Human Nature and The Savanna Hypothesis

Introduction

In this lesson we will look at human nature using the writings of ecologist Edward O. Wilson. You will read two extracts from his book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.
 

Pre-reading task
 
Phobias

• Read the following extract from the Peanuts comic strip where Lucy is trying to analyze Charlie Brown. The cartoon version of the extract can also be found online at this link from min 0:48-1:25: A Charlie Brown Christmas - Clip

Lucy Van Pelt: Are you afraid of responsibility? If you are, then you have hypengyophobia.
Charlie Brown: I don’t think that’s quite it.
Lucy Van Pelt: How about cats? If you’re afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia.
Charlie Brown: Well, sort of, but I’m not sure.
Lucy Van Pelt: Are you afraid of staircases? If you are, then you have climacaphobia. Maybe you have thalassophobia. This is fear of the ocean, or gephyrobia, which is the fear of crossing bridges. Or maybe you have pantophobia. Do you think you have pantophobia?
Charlie Brown: What’s pantophobia?
Lucy Van Pelt: The fear of everything.
Charlie Brown: THAT’S IT!

from A Charlie Brown Christmas by Charles M. Shultz

Now, tell your partner what kind of irrational fears or phobias you have.

Once you have done that say where you think they come from.

Do you think there are phobias that all people share? Explain your answer.

Reading 1.
Before you start reading the extract below, go through the Gist and Comprehension Questions first; this will give you an idea of what answers to look for.
Gist Question
How does E.O.Wilson define human nature?

Comprehension Questions

Paragraph 1

The ‘developmental rules’ of human nature are not absolute – explain.

Paragraph 2

3) Give one an example of a ‘bias’.

Paragraph 3

4) What triggers aversions?
5) Wilson has an irrational fear of ____________.

Paragraph 4

6) Why haven’t people developed 'aversions' to knives and guns?
7) What is ‘hard-wiring' in this context?

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What is Human Nature?

What precisely, then, is human nature? That is one of the great questions of both science and philosophy. It is not the cultural universals, such as incest taboos, rites of passage, and creqation myths. Those are the products of human nature. Rather, human nature is the hereditary rules of mental development. The rules are expressed in molecular pathways that create cells and tissue, particularly those of the sensory nervous system. The rules are also prescribed in the cells and tissue that generate mind and behvavior. They are manifested as biases in the way our senses perceive the world. They appear as the properties of language and symbolic coding by which we represent the world. The developmental rules are not absolute. Instead, they generate the options we open to ourselves. They render some choices more pleasing than others: music yes, the crying of a baby no.

The developmental rules are in an early stage of exploration by psychologists and biologists. Even so, the few that are known range over diverse categories of behavior and culture. They affect how we clarify colors in accordance with the innate of cell reception and transmission within the retina. They bias our aesthetic response to visual design according elementary abstract shape and degree of complexity.

In a wholly different realm, developmental rules determine the readiness by which we acquire aversions and phobias. People come most quickly to fear objects that were dangerous to prehistoric people, including snakes, spiders, heights, closed space, and other ancient perils of humankind. The trigger that creates one of deep aversions is often a single frightening experience. To be startled by a sudden writhing of an object on the ground can imprint the mind against snakes. I escaped that phobia somehow. In fact, I have always enjoyed catching and handling snakes, a taste learned as a boy naturalist. On the other hand, I have a mild and unshakable arachnophobia, acquired during an accidental entanglement with the web of a large orb-weaving spider when I was a boy of eight years old. I enjoy exploring caves - no claustrophobia there – but because of a clumsy anesthesia during an operation when I was a small boy, I cringe at even the thought of my face being covered while my arms are pinned. In general terms, I'm typical. Every person has his own imprinting experience and profile of such archaic aversions. Only a lucky few lack them completely.

In sharp contrast to their inborn sensitivity to ancient perils people are far less prone to acquire fear of knives, guns, automobiles, electric outlets, and other dangerous objects of everyday modern life. The reason for the difference, scientists believe, is insufficient time for the evolving species to hard wire reactions in the brain to these newer threats.

Wilson, E.O.(2006) The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth pp. 65-66

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Reading 2.

Pre-reading task

1a. Without talking to your classmates think about what your ideal landscape is. The place where you would feel most content. In that area where would you place your most preferred type of habitation. Think about what is in front of it and what is behind it?

