Humanity Owes Our Females a Huge Debt

The Gender of Debt: The Last 50,000 Years – Mariano Pavanello (2019)

When I began this book review journey, my wife asked me what I hoped to be a good end-result for this endeavor.  I told her that I wished to create a resource, a website that readers could use to find interesting books to read, and that it would be awesome if writers thought enough of my commentary to seek me out so I could provide a review of their work.  I specifically considered writers of science books, science history, and other such work to be ones I would love to collaborate with and provide reviews of their writing.  Through hard work and diligence, this has indeed come to pass.  I am contacted regularly by book publishers and authors with requests to review their work, which is extremely satisfying.  However, receiving an email from a renowned anthropologist asking if I would consider reviewing their book on my site was a tremendous thrill.  Reading the work, and understanding the implications this book could have on our understanding of human social development, is a privilege.

Mariano Pavanello’s aim with The Gender of Debt is to shed some light on the erroneous assumptions that many anthropologists still hold in regards to the role of labor sharing in early humans, and the motivations that drove the specializations of hunting and food gathering into a sexual division that we still take for granted today.  He seeks to correct the social debt that human males owe to human females, a debt which is never acknowledged in our patriarchal society.

It is currently assumed that what drove humans to develop the society and culture we see around us today was the increase in meat provided by the male hunters of early tribes.  Meat is highly nutritious and full of energy.  The idea was that, as this great resource requires a large expenditure of effort and energy, and came fraught with danger, the risks associated with hunting became more and more a male dominated pursuit, leaving women to tend the camps, care for children and elderly, and gather up other food items such as plants, tubers, honey, and other such food sources as could be collected not too far from their camps.  This, they assume, is what drove the push to patriarchy and male control over women.  Mr. Pavanello goes into great detail explaining why previous researchers and scientists drew these conclusions, and then adroitly points out why these assumptions are dead wrong.  The complexities of human social order do not fall so neatly into the categories our assumptions place them in.

One of the most interesting chapters in this book delves into the scientific literature to explore exactly what we know about how tribal people throughout the world manage to subsist.  Various charts are used to explain the variations between the amount of labor that goes into hunting and the amount of labor that goes into food gathering.  What the data shows, and what is not present in the modern conversation about early man, is that, for the most part, the food gathering side is the crucial one.  It is the side that allows for all other functions of humanity to continue, including long, arduous hunting excursions. Many groups could survive on just food gathering alone, but no one could survive on just hunting alone.  In fact, without the steady, constant work of the food gatherers the hunters would have no sustenance to support their physical work.

Mr. Pavanello posits that, because the hunters realized how much they depended on the gatherers, they began to implement cultural methods by which they would control the females, assuring the hunters of constant food, constant care for their children, and autonomy in the hunting process.  This was not done by coercion or force necessarily, but by the strict codes of societal control, such as food sharing, child care, daughter exchange for marriages, etc.  Most tribal cultures share all food items as a rule.  The gatherers will share their supplies with all in the tribe, while the hunters would divide up the kill for all people to share.  This reciprocity is integral to understanding early human cultures.  It is because of this system that humans thrived in a manner that our Neanderthal and other relative species could not.  Assuring communal survival through food sharing allowed humans to develop free time, to eventually come up with higher social structures such as religion, markets, etc.

What is evident throughout this book is that humanity indeed owes a huge debt of gratitude to the females of our species, for without their abilities, knowledge, and wisdom we humans would have stayed tribal peoples, never developing the complexity and intricacy of our modern human society.  I hope more people read this book, or at least study its conclusions, so that as a society we all accept, understand, and appreciate the achievements of the female of our species, instead of solely focusing on the achievements of male humans in our history.  

This is quite a dense treatise, and explores far more data and ideas than I could possibly cover in this review.  I hope it is a touchstone for scientists and social anthropologists to view the human condition through a new spectrum.  The debt humanity owes to our females is over 50,000 years old, and needs to be addressed sooner than later.  We are all one humanity, with shared goals and shared credit for our successes. 

(This book can be purchased here: Cambridge Scholars Publishing )

Mushroom season is coming, and this book has me HYPE!

In The Company of Mushrooms: A Biologist’s Tale – Elio Schaechter (1997)

            It is currently winter here in Houston, Texas, which means that soon the weather will warm up a bit, the rains will come, and the ground and trees will be full of mushrooms once again.  As an amateur mycologist, I am really looking forward to this next mushroom season.  While I wait for it, I find that reading cool books about mushrooms helps me to pass the time and prepare for my next hunts.

