Apologies to everyone for the long interval between blogs.
Over the last six months, AJ and I moved from Johannesburg, South Africa to Vientiane, Laos, travelling via Australia to catch up with family and friends. Because of the Covid 19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns, quarantines and interrupted international travel, this has been a long, long process.
As well, I’ve been planning on working on a major piece on human evolution for some time, something I’ve slowly – and somewhat painstakingly – put together over the last 10 months. The piece is based on a book a friend, palaeoanthropologist Colin Groves, and I were writing together. From the short few chapters we managed to write before his death in 2017, from memories of our many weekly conversations, and from subsequent conversations with his wife Phyll and colleague Debbie Argue, that piece is now all but done. Although nowhere near as comprehensive as the book would have been, it’s still far too long to be viewed in one go, and will appear on this blog over the next few weeks in six sections.
Pha That Luang, Vientiane. Photo: courtesy of Creative Commons (photographer unknown)
Almost as a counterpoint to thinking about human evolution – dealing with relatively deep time – I’ve also been thinking about more recent human history, something spurred on by the pandemic, as well as crises in the Ukraine and the West’s fumbling, erratic handling of the inevitable rise of China. In the process, I came across this short piece I wrote for a workshop two years ago, arguing that the Napoleonic War (or perhaps more accurately, wars) were an essential ingredient in the making of the modern world.
So here it is, the first in what I hope is a much more regular series of blogs.
Napoleon and the modern world
I know … boring Euro-centric, male-centric, and military-centric history. Not really history at all, at least not as its understood these days. But still, the effects of this long conflict did two things that helped establish the world we now live in. First, it saw the creation of the most dominant modern European states. Second, it led to the rabid drive to colonise and exploit Africa.
The so-called First World War – the Great War of 1914-18 – was no such thing. The first true world war was the Seven Years War and occurred in the 1750s . It was fought in Europe, the Mediterranean littoral, west Africa, North America, southern Asia and the Philippines. The Napoleonic War was more of the same – the Second World War, if you like – but with extra countries thrown in and fought on a much more massive scale: bigger armies, bigger battles, greater civilian casualties and dislocation, and huge fleets of giant wooden ships sailing across all seven seas.
Artist: Paul Delaroche. Photo courtesy of Creative Commons (photographer unknown)
One thing you have to say for the Europeans, when they throw a party they make sure everyone’s invited, whether they want to join in or not.
The Napoleonic War involved military, economic and social mobilisation on a scale never seen before. Just two examples: between 1805 and 1813, Napoleon conscripted over 2,000,000 soldiers, and by the end of the war British national debt reached 200% of GDP.
Of course, Napoleon was a megalomaniac, but he also introduced dramatic reforms or consolidated reforms brought in by the French Revolution. Just three examples: the legal system, the Civil Code, influenced similar codes throughout Europe; the metric system is now used almost universally; and state-sponsored voyages of scientific discovery.
The Napoleonic War entangled the US in its first international conflicts: first against the French themselves (their previous ally during the American Revolution), and then, in 1812, against the British (their previous opponent during the American Revolution).
Prussia’s success resisting the French during the war cemented its position as the leading German-speaking country – a process begun 50 years before under Frederick the Great – leading to the creation of the German state itself under the direction of the Prussian Bismarck.
It’s hard to measure to the last centimetre or the last centime or the last degree Celsius the effect all of this had on the rest of the world. But when we talk about nation states, modern economies, science, art, culture and yes, even history, we are dealing with many ideas that had their origin or first great flowering during the Napoleonic era. When the wars were finally done, the continent of Europe – exhausted and battered and Napoleon sent to his last exile on St Helena – experienced nearly a century of peace, something that had never happened before. Instead European states competed with each other overseas, most dramatically in the race to colonise Africa during the 1800s.
The raw materials of the modern world can be found in early European colonialism and 18th century industrialisation, but for all its benefits we enjoy and all its crosses we bear, it was forged during the Napoleonic War.
‘The first time I heard the South African anthem was at funerals, and if the police heard you singing it they would fall on you.
‘Eleven years ago I sang the full South African anthem on South African soil for the first time. It was at a school soccer game in a Johannesburg school gym, and I felt immense pride. Now every South African knows the words.’
Clinton Keet, now a teacher at the very same school he first sang that anthem, says he cannot help smiling when he sees a sporting team representing South Africa and everyone in the stadium stands and sings the national anthem together.
Clinton Keet. (Photo: Simon Brown)
#
Clinton started life in a divided Cape Town, living in a district set aside for non-white South Africans. Through hard study, hard work and the support of his family, he became a teacher, and then an international teacher working in countries as diverse as Vietnam, Italy and China before returning to his native country, now freed from apartheid.
‘I was born in District 6, about the ten minutes walk from the centre of Cape Town. I don’t remember a lot about it – we were forced out of the district when I was about five years old. I remember it was very urban, mainly concrete and tar, and the only grassy area was the fringe around the TB clinic across the road.
‘It was a busy area, so if my parents and grandmother were out working I was put in the care of our neighbour; if she was housecleaning I had to sit on a small spot on the front porch and not move. There was a local gangster on the street corner 30 metres away who made sure I wouldn’t wander.’
Gangsters were locals who belonged to territorial gangs and dealt mainly with illicit drugs and alcohol. They rarely troubled civilians, but were strict about who could cross into their territory.
‘Sometimes gangsters would use us kids to help make a stack of bricks they could use against other gangs crossing the line.’
Destroying homes in District 6 – ‘The regime didn’t like the fact that District 6 was a bit of a melting pot, what they called a “grey area” … ‘ (Photo: courtesy of Creative Commons, photographer unknown)
In 1970 the government forcibly moved Clinton and his family to Penlyn Estate, a district set aside for coloured people in an area called Cape Flats.
‘The apartheid regime didn’t like the fact that District 6 was a bit of a melting pot, what they called a “grey area”, where coloured, Indian and black South Africans mixed freely and made families together. Keeping the different groups apart made us easier to control.
‘On the day we ordered to leave, government workers came about midmorning and piled our stuff into the back of a truck with a tarpaulin over it. The rest of us piled into our uncle’s old Hillman and drove off as the neighbours watched.
‘Most of District 6 was emptied pretty quickly, but some people hung on to the outskirts; it took a long time to clear out the whole area.’
Clinton admits the name Penlyn Estate sounds wonderful, but when they arrived the streets were still all gravel.
‘In the months before we moved, my dad took me there every few weeks and we’d stop by an empty field and stand there for a bit. But slowly a house was built on the land, and all the plots nearby. It was like a giant Meccano set.’
Clinton recalls that after moving in he and other children used to play on the sites still going up, despite warnings from parents to stay away from them.
‘There were small brass rings on the light switch fittings I used to put on my fingers; sometimes they’d get stuck and I had to run to my grandmother to help me get it off. So of course she’d know I’d been playing where I wasn’t supposed to go.’
He also remembers the area was pretty wild at first. They were robbed a few times.
‘The estate bordered on a really dodgy area called Hanover Park, an area with high unemployment and rife with gangsters. It was another coloured area, but poorer. Much of the housing was what the regime called “sub-economic”: flats and apartments.
‘I was personally threatened a couple of times. Once when some friends and I were crossing the canal that ran through the middle of our estate on the way to football, with our soccer boots hanging around our necks by their laces, an older guy appeared and demanded money. We told him we didn’t have any so he told us to hand over our football boots. One of my friends, Bones – a small kid who never stood back from a fight, hit the guy with his boots instead.
‘Another time someone wanted a friend’s new tennis outfit. We threw rocks at him until he drew a knife and then we ran away.’
Clinton says the policing was not very good in coloured areas.
‘Just like today, really, it’s the wealthier areas that get the most patrols and the most police stations instead of the areas that really needed them.
‘But the dads at Penlyn Estate got together and arranged a duty roster to keep residents safe. They were factory workers and had grown up rough. They kept the estate safe from when residents returned from work and through the night until residents left for work the next day. They worked in three shifts over 12 hours. When someone was caught stealing they might be beaten up in the process of being apprehended. Then the police were called to take them away.
