Chapter 1: Where do we come from?
Homo Sapiens (that’s us) is Latin and means “Wise Man”, and started appearing around 300 000 years ago in Africa and being nomadic spread around the globe. For by far the most of that time we were only hunter/gatherers, living off the earth and in unison with our little blue planet – until about 13 000 years ago when agriculture and permanent human settlements started appearing.

Many different forms of us evolved depending on location – black/white; big/small; blue eyes/brown eyes – you get my drift – yet any two humans on this planet today has 99% the same DNA. I feel that is close enough to say we are all the same, something we tend to forget.
Homo Sapiens evolved in different varieties, first from Australopithecus (dates to about 5 million years ago) who were the first dudes to start using tools; then onto Homo Erectus (get your mind out of the gutter) around 2 million years ago, who’s claim to fame was they started using fire for cooking.
It is generally believed that cooking food originated from bush fires caused by lightning, when our ancestors who left the trees could now walk upright, picked up burnt animals and fruit after such fires and realized: “Hey, this tastes good!” It brought about more energy for our bodies, as cooking helps in making the digestion of food much easier, so more energy became available to fuel the brain and less to digest the food.
Although only 2% of your body, the blob of matter in your skull takes up 25% of the energy your body burns – in some people I feel that just goes to waste. Many different evolutions of us occurred based on the path’s they took around the globe and one thing they sure did was have sex – with each other, as well as between species, they did not care. If you were a male, and you spotted a female who had more or less the same sexual anatomy, it was fair game – no wining and dining or going to the movies.
It was bread into our genes that we need to reproduce, and this not only our species but every single specie on this earth. Me think it answers the age old question: “Why are we here? To reproduce!”
Evolution made the climax so pleasurable, although I have often wondered how many millennia it took before the first female reached a climax, that we wanted to do it as much as possible. The inbred need to reproduce is a much stronger force than just the pleasure – some species would give their life to be able to reproduce: Praying Mantis and some spiders/scorpions eat their males after intercourse – but they still go for it! Eating the male in these species gives the female the added energy needed to grow the eggs for a much higher chance of survival or birth of the offspring.
There are scientists who dedicate their whole life to study the evolution of sex. They have found that it is only us current humans that can be monogamous in their relationships. It was thought that there are a couple of animals – Swans and Dolphins come to mind – that were monogamous, but in testing the DNA of such animals offspring found that the DNA of the father was not always the DNA of the offspring. Yes, they mate for life, having intercourse once again a different story.
One of the conclusions of such a study was that the females across all the species had evolved in their DNA that they should try get the best DNA of the best males for their offspring. This gives the specie the best chance of survival, strongest most evolved babies, even if it’s not from their life partner. It is true as we know that not only the females of the species are the naughty ones, in the DNA of all males across all the species it’s bread to get their DNA into as many females as they could.
This led to the evolution in many species, us being one of them, of why the penis looks the way it does. Studying the Bonobo primates, who share 98.7% the same genetic code as humans and are the closest relative to us in DNA structure, they saw the Bonobo had sex for just about any reason or emotion – if they are mad, happy, for pleasure and I suppose just for the hell of it – they go for it.

For every 1 birth of a Bonobo, a female would have sex an average of 577 times – think here of the scientist who had to sit and count that. You go girl! In studying the penis, these professors found it actually acts as a reverse pump, pumping out the previous sperm out of the female who could have had sex as little as 5 minutes before, so that the current lover’s sperm can get deposited giving him a better chance of reproduction and spreading his DNA.
The Bonobo quickly became one of my favorite animals. They are the only primate that do not kill, they voluntarily help one another to share resources, they are contagious yawners which scientists know is a sign of empathy and which they do even more towards strangers than others they know, and they use sex to release tension in any form. We can learn a lot from them!
As an example, if 2 troops come into contact with each other, they would run at each other in a very aggressive manner like primates do to fight for their territory, but then instead of fighting, they start having sex to resolve the conflict. Imagine that battlefield…..
Females rule the troop, and males need to request sex from them. If you think about the amount of times the females have heterosexual intercourse and the frequency of it, scientists found that the Bonobo females sexually pleasure each other more times than they have sex with a male. One sentence taken directly from one study surely got me: “Bonobos have group sex, gay sex, oral sex and face-to-face sex. They’ve even been reported to French kiss.”
Unfortunately, even though they have this promiscuous behavior, their only habitat is a small area in the Congo. Some Asian cultures off course hearing of the sexual prowess of the Bonobo believe that eating them has huge aphrodisiac properties, so on the black markets of Asia they fetch up to $300 000 each. For every one that make it to the market, there would have been a loss of 2 to 3 dozen who did not – hence they are on the critically endangered species list.
What’s up with some human cultures though? I cannot fathom that an evolved society in today’s era still believe rhino horn or eating apes gives you sexual powers. Have they not heard of this little blue pill called Viagra? I like Bonobo’s way more that I like humans and to help the cause of these primates please follow THIS link.
Going back 13 000 years, and in conjunction with the end our last ice age, we as Homo Sapiens start building settlements and begin in agriculture – we breed like Bonobo’s but also die at the average age of 20 to 25 years.
Although no clear figure for the infant mortality rate back then, you would assume that the death rate for infants would have been much, much higher than what it was in the 1800’s which is the last study I could find. 46% of infants did not make it past the age of 5 years old, so earth was keeping us in check.
This did however set in motion a global exponential growth in human numbers – from around 10 Million inhabitants of our planet then to around 8 Billion we are seeing today – mostly because we could now grow food to meet the demand. Not only were we now able to grow food, we started to domesticate animals like cattle, goats, sheep and pigs, also being able to domesticate animals to help in the production of food.
The homo sapiens who traveled and evolved in Europe could not stomach cow’s milk, today called lactose intolerance, but a mutation occurred and evolved due to the nutritional value of milk leading to as high as 90% of Europeans today being decedents of cow herders. If you are lactose intolerant you could argue that at least you are not a decedent of a cow herder and should softens the blow of not being able to eat cheese of using dairy products. Nah, sorry, you guys are missing out, but based on recent studies maybe not!
Chapter 2: Farming is fun!
“Something else that started happening was the cultivation of sugar. Before the cultivation of sugar, the sweet crave was satisfied by eating honey, and in some cases chewing on a reed like plant now known as sugar cane. The first refined sugar appeared 2500 years ago, and the dire need for us to consume sugar (which our bodies do not need, but crave) created an industry where today 27 million hectares of our planet is cover with it, and added to 80% of anything you buy in a supermarket.“
