisia Panel

First the news: I’m going to be on some panels at Boskone the weekend of 2/17/2023.

 

 

 

I’ll be on the following panels:

• Noir & Moral Ambiguity in SF, Saturday, 2/18, 1:00 PM
• Climate Change in Speculative Fiction, Saturday, 2/18, 4:00 PM
• Seven Easy Steps to Taking Over the Universe, Sunday, 2/19, 10:00 AM

Come see me.

 

In that vein, here are my notes on the Plagues in SF panel I did back in January for Arisia.

 

Picture from here.

 

Observations:

1. Plagues in SFF have to serve a narrative purpose.
1. The purpose can be just to create an apocalyptic landscape
2. My purposes were different.
1. When I started working on my “future history”, the Howard Cycle, I was faced with an immediate dilemma: The number of people on the planet was overwhelming. The effects of that population would dwarf anything I wanted to do.
2. Consequently, I came to the conclusion that, narratively, I had to reduce the population size. This had to be done in a way that served the narrative.
3. Of course, the aftereffects of the apocalypse would resonate for generations in the narrative and that had to be dealt with.
2. It’s terribly easy to create a cozy catastrophe with plagues.
1. Such a thing happens when the right people survive or die depending on what the author wants to achieve, without regard to the larger horror. Like a catastrophe where only the poor die and the more successful luxuriate in the result. (Which actually happens since the wealthy have better access to health care. Suddenly, leveling the playing field with a zombie apocalypse becomes attractive.)
2. The problem, I think, is with apocalypse fiction in general. The post-apocalyptic landscape is preferentially friendly to the target group of the author. Ultra-violent evil—got that covered, Road Warrior. Catholic monks—see Canticle for Leibowitz.
3. In past events, many of the elite had the capability to leave when the plague years hit. They didn’t always escape the consequences but they had a better time of it than the poor souls left behind. Thus, an account of the plague years in a beautiful villa in Italy is going to differ wildly from the same time in a Roman slum.
4. It’s true now. Those that could escape the consequences of COVID did so.
3. Most terrible plague events have two phases
1. Phase 1: the plague (or other apocalypse) hits. Lots of people die. Terrible things happen in the ruins. Think Dresden in WW II or the Black Plague in Europe.
2. Phase 2: Recovery when the plagues run their course. Did this make things better for the survivors? Fewer people/less competition for resources. Worse? Fewer people/less ability to exploit resources. See European recovery after the Black Death.
4. I think an apocalypse—where humans are in real danger of losing civilization—has to go in these phases:
1. Phase 1: see above
2. Phase 2: Possible recovery, if there are enough people left and enough remaining infrastructure and knowledge. Again, see European recovery after the black death.
3. Phase 3: Reconstruction based on restoring lost infrastructure as long as generational knowledge is retained. Rebuilding factories to smelt steel. Build tools. Transportation architecture. Etc. The knowledge of how to do things is preserved but the mechanisms have been lost. Dropping back to basic iron technology because the industrial infrastructure is lost but with the knowledge that industrial infrastructure existed and how it worked.
4. Phase 4: Rediscovery based on recovering lost technology where generational knowledge has been lost. E.g., drop back to basic iron technology with only rumors and myths on how skyscrapers were built. The knowledge has to be rediscovered.
5. The problem then with any apocalypse is what is left. Plagues are nice in that they are like neutron bombs: people die but structures are left standing.  