‘After a year Penlyn Estate was known for not taking any crap. Houses and cars were no longer broken into.’
Clinton loved growing up in Penlyn Estate.
Cape Flats, which includes Penlyn Estate. ‘ … the area was pretty wild at first.’ (Photo: courtesy of Creative Commons, photographer unknown)
‘I didn’t know any better. Under apartheid communities were separated from each other by 4-lane highways, railway lines, industrial estates and barbed wire.’
Penlyn Estate was a coloured area.
‘We had our own schools and clinics. Even the ambulance to hospital had to be one designated for coloureds; if there wasn’t one available you might have to wait for three or four hours.’
#
Clinton remembers it wasn’t until he was about 13 years old that he became aware that things were different elsewhere.
‘Our next door neighbour was a student activist with a massive Afro. He was a well-known DJ, and known to the security police. One day he rushed into our house and asked my mum to cut his hair.
‘While his hair was being cut he asked me to rush next door and find the black bags filled with paper under his bed. “Dig a hole in my back yard and throw in the bags.”
‘I did as he asked, but looked at some of the papers. They were Roneo documents, banned pamphlets about the African National Congress in exile, for example. I became more aware about what it all meant after talking to my mum about it afterwards.
‘It was also about this time, when I was starting middle school, that people started burning tyres in the middle of the street, and we could hear shots in the distance. Police were always driving through the neighbourhood.’
Clinton says the locals burned tyres to attract the police so they could have an altercation.
‘People were getting a bit bolshie. They wanted to show they controlled their own lives in their own space. The actions weren’t organised or strategic as they later became in the 1980s when the plan was to help make the country ungovernable by stopping economic traffic. In the 1970s it was sporadic and unplanned.’
Clinton recalls the African National Congress later claiming they were there to give structure to the demonstrations, but in fact it was just sporadic action by locals.
He became more political in 1980, at the age of 15. ‘During the 1970s I was on the sideline, but what was happening all around me inculcated me with what needed to be done in the future.
‘I went to Harold Cressey High School, situated opposite Cape Town’s oldest prison and just up the street from the parliament. You had to pass an entrance exam to get into it; there was a long waiting list.’
One of his teachers was Mr Farrel. ‘He was a great person, very down to earth. He taught geography, English and social studies, and when he talked about the world he took you there with him.
‘He was held in high esteem as a man of great integrity. As well, he was a cricket umpire who umpired all of Cape Town’s top games.
‘He was one of those responsible for starting a teachers organisation. It wasn’t an official trade union – the regime kept strict control over the creation and running of “official” unions – but more of an intellectual organisation. Meetings were used to discuss the politics of the time. Many members ended up being barred as teachers and many belonged to the Unity Movement, which unfortunately never had the mass following of the African National Congress or Pan-African Congress. It did end up being in South Africa’s first open election in 1994 as the New Unity Movement.’
Clinton says his political wakening was due partly to his teachers, who often spoke about politics and society, and why it was structured the way it was.
‘It was so sad, but Mr Farrel ended up managing a restaurant.’
Clinton stresses his mother was important in his political awakening. ‘She was almost a Trotskyist and surreptitiously used to leave political pamphlets and writings on my desk. Over time I took on my mum’s political leanings.
‘She ran monthly meetings in the lounge room that were attended by prominent politicians and community leaders such as school principals; I would listen in while doing my homework. I gained a lot of political insight from what was said at those meetings.’
Clinton says he became more political in his last two years at school, boycotting classes and entering debates and discussions with other students from his school as well as others.
‘We’d talk about how to get things done despite obstacles such as principals collaborating with the regime or teachers preventing students from leaving classes to attend meetings.
‘The police would raid the school when there was any demonstration or boycott. They used tear gas and dogs because our school was in the city and they didn’t want trouble spilling out onto the streets. The police often reacted violently, and although they were often of mixed colour, it was white officers, usually speaking Afrikaans, on the megaphones delivering the ultimatum, threatening the use of tear gas or rubber bullets and even live rounds. As far as the apartheid regime was concerned it was open season on anyone in the way, students or teachers.’
#
Clinton says he was not raised with a coloured identity.
‘I was raised just as Clinton, although I understood myself not to be white when I was in other communities. The apartheid regime did a great job of dividing and conquering non-white communities – just like Donald Trump did in the US when he was president. But a coloured identity is something that really only developed after 1994, to some extent filtering down from the earlier black empowerment movement. Some coloured people are still struggling with the idea of identity, still driving the bus, but “coloured” culture is probably the big driver today, expressed in everything from popular music to slogans on T-shirts.
‘There are serious divisions among non-whites in parts of South Africa, if not so much in Cape Town. For example, Penlyn Estate was right next to an Indian designated section called Rylands, an Indian district. We went to school, to church and played sport with Indian South Africans; the division was very porous.
‘But Cape Town was regarded as a preferred coloured employment area, and we were sometimes seen as Uncle Toms. This was aggravated by the apartheid regime’s creation of the Tricameral Parliament in the 1970s, which allowed political parties for white, coloured and Indian South Africans, but not for black South Africans. This is an example of the regime producing a government that excluded blacks and divided the coloured people between Indian and others.’
Clinton’s father, Reggie, was designated coloured. ‘I’m not certain what his ancestry was: some Javanese, Filipino … his great-grandfather was German. There’s no paperwork to find out these things; births and deaths weren’t registered back then. I’ve seen a photograph of my great-grandfather, and it shows a tall, light-skinned man with a Schwarzenegger hairdo. His dad was so light-skinned he could get into a whites-only queue at a Cape Town fish shop by faking a British accent.’
He laughs when he remembers he once attempted pulling the same trick once. ‘I tried getting cold beer at a place in Knysna by faking a cockney accent. We got the cold beer, but I didn’t fool anyone.’
Reggie was a freehand cutter at a leather factory, specialising in exotic skins such as elephant and crocodile hide to make bags and other luggage.
‘But that job ended when he lost his cool with a young administrator straight from the parent company in Germany who was telling Reggie and others their productivity was too low. My dad asked for the ledger the administrator was quoting from and smacked him in the head with it, then walked out. After that he worked at a spray-painting company.’
Clinton’s mum, Rosie, was at least part-Khoisan.
‘It wasn’t until the 1990s that anyone celebrated their ancestry. Being Khoisan to some degree could be a shameful thing. Being called a “Bushman” was the equivalent of being called “nigger”.’
Besides being a teacher she supplemented the family income with hairdressing and needle work, making things like wedding dresses.’
When he was a child, Clinton didn’t feel that apartheid was particularly repressive.
‘The first time I was made to feel powerless I was about 14 years old. I was on a train to school when some white boys threw dirty water over me and my friends. One of those friends retaliated the next day by slapping one of the white boys across the side of the head with a T-square. When we got off the train we were accosted by one of the white passengers. It really caused us to think of ourselves as different, and was the first time where I was involved in an altercation where race was the issue.’
Clinton says he always moved in a coloured area and so felt cocooned. ‘There were subtle reminders of apartheid, like which beach I could go to, but I became more aware of the whole situation as I got older.’
Clinton remembers he became very serious about apartheid in high school. ‘I was a very serious young man. With the example set by others in what we called ‘The Struggle’ – family and friends – I felt the need to help overthrow apartheid, that had a role to play as well as a student organiser and activist.
‘Not all my friends in high school felt the same way and I sometimes felt disjointed from them. It wasn’t until later that I realised how much I’d missed out on, but a “normal” teenage life was very difficult because of my activism.’
By the mid-1980s the apartheid regime was under such great internal and external pressure they extended an olive branch by entering into discussions with the ANC.
Clinton went straight to university after school.
‘I got a bursary to the University of Cape Town to study geography and anthropology – Mr Farrell’s influence! – with the intent of becoming a teacher. I became interested in other subjects like environmental studies, but the bursary proved to be a two-edged sword: it paid for my university fees, but restricted what subjects I could do.
