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There is a question at the heart of humanity that question is: ’who are we’. It is peculiar that we should be able to ask this question. It seems in many ways almost pointless, yet its consequences are very far reaching. The question ‘Who are we?’ also implies other questions. It also implies the question ‘Who are they?’, ‘Who are the others?’. It is the ability to ask this question which also bestows humanity with the ability to relate to it’s environment through culture. How we answer the question ‘Who are we’ determines the sort of culture we have. I think it is possible to say that wherever this question originates, whenever that question first started to be asked, when it became relevant, that that was the time when humanity was truly born. Now, in the current academic and intellectual climate the idea has been put forward, that this question has been a fairly recent one. It has been attributed to a human species called Homo sapiens sapiens – which basically means the wise wise man. This idea is supported by a distinction in the size of the human brain in different human fossils and also whether or not the skeletons resemble us in their slenderness or whether they appear to be more robust.

There is nothing to say that someone who has a bigger brain is more intelligent. There is no proven link in modern humans between the size of the brain and human intelligence. Many scientific geniuses of our age had very small brains by comparison. The fact is that the relevance of a bigger brain is not very well understood and it is presumptuous to assume any judgement on our ancestor’s intelligence due to the size of their brains.

However, these presumptions exist, and usually they relate to attempts by anthropologists to categorise the human species separate from the apes. We feel different from the apes, we look different, and we seem to differ in our achievements. However, whenever we try to determine exactly how we differ from the behaviour of apes we are surprised to find some apes who seem to display behaviours that are considered to otherwise be inherently human, such as the use of stone tools and even the use of spears. Thus, if we ask ourselves ‘How do we differ from apes?’ we have to concede that there is no definite dividing line. It is a matter of scale not principle. We should therefore also assume that we differ from human ancestors not in principle but by degree. In other words we can expect our early human ancestors to have been more like us than apes, who already display some cunning similarities in behavioural patterns. The question then arises, ‘What exactly did evolve in us’, ‘What is it that has become more expressed and why did we evolve bigger brains?’.

When we look at the fossil finds of Homo Florensis from Flores in Indonesia who was last sighted there about a hundred years ago, then we find many physical similarities with the Australopithecines, the so called Southern Apes, who were the first human ancestors known to have had expressed stone tool cultures, who are associated with the first artistic artefact, and who already walked upright. Australopithecines were the dominant human form from about four million years ago to about one and a half million years ago. It is interesting that eye witness reports of Homo Florensis only remark on their small stature and a funny gait which they displayed when walking. There are no reports of furriness, yet all images presented in the press, make every attempt to make them look furry and apelike, as is customary for the treatment of all our human ancestors except Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

Like australopithecines Homo Florensis had quite a small cranial capacity. However, Homo Florensis also was very small standing only about three to four feet high like our Australopithecine ancestors. Nonetheless these people had a stone tool culture so sophisticated that it is indistinguishable from the most recent stone tool cultures of the late Stone Age, i.e. ourselves. Again this put in question the relevance of the size of the brain as to the ability to produce sophisticated tools and the ability for language, since culture is passed on from generation to generation.

Homo Florensis had a friendly relationship with the indigenous people of Flores, who left food for them from time to time, but disappeared when the Dutch arrived on the island. There are no reports of them being hunted or killed. It seems much more that they did not like the vibe and retreated, perhaps, to other more remote islands.

Indiscriminately of the cranial capacity or size of the brain of a human fossil, if they appear to be of a robust stature they tend to be excluded from our ancestry, and if they appear to be of a slender statue, which is amongst other things apparent through less expressed bow ridges in the skull, they are included in our human lineage. The size of the bow ridge does not in any way relate to the size of the brain. In fact, anthropologists give too much weight on the importance of the differences in skeletal anatomy. We have bones so that muscle can attach to it, and to allow for leverage. The shape of the bone is determined by the type and the size of the muscle attached to it. It is essential that someone who is very muscular has bones that support these muscles. If we look at skulls with very expressed bow ridges then we are looking at someone who was essentially much more physical than ourselves. The muscle that is attached to the brow is connected via a tendon to the neck muscles and gives support to the head. The muscle tears on the bone, that is how bone grows, that is how bone is shaped. Muscle shapes bone. Bone grows where it is needed. Bone is shaped by muscle. I do not see why someone who was very muscular could not have been a direct ancestor of ours.