 Plagues in SF and Fantasy, Dan Koboldt

1. Plagues don’t have to be viruses to be deadly. See Black Death in Europe and syphilis in Europe.
2. Plagues don’t kill a certain population. I.e., plagues aren’t just going to kill a target group like Arabs or Jews or adults.
1. This is sort of true. Often, the binding site for a given organism’s cells is conserved across the species population. Thus, a given virus suitable for humans can infect most or all humans. It might also infect other species—rabies is a good example of this. It infects any mammal.
2. That said, just because an organism can potentially infect an individual doesn’t mean it will or that it will be successful in inducing disease or being lethal. Smallpox comes in two varieties, Variola major and variola minor. Variola minor has a death rate of 1% or less. The variola major death rate is closer to 30%.
3. An individual may have immunity to the organism—that’s how vaccinations work—or the individual binding site might be different enough to discourage infection or prevent it.
4. Thus, saying a plague doesn’t kill a certain population depends on the words “kill” and “population.”
1. Most diseases don’t kill high percentages of the target population. Some do—the Black Death, for example, which killed between 30% and 60% of the population of Europe, or any of the plagues that struck the indigenous people of the New World. As for population, that depends on the resistance of the target population. Thus, killing a particular population depends on the nature of the population’s susceptibility to the disease.
2. Historically diseases that were relatively benign in the Old World were deadly in the New World.
3. There is also “combination” hypothesis for syphilis being brought from the New World to the Old World in that the original parent organism was brought to the New World over the Bering land bridge and did not die out in the Old World. But new varieties originated after that time were brought back to the Old World in the Colonial Period. This new strain responded to new selective pressures and evolved into syphilis. (See Alfred Crosby)
5. Unnatural plagues—designer plagues—could be configured to target a particular group:
1. Provided that group had a specific biochemical profile that was 1) presented such that the agent could recognize and act on it and 2) the agent would only react to that profile.
2. However, this is unlikely to be so specific as to target a human invented trait such as race or ethnicity. A plague wouldn’t recognize just Arabs—that’s a human designation that has little basis in biology.
3. Conceivably,  a plague could be two-fold: one component that recognized a group that then activated a second component that activated the disease state. However, once the disease state was activated, it would be unlikely to remain in the target group.
3. Scientists are not always creating new viruses, OAN’s opinion notwithstanding.
4. Diseases need vectors and transmission mechanisms.
5. High speed infection and death isn’t advantageous to a toxic organism. If the target dies too fast the vector doesn’t get a chance to spread.
   

10 Scariest Plagues in SF

1. Captain Trips from The Stand. My comments:
1. Kills too fast to be useful.
2. And kills too universally—which is to be expected from a divine virus, I suppose
2. Vampiric/Zombie plague from I Am Legend. My comments:
1. Interesting in that it doesn’t kill everyone.
2. b.       Instead, it modifies the surviving subset into a new species of human
3. Infertility Pandemic from A Handmaid’s Tale. My comments:
1. This is an example of a narrative plague. I.e., a plague that creates a certain outcome useful to the author.
2. Note: infertility plagues have been used many times. Note Children of Men and Graybeard for example.
4. Blindness from See. My comments:
1. See Day of the Triffids
5. Wild Card virus from Wild Cards: kills most leaves the remainder with superpowers
1. Me: Meh.
6. Legacy Virus from X-Men: kills mutants when they use their powers. My comments
1. Interesting that if one exercises one’s defining characteristics, one dies. E.g., Tiger Woods succumbs when he plays golf.
7. Protomolecule from The Expanse. My comments:
1. This is one of the most interesting plagues in SF. It does not kill anyone. Instead, it repurposes living mechanisms.
2. While I really like it, that is an enormous amount of intelligence to pack into a molecule.
8. The Cruciform Parasite from The Hyperion Cantos: confers recurring reanimation after death.
9.  Zombie viruses. Any zombie virus. My comments:
1. Anything that acts in minute->hour timeframe is not an organism. It’s a toxin that generates a specific reaction.
2. The best zombie plagues are those based on behavioral modification of humans based on the zombie fungus Cordyceps and like organisms. (See The Last of Us.) There was an interesting story I read years ago (whose title and author I forget) about an organism that lives in humans that possesses them to reproduce to get the next generation of parasite.
3. One of the interesting things about fungi is the enormous amount of genetic information available to be used—far more than a bacteria or virus. In some groups, the cells have multiple nuclei, increasing by orders of magnitude the data over even “higher” organisms. If I were designing a really complex plague behavior, I’d look at working with fungi.
10. Xenomorph from Alien. My comments:
1. This is a lovely idea of humans becoming entwined in a parasitic wasp style life cycle. It has major problems:
2. It is too universal: any organism can be infected by the aliens. Dogs, cats, predators, human creators—it’s all just grist for the mill. There is, in Prometheus, an idea that humans, being created organism, are susceptible to the same parasites as their creators. But then, apparently, any mammal, as well. Even rabies has limits to infection.
3. It’s too successful. Eventually, all susceptible organisms become xenomorphs. Parasitic success relies on not being so successful that the target prey species dies from being overly parasitized. Xenomorph parasitism is so successful it will eventually kill all the hosts. Then, the aliens need a second mechanism that does not parasitize to survive—hence, the required invention of the queens.
4. Of course, these biological problems go away if the organism is designed.

Plagues in Fiction, LA Public Library

This site lists some interesting works including The Plague, Albert Camus, and Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe. It’s interesting to note that plagues in SFF are a subset of the larger plagues in general fiction.

 

10 Fictional Pandemics that will make you sweat

Another list. Two interesting ones: The Fireman, Joe Hill, where a spore is causing people to burst into flame. Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, showing how politics will really doom us all. And Station Eleven, where the plague aftermath is considered.