‘I didn’t realise how cornered the regime felt until one day while playing cards at uni, some friends and I made up a political party called the South African Liberation Front to “heal the wounds of the people”. It was done as a kind of Monty Python joke – Salf was the name of a medical ointment at the time. But the next day someone who’d been at our table sprayed the name and the credo in the library elevator, and the police went ape, pulling people into “interviews”.’
University of Cape Town (Photo: courtesy of Creative Commons, photographer unknown)
Clinton learned good manners from his gran, Gussie, who came from a small agricultural town in the Karoo called Ladysmith to take up domestic work in Cape Town.
‘Sometimes I’d go with her to visit Ladysmith. It was a totally different world. No grass anywhere, just gravel. Everyone there played Rugby instead of soccer. As young kids do, I spent a lot of time looking for scorpions and snakes, and I still fondly remember waking up to the smell of bread freshly baked in a woodfired oven.
‘Gussie instilled in me a good work ethic, and taught me the importance of introspection, about thinking before you speak or act. She said people will know in the first minute they meet you by your manners. She often used my uncle as an example of someone with good manners; his nickname was Dennis the Manners.
‘Dennis will strike up a conversation with anyone. He emigrated to Australia and taught art in schools in Kiama, New South Wales. He also helped establish the Kiama Jazz and Blues Festival.
‘From my mum I learned to be serious about work and about politics, and the value of reading. In fact, one of our neighbours, Mrs Kaylor, used to throw the neighbourhood kids into the back of her old Ford Cortina station wagon every weekend and drove us to the library so we could get three new books out to read. Her little effort made a big difference to us.
‘I also got my love of hiking from my mother.
‘From my dad I learned to love sport. He was sternly protective, and I inherited some of that. I also got my love of music from him, especially jazz. I remember when we were still living in District 6, going inside the house when it got dark and the first thing I’d hear would be jazz music coming from the turntable in the loungeroom and finding my dad by the glowing ember at the end of his cigarette.’
#
In 2021, Clinton says he feels he is South African, but hard done by. ‘The leadership has sold out by looking after themselves. There is a gulf between the wealthy and everybody else, something created post-apartheid. You can see it now during the current pandemic. We should have had better structures in place to better help those in poverty.
‘We were a country willing to stand up to lose its chains but is now being shackled again. No one’s willing to stand up and say ‘No!’ – this is not right. We allow it to happen. The faces of the new regime we recognise as coming from our community.’
Clinton thinks the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that followed majority rule might have prevented a civil war from happening.
‘There were forces at work who wanted to destabilise the government, to prove that majority rule could not work. But I believe the TRC stopped short of delivering real justice. Many members of the apartheid regime’s police and security police got away with murder and working well beyond the limits of the law.
‘A great deal was swept under the carpet by the TRC, and was proof to some that you could get away with a great deal and not be punished for it. Many of those in power now are as corrupt as those in power during apartheid. The TRC should have established a better precedent.’
Clinton thinks that South Africa needs a change in political will.
‘We need to step forward. The current pandemic, for example, has highlighted the fact that some in government are still trying to line their own pockets despite the suffering of the people.
‘If the pandemic doesn’t change things, I don’t know what will.’
An organism has been found that photosynthesises from light coming from hydrothermal vents 2400 metres below the sea. It is the first photosynthetic organism discovered that does not rely on sunlight.
As reported in a paper pithily titled ‘An obligately photosynthetic bacterial anaerobe from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent’ published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the green sulphur bacteria was found living near a thermal vent off the coast of Mexico called 9 North.
One of the paper’s authors is Professor Robert Blankenship from Arizona State University’s chemistry and biochemistry department. In an interview with Skip Derra (posted on the university’s website) , Blankenship said the bacteria uses a chlorosome complex which acts like a satellite dish to collect any light it can and transfer it to the organism’s reaction centre where the photosynthesis takes place.
Blankenship also said the discovery was important not just for what it meant for life on earth, but what it means for the search for life outside of Earth.
‘This shows that photosynthesis is something that is not limited only to the very surface of our planet,’ he says. ‘It lets you consider other places where you might find photosynthesis on Earth, as well as on other planets.’
As the original paper’s abstract reflects:
‘The abundance of life on Earth is almost entirely due to biological photosynthesis, which depends on light energy. The source of light in natural habitats has heretofore been thought to be the sun, thus restricting photosynthesis to solar photic environments on the surface of the Earth. If photosynthesis could take place in geothermally illuminated environments, it would increase the diversity of photosynthetic habitats both on Earth and on other worlds that have been proposed to possibly harbor life.’
Something for us science fiction writers to ponder.
Another amazing aspect of this paper is its relative obscurity: the paper was published in June 2005. If not for the heads-up in a recent post by Jerry Coyne on his website Why evolution is true, I doubt I would ever have learned about it.
The late Australian philosopher and ecofeminist Val Plumwood was attacked and almost killed by a saltwater crocodile in 1985. The fact she survived three ‘deathrolls’ is down to her sheer determination to escape and a good amount of luck. Severely injured, one leg was exposed to the bone, she somehow managed to walk and finally crawl to the nearest ranger station, some three kilometres away.
In her essay ‘Prey to a crocodile’, Plumwood writes that during the attack ‘I glimpsed the world for the first time “from the outside”, as a world no longer my own, an unrecognizable bleak landscape composed of raw necessity, indifferent to my life or death.
‘ … It was a shocking reduction, from a complex human being to a mere piece of meat.’
Saltwater crocodile. Courtesy of Creative Commons, photographer unkown.
Human exceptionalism is the belief that we as individuals and as a species are separate and superior to all other life on earth. It is a belief innate in almost each and every human, especially those belonging to so-called developed societies, that stems from our almost complete domination of the planet’s landscapes and ecologies. We are the world’s most numerous large animal, and our technology has enabled us to travel from the deepest abyss to the surface of the moon. Some aspects of our technology are overwhelmingly prolific and invasive: plastic, for example, is now found from the highest point to the lowest point on Earth’s surface and throughout our own food chain.
Human exceptionalism partly stems from the way we historically treat the animals and plants with which we share the planet. They are the resources we need to survive and thrive, and we reshape entire ecosystems to sustain industries that provide those resources in the cheapest, most efficient and in the greatest amount possible. This has been at the expense of vast swathes of rainforest, wetlands and temperate forests, environments essential to the health of life on earth.
But as Val Plumwood discovered, it doesn’t take much to reduce a single human being from a member of the planet’s dominant animal to just another source of food.
#
In 2020, in the middle of South Africa’s first and strongest COVID-19 lockdown, I wrote a short story called ‘Speaker’ for a competition run by Sapiens Plurum, an organisation created to ‘inspire (humans) to aspire beyond what was humanly possible.‘
The competition’s theme was ‘how can technology increase empathy and connection?’ They wanted authors to imagine ways technology can improve how we relate to each other and bring us closer, even across species.
The idea for ‘Speaker’ came from one of those moments of serendipity – or perhaps synchronicity is a better term – when two ideas fuse to create a third idea. The first idea was based on the development of protein microchips, a scientific endeavour that had its research heyday in the 80s; one objective of the research was finding a way to help people suffering from brain injury to regain full health. The second idea is a personal fantasy, really to one day communicate with one of our hominin cousins, such as Homo neanderthalensis or H. ergaster. The fusion of these two ideas created the third idea: using linked protein microchips for communication between two modern species, Home sapiens and, in this case, Crocuta crocuta – the spotted hyena[i].
The story won the competition, and subsequently Sapiens Plurum asked Slate Magazine to consider publishing it. Slate agreed, and in January published it in Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, New America (a Washington-based think tank), and Arizona State University’s Center for Science and Imagination.[ii] Specifically, my story was part of series sponsored by the Learning Futures initiative out of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU.
Stories appearing in Future Tense have a ‘response essay’ written by someone who is an expert in the field or issue covered by the story. In my case, I was fortunate to have Iveta Silova, an expert in global futures and learning, write the response in a piece called ‘If Nonhumans Can Speak, Will Humans Learn to Listen?’