            The author of this book, Mr. Elio Schaechter, is a trained scientist, specifically in biology.  He combines his scientific knowledge with his love for the exploration and fun found in mushroom hunting.  The book is divided up into several parts, each of which focuses on one specific aspect of this fascinating hobby.  The first chapters discuss exactly what is a fungus, what is a mushroom, and how they fit into the tree of life.  Fungi are ancient, very ancient.  The organisms we class as fungi are so old that they belong to a separate kingdom of life, and have been evolving since before the advent of flowering plants and trees.  A mushroom is the fruiting body of many types of fungi whose purpose is solely to procreate.  Others do not make mushrooms, instead utilizing spherical shapes, jelly shapes, or other such creations to spread their spores.

            Another chapter in this great book details the use of mushrooms throughout history, and yet another explains the rise of mushroom hunting clubs and organizations.  These are some of the best parts of the book, as they detail the fun and camaraderie found by people whose shared interests in mushrooms bring them together to learn and eat and have fun.  As the world of mycology is largely one composed of self-starters and amateur hunters working alone, these mushroom/mycology clubs are a great resource for information exchange and education.  I myself have joined the Gulf States Mycological Society, and hope to head to a foray at one of the massive state parks here in Texas, as soon as the weather allows.

            One of the topics that Mr. Schaechter returns to is that of the traditional mushroom hunters in Europe and Asia, and why this has not taken hold in places like the UK, or the USA, where mushrooms are seen as dangerous and eating wild foraged mushrooms especially so.  This bias is a shame, as mushrooms are a very good food source when sourced intelligently.  The area I live in, near Houston, TX, is estimated to have 5,000-6,000 species of fungi, of which just over 1,000 are identified.  The climate is moist and there are lots of places for the mushrooms to grow.  Being in the middle of the continent, mushrooms from the East coast grow here as well as mushrooms from the West coast.  This hobby, which takes you into nature, allows for education and fun, and if lucky, results in delicious mushrooms for your table, is one that can be enjoyed by a great many people.  I hope to do my part by sharing my mushroom adventures and spreading the fungal love.

(This book can be purchased here:  IN THE COMPANY OF MUSHROOMS )

Heredity, and genetic science, are more complex than one could ever imagine

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers. Perversions, and Potential of Heredity – Carl Zimmer (2018)

            (A quick note on some awesomeness that has graced this humble book review blog recently.  Several weeks ago I received notice that RXTT’s Intellectual Journey has been included in Feedspot’s Top 200 Book Blogs, currently found at #193! Amazing!  Many thanks to blog master Mr. Anuj Agarwal, and the good people at Feedspot.  BOOKS RULE!)

The past decade has seen the world of genetic research explode, in both the amount and the scope of what is being attempted.  Researches the world over have new tools with which to explore the genetic codes that provide the instructions to make all parts of living organisms.  As with all emerging scientific fields, the general public’s discourse is decades behind the forefront of research.  This leads to reactionary angers, manipulation of the ignorant through fear, and an inability to properly fund cutting edge research.  Carl Zimmer has done an amazing job corralling the wild and weird history of the human study of heredity and genetics, and made it truly enjoyable to read.

Humans have been genetically altering the natural world around us for millennia; way before we knew what drove heredity, or had any idea about why offspring acquired certain characteristics of their parents and lost others.  These early genetic experimenters were the early humans that began to cultivate wild plants.  An example of this is the modern tomato.  The original fruit, which is exceedingly rare to find these days, was basically a tiny, tart and seedy berry.  The humans in the New World (many of our modern foods were not found in Eurasia, Africa, or Australia) would choose a plant with slightly lager or sweeter berry, collect those seeds, and propagate it.  Each new generation, the human would choose the plants with the best fruit, propagate that one, and dispose of the lesser plants.  Over the centuries, that basic method created whole new species of tomato plants, capable of producing much bigger, sweeter, and more nutritious food.  The same process allowed our New World ancestors to create what we now call corn, chili peppers, potatoes, and a host of other vegetables that are ubiquitous in modern diets worldwide.  This same process was undergone by early humans domesticating cattle, goats, swine, etc.  By breeding only the animals whose traits were preferred, more animals capable of reproducing those traits existed, soon making them the norm.

