Ancient Treehouses

By Donald Perry
Summary of The Descent: The Untold Story of Human Origins ©2008

The fruits of our creativity: music, dance, mathematics, technology, towering

high-rises and our awareness of the universe, are the result of evolutionary events that
occurred in the murky depths of humanity’s distant past. And while it is not known
where or why our large brain evolved, it has always been thought that this remarkable
evolutionary event was the result of being full-time residents of the ground.
Charles Darwin was one of the first to speculate on where the brain evolved.
Since few fossil humans had been discovered In the1800's, he used living humans to
arrive at an answer. In his book The Descent of Man, he states: “The ancestors of man
were no doubt, inferior in intellect, and probably in social disposition, to the lowest
existing savages; but it is quite conceivable that they might have existed, or even
flourished, if they had advanced in intellect, whilst gradually losing their brute-like
powers, such as that of climbing trees.” Brain-size measurements led Darwin to
conclude that climbing “savages” had smaller brains than non-climbing Europeans.
Based on the weak evidence of those early times, he forged an enduring link between
climbing and low intelligence, while declaring that the human brain had evolved in a
terrestrial habitat.
Stephen J. Gould carefully examines early brain-size data in his book, The
Mismeasure of Man, 1981. He emphasizes that a reduced average body size brings
with it a reduced brain size, therefore smaller “savages” should have a smaller average
brain size than larger-bodied northern Europeans. Whether or not they are climbers,
smaller people are just as intelligent as larger people.
As an evolutionary biologist who has spent decades climbing and studying the
towering trees of the rain forest canopy, I have developed an alternate perspective.
Humans are climbers. And we are not just good climbers, we are one of the best
climbers in the history of evolution. Of all primates, only humans are capable of
climbing a thousand-foot-high rock wall, and at times, some really gutsy individual
manages this without direct aid. Over the millennia, humans have climbed to collect
honey as well as high-hanging fruit and nuts. Military reconnaissance missions have
routinely been carried out from treetops, and cliff-top fortifications have secretly been
attacked by climbing. Since we are still adept climbers today, it is safe to assume that
our distant ancestors must have been superb.
 Zoologically, we fit the definition of a scansorial species – animals that both climb
and travel at the ground, like bears, racoons and squirrels. Darwin highlights our
scansorial nature with comments on the foot’s dexterity: “With some savages, however,
the foot has not altogether lost its prehensile [grasping] power, as shewn by their
manner of climbing trees...” With their ability to secure us to a tree trunk and grip
branches, our feet retain vestiges of a recent arboreal past.
Although scansorial feet are far different from terrestrial feet, the human foot is
usually seen as a paradigm of terrestrial design. Terrestrial feet are often rigid, raised
up on the tips of elongated toes and capped by a hoof, as in horses and deer; or the last
digit of each toe is bent and padded, like those of dogs and cats. Our feet lack this
rigidity. To correct for evolution’s sluggishness in adjusting our foot’s design to its new,
full-time existence at the ground, the feet are usually bound with sturdy materials that
mimic hooves.
Recognition of our climbing nature alters how we must interpret evidence
concerning human brain evolution. The richest source of data are the extremely
valuable fossils packed in museum drawers. From the diminutive brain cavity of bulky
dinosaurs to the optical bulges of bird skulls, to the elaborate olfactory apparatus of
mammals to high-browed, primate foreheads, the largest relative-brain sizes in any
given geological period occurred only in species that once climbed trees.
Harry Jerison at UCLA formalized this view with equations (subsequently refined
by others) that quantified the canopy’s influence on the ballooning brain, although there
are many exceptions. Opossums, for example, have been climbers for tens of millions
of years, but they did not experience significant brain expansion. Nonetheless, the
canopy habitat has been recognized as the premiere factory of brain evolution for well
over a century.
As protohuman ancestors began to walk upright, it is thought that the freeing of
the hands allowed them to make tools and weapons, which initiated an incessant quest
to invent things. This provided the ground-based, feed-back mechanism that would
produce a large brain. But what about Australopithecus and Paranthropus? For at least
these two genera of early human terrestrial pioneers, millions of years of upright walking
and manual freedom did nothing to stimulate their brains’ expansion. An ingredient was
missing.
Terrestrial theories of brain evolution have often focused on human uniqueness.
