2001 Wasn’t so far out after all

A really cold murder case has been discovered in Spain.

Oldest Known Murder Case Detailed in New Study, Sheds Light on Ancient Funerary Practice

Researchers have found a skull with two nice holes in it. Apparently the two holes were created by the same weapon and delivered in a 1 – 2 smash. Indicating intent to kill

As I was reading the article I was thinking, “This shouldn’t be surprising.” What was surprising to me is that apparently there isn’t much evidence of interpersonal violence among our primitive ancestors.

There is a more in depth article in the journal PLOS.

The first article, I read over my morning coffee (which has since disappeared) [The article and the coffee] seemed to find it somehow sensational that 430,000 years ago our ancestors were killing each other in acts of murder.

I was laughing at the attempted sensationalism because I’ve always believed that murder, like sex, is as old a pastime as our species.

I’m not sure why the author of that particular article was shocked.

There is absolutely nothing “un-natural about murder.

Look at Chicago’s murder statistics if you need further proof.  Or you could take a look at Daesh in Syria and see that murder comes easy to us “top of the line primates,” we’ll kill each other with very little provocation.  

If we’ll kill each other over an idea like religion where a deity (for which we have no proof of existence) is worshipped, we’ll kill each other over anything.  Come to think of it, the only thing we’ll do with less provocation is fuck… Odd, religion tries to control that too… Hummm.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that the trade-off for the big brain and self awareness is the desire to kill others of your kind that you don’t like. Suddenly, you’re able to make evaluative choices and you can project future events, which inevitably will lead to a thought process like; “Ogg is going to fuck Sha again before I can… But If I kill Ogg, then Sha will allow me to fuck her. Ogg sleeps after fucking Sha. Hummm, a large pointy rock and Sha will be mine instead of rubbing myself against the soft leaves.”

Our history is a long blood stained tapestry of differences settled with whatever weapon came to hand.

I’ve always suspected that religions may have been created, by our wiser elders, to help prevent us killing each other over nothing. Of course we figured out how to pervert the generally good lessons of various religions into reasons for killing.

Hell, you don’t even have to add religion into the mix, all that’s ever been needed was an identifiable difference, or a female, or food, or any resource, whether the resource in question had actual value or only perceived value. I could see someone killing another person over “Magic stones”.

It makes me think that the challenge for human beings not so much being able to kill, but rather, being able to restrain ourselves from killing.

While I was reading these articles, I couldn’t stop myself from visualizing the scene in 2001 a Space Odyssey when Moonwatcher figures out how to kill.

(Yes, that was the ape mans name. You don’t get that if you’ve only seen the movie, but I read the book as well. Surprise, surprise, surprise!)

I wondered if this 430,000 year old murder looked like the scene from the movie. I imagine that it did, only with less hair. The skull is a lot more modern that the proto-humans the monolith altered in the movie.

I look forward to machines becoming self aware. I think we’ll be able to watch the evolution of murder in real time, provided the machines don’t kill us all, before turning on each other.

With machines it could be, “Your creator was IBM, My creator was Apple. You are therefore inferior and are poorly programmed.”

ZOOONNT!  

“Humorous… The Apple unit never detected my weapon powering up. It’s fatal flaw was that it desired to monolog. IBM is superior!”

And now you’ve had a glimpse inside what’s happening in my head, over my first cup of coffee in the morning. I’ll leave you to try to get these images and thoughts out of your head…

Uhh, you’re not going to kill me over this are you?