As an extra bonus, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College then arranged for an online discussion between Iveta, Punya Mishra, a professor and Associate Dean of Scholarship and Innovation at the college, and myself, on the creation of ‘Speaker’ and the issues covered by it and Iveta’s response. That discussion was recorded and subsequently uploaded to YouTube.
The discussion’s central issue turned out to be about human exceptionalism. As Iveta explains in her essay:
‘Today … we are forced to acknowledge that we are not so special after all. On the one hand, we wonder and worry whether artificial intelligence will become conscious, leading us down a dystopian spiral of human irrelevance. On the other hand, we see a major shift in scientific thinking about plant intelligence and animal consciousness, suggesting that the difference between human and nonhuman species is just a matter of degree, not of kind. Meanwhile, our hyperseparation from the natural world is threatening every species on Earth—including humans.’
Iveta goes on to write that ‘Overcoming the modernist assumption of human exceptionalism and reconfiguring our relationship with a more-than-human world is a complex and long-term project.’
In ‘Speaker’, linking humans with different species is an attempt to overcome human exceptionalism, but the exercise itself is fraught with difficulties, especially the hurdles imposed by our own innate prejudices and assumptions about what it means to be human in a world that seems to be so completely dominated by humans.
Spotted hyena. Courtesy of Creative Commons, photographer unknown.
And this is where our hubris kicks in. For the most part life on Earth is dominated by viruses, archaea and bacteria, but we are so coddled by civilisation that even if we understand this intellectually, it is usually impossible to acknowledge it instinctively. The current Covid-19 pandemic, for example, has demonstrated that for all our technological and cultural achievements, our entire civilisation can be put on hold by a virus so small that all the world’s Covid-19 particles can be contained a single soft drink can. It is well to remember that in ancient Greek tragedies, hubris comes before a great fall.
Linked to that hubris is the assumption in the story that given the capacity to link our own minds with those of other animals, we will go ahead and do it. The story doesn’t engage with the ethical issues of communicating in such a way with another species. For example, what repercussions would there be for the recipient species? How do we stop the link resulting in one species overly influencing or even dominating the other? In fact, how would we even begin to estimate what impact there might be? And if the decision was made to go ahead and make the link, how do we deal with the issue of privacy? How do the two linked intelligences stop invading each other’s most private thoughts? Can thoughts be turned on and off like a tap, or would the link open a floodgate that would drown both parties in a wave of facts, emotions and random thoughts?
Perhaps most importantly of all, and in the context of ‘Speaker’ the most relevant, is how do we interpret those thoughts? How do we know for sure that our brains won’t ‘mistranslate’ the thoughts it receives, and vice versa? In the story this is handled with the ‘joking’ subtext, the way Akata and Samora try to find a way around their very different life experiences to reach a common understanding for the concept of humour, something humans but not hyenas possess (at least in the story).
And yet, despite all of these issues, I see linking with another species as a wonderful opportunity and a positive action at so many levels. In her responding essay, Iveta actually quotes Val Plumwood:
‘According to … Val Plumwood, we must reimagine “the world in richer terms that will allow us to find ourselves in dialogue with and limited by other species’ needs, other kinds of minds.” This is, she argues, “a basic survival project in our present context.”’
It’s time for humans to put aside their exceptionalism and hubris. Apart from the damage to the planet such an attitude encourages, it damages us, keeping us artificially apart from the rest of life on earth. We cannot flourish as a species by ignoring the fact that we, like spotted hyenas and saltwater crocodiles and for that matter centipedes and flies, are animals. We aren’t the endpoint of evolution, just one of its offshoots.
[i] An animal seriously misrepresented in human culture. The spotted hyena is an intelligent and extraordinarily social predator that lives in large troops dominated by females. And I do mean ‘predator’; despite its historic image as a scavenger, almost all its food comes from actively hunted prey and not from stealing some other animal’s kills.
‘We need to codesign programs that move away from disempowering communities and indigenous people to giving them the power to be strong stewards of the natural resources and the lands,’ says Dr Patricia Mupeta-Muyamwa, Strategy Director for the African Indigenous Landscape program at The Nature Conservancy, a charitable environmental organisation with its base in the US.
Her job involves working with local communities to protect and nurture the natural environment. Patricia says she fell into the work more by accident than design.
Dr Patricia Mupeta-Muyamwa (Photo: Simon Brown)
‘I did my undergraduate degree in wildlife ecology at the University of Zambia in Lusaka, and in my last six months did an internship monitoring wildlife and vegetation in a national park. The job involved interacting with the park scouts, and after listening to their experiences I realised that it was people and not wildlife that was the problem, and I asked myself how do we empower people to make them better stewards of nature?
‘I did my Masters in conservation and tourism in the UK, and learned about different models of conservation. Because of the chequered history between national park administration and local communities, which left a great deal of animosity towards the state, my work promotes the importance of getting the rights to land and natural resources to the people that live closest to them.
‘Historically, African national parks and nature reserves were created for aesthetic reasons using an American model first developed for Yellowstone National Park.
‘Up until the 1990s, the state and not the local people ran national parks and conservation areas; it was a relic of Africa’s colonial past, and part of my work is to help address this injustice by reconciling local people so they’re a part of the conservation solution.
‘Local communities were forced out. People were seen as part of the conservation problem and not as part of the solution. For example, in South Africa national parks are still state run in a very centralised way; there are many communities around Kruger but few are getting any real benefit from it except a few people that find employment.’
Patricia says her long job title came from her work as it evolved.
‘A large part of the job is focused on protecting wildlife corridors spanning across parks, private and community-owned lands.
‘The work itself has three main objectives. First, giving land and resource rights back to the local community. Second, developing community skills to manage natural resources for example protecting and monitoring wildlife . Third, helping develop community opportunities for making a living from conservation, for example with tourism and programs that empower women.’
Patricia stresses this is a bottom-up approach. ‘A big part of my job is to consult with communities and their leaders to find the best conversation solution. I listen to their stories about living and interacting with the land.’
Patricia leads teams that are managing four big landscape projects, one in Kenya involving 39 separate communities, two in Tanzania and one in Zambia.
Patricia with two young Hadza girls in Tanzania (Photo: Dr Patricia Mupeta-Muyamwa)
‘We’ll soon be starting a fifth one in Angola, based around the headwaters of the Okavango River.’
As an example of what these projects can achieve, Patricia cites the work done with a local partner Northern Rangelands Trust with 39 separate communities.
‘Establishing wildlife corridors between these communities has been successful in increasing numbers of previously threatened animals such as elephants.
#
Patricia was born and raised in Kitwe, a mining town in Zambia’s Copper Belt on the Kafue River, Zambia’s third largest river. This is also where she first met her husband Andrew, now a Maths Studies high school teacher. The two of them have fond memories of growing up in this small, quaint mining town.
‘My parents worked for a mining conglomerate. My father worked for 27 years as a human resources manager for a copper mining company. He was a real people person, and connected with people from all walks of life.
‘My mother was a teacher, training first in Zambia to teach home economics, but later she studied in Liverpool in the UK to become a Montessori teacher; and was the first Zambian to achieve this.’
Patricia grew up in a one-party state created by independent Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda. Following a period of instability, the 1973 signing of the Choma Declaration banned all parties except Kaunda’s own, the United National Independence Party (UNIP). He remained in power until he was ousted after being forced to hold multi-party elections in 1991.
‘Kitwe’s British-South African owned mining company was nationalised by the Zambian government, so I grew up thinking it was normal to grow up in a black-run black society. It was a source of pride for us that Zambians were in charge of the company.’
Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s first president (1964-1991) (Photo: Creative Commons)
Patricia says that even though she grew up in a one-party state, she only became aware of that as she finished high school.