Embraced passionately at first, prized features are often snubbed when it is discovered
that they are also possessed by apes. For decades human female sexuality was said to
be unique because of a woman’s ability to engage in sexual activity at any time. Since
most primates and mammals have an estrous cycle that typically limits receptivity to
about once a year, the alluring sexuality of women (thought by some to be a terrestrial
feature) was sometimes linked to brain enlargement.
But fascination with the subject waned when Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of
Pennsylvania pointed out in his book, The Red Ape (1986, 2006), that female
orangutans and humans have a nearly identical sexuality not shared with chimpanzees
and gorillas. Humans and orangutans share other features as well, including
mustaches, beards, breast position on the chest, hair length and many more. Recently
Schwartz was joined by John Grehan of the Buffalo Museum of Science in preparing a
long list of traits (more than 40) that are shared by humans, orangutans and fossil
hominids, suggesting that perhaps orangutans are our closest living relative. While this
conflicts with the well-accepted view (based on molecular evidence) that chimpanzees
hold that position, Grehan and Schwartz (in press) have illuminated a provocative fact:
evolving Homo sapiens shared more physical traits with the orangutan, the most-
arboreal great ape, than any other primate.
One aspect of women’s unique sexuality would have often proved fatal if early
humans had been fully terrestrial. The ancient landscape had a variety of grizzly
predators such as saber-toothed cats, cave bear and hyenas that ate whatever they
could sniff out, hear, or see, including humans. A menstruating female would have
been readily detected and tracked. This is why women who are menstruating are
solicited to accompany bear-hunting expeditions in Alaska. Heavy blood flow for up to
seven days of every month would be the most-unique “terrestrial adaptation” ever to
adorn a female who lacked claws, fangs, speed, or strength.
Adaptations more suited to an arboreal existence could be shrugged off as just
another evolutionary conundrum if human females alone possessed them. Not by
coincidence, complementary oddities are also found in our infants. One is the tendency
for our young to screech at the top of their lungs to attract a parent’s attention,
especially when the parent is out of sight. Large, adult, terrestrial animals and their
young follow the basic tenet of terrestrial life that silence is golden. After dropping from
the womb, the young often remain quietly huddled under the cover of grass and shrubs.
Only in dire circumstances do they cry out for a parent, because there could be no
sweeter music to a predator’s ear than a screaming, defenseless, unguarded infant.
The explanation of this trait as an adaption to terrestrial life is untenable.
All mammals are born with the exact instincts they will need to survive in the
habitat where they will live. Ungulates quickly learn to stand and run; our infants
experiment with climbing well before they can walk. As they mature, children are
irresistibly drawn to playgrounds that often including a variety of acrobatic apparatus.
An instinctual attraction to a simulated arboreal habitat, as well as treehouses, would be
expected of a scansorial species that was once dependent on trees.
It was only recently in our evolution that one of the quintessential adaptions for
travel in trees was lost. Experts like Ian Tattersal of the American Museum of Natural
History conclude that before 30,000 years ago most of our potential predecessors were
as much as two to three times stronger than us. While working on a NOVA television
program entitled Orangutans in the Rain Forest, I watched in awe as a Dyak tribesman
climbed barehanded over a hundred feet above ground to reach my position in the
canopy. Not even large male orangutans ventured to this height, and they are much
stronger than humans. This underlines the astounding arboreal potentiality locked in
the stout physiques of archaic humans, males, females and children.
Nothing drives a new theory better than a mechanism. Some may remember
when Wegener’s theory of continental-drift was taught as a curiosity. Curiosity turned to
astonishment when the sea floor was mapped and the mechanism – sea floor spreading
– established that continents really are moving. But before this mechanism was
discovered, the theory was largely ignored.
Looking through arboreal glasses, a mechanism for human evolution emerges
from data concerning body-form changes that occur when species emigrate to new
habitats. Major changes in lifestyle produce visible skeletal alterations. Whale bones
conclusively demonstrate that these animals relocated from a terrestrial to an aquatic
habitat. If humans underwent a shift in their way of life to become more terrestrial,
these changes should be evident in fossilized skeletal remains.
The mechanism of human evolution came to me in 2004 while reading a paper
by J. Lee Kanvanau, of the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the
University of California at Los Angeles. He discussed the arboreal origin of flight in
birds and its effects on body shape while citing Gregory Paul’s book, Dinosaurs of the
Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds, 2002. This fully describes
how body form changed when species switched from using their arms for flight to
walking full-time at the ground on two legs, as was the case with moas and ostriches.