It seems to reflect much more a prejudice of our modern day and age that someone who is more muscular may be less bright.

There are various examples of so called human species who were categorised as such, simply because they were robust. There is no other indication that they were different in any other way. There are fairly recent examples such as the Neanderthal people, where desperate attempts are made to exclude them from our direct ancestry - famously through an analysis of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA. This type of DNA exists independently within every cell and is subject to quite frequent mutation. This mutation has not been studied in great detail but I suspect that it does reflect environmental changes. Today the brown eyed gene is considered dominant over the blue eyed gene. However, when blue eyes first evolved, they must have done so under conditions that gave dominance to blue eyes over brown eyes, or how else could blue eyes have evolved from brown eyed people. It is highly unlikely that a few blue eyed mutant freaks started their own little human species.

Mutation alone is not enough to explain the diversity of appearances amongst humans or even amongst animals that are exposed to human culture, that is, domesticated animals.

There has to be a genetic immune response which favours one feature over another according to lifestyle and environment; features that in humanity are controlled by culture.

However, as far as mitochondrial DNA is concerned, it is scientifically sloppy to compare highly mutant DNA from fifty thousand years ago with its modern equivalent, when we do not understand either the rate of mutation or which factors contribute to it. If we truly wanted to sensibly compare such DNA from people of the Neanderthal culture with perhaps more accepted human ancestors then we would have to find different samples of mitochondrial DNA from people who lived at similar times fifty thousand years ago.

Fifty thousand years ago people lived in an ice age which was dry and cold closer to the poles and very wet and humid closer to the equator. Life on earth has changed significantly since then and we may assume that the presence of an ice age or warm period may constitute the sort of evolutionary force that might regulate the rate of mitochondrial DNA within our cells.

As for people of the Neanderthal culture, it has to be said that new recent studies of human DNA and hybrid fossil finds in Portugal and Romania have forced anthropologists to accept that interbreeding between people of the Neanderthal culture and people of the Cro Magnon or Aurignatian culture has occurred. Again, the question is one of degree and not principle.

Amongst the much older Australopithecines essentially four types or species of early humans have been identified, purely on the basis of their physical anatomy. There are the two slender forms Africanus and Afarensis, which are regarded as our direct ancestors, and there are the two robust forms Robustus and Boisei who are excluded from our ancestry.

Now even in the world that we live in today there are people who differ significantly in physical strength, in height, in population and in the apparent sophistication of culture. Do we really want to argue that these differences in humans constitute the presence of different human species? Should we not expect human ancestry to somehow mirror the diversity we see today? Are we saying that if someone does not drive a car, they and their kin are going to physically die out in the so called battle for the survival of the fittest?

The question, why our human ancestors on average were so much more robust, is an interesting one. Certainly, having a weaker physical constitution rules out the possibility of a more physical lifestyle. It creates more of a dependency on a cultural safety net around. We would not be able to participate in prehistoric cultures without introducing some of the sophistication that makes our lives less strenuous. At the very least, we would need time to adjust. So I think, once we see people who are not as physical as others, we know, that they are probably relying on culture to provide them with a less strenuous lifestyle.

For instance when we look at all of the Neanderthal fossils, there is something very intriguing. This is a culture that has been very consistent. At least in certain aspects. There are not enough fossil finds of any human prehistoric people to allow any conclusive statement concerning their lifestyle or culture. It does appear, however, that there are many aspects of Neanderthal culture that hardly changed over more than hundred thousand years.

The Neanderthal culture spans over almost two ice ages and in between those two ice ages was a previous warm period. We are talking about ten to twelve thousand years of consistent warm weather. There are interstadials; they are phases for maybe a thousand years or less, where the weather gets comparatively very hot and then again very cold, and so on. Usually interstadials mark a period of change from an ice age to a warm period and vice versa. Geological records show that these changes can occur very suddenly, in less than ninety years.