In spite of the long history of humans altering the plants and animals around us, it seems that as a species, we humans have an extremely short memory of our collective past.  We allow ideas that have no relation to the world around us to color how we see the world itself.  One of the biggest restraints to developing the science of heredity and genetics came from organized religion, and the blind obedience that their dogma requires of their followers.  Ideas that are in opposition to religious dogma are disposed of without exploration, and people are kept blind, ignorant and happy in their stupidity.  For centuries, the idea that the world was truly static, truly unchanging, was prevalent in Western culture.  This stems solely from theologians and priests demanding that everyone see their little collection of stories, history, genealogy, myths, and fables as LITERAL TRUTH, never to be questioned, never to be doubted.  In this world view, every animal species was perfectly crafted by an omniscient creator, and these species have remained unchanged since the beginning of time.  This belief depended on the unchallenged assumption that the world was just over 6,000 years old, an assumption so stupid and wrong yet strictly dogmatic, that it was unchallenged for centuries, even causing the execution of people willing to claim otherwise.

It is quite fitting that despite these idiocies pushed on people by organized religions, it was ordained members of the clergy who did the most groundbreaking work on genetics.  Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar and abbot, decided he was going to do his own experiments, regardless of the consequences.  He used the common pea plant, and its many colorful flowers, as his subject.  By cross-breeding them over and over, and carefully observing the results, he developed the idea that the outcome of reproduction is due to the offspring inheriting some sort of instructions from both of its progenitors.  He showed how, for these plants, and it turns out, for much of life on Earth, there is a rigid set of probability controlling which traits are passed on and in what quantity.  By selectively breeding only tall plants, an d then pollinating them with pollen from short plants, he was able to show the existence of dominant, and recessive, traits.

Dominant traits are those that will appear in an offspring if only one of its parents carries that trait.  Recessive traits can spring up in offspring, but only if both parents carry the recessive trait themselves.  He also determined the ratio in which these traits would appear, and was vindicated by his experiments.  People condemned the man, ignoring his work. It was only after his death that recognition came, and now Mendel is considered the father of genetics for his efforts.

Breeders and scientists continued working in this manner for centuries, through trial and error, until a great discovery was made.  This was the discovery of the DNA molecule, and how it is found in every single form of life on the planet, from bacteria to trees to humans.  Understanding that this complex and huge molecule encoded instructions for the creation of all parts of an organism was something that, even today, many people are not willing to accept.  Once this was found out, scientists and researchers sought to decode what was now called a genome.  Some animals have few chromosomes containing DNA, and others have dozens and dozens.  Each species is different, yet each species carries so much “junk” DNA (DNA that is left over from previous ancestors or organisms) that looking for the genes that are actually shaping our bodies was a herculean task.  Over the past 30 years much groundbreaking work has been done in studying genes, what they are responsible for, how to alter them, and how to use gene therapy to help people suffering from genetic diseases.

Another awesome part of this book discusses the study of heredity, as it relates to what traits and genes are passed on to our children.  Humans are pretty selfish and stupid, for the most part, and because of this many people were convinced that having “bad” parents automatically created “bad” offspring.  This was such a racist and classicist idea, yet it persisted for a long time, because, of course, most “educated” people canme from the rich white upper crust of society.  It allowed people to classify a pecking order of human quality, with white Europeans on top of the list, and African and tribal people at the bottom.  These morons made the grievous mistake of assuming that genetics count for everything in a person’s makeup, and that environment, opportunity, and nutrition had no bearing.  These idiots fought the hardest, and still fight today, to try and maintain the status quo which keeps them fat and happy while everyone else deserves their shit lot in life.  It has been shown, countless times, that human achievement and quality is an ongoing process, and results from everything that shapes a person, from their family life, to their education, to their nutrition, to where they are born.

Even after these dumb-ass ideas were discounted, people continued to stick to strict ideas of heredity, ideas which have no bearing in the real world.  In one example, around the 1920’s, the comedian Charlie Chaplin was sued by a young lady claiming her son was his illegitimate child.  Chaplin sought to have the court accept scientific evidence (blood type) that the child could not be Chaplin’s, but at the time the courts were scientifically ignorant, and would not allow it.  In recent decades, this mindset has flipped, and in most courts, only DNA evidence is accepted and it is seen as irrefutable. The blind stupidity of this is pointed out by the case of a woman with three children, who, in a custody battle, had blood work done.  The blood work showed that her kids did not share her DNA, so the courts accused her of stealing the babies when they were young.  She tried everything, including testimony from the doctor that delivered her babies, but had no luck.  It was not until several scientists did extensive work on the lady that it was discovered that she is a chimera.  Her body is composed of two distinctly different sets of DNA.  Her blood contained DNA that did not match her kids, but her muscle and skin contained matching DNA.  Genetic chimeras are quite common, in fact, it is estimated that most humans are genetic chimeras on some level.  Some of them are formed when two eggs are fertilized by two sperm I the uterus, and then these two combine into one embryo, creating one human.  Sometimes these come out hermaphroditic, other times it is seemingly undetectable.  Even other people have stripes across their skin, from two separate genetic pools. 

