Point of Departure
What makes man "different"? We now know that he evolved from the animal kingdom, yet animal and human being are separated by a wide gulf. In a recently published book, the British zoologist Desmond Morris portrayed man as a "naked ape" with an exceptionally well developed penis. His intention was wholly serious. No sooner do we tackle the question "What are we?" than we become bogged down in the welter of opinions that have already been expressed on this subject. Almost every one of the countless religious, philosophical, sociological, psychological, anthropological, and zoological views of the nature of man appears to contain a germ of truth, yet an unbridgeable chism continues to separate us from our past. This book is an attempt to view man's peculiarity as part of the overall development of the life process. It investigates the problem of what parts of our behavior can be accounted for by our ancestry and may thus be construed as a further development of animal behavior. Beyond that, it explores three additional questions. What is it that truly lies at the root of our great "differentness"? How did we attain our present position of superiority? And, finally, how did the life process, in the structural type known as man, gain such complete supremacy over all hitherto existing specimens in the animal and vegetable kingdoms?
(original book page 10)
The great difficulty that must be overcome in any study
of man is that we, the observers, are men ourselves; that our brain, being
an instrument of study, is itself an object of study. We are surrounded
by human beings all our lives, with the result that we take society and
all that it imprints upon us for granted. It is all but impossible for
us to speculate about that which seems so natural, view it from a different
and unbiased angle, climb out of our own bodies – become strangers to ourselves.
The idea of studying man from an extraneous vantage point
– in other words, as something completely foreign and novel, occurred to
me years ago during my research work in tropical waters. Hundreds of times
we went over the side with our diving equipment and drifted down-into the
unknown. Vague outlines emerged from the twilit depths and took shape,
and we found ourselves constantly confronted by alien realms of existence.
Observing the numerous corals, sponges, fish, and crustaceans, we endeavored
to grasp why, in the course of evolution, they had developed this or that
particular physical shape, this or that mode of behavior. A visitor from
another world, approaching our planet in an invisible spaceship, would
presumably find himself in a similar position. He too would begin by observing
vague outlines, then look down on a flurry of alien life in which the creature
known as man would doubtless hold special interest for him. He would know
nothing of our history, nothing of our thought processes. All he would
see of us initially would be moving bodies, and he would very probably
ask himself how such creatures had attained such a considerable degree
of development.
To the biologist, there is no very great or fundamental
difference between man and beast. The laws which once governed the life
and physical appearance of marine organisms continued to govern the life
and physical appearance of plants and animals when these had conquered
dry land. The same laws governed the beginnings of human evolution, which
subsequently deviated so far from "nature" that we find it hard to discern
or acknowledge the connection today. Was it not possible, I wondered, to
study these most remarkable of all living creatures oursleves – with the
same objectivity that we reserve for, say, the study of marine life?
(original book page 11)
The camera, I thought, might be able to help me here.
From elevated observation posts, I tried to film city dwellers just as
I had filmed fish thronging the coral reefs, varying the camera speed so
that all movement appeared many times more rapid when the film was projected.
The results were promising. These sequences transformed scenes of familiar
activity into something akin to an ant heap. The individuality of different
persons largely vanished, and transcendent factors became visible. Events
at an intersection displayed a rhythmically pulsating pattern. The gestures
of people buying from sidewalk stalls or engaged in conversation took on
different aspects. With one farmer and his wife, whom I filmed from above
while they were haymaking, the pattern of their organized cooperation became
clearly apparent. Incidents which at normal speed appeared mundane and
banal became exciting and novel when accelerated. Obviously, the brain
was not attuned to such timing.
I reran many sequences a dozen times or more and found
that each viewing disclosed something new. Patterns emerged which would
normally have passed unnoticed; first, because the mind is habituated to
such procedures and automatically fits them into a thought pattern, and
second, because they occur too slowly to be noticed in normal observation.
With a number of close-ups I altered the timing in the
other direction. I "stretched" these telephoto sequences or filmed them
in slow motion, and a similar alienation effect came into play. Normal
judgements lost their meaning so far as these films were concerned. A common
element, only partly disguised by individual differences, emerged. The
screen no longer showed a mere face but an undulating plain upon which
movements ran their course. These movements –
smiling or frowning, for example – still elicited the
reactions normally produced by recognition of their significance, but subjective
reactions also receded. There was less appeal to the emotions and more
freedom for the eye to follow each facial movement critically and leisurely.
I noticed, however, that only films shot unobserved produced this effect.
Having used a photographic subterfuge to study various
human behavioral patterns, I wondered if reality might not have been so
distorted by changes of speed that I was drawing false
(original book page 12)
conclusions. This doubt was quickly dispelled. As every
scientist knows, speed is never absolute. More than a century ago, the
zoologist Karl Ernst von Baer pointed out that the human time sense is
relative and differs from that of many animals. A living creature's notion
of time derives from the number of impressions which its central nervous
system can process in a given unit of time. Insects, for example,
react considerably faster than man, as the sight of a darting fly clearly
demonstrates. It is obvious that they can process impressions faster than
we can, hence the passage of time must seem relatively slower to them.
To them, the human being must appear to move in slow motion. Other creatures
react more slowly – e.g., snails, to which the human being must appear
an extremely fast-moving creature. Thus, by artificially distorting the
passage of time, I was abandoning the subjective, human mode of observation,
not falsifying reality in any way.
But there was another problem. Regular movements seemed
even more regular in greatly accelerated sequences than they really were.
An example of this was a film I had made of a ball in Vienna, projected
at ten times the actual speed. The young men and women dancing the polonaise
were far from faultless; indeed several of them broke ranks. But in the
accelerated film, by contrast, the couples were invested with great precision
by the marionettelike rapidity with which they rotated and formed lines.
Here, the brain was obviously ironing out irregularities. And yet, an analogous
falsification occurs in our normal perception of material objects. Only
because our brains emphasize common and regular features are we in a position
to make a swift and effective assessment of the world and classify its
contents. The human capacity for Gestalt perception, seeing things as a
whole and not as separate parts, made its appearance here, as it does in
general.
Armed with this new technique, I proceeded to make films
in all five continents in association with Dr. Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt
(of the Max Planck Institute of Behavioral Physiology, Seewiesen), and
studying these films helped us evolve many new methods of observation.
In the first part of this book I premise a summary of
those features of animal behavior with which anyone who wishes to
(original book page 13)
undertake a scientific study of human behavior must be
acquainted. The reader versed in biology will find little that is new to
him. The reader less conversant with science – and it is to him that I
should like to appeal in particular – is intended to regard this section
as a bridge to biological thinking.
The second part sets forth the results of our investigations,
together with a number of more general observations on how the various
facets of human life (political organization, economics, education, art,
religion, entertainment, etc.) appear when viewed from the evolutionary
standpoint. The principle of artificial organs, here expounded for the
first time, runs counter to various currently popular basic tenets and
buttresses my demand for a completely new and different classification
of man within the zoological system. Because it repeatedly emerges in the
course of discussion that misapprehensions arise from wrongly understood
words, I have made a special effort to clarify all the expressions employed
here. I have attempted to avoid technical terms which are not universally
familiar.
I should like to take this opportunity of expressing
my thanks to my friend Dr. Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, whose comprehensive
knowledge of research into animal behavior (see source nos. 33 and 34 in
the Bibliography) paved the way for the ethological aspect of our endeavors.
Many of the ideas advanced in this book matured in the course of discussions
which took place between us during joint filming expeditions all over the
world.