Shifting from an aerodynamic design where the body is carried by the upper torso, to
carrying the body’s full weight on two legs on the ground sets the stage for an
evolutionary transformation of the skeleton. Over time, arm and shoulder-girdle
strength become reduced and the legs lengthen.
Eric Trinkaus of Washington University and many others have studied human
fossils from around 30,000 years ago, and like the role of Rosalind Franklin’s x-ray
photographs of DNA crystals in discovering the DNA molecule’s double helix, their work
is critical to interpreting modern human origins. They describe changes in the evolving
human skeleton that are suspiciously similar to those of moas and ostriches. Humans
display a profound decrease in upper torso/arm strength and increasing leg length that
signal a dramatic shift in their way of life.
This mechanism helps us understand another enigma. Thirty thousand years
ago, modern human predecessors known as CroMagnons and their more-ancient,
robust counterparts, the Neandertals, simultaneously inhabited the earth. At that time,
Neandertals were mysteriously beginning to disappear. Although they were stronger, it
is often suggested CroMagnons exterminated them. But around that same time a
climatic change with much lower temperatures took place, and extensive studies show
that forests receded dramatically in response. As might be expected, the more tree-
dependent body form of Neandertals followed suit.
A smoking gun establishing that humans were beginning to spend more time at
the ground is frozen in the details of thigh-bone cross sections from archaic ancestors
and modern humans. Robust, archaic legs look much like ape legs. Their uniformly
thick walls indicate mechanical loading similar to apes. Their legs were used for
extensive climbing. Meanwhile, cross sections of CroMagnon thigh bones resemble
those of living humans. Unlike stronger archaic humans, these more-modern humans
spent much more time hiking on the ground. While it is clear that modern humans
originated from a robust ancestor, exactly which ancestor, as well as the timing, are
hotly debated. Still, the evolutionary mechanism for this change appears firm: our
weaker body design is the result of spending more time at the ground. Modern humans
have recently undergone what I call an arbo-terrestrial transformation.
The terrestrial theory advances a different explanation. The apelike, leg-bone
cross sections of archaic humans are thought to have been due to a unique form of
terrestrial locomotion unknown today. One explanation states that perhaps archaic
humans ran up and down mountain slopes where jumping between rocks was common.
But this bone structure has not been reported in humans who live in mountainous areas.
Nor does hopping about on steep slopes explain why the upper torsos of archaic
humans would be the envy of every muscle builder.
Unfortunately, there are no telltale fossil videotapes. But a scientific convention
exists for choosing the preferred explanation. Known as Occam’s razor, the simplest
interpretation that accounts for the most data should prevail. The scansorial theory
advocates a single behavior that accounts for the arm and leg strength of robust,
archaic humans: climbing. This explanation accounts for many other odd aspects of
human nature as well.
For many people, climbing ancestors conger up an image of lowbrowed, hairy
dimwits swinging on branches. Indeed, there is genuine doubt about the IQ of our
robust, archaic predecessors due to the monotony of their tool types. A few stone
points and scrapers with little variation in design dominate the archeological record for
over hundreds of thousands of years, a sure indicator of abiding intellectual stagnation.
Perhaps the best defense of ancient ancestral intelligence comes from the
Korowai, a tribe of climbing humans that live in Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea. Their
bare-bones existence depends only on the bow and arrow, a couple of stone tools and
a few trinkets, implying a paucity of tool types on a par with archaic humans. Korowai
tree houses, however, are magnificent feats of construction that challenge the cognitive
capacities of civilization’s best builders. They climb barehanded and construct their
dwellings as high as 150 feet above ground.
Imagine that an anthropologist has been catapulted ten thousand years into the
future to the site of a Korowai tree house. Because environmental factors would have
long since decomposed the marvelous tree house and even the tree itself, the
investigation would focus on refuse at the ground. This would reveal a meager
distribution of simple tools with little indication of how the people lived. One day, a full
skeleton is found. The dictates of the terrestrial theory would lead to several
conclusions. The Korowai’s modern human form would be identified as 100%
terrestrial, despite its obvious scansorial nature. A lack of inventions would translate
into low intelligence and possibly little use of language, both incorrect. Furthermore, the
terrestrial theory would interpret the scattering of tools and bones as proof that the
Korowai lived in modest shelters at the ground.
Massive efforts of generations of scientists have created a sound foundation to
replace the terrestrial theory that allows a profound biological principle to emerge. The
new law of encephalization states: relatively large brains have never evolved at the
ground. Outside of aquatic environments, only tree-climbing species have attained a
relatively large brain. The habitat of human brain evolution has been found.