My Books > Secrets > Conversation

This conversation occurs between Dave, Mike, and Mike's parents. It takes place after the events of Secrets, and concerns the history and nature of the Pack.

"Mike hasn't told me much about the parent species," Dave began. "I know the memories are a lot less clear." He shrugged. "My best guess is that when Homo erectus wandered into Europe, a beneficial mutation arose in one of the bands." He looked at our blank faces and explained patiently, "Mutations occur all the time, but most of them are useless or even deadly. Occasionally one happens that gives the individual a big advantage. If the population he or she lives in is a small one, and isolated from other potential breeding partners, the mutation can spread through the group really quickly. That's how new species are formed." He grinned and shrugged again. "Well, I'm simplifying, but —"

"That's all right," I said quickly. "Simple is good."

His grin broadened. "Okay. Well, that's what I figure happened. Now it might not have been Homo erectus, but he was really the first species that you could call human, although his predecessor, Homo habilis, is dignified by the Homo prefix. Anyway, he's the first one to have got as far as Europe, and it does seem that that's where the Pack arose."

Paul asked hesitantly, "How human was Homo erectus, Dave?"

Dave's peat-brown eyes turned wary. He said carefully, "They were as tall as modern humans. Stronger. Fully bipedal. Intensely social. They used some tools, they may have had some ability to vocalize, although modern humans have extra nerves to their stomach and chest muscles, which may give us better breathing control." He hesitated, then added, "They're thought to have the brain of a toddler."

There was a moment of silence, then Dave went on with more certainty, "Homo erectus were my ancestors too." He cracked a grin, though his eyes were still watchful. "Doesn't seem to have done me any harm." He spread his hands. "All I'm suggesting is that erectus was our last common ancestor. But it's also possible that archaic Homo sapiens was." He shrugged. "Need more data. But the point is, even if we separated that far back, the same process that pushed human's increase in brain size must have worked on the Pack too." He tilted his head and looked at us. "The proof's right here, eh?"

Paul said stiffly, "How long ago, Dave?"

"At least 300,000 years." He looked down at his hands, then, surprising me, reached for my hand and held it in his, palm up. He stroked my palm with his forefinger and flexed my fingers and my claws sprang out. He said softly, "Mutations can spread quickly in an isolated population, but the differences between you and humans need some time in which to occur. I think our separation would have had to occur at least that far back, and maybe more. It could be as much as a million years." He looked up, still holding my hand. "There are thousands of hominid fossils, but there are very few complete skeletons or skulls. Our ideas of how these fossils should be classified — which ones belong to new species — change all the time. Fossils classified as Homo erectus may well belong to several different species. Some are more like Homo sapiens than others."

Maggie said quietly, "You've done a lot of reading into this, haven't you?"

"It's interesting." He looked at me, and said more intensely, "It's interesting, but it doesn't make any difference to me. I did it because it matters to you and Paul." Embarrassed by his intensity, he settled back, releasing my hand, and said more casually, "Do you know why our brains got bigger?"

We shook our heads.

"Well, we don't know, of course. But there are a couple of theories you might find interesting." He paused. "The first thing is that we probably couldn't have grown these hefty brains without eating meat. Brains require a huge amount of energy." He grinned. "Why carnivores are usually brighter than herbivores. So, don't condemn the hunt."

Maggie smiled and said, "Are vegetarians dumber then?"

Dave grinned back. "I think you're pretty safe, but you might be in trouble if your only choice was lettuce." They both laughed. "Anyway, that's just a prerequisite as it were. The important question is, what are brains good for? It's not as obvious as it might sound. Like I said, brains are really expensive to run, and most animals manage fine on what they've got. Something had to drive our increase in brain size."

"So what was it?" Maggie asked curiously.

Dave shrugged. "Maybe divvying up the meat."

We stared at him in amazement. He shrugged again. "We needed meat, right? And it wasn't something everyone could get for themselves. If you're not a hunter yourself, you want to be friends with a hunter, right? And you've got to offer him something." He blushed suddenly.

"Like sex?" Maggie asked sourly.

He bobbed his head, and went on quickly, "And protection. Like allies, you know? If I see you're in danger, I'll let you know, and I'll help you out, because you're my ally. It's a dangerous world out there, you need people you can count on." He stopped abruptly, and I knew the words had hit him with unexpected force. He looked at me, and I touched his hair.

"Yeah," I said softly.