What is interesting is that the fossil finds during the last warm period do not look like Neanderthal people at all. As a matter of fact they look like what are called archaic Homo sapiens. They look more like us. Their foreheads are fairly flat; their built is far less robust than that of Neanderthal people.

Now that is interesting. That is really interesting. There is not a trace of Neanderthal people around. Fossils of Neanderthal people of that time have not been found. Why? Where have they disappeared to? How could a culture that had reigned for almost seventy thousand years suddenly disappear without a trace, and then re-emerge some ten thousand years later and reign for another fifty to seventy thousand years? That is peculiar. Could it not be, that the robustness that we see in the Neanderthal people, was produced by ice age Northern Hemisphere conditions which forced upon people a particular culture - a culture which forced them to become more physical in their appearance.

Culture is a collective response to the environment and habitat in which we find ourselves. It results in a lifestyle, and it results in a definition of who we are. It is through this collective idea of who we are that we express ourselves and that we are shaped. It seems that in the last warm period the Neanderthal people changed their culture and became far less robust. They probably interbred with people from Africa and Asia. The slender features which are more suited to a warm period probably became dominant within the human gene pool due to the changes in climate. And then when the ice age set in again, people went back to looking like Neanderthal people, because that is what was required.

We are at the end of a warm period. I mean all these changes of the weather, people say ‘Oh it’s global warming’, but at the end of the day what we are looking at are rapid changes, rapid fluctuations of the weather. The weather is becoming very unstable, and the end result of all of this is very likely to be the onset of another ice age. That should not surprise us. We can look at the geological fossil record and we can say this is what has happened many, many times before, probably for the last million years.

We look around ourselves and all we can see is our own creation, our own influence. Who are we?

There are fossilised footprints of Australopithecines in Kenya that are probably two and a half million years old. There are separate tracks of a prehistoric horse, a hipparion, and its foal walking almost parallel to these early human tracks. The human tracks stretch over approximately eighteen meters. However most of the middle section is lost.

When we look at the beginning section we see what are probably the mares footprints walking parallel next to the human footprints and then following the foals footprints to the right but still following the general direction of the human footprints. In the end section we see the track of a hipparion (the mare?) following the human track in an exact parallel for about five meters, keeping a distance of less than a meter.

Could this suggest that two and a half million years ago people were already sophisticated enough to ask the question ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who are they?’. To project themselves and think themselves into those prehistoric horses, so that they were able to create some sort of culture that involved those hipparions, the ancestor of the horse. Is the horse in fact a result of human culture as are most recognised domestic species on earth today. We look at the Dingo, the wild dog of Australia, which were once domestic, some sixty thousand years ago. If humans have been cultivating relationships with other animal species over the last two and a half million to perhaps four or five million years, then our collective human culture is a lot deeper and much more profound than we can possibly imagine at present.

Current academic belief wants us to believe that all that we see around us has virtually sprung up over night.

However, there are alternatives.

If natural selection occurred amongst human species, then the evolution of humanity can best be described by the Savannah Theory. Accordingly, all familiar human traits emerged fully only fairly recently, due to human sophistication. This in turn is seen as a consequence of the size of the modern human brain and, as I have already discussed, a direct link is made between intelligent behaviour and cranial capacity, although cranial capacity is not an indication of intelligence in modern humans.

Since modern people are comparatively slender, only slender prehistoric ancestors tend to be regarded as the ancestors of modern humans.

The upright human posture evolved before the emergence of Australopithecines 4,5 million years ago; however, the Savannah Theory supposes a gradual evolution of the upright posture. The lack of fossil evidence for this aspect of human evolution is called THE MISSING LINK.

If, however, natural selection occurred amongst human cultures, which invariably would have lead to different physical appearances and robustness, then the Savannah Theory is unsuitable to describe the process of human evolution, and consideration should be given to the AQUATIC THEORY.

