I recently read the book "The Sixth Extinction" by Elizabeth Kolbert. It tells us how we are in the middle of one of the rarest events in the history of Earth, an event which has happened only 5 times before in all the 4.54 billion years of its existence. 'We' the Humans are not just a mere audience for this but we are the single most cause for this event. It is amazing how a species which came into existence 500,000 years ago, got on its foot a mere 50,000 years ago has managed to irreversibly change the Earth.
But I did not want to talk about the Mass extinction of species perpetrated by us. I want to talk about the "Madness" gene. Homo Sapiens developed into "Homo Sapiens" some where in Central Africa about 200,000 years ago. One Group out of this small mass of people migrated North into the present day Europe, another group migrated East via Red Sea crossing into the present day Middle East. The group which went into the Europe met a distant cousin called Homo Neanderthals, killed all of them off and occupied their territory. The second group which went East had even more interesting journey. After reaching the Nile Valley they proceeded down into Asia, Siberia and over the bearing land bridge into the Americas. A further subgroup of these people proceeded down into Australia through a series of land bridges then existed. That is a hell of a long journey that happened over a period of 125,000 years and countless number generations. But given the non existence of any technology, social structure or a defined path they survived impossible odds. The question is why did they move ?
Why did our ancestors ever move from Central Africa ? A possible answer is a sudden climate change, but they could have just adapted to it. That is what they have been doing since they were apes, no species till then ever left its territory in separate groups. Lack of food doesn't come into picture because there were not many people to begin with. Another question is why were there 2 groups moving in opposite directions ? No group had any idea what they were going to face, no group had any structure which decided who goes which way. Why did some people decide to move and keep moving and why did some decide to stay back ? If climate change was the answer they could have stopped after reaching the pleasant Nile valley, why did people kept on moving all the way till the Australian deserts and Alaskan Tundra ?
Homo Neanderthals were almost same as Homo Sapiens. They ever even a stronger species physically. They too moved from Africa to Europe. But almost all of them moved to Europe and just stayed there, they didn't want to go any further. When the younger cousins came and met them, they couldn't survive this weedy new species and just perished from the face of the earth. Only good news out of this is that, there was some breeding between the two and we are all 4% Neanderthals. So Why did the younger cousin kill off their most identical species ?
Fast forwarding the journey a few 100,000 years. Before Columbus reached the Americas, there were around 4 Billion Passenger Pigeons in North America. Around the start of the 18th century the bird became a cheap food source, the species was hunted to extinction. The last of its kind died in 1914. The Great Auk, Dodo and countless number of other species went the same way. All perished for the upkeep of that one weedy killer species. The same species fought countless number of wars among itself and killed millions of themselves. In another part of the world something different was also happening. California Condor is the largest bird in North America. It almost went extinct in the wild, all the remaining 22 of them were captured and with Olympic efforts which include teaching the birds not to use electric wires, inventing bird puppets to feed the hatch-lings they were brought back and are now thriving. There are now about 400 of them in the wild. As I write this, Conservation efforts are happening to save thousands of species all over world, often adjacent to poachers and polluters who are endangering thousands more. What prompts us to be so diabolic ? No other species ever inhabited this planet had this, the Madness Gene.
Madness Gene, some thing that makes us what we are. Makes us to kill our brothers and yet show immense amount of kindness to strangers. It makes to not to care one bit for the planet earth and yet devote entire lives to conserve what we can. That makes us to create immortal works of art and yet make horrible Wars. To reach to the skies, to split atom and yet that gives us enough gumption to drop an Atom Bomb on our own kind. That enigmatic and inexplicable Madness Gene which creates that insatiable urge to carry on, always.