How Stories Made Us...

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut

Why did we paint the caves? What's the connection between the rock arts of hunters and gatherers, the ‘fiction’ of Harare and the ‘Maya’ of Upanisads? How are humans related to Zebra flinch? Why do we create stories and how did it make us the top predator? How can stories limit our potential? Can we script a new story to create a better world?

Between 60-70,000 years ago, the group of Sapiens that now dominates our world, started to migrate out of Africa. This group of people were unique and lucky to be part of some random mutations that changed the fate of our planet. One of the uniqueness of those random mutations is what we see in the ancient caves, that we now call rock paintings. Why are the rock paintings important? What does they reveal about us? We will find out.

Figure 1

Figure 1 is the oldest figurative rock painting we know of. It is from a cave in Indonesia and is over 40,000 years old.

What do they paint in the wall? 

Dinner! 

Not much different from our Facebook walls now a days.

Figure 2

Figure 2 is from the more famous Altamira cave in Spain and is around 20,000 years old. The fine motor skills and the advance imagination of our ancestors amaze me. 

Figure 3

Figure 3 is a picture I clicked...from Bundi in Rajasthan. We do not know how old these are, but still pretty amazing. The question that comes to the mind when I see these paintings is why did they paint?

The most common reason proposed by scholars is animism. “Anima” means soul or spirit in Latin. According to this theory our ancestors painted the animals they hunted, on the walls, to call help from the spirit world to bring success in their hunting expedition. Back in those days hunting was a dangerous activity, and they needed all the help they could.

I believe there is an alternate explanation. This idea struck me in my 2016 Ladakh trip. I just finished reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and was reading The Principal Upanisads by Prof. S. Radhakrishnan. As I was standing in front of those rock arts, looking at the figures of Ibex hunting, dancing, caravan scenes etc, I realized that there was a connection between the rock arts of hunters and gatherers, the ‘fiction’ of Harare and the ‘Maya’ of Upanisads. Before that let us look at some other paintings

This was drawn by my daughter when she was 5.5 yrs old. Thats a farm and there are animals in that picture. One thing I can assure you, she was not summoning the spirits. 

I took this picture when I was in Jordan. The whole truck is decorated, like most Asian trucks. Its an expression of love for MA, and I cannot be sure from this picture if she is a spirit.

This is a graffiti, again from Jordon. It is talking about hope and peace.

This one is from Ulaanbaataar, Mongolia, from my trans-Siberian trip. I am not quite sure what that means.

This is also from the same trip. Its Olkham Island in Lake Baikal. This cute little thing is called nerpa or the Lake Baikal seal. 

Painting is not just something our ancestors did. We still do it everywhere around the globe. Now let us go back in time.

Shekhawati is a wonderful place to visit, and not very far from here. All the houses are richly decorated with colorful murals like this. It depicts scenes from the epics or the daily life of people.

Going back few centuries, this one if from 16-17th century Orchha. It shows gods and goddesses and various mythological characters. 

This painting of a king with his concubines is from 4th century Bagh caves. 

These are Buddhist paintings of 

Bodhisattva from Ajanta and Bagh cave. 

This one is from Egypt, Valley of kings.

Looking at all these paintings one thing is clear, art exists all round the globe since time immortal… why……

Art is about communicating a story in form of information. Imagine a person who lived thousands of years ago, is now transferring information to me long after that person is gone. Looking at the cave paintings I can now feel the story of his life, of hunting, of the dancing, of all his emotions. No other animal is capable of doing that in the sophisticated way our species can. 

Art make our species unique.

According to neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, art activates our visual centre and tap into evolved survival response center of our brain. Our brain likes to share emotions with others through stories, and art was the first tool we invented to do just that.

Brain has three components, if we describe it in a crude way:

1. The reptilian brain, the oldest component, controls out desires. Desires motivate us to weave stories. 
2. The mammalian brain controls emotions. Emotions add color to the stories and create the urge to share it with others.
3. The neo-mammalian brain controls our cognitive functions that help us build the tools to share the stories. 

In human beings all three components of the brain are strong enough not only to think about art, but also replicate that thought in the walls of the caves and share it with others in form of stories. It helped create fictions like religion, nation, currency etc. It is the ability to create this fictitious world of Maya that helped us rise to the top of the food-chain from being just another ordinary prey. Information is the strength of our species with which we could defeat any predator. These etchings on the rocks were the first evidence of us turning into the deadliest predator of all times.

The area of our brain that is associated with speech is the same area responsible for singing in zebra finches. Some scientists have found link between FOXP2 gene with evolution of human speech and language. Mutation of this gene results in speech impairment in not just humans, but also lack of singing ability in flinches. Language is in our genes. 

Language not only helps in communication, but also in making and sharing stories.

We can talk and plan ahead to save ourselves from predators, while at the same time strategizing how to kill our next prey. We can gossip about whom you like and whom you don’t, about who is helpful and who is a cheater, about who loves whom and who is sleeping with whom. According to Yuval Noah Harari, none of these ‘fictions’ would have been possible without language.

Human brain is a complex mass of tufu-like protein that guides us through our life. Information travels faster than any F1 car inside our brains. It acquires, processes, interprets and stores information, while creating prejudice and bias. Let’s test that theory…. This is a simple question, and we all know the answer. How many colors are there in a rainbow?