Accordingly, the ancestors of the Australopithecines had adapted to an aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyle (Use shores for shelter at night; live and hunt in water by day). We may find evidence for this, in our ability to swim, and many of our physical characteristics which we share with other aquatic or semi-aquatic mammals, such as a diving reflex in babies, skin, webbing between fingers and toes, tear ducts, a straight pelvis (which essentially allows using the legs for swimming), but also bigger brains, cultural behaviour, complex emotions, complex social structures, high intelligence and play.

We should assume that Australopithecine fossil finds indicate that these early humans started to abandon their aquatic habitat, probably due to some cultural sophistication such as early stone tool cultures, and hence, according to the Aquatic Theory, must be regarded as the first true humans.

The brain of the Aquatic Mammal should be regarded as a primarily SOCIAL BRAIN, capable of complex collective behaviour, and high emotional bonding such as love.

The increase in human fossil cranial capacity should thus be seen as response to an increase in the complexity of human culture (bigger populations, more complex relationships). It is, then, not our personal intelligence that matters but our ability to relate collectively, to ourselves and the world around us.

To start with the Aquatic theory does not allow for the idea that humanity as we see it today evolved on the backs of some very enlightened archaic Homo Sapiens who lived, maybe, a hundred thousand years ago. No, we have to look at the entire human fossil record and we have to say ‘This is humanity!’. ‘These are our ancestors!’ who had different cultures. Some of them had cultures that made them robust, and some of them had cultures that made them slender. Their only cultures that left any tangible trace were their stone tool cultures but there must have been many other skills these people had, that we do not see today.

There are many possible ways in which we should expect culture of our early human ancestors to have manifested.

There would have been people that lived along the shores of the sea, some would have lived along the rivers, some would have built their dwellings in trees, others would have constructed their shelter in convenient caves or on the river banks, yet others would have built shelter from mud and sticks. Others may even have built basic villages. All early human fossil finds are associated with locations next to aquatic sites, such as rivers, lakes or the sea. We have every reason to assume that our early human ancestors should have been able to develop such cultures according to the Aquatic Theory.

The Australopithecines had cultures that were evolved enough to allow them to conquer this planet. They made it to East Africa, to South and West Africa and all the way to Asia, where we may have seen some of their last cultural remnants in Homo Florensis. They travelled long distances. They probably had routes that they could travel, very much like nomadic people today, with seasonal shelters and sources of sustenance.

To supporters of the Savannah Theory this will sound very far fetched. However, we should bear in mind that we recognise such nomadic seasonal cultures in aquatic mammals such as whales and dolphins, the Orcas in particular, as well as in elephants. Hippos have been observed to mourn and defend their dead. Dolphins and whales have been known to adopt lone members of other dolphin or whale species.

We know that any adaptation to a life in water has a profound effect on a mammalian species, resulting in much more complex behaviour. That is why the Savannah Theory finds it difficult to recognise early humans as human, while the Aquatic Theory is satisfied that a profound evolutionary change has already taken place, no matter what the size of the brain.

I think it is an expression of the culture of the Australopithecines, or better these early humans, that they re-emerged from our aquatic or semi-aquatic past, to reclaim life on land. They had the cultural sophistication to do this, and the evidence of their physical diversity, is equally evidence of their cultural diversity. Just as much as any domestic animal may change its size and appearance to suit a particular human culture so do humans change their shapes and appearances depending on the cultures and their respective habitats to which they are exposed over time.

However, we should also consider that despite their growing ability to exploit life on land they still retained strong cultures connected with the water.

Australopithecines were still able to fold out their big toe. We may assume that the remnants of webbing still present between our fingers and toes was much more pronounced four million years ago. Everything in the built of an Australopithecine suggests that they were formidable swimmers. They had enormous upper torsos and long arms. To this day women are better long distance swimmers than men, and human babies are born with a diving reflex.

