They would need a way to convey, using a combination of gestures and sounds, there is a dead hairy mammoth down the road near Moishe’s giant rock. They would need to make an alliance with other troupes, so that together they could eat and survive. They don't have enough individuals both to eat the meat of a larger dead animal-protein that is going to develop larger brains-and also scare off larger predators that might eat them. Ape tribes back then have only about 40 members, including the young. ![]() Why would you need to develop this form of communication? Imagine another origin scene instead of Kubrick’s. Language allows an animal to see a picture in its mind of something that is not right in front of them. Language, on the other hand, allows for “not here” and “not now.” It allows for elsewheres and elsewhens, which are properties of human imagination. Bird A tricks bird B into dropping that seed by squawking loudly to distract bird B. ![]() The difference between animal communication systems and language is that animal communication systems are about right here and right now. The story of how apes became humans, a story we will never know, could just as easily-and I would say more logically-have progressed not through technologies of violence but through technologies of language. Later in the film, another murderer will rise up named HAL the computer, an AI that takes upon itself the job not only of controlling the mission to Jupiter but dispensing with humans altogether, much the way people now fear that the AI components in their smart devices will go rogue.Ī still from 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick In Kubrick’s vision, the jumper cable connecting ape to human is not language but murder, and in the movie murder and technology are ineluctably linked.Īn alpha male in one tribe of apes uses a tibia bone to kill an ape from a different tribe, and in one of the most thrilling examples of montage in the history of film, the murderous ape, in a moment of glee and triumph, tosses the bone into air and in the next shot the bone has turned into a space ship, floating in the cosmos. I’m referring to the scenes in which our primate ancestors are visited by an alien intelligence that jump starts the evolution of apes to homo sapiens. Thinking about the end of things, the mind naturally drifts to beginnings, and I often recall the opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s ingenious film 2001, A Space Odyssey. Today, I’m looking at the end of things-I mean extinction-as well as feelings of pleasure while sand still trickles in our personal hourglasses. ![]() Richard Toon eating fish and chips in Lyme Regis.
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