He swallowed and tried to regain his casual tone. "So, the thing is, um, you need to remember who your friends are. Who you can count on, and who you can't. Who's done what for you, that sort of thing. And that's what we need brains for." He looked at Maggie and then at Paul.

Paul was still tense, but he looked intrigued as well. Maybe taking confidence from that, Dave said with renewed energy, "Tell you the really interesting thing. Among monkeys and apes, alliances are maintained by grooming. The larger the group grows, the bigger the grooming group. There's a pretty good fit between the size of the neocortex — that's, like, the "smart" part of the brain — and the size of the group. So, a current theory is that humans evolved language because they needed to spend too much time grooming, because their group sizes were too big. On the basis of our neocortex, humans can live comfortably in groups of about 150, but to do that they'd have to spend about 40% of the day grooming each other! It's suggested that language serves the same function, but because you can talk comfortably with three other people, rather than the one-on-one situation you have with grooming, then you get more for your time." He paused, then added, "I think the Pack evolved its mind-to-mind communication for the same reason. It was an alternative strategy. You did one thing, we did another. But we both needed big brains to do it. We followed, like, parallel paths?" He looked at us questioningly, and beneath the surface calm I could see the nervousness. He'd obviously been thinking about this a lot, but he just as obviously wasn't at all sure how we'd take it.

Paul said abruptly, "We're animals."

Dave threw up his hands. "We're all animals! You both obsess about this whole human-animal thing. Why? Because you've got coats like a German shepherd? So what? It doesn't make you a dog. Human versus animals is something humans thought up to bolster their egos. Don't fall into their trap."

Paul said tightly, "You think there's no difference between humans and other animals?"

Dave said firmly, "There are differences between humans and other animal species, as there are between any different animal species. There's not some huge divide between humans and all other animals." He paused, then added, "It's occurred to me that one of the reasons humans found it easy to imagine a huge gap between themselves and everyone else is actually down to the failure of the hominid line."

We all stared at him. He shrugged. Leaned forward a little. "How many hominids roam the earth today? As far as most humans know, one. Just one. That is not a successful line. There's a gap next to humans because of all those hominids that didn't make it. The closest relatives humans know of are the chimps and the gorillas." He paused. "You know how much difference there is between chimps" DNA and ours?" He held his thumb and forefinger a millimetre apart. "About that much. Less than there is between two different types of gibbon. If biologists weren't prejudiced in favour of their own species, chimps and humans would be grouped together."

I said, "So?"

He regarded me earnestly. "In Lake Victoria, in Africa, there are about 200 different species of this little fish called a cichlid. Some of the species eat fish, and others eat insects, and others nibble at fish scales, and some are herbivores, some are plankton-eaters, some crush snails. You see? Different life-styles, different eating habits, different species. They all descend from one single ancestor who lived 200,000 years ago. Like humans."

"So?" I asked again.

"So there's only a fraction of a percent difference in their DNA, but they're all different. Biologists say they're different species." He looked from me to Paul and back again. "Because of their different life-styles. Because of —" He shrugged, grinned suddenly, "cultural differences. That's what the problem is here. I don't think there's much difference between us genetically. You've got some physical differences from us, but you can pass for human. What makes it so hard for you is … cultural differences."

"Memory," I said softly. He nodded.

Paul said stubbornly, "We're either human or we're not, Dave."

"You're missing the point," he said with exasperation. "It's the wrong question. You get the wrong answer because you're asking the wrong question! Does a platypus care whether biologists label it a mammal or something else? It's irrelevant. The label doesn't matter. The only reason you think it's important is because you have this big “either I'm a human or I'm an animal” idea. Humans are animals, okay? It's meaningless. You've got to ask yourself the right question. What is it that really worries you? What do you mean when you compare a human with other animals?"

Paul and I went still.

Dave said angrily, "Does eating your meat raw make you less than human? Humans eat raw meat. Raping? Killing? Torturing? Humans do all that. Because you can touch each other's minds? How the hell does that make you inferior?" He tilted his head to glance at me. "Mike, there's nothing your ancestors have done that my ancestors haven't done. Or Maggie's. Trace anyone's line back 30,000 years and you'll find plenty of terrible stories. Humans are not a nice species. The difference is, you remember it. That's your grief. It shouldn't add to your shame."

Paul said, "But we are animals. Maybe humans were animals, too, but they can get past it, they can leave their history behind. We can't. We can't forget what we were. Can't forget what we did. Can't stop wanting it." He stopped. He was shaking.