I also believe that if we look around we can still see a progression of these early aquatic cultures today. For instance, if we look at the way world trade operates in our modern age, we have to admit that it would not be possible without transporting cargo on water. Likewise, all early civilisations known to us were connected with major rivers or water ways in some way or another. We know that the Australian aborigines must have arrived there by some means of naval transport, and the oldest graves found in the Americas are located in Chile, dating back some eighteen to twenty-four thousand years. The skeleton of ten thousand year old Kennewick man found at the shores of California displays a distinctly European skull. All major Palaeolithic sites in Southern Europe are located in the proximity of rivers that lead either to the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. Where such rivers are absent, so is the presence of cave art.

Sure there has been trade across land. But surely the most important trade has been the trade along water ways, simply because it is the easiest way of transporting heavy loads. It is via water that the stones of Stone Henge arrived there from the Welsh mountains. We can safely assume from experiments that were conducted that this did not happen via dug out canoes.

I read a description on how an Australopithecine skull was found inside of a cave. The person who found the skull remarked that it almost looked as though it had been placed there. Is it not peculiar that one of the best places for us to look for human fossils is in caves?

Caves are holy places for people all around the world. They are the vaults of old. If an Australopithecine human ancestor put that skull there on top of that rock then he or she was not just trying to decorate the cave. That person was remembering another person. ‘They’ recognised that this skull still represented a part of that deceased person, a part that in its way, was still alive. These Australopithecines were part of a human culture that was still very closely related to the water.

We think about the water and what it means to people all around the world. Water is life. The Holy Spirit. Go down to the river and pray. Go down into the waters, the sacred lakes, the sacred springs. Water that combines heaven and earth. The warming light from above with the warming glow from below.

Our most distant human ancestors who were probably living on trees. If their habitat one day got invaded by water and they were confronted with a new world, a world where one day the water came. At first it must have been a very scary time. But I am sure that people gradually discovered that it actually was not such a bad thing. A new door opened. A new world. I am sure that there was ample food to be found amongst the mangroves, and little lakes. And I think that very early on people developed a straight pelvis that allowed them to swim and wade around in the waters.

I think water is what made us human. The spirit. All the spiritual people around the world, they all say that if you want to look for spirit – and it does not matter what spirit you are looking for, whether you are looking for God or the animated world – spirit travels best or is contained best in water. For our ancestors to take the bone of their own ancestors and for them to place it into a cave, if we can establish such an act, that is a profound and deeply spiritual act. In some African cultures it is believed to this day that knowledge and wisdom are contained in our bones. It would mean that they had a feeling about the bone, that they could feel the wisdom from the bone, that they were aware of their own bones: When they were singing; when they were hurting; when they were swimming under water, making sounds. There is a common notion that human ears do not work very well. Well, actually, they do! – Under water, they work excellently. The whole range of sound that humans are able to make, in their throats as well as in their sinuses, works really well under water.

We are designed to make those underwater whale sounds that travel for long distances. Try it in a swimming pool or even just in your bath tub. Why do we sing in the shower?

I believe that this is how the human voice developed. It is an underwater voice box. The sinuses and our vocal chords they are designed for making underwater sounds, it is just, that when we are not in water we can make these other sounds.

So, according to the Aquatic Theory, human sound is as old as the straight pelvis because the straight pelvis marks the period when humanity started to swim. A straight pelvis is a common adaptation to swimming in almost all aquatic mammals. Perhaps the funny gait of Homo Florensis could best be explained by making the assumption that these humans did or still do possess their predominantly aquatic use of their legs. We know from the fossil Australopithecine footprints in Kenya that the big toe was folded inwards while walking, making their footprint indistinguishable from our own.

The Aquatic Theory saves us trying to explain the miracle of our own straight pelvis, or why we are walking upright. Once you have a straight pelvis, you have to walk that way.

We have so many aquatic features: webbing between our hands, skin, tear ducts, cultural behaviour, complex emotions, love, and play. So, why is it that aquatic mammals develop these features. Why is it that we develop this ability for culture, for deep emotions? Well maybe it has something to do with the fact that our ancestors went into the water. It is a different world. There is something profound about going into the water. It is the most ancestral living habitat.