One other seeming insanity I came across while reading this book is the discovery that human mothers exchange DNA with their offspring, and vice versa.  It used to be thought that the placenta was a protective barrier, keeping the fetus separate, but that is not the case.  The mother’s DNA does enter the child, and sometimes the child’s DNA goes back through the umbilical cord in the form of stem cells and become part of the mother’s body.  In some cases it was found that the fetus’ stem cells became neurons in the brain of the mother, sometimes months after the child had been born.  The implications are awesome.

I could write about the amazing stuff in this book forever.  I think it is a very engaging read, and worth the time it takes, for anyone interested in heredity, genetics, science history, and the foolishness of man’s assumptions about our own nature.  Highly Recommended.

(This book can be purchased here: SHE HAS HER MOTHER'S LAUGH )

The animal life around us is more interesting than we could ever imagine

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21^st Century Bestiary – Caspar Henderson (2013)

            Bestiaries are bad-ass.  I even like the word itself (a collection of beasts!!!).  For the most recent human history, bestiaries were collections, much like encyclopedias and atlases, that sought to compile the whole breadth of the animal life found in a specific area of the world.  Ancient Greek and Roman scholars would compile these amazing bestiaries, mostly based on word-of-mouth and accounts brought back from intrepid sailors.  Because their sources were never actually verified, many of the entries found in these old bestiaries are either for wholly made up animals, such as chimeras, unicorns, and gryphons, or they were for severely misidentified and poorly described animals, such as the rhinoceros, which was originally thought to have armored plating, and whose horn it was said would spew fire when the creature was angry.  While many of these descriptions sound poetically correct, (you do NOT want a 2 ton rhino angry at you.  You will swear he has fire shooting out its snout as it comes to wreck you up.  Also, its thick, folded skin, does indeed look like armor plating,) they were not up to the veracity needed to function as true scientific categorization.

            Around half a decade ago, author Caspar Henderson started to think about animals, specifically the ones that are surprising to encounter.  These animals are so amazing, so unique in their morphology or their behavior, and so different from the standard animals we humans find ourselves exposed to, that they may as well be mythical.  He began to do the research that led to this book.  Mr. Henderson’s love of nature shines through in his writing.  He has chosen one animal to represent each letter of the alphabet, and in each chapter he manages to not only describe the amazing animal in question, what we know currently about its life, physical properties, and behavior, but he also explores the way humans have discovered these details, how humans used to see these animals historically, and the possibilities inherent for us in studying these magnificent creatures.

            I am a huge nature nut, and I am always in awe of the seemingly inexhaustible variety of form and function that life has taken on our lovely planet Earth.  I was quite familiar with some of the animals in this bestiary, and I was completely ignorant of several of these creatures.  I learned quite a lot about or fellow animals, and was left with a distinct impression that, for all we humans know about life and the universe around us, what remains to be known is so vast, and so completely unpredictable to us, that it shines a harsh light on the selfish way we humans treat our Earth and its fellow inhabitants.  We are all in this together, whether prey or predator, scavenger, or parasite.  The more we know about the world around us, hopefully the less we will take it for granted.  When we destroy nature we are destroying ourselves.

(This book can be purchased here: THE BOOK OF BARELY IMAGINED BEINGS )

[ Review edited per the author's correction. - RXTT ]

We may in fact owe all of our planet's life to the magnificent Fungi

Fungal Biology in the Origin and Emergence of Life –David Moore (2013)

      One of my life’s passions is that I love mushrooms.  Actually, I love fungi of all types.  I seek them out after spring rains.  I keep my eye on the ground as I walk around the campus where I work.  I also keep careful notes in my head about what mushrooms are delicious and safe to eat.  I photograph almost every mushroom, slime mold, or lichen I find.  The variability is amazing, and many of them are outright beautiful to look at, but I think part of the thrill is that mushrooms are unpredictable.  They do not grow in orderly ways like plants do.  Finding a patch of delicious chanterelle mushrooms is great, but it is no guarantee that they will be there again next week, or month, or even at the same time next year.  Mushrooms are ephemeral in their way.  It is amazing to think that these overlooked organisms may very well have been the very first self-contained life to evolve in our world.  This story is the subject of Fungal Biology, by David Moore.

