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The Compassionate Homo Erectus

Copyright 1996,1997 G.R.Morton. This may be freely distributed as long as not changes are made and no monetary charges are made.

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I have just finished reading a very interesting book by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman, _The Wisdom of the Bones_ (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996). This book raises several issues which bear on the thesis I have advocated, namely, that in order to account for the anthropological data, Adam must have been either Homo habilis or Homo erectus. Most Christians are loathe to consider such a hypothesis, preferring to reserve the term "human" to those who look like us, i.e. anatomically modern humans. Unfortunately, this viewpoint ignores some of the most interesting details found in the fossil record. The record of care and compassion on the part of Homo erectus would seem to go beyond what can be expected of a mere ape. The case of a fossil known as KNM-ER 1808 exemplifies the care of a human, even if 1808 looked a lot different from us.

It has long been known that Neanderthal's show much evidence of treating their companions with compassion and care. Klein (1989, p. 334) writes:

"However, the same skeletal pathologies and injuries that show that the Neanderthals lived risky lives and aged early also reveal a strikingly 'human' feature of their social life. The La Chapelle-aux-Saints and Shanidar 1 individuals, for example, must have been severely incapacitated and would have died even earlier without substantial help and care from their comrades. This implicit group concern for the old and sick may have permitted Neanderthals to live longer than any of their predecessors, and it is the most recognizably human, nonmaterial aspect of their behavior that can be directly inferred from the archeological record."

Some christians have accepted such evidence and accept the humanity of Neanderthal but not of Homo erectus. John Wiester (1983, p. 181) wrote:

"There is additional evidence of those qualities associated with humanity at the Shanidar cave. The analysis of undeveloped bone structure indicates that another man, known as Shanidar I, was a severe cripple from birth. His right arm was entirely useless and may have been amputated just above the elbow. Extensive bone scar tissue indicates that he was blind in his left eye. He was apparently cared for by his people until his death at age forty, a very old age by Neanderthal standards. This is the first sign of compassion and tenderness in the archeological record."

A year before the publication of Wiester's book, an article was published in Nature which had the barest outlines of an example of human compassion among Homo erectus (Walker, Zimmerman, and Leakey 1982)

In 1973, Kamoya Kimeu, a hominid fossil hunter of mythic renown discovered the fragmented bones of an Homo erectus. After sifting the earth from the dig, the homo erectus skeleton fragments were mixed in with the bones of hippos, crocodiles, and turtles among others. The fragments of this individual were easy to pick out from the 40,000 bones of other species because the homo erectus' bones were terribly diseased and deformed. Eventually, the fragments when glued back together, it turned out to be the first nearly complete skeleton ever found of a Homo erectus. Unfortunately, the diseased bones allowed very little to be learned of the normal anatomy of H. erectus. This fossil was given the museum number KNM-ER 1808. The KNM-ER stands for Kenya National Museum-East Rudolf. The geologic dating revealed that the fossil was 1.7 million years old, making this one of the oldest erectus fossils around. The bones had belonged to an adult female erectus.

The diseased bones consisted of two parts. There was a normal core where the osteocytic lacunae are parallel. The osteocytic lacunae are tiny caves in bone where the bone cell once lived. Surrounding this normal core was a half inch of 'woven' bone, thickest on the limb bones and almost nonexistent on the skull. The woven bone has bloated and highly irregular osteocytic lacunae and was deposited near the end of 1808's life. This fabric develops for one of three reasons: 1) when the creature grows very rapidly, 2) when fractures heal and 3) when a disease is operative. Since there is a core of normal bone which represents an adult-sized skeleton, rapid growth as a cause can be ruled out. Since the woven bone was all over the skeleton except for the skull, fractures didn't seem very likely as a cause. This left open disease, but what disease?