If we are ever in need of making a profound prayer, for wanting to change or cleanse ourselves, or open ourselves to a new world going, down and submerging ourselves into the water to do our prayer is the most ancient way indicated by all cultures. I know this may sound silly. I know I may sound like some cheap television preacher but I have looked at shamanism, I have looked at the arguments from spiritual people around the world and through the ages, I know about Quantum Physics and Relativity. These concepts do not exclude themselves. The difference between a quantum physicist and an animist is purely that the animist believes that the matter, the light particle itself, the photon, also resembles a portion of consciousness, an awareness. The animist sees that all matter exists because it is filled with sparks of awareness, which in my humble opinion, are sometimes represented in prehistoric art as dots or hand stencils put on top of the outline of an animal, embodying its life force. The animist believes that matter is alive, not dead. It can be connected with. The animist goes through the world and spiritually connects with everything they encounter. Everything has a spirit. A spirit that can be explored. That is ancient wisdom. That is ancient culture. Such perception very much relates to the way we perceive things under water. The underwater world is an animated world, where the impact of sound is much more immediate and where the boundaries of objects are blurred much more.

So, the ability to see that we can or do connect with anything is probably due to culture that goes right back to the human roots.

When the waters arrived, humanity changed, humanity was born. Before, our distant ape ancestors were probably living very much like chimpanzees many million years ago in woodlands and forests, our sheltered, our whole worlds. And then one day the water arrived, and with its arrival, new world opened.

‘The question who am I?’ is a trick question. There are infinite answers to it, and as long as there are many answers to the question ‘Who am I’, there are many options I have in responding to the world around me. It allows me to dream up my existence, because I can respond to my environment not just physically, and by building myself a nice solid shelter and getting some good tools sorted out! – But I can also respond culturally and that means I can respond not as me the individual, but I can respond as me, a part of the community. A community that can feel out the spirit of everything around. What feels safe, what feels friendly and what feels hostile. It allows for the creation of a culture that creates a balance. A culture that consists of people and possibly of animals, and plants, of heaven and earth. That is the function of culture. The function of culture is simply to create a balance, a harmonious give and take with the environment that allows perseverance. If it succeeds it results in tradition, if it fails tradition is destroyed.

Is it not interesting how our ancestors hold such a fascination? How scientists are obsessed with digging them up. Why? Why do we dig up the bones of our ancestors?

We dig them up because we want to have an image of them; and we want to have an image of who we are.

The reason for digging up human fossils is, that we are not able to answer the question ‘Who are we?’. We lack identity. Our culture is moving. If our culture was settled, if it was stable we would not need to ask these questions. We need to ask these questions because our culture is on the move and our traditions are failing. That is why we ask the question of who we are. It is because we are reshaping our culture. The fossil records of humanity are part of the question ‘Who are we?’. Are we apes that very clumsily ventured out into the world, being torn apart by predators, who somehow managed in a tremendous struggle for life and death to elbow their way to where we are today? Getting wise as they went along and more refined, and more sophisticated, and in an effort not to be down there on the earth, lifted themselves up above things? Again that is a very Victorian view of events dating from a time when the mud clad, earth painted people of Africa were seen as a prime example of a primitive human form from which somehow the white race of Europe had managed to evolve, washed and well dressed. No, we do not want to get our hands dirty. We like to be very comfortable and have developed all sorts of science, making us ignorant of almost all indigenous achievements and spiritual technology. Keeping us in our rightful place, which we have earned because we fought hard and struggled long to get here, elbows well polished.

That is one way of looking at it. Times change. The other way of looking at it is that we are here today because our ancestors went down to the water. They got in touch with the water. The water of life. And in getting in touch with the water, by taking on such a profoundly different perspective as it presents itself in an aquatic lifestyle, they learned to rephrase the question of ‘Who are we?’. Again, and again, and again. And in rephrasing it they were able to connect with the trees, the mountains, the animals, the great ocean, their own ancestors, their bones, the stones in the earth, the crystals, with images and symbols. To shape ways of life, cultures, that put them in intricate harmony with their environment. An environment that would otherwise seem hostile and uninviting.