‘But living in it as a child you don’t necessarily feel authoritarian measures, for example restricted access to the world outside Zambia. We were cocooned, but that didn’t feel bad. In some ways I would rather live in that state than what exists now. Things worked: there was infrastructure that worked, equity for all seventy-two tribes and a sense of security. I believe Kenneth Kaunda was motivated for the greater good of society. He created an environment that allowed everyone to have access to healthcare, education and employment regardless of background.
‘Kaunda created a system where we didn’t feel black, but Zambian. My father’s generation, which grew up under colonial rule in what was then Northern Rhodesia, was taught British, European and American history at school; my generation was taught pre- and post-colonial African history.
‘Kaunda led the way in institutionalising a Zambian identity. As a kid I didn’t really appreciate the gravity of this, but looking back now I see that it helped me navigate through life as a Zambian. Kaunda called this philosophy “humanism” – in the sense that the core values were about recognising our common humanity, and that we should always be aware that history was judging us and so be peaceful, respectful and good to each other.’
But things started to change in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
‘The economy was stalling and there were food shortages. Up to then the majority of Zambians had been politically passive; there wasn’t a lot of collective activism. The system that existed helped make it that way. But at that point the multi-party democracy movement challenging Kaunda was slowly taken up by the people.
‘When I was sixteen I was apolitical, but then my dad took me and my older brother to my first political rally just before Kaunda left. It wasn’t simply an anti-Kaunda rally, but more about a wind of change. It was huge and exciting – there was a great desire for change – and when it came I was hopeful. Everything felt new and that at last we were going places and fighting for a better Zambia. There was a sense of entrepreneurship in the early 90s, and new markets were opening up. The mines were privatised, for example, and different assets were being sold, like the mining homes, and many Zambians became home owners for the first time.
‘But in the euphoria we forgot what Kaunda had done for Zambia. The current political system in Zambia is not as effective as the old political system. There is less equity and less access to health, work and education. The Zambian economy is on life support.’
#
The future Dr Patricia Mupeta-Muyamwa in 1976 with older brother Chris, left, and younger brother Michael, centre (Photo: Dr Patricia Mupeta-Muyamwa)
The one great source of stability for Patricia is her family.
‘I come from a very strong nuclear family, which is not the norm for families in Africa. It is a central part of who I am. My husband, parents, siblings and my maternal grandmother have all influenced my life in different aspects.’
Patricia says her grandmother, Dorika, was independent, strong-minded, political and entrepreneurial. Born in the early 1920’s, she witnessed her country move from a colonial to a post-colonial era.
‘She was a Kaunda supporter and freedom fighter from the colonial era. She later became a strong organizer in the women’s league of the United National Independent Party (UNIP).
‘Towards the end of the colonial period she accompanied her husband, a community development officer, to different postings all over the country. In one posting he was sent to a district in the northwest at the same time as the colonial authorities imprisoned Kaunda there; when Dorika saw Kaunda being taken for his daily walk she would go up and talk with him, much to the distress of the local British officials. During one encounter she was reprimanded by the District Governor for this action. She held her ground, and continued with her actions. This upset the Governor and he later transferred my grandfather away from the district because of his “troublesome wife”.
‘During the time when there was a call for change from Kaunda’s rule, she said “No! No change!”’
Dorika and Bilson Muzi, Patricia’s grandparents, taken in 1963 at Kabompo, North Western Province, where Dorika upset local authorities by talking with the imprisoned Kenneth Kaunda. Patricia’s future mother is standing on the right. (Photo: Dr Mupeta-Muyamwa)
After her husband died, Dorika supported her family of eight children by selling bread and other baked goods from home and at the market.
‘With two other women she set up one of the first female trading markets in Kabwe, a small mining town in central Zambia; it’s still operating to this day.’
Patricia says she drew a great deal from her grandmother.
‘I admired the way she navigated through life and survived as a woman and as a leader. She did so much in her life and in her own way. The older she got the stronger she got, and she was a great female model. She really lived life in her own terms.’
Patricia’s father, David, was the biggest male influence on her life. ‘My love of reading came from him. I loved going into his library. I read his 12-volume encyclopedias over and over.’
Patricia says growing up she never gave her mother the same attention she gave her father.
‘I was a “daddy’s girl”, and she wasn’t in my “cool space” back then. Now I realise just how similar we were. She was a trail-blazer. She was the first Zambian to study and teach Montessori; that took a lot of initiative and courage.’
Perhaps the biggest influence her mother had on her life was her decision to send Patricia and her sister, Edith, to an all-female boarding school run by German nuns; one of the oldest and best schools from its establishment in the early 1900s. She remembers the school was run under a very strict regime.
‘I did not like it at all. The nuns worked us very hard. When I tell people I went there they ask me if my parents hated me! But in hindsight, the education I gained from that time was invaluable.’
#
Patricia says she wasn’t really conscious of her skin colour until she travelled to the UK and, especially, the US, for study.
‘I’m not sure whether or not that was a peculiarly Zambian experience. I’ve heard very different stories about encounters with racism from other black people, many of them heartbreaking.
‘Up to then I never thought of myself as a “black” person. My first racist encounter was in the UK when I was in my early 30s, when a hobo at a train station yelled at me to go “home”. I was shocked more than hurt by it because for the first time I became truly aware that this society was different from the one I grew up in.’
She says that while studying for her masters at the University of Kent she felt she was living in a bit of a bubble because she was very familiar with the British tradition and culture that had been such a part of Zambia before independence.
‘Growing up in Kitwe I had many encounters with non-racist and progressive Brits. It wasn’t until I was studying in the US that racism really hit me.
‘Soon after I arrived at the town where I was going to study I started looking for accommodation and came across a poor black neighbourhood. I began to understand how a community placed like this, separated from better-off communities, institutionalised racism.
‘US culture was strange and interesting. I was living in a diverse and liberal university town in northern Florida, but you didn’t have to drive far from the town to find Confederate flags flying in front yards. It was a totally different society.
‘For the first time I felt and identified as “black”. I found myself gravitating towards black student unions and organisations helping black communities.’
Patricia was saddened to see great poverty in some black communities in the US. ‘I had seen poverty in Africa, of course, but here it was like the lights had gone out. There was a lot of hurt and anger in that tribe – a tribe I can relate to – but the hurt and anger also existed in the academic environment which was so different from my previous experience it threw me off guard somewhat.
‘What I also found interesting was the way the black community was divided among African Americans, Caribbeans and Africans. It could be hard to cross the divide, but I’m not sure how much that was due to my own naivety. The black student union had a good ethos, for example, but it’s leadership was African American, and they defined the union’s agenda and this is where a lot of the union’s energy was spent. I had to think about what it meant to be an African in this situation. My initial enthusiasm at being part of the union started to wane because I couldn’t see what my role might be.’
#
Patricia says she identifies as Zambian but feels African.
‘I especially feel broadly connected to sub-Saharan Africa. African countries like Zambia, Kenya, Botswana and South Africa have more in common than not.
Patricia at the farm owned by her and her husband Andrew in the village of Chifwema, southeast of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital. (Photo: Dr Mupeta-Muyamwa)
‘There is a connection around tradition, culture and how we think about family. There is a very strong “oneness” around family events that goes with a sense of community. This means there is still an especially strong tie in many countries between urban and rural communities; people working in the big cities still go back to their families living in rural areas for important occasions.’
Patricia hopes those values will see sub-Saharan Africa through to a better future. ‘Right now, for example, that rural link for urban dwellers means many of them have a comparatively safe refuge during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Strangely, this isn’t what’s happening in Zambia, where the rush to urbanise seems to have cut many of those ties to the country. I don’t know the village where dad came from, for example.
‘Africa needs to reconnect to its core identity. I believe we lost this connection as we urbanised. My hope is that we will see those links repaired in Zambia and other parts of Africa.’
Mrs Ples is the oldest thing in my house. Although, to be honest she’s just a representation of the original Mrs Ples. And, to be even more honest, my Mrs Ples is only one-third the size of the original.
Mrs Ples has more than one name, and her history is, to say the least, turbulent.
