Desmond Morris
‘An exciting and important book. Bromhall is a major new voice, with a valuable contribution to the understanding of human evolution.’
Herbert Prins, author of Ecology and Behaviour of the African Buffalo: Social Inequality and Decision Making (Chapman & Hall, London)
'This book provides a candid and unadulterated insight into our body and mind.'
Herbert Prins, author of Ecology and Behaviour of the African Buffalo: Social Inequality and Decision Making (Chapman & Hall, London)
'This book provides a candid and unadulterated insight into our body and mind.'
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Peter Tatchell, gay human rights campaigner
"Bromhall tosses a tanker load of intellectual petrol onto the fiery debate about sexual orientation."
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Clive Bromhall's ground breaking book is the story of a single evolutionary process, which has shaped the human species. The process, known as neoteny, has been massively underestimated by scientists until now. It explains everything from our hairless skin to our upright stance and, argues Bromhall, unlocks the key to human nature and to the future of homo sapiens. The human species, says Bromhall - radically but convincingly has anatomically and behaviourally regressed into a state of pemanent childhood. Humans are not in fact mature primates, but rather over grown baby apes. In essence, in order to survive our environment, in order to create a social species and allow our brains to develop, our species has been completely infantised.With this key Clive Bromhall proceeds to unlock many of the mysteries of human behaviour and forces us to reassess our thinking on human nature, and the power of the child within. The result of years of research, "The Eternal Child" is thought provoking and highly readable and will explain mysteries such as why some of us are homosexual, the differences between races, the need for religion and the dynamic of male/femal relationships. Each decade produces one seminal, challenging and opinion-changing popular science title. This decade, it will be "The Eternal Child".
From the Publisher
A seminal and highly controversial popular science title in the tradition of The Naked Ape
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
After gaining a Phd in Zoology from Oxford, Dr Clive Bromhall left academia to form a documentary company making educational, scientific films. The Eternal Child is the product of a lifelong fascination with the development of human and animal species.
Excerpted from The Eternal Child by Clive Bromhall. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A body of evidence
It could so very easily have happened. All that was needed was for one meteor - one out of countless millions that hurtle around our universe at any one time - to have followed a minutely different trajectory. Rather than smashing into our tiny planet, this meteor could have sailed by without any of the world's inhabitants being aware of its existence. But this was not to be. As it was, a massive lump of extraterrestrial rock, about 170 kilometres across, thumped into Earth with such ferocity that it sent a cloud of dust into the atmosphere so thick that it prevented most of the sunlight from reaching the planet's surface. In the gloomy darkness that resulted, the stench of death soon started to take hold. Starved of light, plants withered and rotted, forming a uliginous slime that festered on the barren soil. The animals too make their own noxious contribution to the putrid miasma. First of all, many of the smaller herbivores, with their need for constant fresh food, died. !
Then it was the turn of the larger animals. One by one, the larger species succumbed to starvation, their bodies forming large rotting islands in a sea of death. Tyrannosaurus rex, Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus - each the result of millions of years of evolution were all wiped out because a single, albeit massive, rock just happened to collide with our planet.
But what if the meteor had just missed Earth and the dinosaurs had not been annihilated? How would today's animals have survived alongside flesh-devouring predators such as Velociraptor? Perhaps most intriguing of all, how would the great apes - a group that includes our own species as well as orang-utans, chimpanzees and gorillas - have fared? The most probable answer is that humans would have been hunted with particular vigour. This is not simply because our upright ancestors would have been easier to chase than their four-legged relatives - although this would almost certainly have been the case. Rather, it is because compared with the other great apes humans have deliciously soft, delicate and tender bodies that would undoubtedly have been highly prized by the giant bloodthirsty lizards. We are, in short, perfect dinosaur food. Whereas the other apes have a tough leathery skin that is covered in coarse hair, as well as thick bones and a heavily armoured skull - all features that make them far from pleasant to eat - the human body is thin-skinned, relatively fine-boned, with a large juicy brain that is housed in a flimsy skull, and it even has a tasty extra layer of fat just beneath the skin. Humans are to the other great apes what lamb is to mutton, veal is to beef, or a spring chicken is to an old broiler.
The human body is one of life's great mysteries. Although we are unquestionably members of the primate group - along with bushbabies, monkeys and the other great apes - our bodies possess certain features that make us stand so far apart that it seems that we should belong to a major group all of our own. Of the 181 species of primates, we are the only one that stands upright on its two back legs. We are also the only one that has become largely hairless except for the occasional tuft of hair, such as that on the top of our head, under our armpits and around our genitals. We are especially unusual in having a massive brain that is housed in an inordinately large and bulbous skull, as well as in having an extremely flat face, diminutively small teeth and a very short lower jaw. As for our soft tissue, female humans are the only primate to have permanently swollen breasts - regardless of whether they are producing milk - while human males are extremely unusual among primates in!
lacking a bone in their penis. All in all, the human body is bizarre.