1b. Now sketch your ideal landscape with your ideal habitation. Once you have done that take an overhead projector transparency and pen and trace the essential lines of your drawing onto it. Label all the land forms and features you have included. Make sure your picture is enclosed in a frame and it has a key which will serve as a vocabulary list. When you have finished give a 1 minute presentation to the class describing it.

Before you start reading the extract below, go through the Gist and Comprehension Questions first, this will give you an idea of what answers to look for.

Gist Question

Read the following quote from the film Lawrence of Arabia and say what it has got to do with the ‘savanna hypothesis’.

PRINCE FEISAL:You are an Englishman. Are you not loyal to England?

LAWRENCE: To England and to other things.
PRINCE FEISAL: To England and Arabia both? And is that possible? I think you are another of these desert-Ioving English. .. Doughty, Stanhope...Gordon of Khartoum. No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert. And no man needs nothing.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)- directed by David Lean
You can watch this scene on Youtube, click on the following link:
No Arab Loves the Desert



Comprehension Questions

1. In choosing a place to locate a home, what three environmental characteristics do people most prefer? (paragraph 1)
2. What should be behind the house? (paragraph 2)
3. What kinds of trees and animals do people like to see as they overlook the landscape in front of their house? (paragraph 2)
4. Why did our ancestors like small isolated clusters of trees? (paragraph 3)
5. What kind of trees are most often preferred by people and the author of the text?
6. What was the function of a river or lake for our forebears from Africa? (paragraph 3)
7. What do you think ‘genetic human nature is? (paragraph 4)
8. Was Gerard Piel a supporter of this notion? Explain your answer.
9. What did E.O.Wilson do on the balcony of Piel’s apartment?
10. Why did he especially enjoy his little walk onto the balcony?
11. Do you agree with the savanna hypothesis? Explain.

2. The Savanna Hypothesis

…Researchers have found that when people of different cultures, including those of North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, are given freedom to select the setting of their homes and work places, they prefer an environment that combines three features. They wish to live on a height looking down and out, to scan a parkland with scattered trees and copses spread before them, closer in appearance to a savanna than either a grassland or a closed forest, and to be near a body of water, such as a lake, river, or sea. Even if all these elements are purely aesthetic and not functional, as in vacation homes, people who have the means will pay a very high price to obtain them.
There is more. Subjects in choice tests prefer their habitation to be a retreat, with a wall, cliff, or something else solid to the rear. They want a view of fruitful terrain in front of the retreat. They like large animals scattered thereabout, either wild or domestic. Finally, they favor trees with low horizontal branches and divided leaves. It is probably not a coincidence that some people, I among them, consider the Japanese Maple the world’s most beautiful tree.
These quirks of human nature do not prove but are at least consistent with the savanna hypothesis of human evolution. Supported by considerable evidence from fossil record, this interpretation holds that human beings today still choose the habitats resembling those in which our species evolved in Africa during millions of years of prehistory. The distant forebears wished to be hidden in copses looking out over a savanna or transitional woodland, scanning the terrain for prey to stalk, fallen animals to scavenge, edible plants to gather, and enemies to avoid. A body of water nearby served as a territorial boundary and an added source of food.
By and large, people are keenly aware of their own innate preferences but have given little or no thought to why they and others feel the same way. I once dined at the house of the late Gerard Piel, a distinguished writer, publisher, and the founder of Scientific American. He was, I knew, disinclined to accept the idea of a genetic human nature. So it gave me considerable pleasure to stroll out with him on to the balcony of his penthouse apartment, which was lined with potted shrubs, and gaze down with him more than a dozen stories to the woodland, savanna, and reservoir lake of Central park. I can only imagine how much that view added to the commercial value of the apartment – thanks to choices made by our long-ago African ancestors.
Wilson, E.O.(2006) The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth pp. 66-67

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Answers

• Listening follow-up

To hear Edward Wilson talking about about Biophilia and the Savanna Hypothesis go to the link below and listen from minute 32 to 35:4
Edward Wilson discussing biophilia and the savanna hypothesis. .




Further reading

Dutton, Denis (2009) The Art Instinct:Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. Chapter 1 Landscape and Longing, pp 13-28. Bloomsberry Press. New York. 282 p.

Nature, Art & Language

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© All Copyright, 2007, (revised 2019) Ray Genet