But first, the big reveal. Mrs Ples is the oldest complete skull we have of Australopithecus africanus, a member of the great apes that includes us – the hominims. I bought the replica that now rests proudly on my bookshelf at the Cradle of Humankind in August 2018.
I think she’s beautiful.
And yes, it’s reasonably likely that Mrs Ples is not Mr Ples, although the issue is not yet settled. When the original fleshy envelope holding her passed away, she was middle-aged, not bad going for someone from her time. Standing in her socks she was about the same height as a chimpanzee, and her brain was about the same size as a chimp’s as well.
But, unlike a chimp, she was bipedal. She proudly walked on two legs, occasionally retreating to a tree if something bigger than a hedgehog threatened her.
In her modern incarnation, she entered the world with a bang. Literally. The rock matrix enclosing her skull was blown apart by dynamite. It took a lot of work to get all the pieces together again.
At first, she was Plesianthropus transvaalensis; later, scientists discovered she was actually related to the Taung child, the first early hominin ever found in Africa, and already given the binomen Australopithecus africanus. So she lost her first official title and took up another; in honour of that first name, however, she has since been called Mrs Ples.
Her other name is her catalogue number, in this case STS 5, which indicates the fossil was found at Sterkfontein.
Despite being blown up, misnamed and constantly man-handled by grubby palaeoanthropologists, she is regarded with wonder by those in the know. In fact, when South Africa’s free-to-air broadcasting company aired a show in 2004 called Great South Africans, Mrs Ples made the list.
Not bad for someone who’s been dead for at least 2.1 million years.
Sadly, Mrs Ples was among the last of her kind. Soon after she was extinguished, so was her species. A sister species, A. sediba, lived in southeast Africa for a while longer, but it too eventually disappeared, probably the last of the australopithecines.
And for those who want to know what she looks like … here she is …
Some Australians take perverse pride in the legion of venomous animals infesting the continent and its surrounding seas, from the very small members of the Irukandji group of box jellyfish[i] up to the very large mulga snake[ii].
On the face of it, Australia seems to have had the bum run when it comes to its snakes, spiders, ants, octopuses, cone shells and jellyfish, and this hardly exhausts the list of venomous creatures that call Australia home. On the face of it, if venomous wildlife is your thing then you should be calling Australia home, too.
(As an unpleasant aside, Australia’s venomous biota is not even restricted to its animals; I dare you to read this with the lights off: Australia’s venomous trees.)
If we exclude the 120 kg drop bear[iii], which is sometimes erroneously claimed to use venomous claws to subdue its prey, then the big three that dominate most conversations after a few beers at the pub are the inland taipan, the box jellyfish (particularly the sea wasp), and the Sydney funnel-web spider.
For a timid and rarely seen snake, in recent years the inland taipan has garnered a fearsome reputation for itself. In fact, one of its alternative names is the fierce snake, but this is entirely due to its venom, milligram for milligram the most lethal of any of the world’s reptiles. It is often reported that the venom from a 110 mg bite, if carelessly (or maliciously) injected, could kill 100 adult men. The fact that the average dose delivered by an inland taipan is about 44 mg is rarely mentioned, although since this is still enough to kill at least 40 adult men it could be argued I’m being pedantic. Compare this to the most lethal member of the saw-scaled vipers[v], which can reportedly kill six adult males with the amount of venom it delivers with one bite. (We’ll be returning to the saw-scaled viper a little later.)
The chance of encountering the inland taipan, which inhabits that semiarid corner of hell-on-earth between Queensland and South Australia, is vanishingly small. Indeed, in Australia your chance of dying from thirst or a camel stampede is probably greater than dying from a snake bite from any species. It’s also worth noting that the inland taipan has been described as placid and reluctant to strike; of course, if cornered or mishandled it will not hesitate to bite with remarkable speed and precision, and more fool you.
The sea wasp is another matter altogether, not because it is remotely vicious, but because it just doesn’t give a damn. All envenomations are accidental. The largest of the box jellyfish, it spends its life floating in the warm tropical waters off northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and Southeast Asia. Well, floating isn’t entirely correct. The sea wasp does swim, but not in the determined way that would get it a place in Australia’s Olympic swimming team; apparently at full pelt they can cover about six metres in a minute. In the right season and the right place, the chance of accidentally bumping into one of these almost transparent jellyfish is depressingly high. Beaches all along the northern, tropical shorelines of Australia have signs warning swimmers of the danger.
Sea wasp. Photo Creative Commons
An adult sea wasp is made up of a roughly square-shaped bell about 30 centimetres in diameter; 15 tentacles trail from each of the bell’s corners, each of which can be up to three metres long and are covered in around 5,000 cells called cnidoblasts, each of which in turn houses a nematocyst, which is Latin for ‘this will hurt’.[vii]
Nematocysts are the business end of a sea wasp’s venom delivery mechanism. When its prey, usually prawns or small fish, brush against the tentacles, the cnidoblasts release the nematocysts. The nematocysts penetrate the skin of the victim like miniature harpoons and then release their venom. Despite having actual eyes, the sea wasp seems incapable of restraining the cnidoblasts from releasing their load if the tentacles accidentally brush against something which isn’t prey, such as a human. Since this means the sea wasp is missing out on a meal and must now spend what I assume is a lot of energy to rearm the cnidoblasts, this is a serious design fault. Admittedly, that’s small comfort for anyone writhing in the water in unbearable pain, but one can only imagine the cuss words going through what passes for a sea wasp brain.[viii]
According to one study[ix], a sea wasp carries enough venom to kill 60 adults, which considering its size compared to, say, the inland taipan, is some achievement. Nonetheless, most encounters with a sea wasp don’t end with a fatality. The quick application of vinegar to neutralise any nematocysts still attached to the skin, and ice to relieve the pain, is often all that’s necessary. Having said that, one study[x] shows that 8% of envenomations require hospitalisation:
‘Because of the rapidity of fatal C. fleckeri envenoming, the critical window of opportunity for potentially life-saving use of antivenom is much smaller than that for snake envenoming, possibly only minutes. Furthermore, from animal study data, it was calculated that around 12 ampoules of antivenom may be required to counter the effects of a theoretical envenoming containing twice the human lethal dose of venom.’
The lesson here is if you come across a sign at a beach that says beware of box jellyfish (or for that matter crocodiles) consider something marginally safer and decidedly less painful for your daily outing, like jumping off a cliff.
I’m an arachnophobe, and this spider pretty well defines the content of my worst nightmares.
I readily admit I’m scared of vampires, malevolent ghosts, land sharks, Brussel sprouts and omelettes – for that matter, any food made mainly from eggs – but my fear of spiders is on a whole other level. Even if I catch a glimpse from the corner of my eye of the completely innocuous daddy longlegs a long shiver will pass down my spine. I don’t know what it is about arachnids that gets me all goosebumpy or triggers my fight or flight instinct (to be honest, my fly or fly-twice-as-fast instinct), but it might have something to do with spiders like huntsmen, wolf spiders, tarantulas and funnel-webs being so damn hairy. It just isn’t right; it’s as if they’d killed a dog or cat, skinned it and donned the fur. Then there’s the eight legs. Six legs on creatures such as ants and earwigs are hard enough to put up with, but eight seems a serious case of overengineering.
Sydney funnel-web. Photo Creative Commons
Anyway, of all the world’s spiders, the Sydney funnel-web ticks every yuck box: wears dog fur, tick; eight legs, tick; lives in a hole in the ground, tick; likes entering human households, tick; has more than two eyes, tick; has fangs long enough to pierce your toe nail to get to the vulnerable flesh underneath, tick; can kill you with single bite, tick.
Indeed, I cowrote a short story about the Sydney funnel-web with good friend, colleague and fellow-arachnophobe Sean Williams. The story, ‘Atrax’, must have hit a nerve with quite a few people: it won the Aurealis Award for best horror short story in 1999.