So where did all these curious and aberrant features come from? Did each evolve in response to a different environmental challenge? Or is there a link between them? For decades, scientists have strived to identify a function for each anatomical and behavioural characteristic of every species - however minute this feature might be. It has been seen as something of a failure if a 'purpose' cannot be attributed to each aspect of an animal's body. And yet, using humans as a model, there seem to be distinct problems with this approach. It turns out to be extremely difficult for scientists to come up with a single widely accepted explanation for any of our species' defining physical attributes. The scientific literature is replete with theories on the benefits of, say, upright walking - yet, by some scientists' own admission, these are invariably little more than 'just-so stories'. Despite centuries of speculation there is still no single, unifying theory to explain why humans evolved the way they have.
With this puzzle in mind, it is time to start on the first leg of our journey to find the missing link - the Holy Grail of human emotion - the single element that binds together all our mysterious and highly distinctive characteristics.
It could so very easily have happened. All that was needed was for one meteor - one out of countless millions that hurtle around our universe at any one time - to have followed a minutely different trajectory. Rather than smashing into our tiny planet, this meteor could have sailed by without any of the world's inhabitants being aware of its existence. But this was not to be. As it was, a massive lump of extraterrestrial rock, about 170 kilometres across, thumped into Earth with such ferocity that it sent a cloud of dust into the atmosphere so thick that it prevented most of the sunlight from reaching the planet's surface. In the gloomy darkness that resulted, the stench of death soon started to take hold. Starved of light, plants withered and rotted, forming a uliginous slime that festered on the barren soil. The animals too make their own noxious contribution to the putrid miasma. First of all, many of the smaller herbivores, with their need for constant fresh food, died. !
Then it was the turn of the larger animals. One by one, the larger species succumbed to starvation, their bodies forming large rotting islands in a sea of death. Tyrannosaurus rex, Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus - each the result of millions of years of evolution were all wiped out because a single, albeit massive, rock just happened to collide with our planet.
But what if the meteor had just missed Earth and the dinosaurs had not been annihilated? How would today's animals have survived alongside flesh-devouring predators such as Velociraptor? Perhaps most intriguing of all, how would the great apes - a group that includes our own species as well as orang-utans, chimpanzees and gorillas - have fared? The most probable answer is that humans would have been hunted with particular vigour. This is not simply because our upright ancestors would have been easier to chase than their four-legged relatives - although this would almost certainly have been the case. Rather, it is because compared with the other great apes humans have deliciously soft, delicate and tender bodies that would undoubtedly have been highly prized by the giant bloodthirsty lizards. We are, in short, perfect dinosaur food. Whereas the other apes have a tough leathery skin that is covered in coarse hair, as well as thick bones and a heavily armoured skull - all features that make them far from pleasant to eat - the human body is thin-skinned, relatively fine-boned, with a large juicy brain that is housed in a flimsy skull, and it even has a tasty extra layer of fat just beneath the skin. Humans are to the other great apes what lamb is to mutton, veal is to beef, or a spring chicken is to an old broiler.
The human body is one of life's great mysteries. Although we are unquestionably members of the primate group - along with bushbabies, monkeys and the other great apes - our bodies possess certain features that make us stand so far apart that it seems that we should belong to a major group all of our own. Of the 181 species of primates, we are the only one that stands upright on its two back legs. We are also the only one that has become largely hairless except for the occasional tuft of hair, such as that on the top of our head, under our armpits and around our genitals. We are especially unusual in having a massive brain that is housed in an inordinately large and bulbous skull, as well as in having an extremely flat face, diminutively small teeth and a very short lower jaw. As for our soft tissue, female humans are the only primate to have permanently swollen breasts - regardless of whether they are producing milk - while human males are extremely unusual among primates in!
lacking a bone in their penis. All in all, the human body is bizarre.
So where did all these curious and aberrant features come from? Did each evolve in response to a different environmental challenge? Or is there a link between them? For decades, scientists have strived to identify a function for each anatomical and behavioural characteristic of every species - however minute this feature might be. It has been seen as something of a failure if a 'purpose' cannot be attributed to each aspect of an animal's body. And yet, using humans as a model, there seem to be distinct problems with this approach. It turns out to be extremely difficult for scientists to come up with a single widely accepted explanation for any of our species' defining physical attributes. The scientific literature is replete with theories on the benefits of, say, upright walking - yet, by some scientists' own admission, these are invariably little more than 'just-so stories'. Despite centuries of speculation there is still no single, unifying theory to explain why humans evolved the way they have.
With this puzzle in mind, it is time to start on the first leg of our journey to find the missing link - the Holy Grail of human emotion - the single element that binds together all our mysterious and highly distinctive characteristics.