I think I have got to say one thing about modern science. I just do not think that since Quantum Physics and Relativity we are any longer justified in brushing aside the insights won through spiritual enlightenment, meditation or the spiritual quest. I do not think that we can attempt to describe the evolution of humanity without understanding what spirituality contains, what it addresses, the subtle realities that surround us. Can we ever hope to succeed in anything without understanding the subtleties that it entails? They are these subtleties that make our culture profound. This is why cave art is so difficult to comprehend if we are lacking the myth, the cultural map that puts them into context. Without them all spiritual imagery is at risk of seeming banal. The only thing that distinguishes us from our most ancient prehistoric ancestors is that there may be a lot more subtleties to our lives. There is a lot more bulk we need to remember, and in that sense, our lives may be of a broader social context, but not necessarily of a deeper one. Thus the most apparent physical difference is not necessarily contained in our anatomy but in the density of our populations. Our achievements are always collective. These may be my thoughts but they have been honed and influenced by media and education. I use complex technological tools that took millions of people to develop, from the materials such as glass, plastics, metals, to electrical and mechanical components, which in turn were arranged and designed to serve yet a more complex function, and to the intellectual contributions that have given things their style and application. There is a population threshold that has to be crossed before certain scientific technological developments become possible, and equally there are population thresholds that exclude us from deeper understandings of nature.

The most important function of our brain is to form social bonds, whether with people, plants, animals, rocks or spirits. The mammalian aquatic brain is a social brain. It is found in dolphins, whales, elephants and humans alike. We are all capable of actively seeking to shape our perception of the ‘other’ through curiosity.

So, perhaps our ancestors lives were simpler. But they were human – recognisably so. They were worshipping and remembering their dead, they were communing with animals and the world around them. They were able to adopt all sorts of lifestyles and cultures. They expressed themselves through different cultures, they encountered different cultures and they merged with different cultures. They incited animals incapable of shaping their perception of the ‘other’ to form cultures with them by offering them the recognition and care for their needs, by nurturing their trust and affection.

Our ancestors were communicating.

There is so much emphasis on language being such a complex thing. There is the dreaded grammar with its times and conjugations. There is the wall of vocabulary that needs to be climbed.

Yet, the most key ingredient to language is sound. If you can make many different sounds then essentially you can speak. A parrot can speak, because the parrot can make the sounds. The parrot can even learn to understand some of the meaning. So, being able to speak comes down to two things: being able to make complex sounds, being able to see meaning.

If you can ask the question ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who are you?’ then you can attach meaning. I think early language could have been based a lot more on the sound, the holy sound, which we still know of through the traditions and spiritual practices of religion – the name of God, the name by which you call something into being. You see, early languages were probably a lot more poetic, a lot more based on song. If we feel something right down inside of us, in our bones, it comes out as inspired sound. It is a natural process. So, I think what happened to early humans was that as they went along the nature or spirit of things revealed themselves as sound, emanating from the inner being. There is an intricate relationship between sound and revelation in all ancient languages. They are not merely tools to convey meaning but they are also means of calling things into being by calling them by their soul name which resonates with our own physical existence.

I once saw this program on this shaman in South America who talked about his initiation and how he got in touch with the spirit world. He was dumped in the middle of the forest, miles away from any human habitation. He was instructed to wait until the spirits would talk to him, which happened after about two weeks. Then everything, every plant and every animal revealed their secrets and started talking to him. To spiritual people it is a fact that there are subtle senses that connect us with the world around us which are activated when our senses are deprived from stimulation. This is the source of the often complex medicinal knowledge of plants amongst tribal people.

My wife’s cousin told me about his grandfather, a shaman in Cameroon, who told him how the spirits instructed him where to find the ingredients for his medicine and how to prepare and administer it.

Humanity has a sense that allows us to hear the voices of the things or entities around us. It is when we activate these senses that the world appears animated. Nowadays, there are so many available distractions that this rarely happens to us, except if we are in distress. Thus to us hearing the voices of spirits is a sign of illness.