Alan Walker consulted with doctors at John Hopkins, looking for a diagnosis. The consensus seemed to settle onto a diagnosis of hypervitaminosis A. This type of disease is found among modern health fadists who take too much vitamin A. But since 1808 could not go to the local pharmacy and buy vitamin A supplements, how did she get mega-doses of this vitamin? Walker suggests that she obtained it in the same way that some arctic explorers got it -- by eating carnivores. More specifically, she got it by eating carnivore livers. It seems that when carnivores eat their prey, the obtain fairly large doses of vitamin A. Vitamin A is then stored "in its liver, where it is never broken down or detoxified. Carnivores, like dogs, leopard seals, polar bears, or killer whales, eat other animals, including their livers. Because a carnivore eats so many livers, its liver becomes a veritable warehouse of vitamin A."(Walker and Shipman 1996, p. 162)

Sir Douglas Mawson provides an excellent example of hypervitaminosis A in an arctic environment and the excruciating pain and horrible death it can cause. On Nov. 11, 1912, Mawson and two companions, Ninnis and Mertz, left their base camp to explore a large area on three sleds. They had stashed some food on the path of the journey but only carried small quantities with them. On their return, they traveled too slowly and ran out of food. They abandoned one sled and sorted their gear onto the lead sled, containing the scientific gear, and placed the food in the trailing sled.

Fearing crevasses, they had the scientific sled go first reasoning that if it fell into a crevasse there would be no big loss. Unfortunately, fate had a different idea. On Dec. 13, 1912, Ninnis and the food sled, fell into a crevasse, killing Ninnis and the team. The lead sled had made the crossing but apparently had weakened the ice bridge enough so that it could no longer support the weight of the food-carrying sled. Mawson and Mertz were 320 miles from base camp with only enough food for ten days. As they continued on their trek, they began to kill and eat the sled dogs. The dog meat was tough and chewy. The livers were soft and better tasting. They ate liver which turned out to be a fatal mistake.

They began to suffer from dizziness, stomach cramps, nausea, and balance problems. Their hair fell out and their skin cracked and peeled off in strips. Their joints throbbed with pain.

Walker and Shipman (1996, p. 164) write:

"Any sort of movement produced terrible pain, for what they were experiencing was exactly what happened to 1808. The excess vitamin A they had eaten--Mawson's biographer reckons they ate sixty toxic doses-- caused the periosteum, the tough, fibrous tissue that encases each bone, to rip free from the bone with each pull of a muscle. (The muscles are anchored on bones through the periosteum.) Between the periosteum and bone, torn apart blood vessels spilled their contents, forcing further separation of the tissues. In the case of 1808, the blood formed huge clots, which ossified--turned to bone--before she died."

Mertz died before reaching base camp. Mawson buried him 100 miles from base camp. When Mawson reached the base camp, his good friend greeted him with "My God! Which one are you?"

What does this have to do with H. erectus? Walker and Shipman (1996,p. 165) write"

"To have such extensive blood clots, she must have been completely immobilized with pain. Yet, despite her agony, she must have survived her poisoning for weeks or maybe months while those clots ossified. How else could her blood clots have been so ubiquitous; how else could they have turned to the thick coating of pathological bone that started us on this quest?

The implication stared me in the face: someone else took care of her. Alone, unable to move, delirious, in pain, 1808 wouldn't have lasted two days in the African bush, much less the length of time her skeleton told us she had lived. Someone else brought her water and probably food; unless 1808 lay terrible close to a water source, that meant her helper had some kind of receptacle to carry water in. And someone else protected her from hyenas, lions and jackals on the prowl for a tasty morsel that could not run away Someone else, I couldn't help thinking, sat with her through the long, dark African nights for no good reason except human concern. So, useless as 1808 was for telling us much about normal Homo erectus morphology, she told us something quite unexpected. Her bones are poignant testimony to the beginnings of sociality, of strong ties among individuals that came to exceed the bonding and friendship we see among baboons or chimps or other non human primates"

As to 1808 lying close to water, consider this: water holes attract predators at all hours of the day and night. The predators have learned that their prey will eventually come to the water hole. After describing this and hominid inability to defend themselves at night, Lew Binford (1983, p. 68) writes:

"The place I would never choose to establish a camp in the African savannah is next to a water source! Nevertheless, archaeologists tell us that our hominid ancestors habitually located home bases in exactly these places. At this point, it becomes relevant to ask whether the three criteria used by the East African researchers really permit the reliable recognition of home-base occupation sites."