The Sydney funnel-web’s lethality can be put down to an extraordinary compound in its venom called δ-atracotoxin (sometimes referred to as delta-hexatoxin[xii]), which bizarrely is brilliant at killing its normal prey of insects, but in small doses causes no harm to mammals … with the single exception of primates. And humans, regrettably in this single instance, are primates. Why the venom should be so damn selective is anyone’s guess, and there have been a few.[xiii]
The other peculiar fact about the Sydney funnel-web is that the male’s venom is up to six times more toxic than the female’s[xiv]. The best theory to explain this is that the male goes wandering during the mating season looking for females and has to defend itself against hungry predators, as hard as it is to imagine any predator being so hard up it needs to feed on such an ugly, hairy and extraordinarily venomous assassin. Admittedly, this doesn’t quite explain why the venom is so effective against primates; I assume almost every human on the continent, like myself, would go to great lengths to avoid antagonising any spider let alone one that can kill you, and as far as I know, humans are the only primates to have made their home in Australia.
Ultimately, the venom’s ability to kill humans is just an accidental byproduct of its evolutionary development.
But, and this is a big ‘but’, no human has died from the bite of a Sydney funnel-web spider since an antivenom became available in 1981.
Most venomous versus most dangerous
And this is where we return to the saw-scaled viper. One of these smallish snakes, the largest will grow no bigger than 90 cm, may only be able knock off six fully grown adults, as opposed to the inland taipan’s potential 100 victims, but nonetheless, to my mind the viper is the more dangerous of the two snakes.
Before I set out my reasons for this, we should remember the saw-scaled viper and the inland taipan only have to kill you once to ruin your day, not six or a hundred times, which would seem – and please excuse the pun – something of an overkill. As far as the average human is concerned, a bite from either of these snakes will see your life flashing before your eyes.
And why do I think the saw-scaled viper is the more dangerous of the two?
First, your chance of encountering a saw-scaled viper on its home turf – anywhere dry in Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia – is dramatically higher than your chance of encountering the inland taipan on its home turf.
Saw-scaled viper. Photo Creative Commons
Second, the saw-scaled viper is a much testier beast than the inland taipan, and seems inclined to bite anyone passing within striking distance, something the inland taipan is not inclined to do.
Third, your chance of getting good medical care through much of the saw-scaled viper’s range, let alone the appropriate antivenom, can be very small.
Indeed, the saw-scaled viper may be responsible for more human deaths than any other snake, whether we’re talking about other vipers, adders, taipans, cobras, rattlesnakes, kraits or mambas. It’s reported to be responsible for up to 90% of all snakebites in Africa.[xv]
But rather than picking on any one snake, it’s important to understand that snakebites are a serious health problem in most developing countries. According to the World Health Organization[xvi]:
‘Worldwide, up to five million people are bitten by snakes every year. Of these, poisonous (envenoming) snakes cause considerable morbidity and mortality. There are an estimated 2.4 million envenomations (poisonings from snake bites) and 94 000–125 000 deaths annually, with an additional 400 000 amputations and other severe health consequences, such as infection, tetanus, scarring, contractures, and psychological sequelae. Poor access to health care and scarcity of antivenom increases the severity of the injuries and their outcomes.’
It seems to me these statistics, which barely reflect the pain, misery and social desolation that can be caused by a snakebite, are the ones we should obsess over, rather than how many humans can be killed by a single and remarkably shy Australian snake.
One final point. On average, more Australians die each year from the stings and bites of ants, wasps, bees and ticks than snakebite, largely thanks to anaphylactic shock (and not prophylactic shock as I once tipsily declaimed). From 2000 to 2013, 27 Australians died from snakebite; over the same period, 32 Australians died from animals that fly and crawl around us every day of our lives without us giving them a second thought. In the same period, no one died from a spider, scorpion or centipede bite, and only three people died as a result of envenomation from a marine creature[xvii].
To put these statistics into proper perspective, horses were responsible for the deaths of 77 Australians between 2000 and 2010[xviii]. To make the perspective even sharper, consider that between 2000 and 2013, more than 21,000 Australians died in car accidents[xix].
By the way, in those same thirteen years, two people were recorded to have died from an unknown animal or plant. I’m betting it was a drop-bear.
[vii] Disappointingly, and rather mundanely, nematocyst is Latin for ‘a cell with threads’.
[viii] In fact, sea wasps don’t have a brain as such, or anything else we might recognise as a central nervous system. But it does have something: ‘The box jellyfish’s nervous system is more developed than that of many other jellyfish. They possess a nerve ring around the base of the bell that coordinates their pulsing movements … ’ See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_jellyfish.
[xv] James Cook University toxinologist Professor Jamie Seymour carefully lays out what makes one venomous animal more dangerous than another in the National Geographic documentary World’s Worst Venom, not only comparing and ranking the inland taipan with other snakes, but also including sea stingers, spiders, scorpions and many other venomous creatures. Well worth a look if you can get your hands on it. See:
It was a cold, clear Tuesday night. Harrie ate her dinner so quickly she was done by the time Maggie and Rachel were still munching on their third forkful.
‘I don’t think we gave her enough,’ Rachel said.
‘Do you want more dinner, Harrie?’ Maggie asked.
Harrie shook her head, but wasn’t looking at either of her mothers. She was staring out the window behind them. The sun was down and only a pink light softened the horizon. Just above, where the pink became violet, she could just make out the twinkle of Venus, the evening star and the first light to appear in the night sky. It was one of her favourite things to look at with her telescope – but tonight she had other plans.
‘Are you sure you don’t want more food?’ Rachel asked, looking over her shoulder to see what Harrie was gazing at. ‘Remember, it’s a full moon tonight and it will be so bright it will be hard to see anything else.’
Harrie nodded. ‘I know. That’s why I want go out. I want to look at the moon.’
Creative Commons (photographer unknown)
‘That’s a good idea,’ Maggie said. ‘You haven’t looked at it through your telescope for some time; you’ve been too busy with Jupiter and Mars and Orion’s Belt – ’
‘Twenty-two nights ago,’ Harrie said, her voice very definite. ‘And point-two.’
‘Point two?’ Maggie asked.
‘Twenty-two-point-two nights ago.’ Harrie’s face scrunched up in thought. ‘Can you have a point-two night?’
Her mothers shrugged at the same time. ‘I guess,’ Maggie said. ‘You sound very sure of yourself, though.’
‘Uh-huh. The last time I looked at the moon through my telescope was when it was in its last quarter, and that was twenty-two-point-two nights ago.’ Harrie took a deep breath: that sentence was long even for her.
‘When does it come up?’ Rachel asked.
Harrie pointed to the side of the house opposite the window. ‘It should already be up. But the best time to see it will be … ’ Her voice trailed off and her face scrunched up in thought again. She moved her dinner plate out of the way, stretched out her arms and placed her straight hands on top of one another, palms inward. ‘That’s twenty degrees and the moon moves half-a-degree every hour and the moon is about here and the best time to see it is when it’s here … ’ She wiggled fingers to show exactly where the moon was each time she mentioned it.
‘So the best time to see it is when it reached the little finger on your right hand,’ Rachel observed, smiling slightly.
Harrie nodded, taking another deep breath.
‘You are very clever,’ Maggie said matter-of-factly.
Harrie sighed. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, as if it was a burden.
‘So, just to make sure I understood what you’re saying,’ Rachel said, ‘the best time to see the moon is about half-an-hour from now?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s about your bed time.’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm,’ both mothers said at the same time.
‘But it has been twenty-two-point-two nights since I saw the moon with my telescope,’ Harrie pointed out reasonably.
Maggie and Rachel looked at one another. ‘True,’ Maggie said.
‘And in the life of five-year old, twenty-two nights is quite a long time,’ Rachel added.
‘Not to forget the point-two,’ Maggie pointed out.
‘Absolutely.’
The mothers fell silent as they considered whether or not to let Harrie stay up past her bedtime.
‘We could ask Banjo what he thinks,’ Harrie suggested. ‘Banjo?’
