Why We Love Read Free Page B

They only whacked off one or two sides of rocks to create a sharpened edge or point. But these implements were far superior to those made by any other creature living at the time.
    Our habilis forebears also assembled at what appear to be meat-processing places. Here they lugged huge hunks of hunted game, then sat and stripped the bones of meat, removed the marrow and the fat, and shared and ate. Some twenty-five hundred tools and animal bones were found in these ancient garbage dumps. These ancestors evidently hunted an assortment of large animals, too. Primitive zebras, horses, pigs, monkeys, gazelles, and many other types of antelope were their prey. And because these animals are too big to be consumed alone, our kin must have shared their spoils according to social rules.
    They also left what could be evidence of romantic love.
    Some of these hunters left dozens of stone tools around a fallen elephant. All its bones remain except its tusks and toes. Did they remove these appendages to use as amulets for luck in hunting—or in love? Did these hunters give away these trophies to impress “special” girls instead?
    I suggest these possibilities because these people were getting smarter. One Homo habilis individual who lived some 1.8 million years ago in what is now the badlands of Koobi Fora, Kenya, had a brain capacity of some 775 cubic centimeters. His friends and neighbors had an average cranial capacity of some 630 cubic centimeters. Equally remarkable, one skull dated 1.8 million years ago had an indentation on its inner side to accommodate a brain region we now call Broca’s area. Humans use this brain region to form words and produce the sounds of human language.
    Talking. There have been so many different theories on the evolution of human language that as long ago as 1866 the Linguistic Society of Paris announced it would accept no more articles on this topic. That declaration has deterred almost no one since. I won’t offer another elaborate theory. Nevertheless, as Broca’s area started to take a human shape by 1.8 million years ago, it seems reasonable to believe that some of our forebears were beginning to speak with some sort of primitive human tongue.
    One can certainly see many purposes for language. With meaningless noises arranged and rearranged to make words, with words strung grammatically together to make sentences, Homo habilis men and women could frame arguments, strike deals, support leaders, dupe foes, teach skills, scold cheaters, spread news, set rules, stop tears, define kin, placate gods, and recall events that occurred years ago.
    The first human conversations were probably about the weather. I say this because I am constantly amazed at how earnestly and repeatedly people converse on this matter. Unquestionably our forebears also discussed which way the zebras went, the cliffs where the baboons congregate at dusk, the ripe melons near the canyon edge, and why Mara’s little baby cries at night. They probably expressed hundreds of other thoughts and feelings about today, yesterday, and tomorrow.
    But with words they could also woo. Men and women could tell clever stories, chant sexy tunes, and entice would-be lovers with insightful thoughts. With words, our forebears could flatter, tempt, and tease. They could gossip, reminisce, and whisper with a beloved, too. As primitive human language gradually emerged, our forebears must have begun our endless human chat about, and with, “him” and “her.”
    It is at this general time in human evolution that I feel the brain circuitry for animal attraction developed into its human form: romantic love. I propose this for a series of related reasons.
    Nariokotome Boy
    A boy died. His bones sank into the mud of a swamp some 1.6 million years ago in what today is Kenya. In 1984, paleoanthropologists retrieved almost all of his fossilized remains. 11 When they reassembled his bones and teeth, they gazed upon a child who was somewhere between the ages