One other objection must be discussed. Is the reaction of the Homo erectus care-giver merely like that of an ape? The answer is unequivocally no. Jane Goodall gives an account of how chimpanzees treated an injured comrade. There was a polio outbreak in the chimp tribe Goodall was watching and it afflicted many of the chimps. One named McGregor was paralyzed by the polio. When this newly paralyzed chimp drug himself back to camp, Goodall (1971, p. 221) reports:

"One of the most tragic things about the whole tragic affair was the reaction of the chimps to the stricken paralyzed male. Initially, almost certainly, they were frightened by the strangeness of his condition. We noticed the same thing when some of the other polio victims appeared in camp for the first time. "

She further wrote (1971, p. 221):

"McGregor's condition was patently far worse. Not only was he forced to move about in an abnormal manner, but there was the smell of urine and the bleeding rump and the swarm of flies buzzing around him. The first morning of his return to camp, as he sat in the long grass below the feeding area, the adult males, one after the other, approached with their hair on end, and after staring began to display around him. Goliath actually attacked the stricken old male, who, powerless to flee or defend himself in any way, could only cower down, his face split by a hideous grin of terror, while goliath pounded on his back. When another adult male bore down on McGregor, hair bristling, huge branch flailing the ground, Hugo and I went to stand in front of the cripple. To our relief, the displaying male turned aside.

"After two or three days the others got used to McGregor's strange appearance and grotesque movements, but they kept well away from him. There was one afternoon that without doubt was from my point of view the most painful of the whole ten days. A group of eight chimps had gathered and were grooming each other in a tree about sixty yards from where McGregor lay in his nest. The sick male stared toward them, occasionallygiving slight grunts. Mutual grooming normally takes up a good deal of a chimpanzees time, and the old male had been drastically starved of this important social contact since his illness.

"Finally he dragged himself from his nest, lowered himself to the ground, and in short stages began the long journey to join the others. When at last he reached the tree he rested briefly in the shade; then, making the final effort he pulled himself up until he was close to two grooming males. With a loud grunt of pleasure he reached a hand toward them in greeting--but even before he made contact they both had swung quickly away and without a backward glance started grooming on the far side of the tree. For a full two minutes old McGregor sat motionless, staring after them. And then he laboriously lowered himself to the ground. As I watched him sitting there alone, my vision blurred, and when I looked up at the groomers in the tree I came nearer to hating a chimpanzee than I have ever been before or since.

"For several years Hugo and I had suspected that the aggressive adult male Humphrey was McGregor's younger brother. The two traveled about together frequently and often the older male had hurried to Humphrey's assistance when he was being threatened or attacked by other chimps. It was during the last days of Mr. McGregor's life that we became convinced these two males were siblings:no bond other than that of a family could have accounted for Humphrey's behavior then--and afterward.

"In the whole period Humphrey seldom moved farther than a few hundred yards away from the old male--although even he never actually groomed McGregor. Sometimes Humphrey went away across the valley to feed, but within an hour or so he was back,resting or grooming himself near his paralyzed friend. On the first day of his return to camp McGregor climbed quite high in a tree and made a nest. Suddenly Goliath began to display around him, swaying the branches more and more vigorously, slashing the old male on the head and the back. Gregor's screams grew louder, and he clung to the rocking branches tightly. At last, as if in desperation, he let himself drop down through the tree from branch to branch, until he landed on the ground. Then he started to drag himself slowly away. And Humphrey, who had always been extremely nervous of Goliath, actually leaped up into the tree, displaying wildly at the much higher ranking male, and for a brief moment attacking him. I could hardly believe it.

"One day Mr. McGregor managed to pull himself right up to the feeding area, up to thirty yards of very steep slope, to join a large number of chimpanzees who were eating there. We were able to give him a whole box to himself so that for a while, at least, he was part of the group again. When the others moved away up the valley, Gregor tried to follow. But whether he dragged himself on his belly, or hitched himself backward, or laboriously somersaulted, he could move only very slowly, and the rest of the group were soon out of sight."

Thus, the compassion of Homo erectus was quite human. Christians need to understand that from a spiritual perspective, mankind may extend far, far back into the past.