Arts & Crafts II

 

I made a knife from scratch.

 

Well, to be absolutely honest, I made about 70% of a knife. I took an intro class from Elijah Kelly, a knife maker here in town. He is very accomplished and has an intro class where we start with a billet (the raw steel) and over four weeks create a knife.

 

The class was over four nights: pound the crap out of steel to get a feel for it, forge out the knife blank, tune the knife with an initial grind and heat treat it, grind it into shape.

 

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Not in the least bit.

 

(I apologize from the beginning: these pictures are not great.)

 

I did it with my friend Asher and in the first night, we turned a piece of rebar into a railroad spike. This involved heating it, burning my hand, pounding and shaping it while it was cooling. From the time you take the heated metal from the forge until the point where pounding it won’t do any good is somewhere between a minute to a minute and a half. This is why you see demonstration blacksmiths move quickly. They’re trying to get the work done while they can.

 

So: the billet. (See above.) This is a raw piece of steel. Shown is not my billet. Elijah had selected that one out and then welded a rod to it so we could hold it while we forged. First we hammered out the blade and then took off the rod. Then, we held onto the blade while we worked out part of the handle. Elijah then took over and finished the handle. There were two reasons for this: 1) this was a fairly time consuming part in that the tang had to be lengthened and then curved. And 2) he used his trip hammer. This is a device that lifts a big long column of hardened steel and drops it, again and again. There is no safety here: your hand gets between the two pieces of steel and it’s instant jelly.

 

Elijah showed us how the trip hammer and hydraulic press worked and then he wisely didn’t let us use them. We were going to have enough trouble not hurting ourselves as it was.

 

This, then, is the result of that first night of hammering out a knife followed by shaping the knife with a grinder. Note: no point.

 

 

 

The next session, we ground it down as a sort of first measure. That resulted in this. What I had now was a very rough, very thick chunk of iron in the shape of a of a knife. At least, now it had a point.

 

We had been working with soft steel at this point. To over simplify things, steel comes in three states: soft, hard, and tempered. Soft steel is easily worked, easily ground but not worth much as a knife. A good club, maybe. But that’s about it.

 

To make a knife you have to transition that soft iron to hard. To do this, you take the steel, heat it up to the right point, and quickly quench the knife in oil. (Water, it turns out, is not good for quenching. The creation of steam gives a randomness to the process.)

 

At this point, any imperfections in the metal will suddenly show up.

 

Backtracking a bit, when we did that first coarse grind to get the shape, there was a fat bit of metal above the point that I didn’t like. I ground it down with a file.

 

When my knife was quenched, there was a bend at the tip—right where I had done my filing. No good deed goes unpunished. Elijah took it from me and tried to straighten out the bend and the tip snapped off. The good news is that the bend was gone.

 

Note the snipped off tip. Elijah wasn’t worried. There’s no such thing as a bad knife. There are only shorter knives.

 

Now, the knife had to be tempered. This would soften the steel to a point between hard and soft. It would make the steel touch: able to take and hold an edge but not so hard as to be brittle. I did this at home by putting the knife in an oven at 400F and leaving it for two hours.

 

The result was this. Note the golden tinge on the blade. This indicates the blade has been tempered.

Now, the knife had to be ground to thickness and given an edge.

 

 

The edge came first. (Shown to the left.) We did this on a long belt grinder that would cut your finger off or expose bone, depending on how you misused it. I have a cut from this and a burn from the forge so I’m happy. Result here. Note that we ground the tip back in.

 

From there, we used the bevel of the edge and brought it back up to the back of the knife. This was hard—every time the belt touched the blade, it left an flat spot. That flat spot had to be taken out. It’s tedious, dusty, work. Frustrating, too, as it’s not always clear that you’re working on the right part of the blade.

 

But I did finish.

 

Then, it was medium grind to get this result. My knife is at the top. The other two were projects Elijah was working on. Note the Damascus steel, something he likes to work on.

 

 

After that, it was a final polish. We had been using what is known as a flat grind, where the bevel proceeds from the edge directly to the back of the knife. It’s the favored shape for kitchen knives.

 

Elijah took it back and touched up the edge. I can now shave my arm with it.

 

 

 

 

Four sessions, about 10 hours total.

 

I loved it. It was great fun. It was nice finding out my injured shoulder would take it and I got a knife out of the deal.

 

Asher wants to get a forge. I’m not that enthusiastic just yet. I want to know I can create something of excellence rather than just being able to say I made a knife.

 

That said, I made a knife.