In my previous lectures whenever I asked how many colors are there in a rainbow, almost unanimously everyone said ‘seven’. Again it is not wrong. That is exactly what my daughter is taught at school. Technically it is the correct answer. But have we ever asked ourselves why seven? In truth it is a continuous electromagnetic spectrum, and not discrete seven bands. Rainbow has all colors. Why seven then? Because we were told so.

The number 7 has fascinated Indians and Greeks alike. When you get obsessed with something you see it everywhere. We are biased towards things we hold close. We were so biased that we made seven oceans, seven continents, seven heavens, seven days, seven sins, seven ‘classical’ planets and seven wonders. Even fictions prefer the magic number 7. Snow White met seven dwarfs, Sindbad the sailor had seven voyages, and then there is 007. We can as well make 6 or 20 oceans. We can club Europe and Asia into one continent. Why make Australia a new continent and leave our Greenland? Why seven wonders? Because modern world has been primed by seven.

I hope that now you can appreciate how stories have made us who we are. Most of the time we do not even realise that most of our faith is just stories we have been fed. 

We are the stories we believe in. We have to be careful about what stories we learn.

Grow up with stories of what is right and what is wrong. The moral teachings help us to cope up with the uncertainties of life and prepare us for the reality. But they also limit us by creating ‘belief systems’. Our emotions can often be guided our ‘belief systems’ or stories of which we are often unaware of. For example we often say ‘No pain, no gain’, or ‘Life is hard’. We say that with good intention. It helps us accept harsh realities and work for success. But is also creates a conditioned fear. Children who grow us with such stories often think that in order to be successful one need to suffer. Life is hard, so you might never find happiness. Studies have shown that such limiting beliefs makes one discouraged and hopeless. It also makes people feel guilty when they achieve something easily. They believe that if they have not worked hard and struggled to get something, they are not worthy of it. Such limiting beliefs often end up creating unhappy personalities. In order to be happy one needs to identify their ‘limiting beliefs’. They are not bad, but it is important that we are aware of them in order to avoid their 'bad' influence.

Another story that limits us is the ‘us’ vs ‘them’. For millions of years we have survived by identifying 'them' and 'us'. The wild did not provide us with ample time to judge if ‘them’ were a threat. So, it was always assumed that ‘them’ = ‘threat’. Bigotry is a modern relict of that evolutionary past. This has led to bloodshed and many have lost their life. But the world is changing. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us how intricately we are connected to each other. It also showed us the powerful influence we have on nature. The lockdown has cleaned up the air and water bodies. The birds and animals are happy. Unlike the past, any wrong action we take today, any more war and bloodshed, will have ripple effect in the entire biosphere. Sapiens have become a powerful natural force like volcano. With that much power and influence, we need to take up the responsibility. It's time we find a new story. What would that be?

We need a new Story.

We started with the wall paintings from around the globe and also did a quick time travel. We learned why did we paint the caves, what's the connection between the rock arts of hunters and gatherers, the ‘fiction’ of Harare and the ‘Maya’ of Upanisads, how are humans related to Zebra flinch, why do we create stories and how did it make us the top predator, and how can stories limit our potential. The final question is, can we script a new story to create a better world?

In nature the fittest survive. Devdutt calls it ‘prakriti’, which is guided by the rule of the jungle ‘matysa nyaya’. According to this rule, big fish eats small fish. Hunters and gatherers lived by the rule of prakriti. Post agriculture the rule of ‘prakriti’ changed to the rule of ‘sanskriti’. Sanskriti is culture, or a set of social rules that defines a group. The group can be a tribe, a religion or a nation. Post the Neo-lithic revolution, sanskriti started to dominate over prakriti. Matysa Nyaya was now modified to big (read powerful) groups eating (exploiting) small (weak) groups. According to the new rule, a small fish in a big group has more chance of survival than a big fish in a small group. Empathy is the glue that helps the group bond strongly. However, it's the cognitive power of our brain that can take us to the next level of civilisation. I call it Sukriti, or the right thought, which would eventually lead to right action.

History tells us that many civilizations had flourished in the past, but in the struggle for survival they got lost into the oblivion. New ones took over. Our future will be different from what it is today. It was human beings who have created stories like compassion, altruism, truth, honesty, loyalty, love, equality, secularism, liberty and peace. These words are fictions that we have invented. And these are powerful inventions. Yes, some of them may be evolutionary, and in our genes, but they are also cultural memes. We should be proud of that. That is the trump of us, the inquisitive apes. It is through these values that we can create a strong society and a happier world, not just for us but also for all species.

  

If we have to survive, we need to unite. The new story must be that of unity and compassion for all. Experiments show that compassion and gratitude makes us happy.  They also show that out brain is plastic, it can be taught to be compassionate. If we can teach stories of compassion and global unity, we can create a better world. According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood. Every individual must acquire it through interactions with others and experiences they acquire over time. The concept of 'I' or self is blurrier in Ubuntu philosophy. According to them, ’I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.’ We have to take that story and spread it around the globe. I will leave you with that thought. 

Subhrashis Adhikari

Author: 5 Questions of the Inquisitive Apes

www.subhrashis.com

Also Check Out:  5 Questions of the Inquisitive Apes 

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