      Moore is a biologist, having recently retired from working on genetics and mycology.  If any human has the ability to understand the many threads that point to fungi as the initial role-player in the web of life it is Mr. Moore.  His explanations are sensible, even to someone with a limited background in mathematical or genetic knowledge.  The first part of this book details the properties of modern-day fungi, and how their cellular features differentiate fungal life from vegetable life or animal life.  This background is very important to understanding the rest of this book.  I learned quite a great deal just from the first chapter alone.

      In following chapters, David Moore explores the scientific consensus regarding the state of the Earth in the early days.  As he describes it, a habitat must have been created before the processes began which lead to multi-cellular life.  This habitat was a very different place than the green and blue orb we all live on currently.  Not only were there no plants or animals on Earth about 3.7 billion years ago, there were no cells of any type, or even oxygen in the air!  Only with the arrival of single-celled, photosynthetic proto-algae did our world’s atmosphere begin to be oxygenated.  In fact, most of this early oxygen “fixed” itself to the massive quantities of Iron atoms dissolved in the primordial oceans, raining down a silt of iron oxide molecules that created the world-wide layers of iron ore we have been mining for the past 1000+ years.  It was not until the flourishing of single celled plants in the oceans that the atmospheric oxygen actually rose to the super high levels that allowed the massive proliferation of land-plants, and the animals that lived on those plants.  This took well over 2.5 billion years to occur, a magnificently ridiculous expanse of time.  (For comparison, Dinosaurs lived around 100 million years ago, and the genus Homo has been running around the Earth for maybe 600,000 years.  Our whole current civilization is barely older than 10,000 years, a trifle in comparison)

      Before plants and animals came to dominate the Earth it was fungi that ruled.  They ruled for over 2 billion years!  They did not spring wholesale out of the ground though.  David Moore describes through several chapters what he sees as the mechanism by which life arose.  Many scientists have claimed that the first cellular life that we would recognize as such arose in inhospitable places, such as underwater thermal vents, deep caves, or volcanic fissures.  We find very hardy microorganisms in these habitats now, and call them Archaea, but these creatures are actually quite late-comers compared to other fungi, bacteria, and algae.  Moore posits that much of the chemicals for life existed in the vast aerosols that covered much of our atmosphere.  Aerosols are just particles so small that they stay aloft as they are buffeted by the molecules of the atmospheric gases. Each of these tiny aerosol droplets was a laboratory, mixing up pre-living enzymes, amino acids, lipid molecules, etc.  It only takes one of these billions to manage putting together a self-replicating molecule.  These aerosols and organic molecules would have ended up dispersing this material all over the Earth, resulting in a landscape we would never recognize, of rocks and gravels covered in a thin bio-film.  It is the materials in this worldwide bio-film that served as the food source for our OG organism, allowing it to grow, replicate, compete, and evolve.  I can only summarize what is covered in much more proper detail in this book.

      By the time plants arose, so many fungi existed that today 90% of all plant life has some sort of relationship with it.  Many plants are in symbiosis with fungi.  The fungus provides rare minerals to the plant through the connection of roots and mycelium fibers (hyphae), and the plant provides the fungi with simple sugars that it needs to grow.  Some fungi are predators of plants, and work more like parasites.  Still other examples see plants that parasite the fungus, where the plants receive the benefit but provide none for the fungus involved.  As far as animals are concerned, almost no herbivore animals exist that do not have a colony or colonies of primitive fungi/bacteria living in their digestive tract.  The very first herbivores ate tons of fungi unknowingly, and in many cases this became a deep symbiosis.  Without the fungus in a cow’s gut, the cow would not be able to extract nutrition from the cellulose that makes up most of what it eats.  All plant and animal life owe their existence to fungi.

      To this day the kingdom of fungi is overlooked.  Humans place undue value on animals, for we are animals.  We value plants, because so many of them are needed for our survival.  I think we should start to praise and love fungi as well.  We are here because they were here.  They broke the inhospitable Earth for us plants and animals.  Without them nothing in our vast web of life would exist, and our world would be just one giant layer of biofilms, exuding tar and other waste products.  I cannot begin to describe the amount of information provided here by David Moore, but I am very glad I ran across this cool and seminal work.  I hope it brings mycology to the forefront and helps shape the conversation for decades to come.  Now to go outside and look for some more mushrooms!

(This book can be purchased here: FUNGAL BIOLOGY IN THE ORIGIN AND EMERGENCE OF LIFE  )