However, it is through these voices that often talk in strange or non-translatable tongues that the shaman gains knowledge of the animated world. It is in that process that the shaman learns the sacred or soul names of things.

It resonates from our bones. It resonates within us, that understanding, that ability to sense what is there before us, our ability to feel into this existence, in which presence we are standing, and to become it. We become one. We are engulfed in a state of ecstasy. Inspiration flows freely, and we break into song – sacred hymns that allow us to reconnect with the spirit of such a moment.

All shamanic traditions which I have read about talk about this, talk about this moment when we break into song, when ecstasy and revelation become one. Everything resonates within us on a deep soul level, and when we are relaxed enough, when our mind has become empty, then monotony and suffering give way, and the nature of things reveal themselves in sound. I strongly believe that this is how words were first born. In the beginning was the word – the sacred word, a sacred sound, the root of culture and understanding. I believe that there lies the true meaning in the songs of whales. We bond through sound. There is no spiritual bond between people without song, without incantation.

There is a tremendous power in using sacred sound and language. We hardly use sacred language these days, but I think that once, sacred language was almost all there was.

As far as basic day to day communication is concerned in terms of language, less is always more. With people who we know intimately, language often stops us from feeling their presence, and it is not necessary because gestures provide a very effective intuitive understanding.

If the ability to make sounds precedes language then it is quite possible to see how chit-chat sounds can create a pleasant and meaningful background to communication that relies mainly on gestures, and how certain chit-chat sounds could come to replace gestures when there is no eye to eye contact. Which may be particularly relevant in or under water.

The sounds that start pouring out of us when we see little babies very much shows how we are conditioned to nurture each other through sound. I believe that song and emotional sound were probably much more important in humanities evolution than terms, words with restricted emotional content and a specific meaning. Women who traditionally are a lot more nurturing in their nature, probably because of their traditional proximity to children, also have a reputation of enjoying chit chat a lot more than most men. Sound nourishes and it gives comfort. I think it is the sacred connotation with sound that is responsible for most of the deep meaning in our language today but I think it is the nurturing quality of sound that has made language such a common feature in humanity.

I am a result. I try to connect with the spiritual side of my being. Why do I do that? I do that because I seek purpose. Why do I seek purpose? It is a consequence of my inability to find peace for myself within the culture within which I am. That is why I seek. I seek a different culture. Now, the culture which I seek is not altogether different. It embraces the culture around me, its virtues, and its achievements. I use technology. I drive a car. I love my education. I am interested in science, and I am also interested in shamanism and animism, in spiritual concepts and oriental mysticism, monotheistic ideas on what God is. I talk to God. So, I am very open to spiritual concepts, and I think one of the reasons I am so open to such concepts is because I seek culture. For what I do to have purpose, it needs to be part of a bigger picture. Culture is a way to respond to environment, a way to create balance and harmony.

The aim of all culture is perseverance, sustainability. Culture needs to connect us with our collective unity. I think that the harmony amongst ourselves and within our culture has got something to do with the image that we have of humanity – this image of humanity, which is reflected in our myths and legends which talks about our origins. We may live in a scientific age, yet still, the image of our evolution and human origin is, what allows us to look at each other and be gentler, look at things that are different and be more interested and, perhaps, less blasé. If ever we live in a world that seems unreasonably hostile, we may find justifications for such hostility in the way our human past and existence is explained. That is why we should not just allow scientists to project dark and confused images of our past. If humanity is capable of compassion, if we value compassion as an important virtue, then we must favour views that find compassion in our past. There may be times when compassion is not so much of an issue, yet in a nuclear age all hope for humanity is centred on a faith that ultimately we will not forsake each other. If we can find evidence in our past of times when there was no war amongst humans, and such evidence exists, then we would do well to study such times and the images projected through them.

I think that such action also inspires a greater confidence in who we are and in an understanding of the importance of our community. I hope that my artwork can contribute to such a process. I think if I can see any value in art it is to shape human culture and to contribute to community, so that as much of the world, as we perceive it, may persist through space and time.

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