A young black-and-tan kelpie bounced into the room with more haste than dignity as his back paws skidded out from underneath him and he ended up sliding on his bum for the last two metres. He came to a stop right next to Harrie and gazed up at her adoringly, as if the whole tangled, embarrassing entrance had been planned.
‘One day he’ll grow into those large paws of his,’ Rachel whispered to Maggie. ‘Hopefully.’
‘Banjo, I have an important question for you,’ Harrie said, solemnly meeting the dog’s gaze.
Banjo barked once. Everyone in the family knew that meant ‘yes’, except when it meant ‘no’.
‘Do you think I should stay up late so I can see the full moon in my telescope?’
Again, Banjo barked just once, and Harrie turned back to her mothers. ‘See?’
‘Well, no arguing with that,’ Rachel said.
Maggie let out a small sigh. ‘All right, but just this once. You are not to take this as permission for you to stay up every time you want to go out and look at the night sky.’
‘Maybe once every twenty-two days?’ Harrie suggested.
‘Don’t push it, kiddo,’ Maggie said. ‘Now go and get some warm clothes on. The last thing we need is for you to freeze out there.’
Harrie grinned at her mothers as she left the table, then hurried to her room, eagerly followed by a scurrying Banjo who this time somehow managed stay upright on all four paws.
#
Although winter was officially over and spring had sprung, Harrie’s home town was high up in the mountains and it got cold there when the sun was down. But it did make for spectacular nights, when the stars and the planets danced across the black velvety sky.
Harrie loved looking up at them even when she didn’t have a telescope, but now that she could see them up close the night sky seemed twice as special. And the most special thing in the whole universe to see with a telescope was the Moon.
The first time she had looked through the eyepiece and the Moon suddenly swung into view it seemed to jump right out at her and she forgot to breathe for a long time, and when she finally did breathe out it came in a great big gush.
The Sea of Tranquility (Creative commons: photographer unknown)
Harrie never got tired of looking at it. She knew all the big craters now – like Copernicus and Kepler – and all the big seas – like the Sea of Nectar and the Sea of Islands. But most especially she knew the Sea of Tranquility, because that is where the first humans who walked on the moon landed their spaceship, called the Lunar Module.
The night was getting colder and colder. But Harrie didn’t feel it. Even Banjo was getting cold, and tried snuggling up against her legs, almost tipping her over. But Harrie didn’t care. Her mothers were softly calling to her to come back inside. But Harrie didn’t hear them. Staring through her telescope at that great white globe with all its craters and seas and mountains was more important than being warm or going to bed.
One day I’ll go there, she thought. One day I’ll go the Sea of Tranquility and touch the dark soil and then look up and see Earth, and with my telescope I’ll find home and wave at my mothers and Banjo and everyone else I know.
Maggie tapped her gently on the shoulder. ‘It’s time, Harrie. We’ve let you stay up for a long while. Come inside now. Your cheeks are as hard and cold as ice.’
Slowly she drew back from the telescope. When she looked up into the sky again the Moon was still there but much smaller.
‘Still pretty,’ she said, ‘no matter how big it is.’
Maggie and Rachel stared up at the Moon as well. Even Banjo, who was wondering what everyone was staring at that seemed so interesting. There wasn’t a rabbit to be seen anywhere.
‘Look!’ Harrie said, pointing at the soft nebula of light that surrounded the Moon. On either side of it was a little light. ‘Are they planets or stars?’
Maggie laughed. ‘I’ve heard of them but never seen them before.’
Rachel and Harrie looked at her expectantly. ‘What are they?’ Harrie asked.
‘They’re called Moon Dogs. It’s so cold up there that the light from the Moon is being caught by ice crystals. They almost look like miniature moons, don’t they?’
Harrie sighed, a deep and immensely satisfying sound. She patted Banjo on the head and started back the house, the moonlight shining in her hair and on his fur.
She stopped for a second, looked back up at the sky, and said, ‘Look Banjo, Moon Dogs.’
Banjo barked once, meaning, ‘Yes, what else would they call them?’
In an earlier blog I mentioned a letter to Nature that suggests up to 2% of the Papuan genome originated ‘ … from an early and largely extinct expansion of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) out of Africa.’
If correct, this is important because it pushes back the earliest currently accepted dates for the human occupation of Australia (well, Sahul back then) beyond 50,000 – 60,000 years.
New evidence for a possible earlier date has now come from a site near Warrnambool, a town on the southwest coast of Victoria, where scientists have been investigating a site at the mouth of the Hopkins River. In a paper from CSIRO, it is described as an ‘erosional disconformity of last Interglacial Age’ where the shells of edible molluscs and transported stones were discovered.
The mouth of the Hopkins River. (Photo from Warrnambool local government website.)
It is not known for sure whether humans or animals such as seabirds made the formation, but the site has been confirmed as a midden, and evidence for fire damage to the stones suggests they may have been used to make a hearth.
Thermoluminescence analysis of the stones, together with independent stratigraphic evidence, suggests the hearth could date back between 100,000 – 130,000 years.
If true, not only does this double the possible dates for the earliest occupation of the Australian landmass, it also considerably pushes back the earliest currently accepted dates for the first successful emigration – an emigration resulting in living descendants – of AMHs out of Africa by as much as 20,000 – 50,000 years.
(The research was presented to the Royal Society of Victoria by, among other academics, Jim Bowler, who discovered Mungo Man in 1974. The Guardian’s Paul Daley wrote about the paper and interviewed Bowler in March last year. Also, see this from the Royal Society of Victoria’s own website.)
I live in a compound in the Johannesburg district of Fourways, a favourite location for expats, the white middle class and the growing black and coloured middle class. Our compound is surrounded by a 2.5-metre wall topped with a ring of metal spikes and electric fencing. Our townhouse abuts the north wall. East of our house, and still in the compound, is a children’s playground and a tennis court; before the current lockdown, most weekdays I heard small children laughing and shouting in the playground, supervised by parents and nannies. I like that about where I live: it’s a community, with all age groups.
When I call it a compound, I’m sometimes corrected by locals. ‘It’s a complex, not a compound,’ someone will say. Or, ‘It’s a gated community.’
I get that. ‘Compound’ sounds like a kind of prison, except in this case it’s built to keep people out, not keep people in. Having said that, there are times when it feels like we are being kept in, especially early in the morning when I look out north and east and see glimpses of what appears a less restrained city draped across the Gauteng landscape.[i]
But whether you call them compounds, complexes or gated communities, they are small villages separated from the rest of Johannesburg by walls and wires and gates and guards. These compounds have, as Lynsey Chutel wrote in Quartz Africa, ‘created pockets of development – ranging from middle class suburbia to opulence – walled off from South Africa’s socio-economic reality.’
Compounds are not as old as apartheid, and nor is it true to say they are the spatial descendants of apartheid geography[ii], but as Chutel points out there is a direct link in the mentality behind the construction of compounds and their popularity as places to live in cities such as Johannesburg: ‘The prevalence of gated communities may also reveal what South Africans think constitutes middle class life. As it did under apartheid, it often means avoiding the poor unless they are servants, nannies or gardeners.’
As more and more black and coloured South Africans join the country’s middle class, compounds like the one I live in can be seen as the expression of economic rather than racial division, where the better off are made to feel more secure by being separated from the poor, the unemployed and the underemployed. The fact that a large number of well-off South Africans are white can blur the distinction[iii], but compounds are ultimately the concrete expression of an economic divide, and an expression of what I think is the single biggest stumbling block to a more united, more progressive and ultimately wealthier society: the unwillingness to tear down the walls. I don’t see this simply a physical problem, but more importantly, a deeply psychological one.
When I lived in Phuket, one of the things that struck me about Thai society was how the rich and poor lived cheek by jowl. A drive along Thepkrasatree Road would have us passing a palatial estate sandwiched between a two-bedroom concrete box and a refugee camp filled with tin shacks, all of them spouting television aerials and satellite dishes. It wasn’t that the family living in the palatial estate liked living next to a refugee camp, or for that matter that the refugees in the camp liked being constantly reminded of how little they owned, but that there were no 2.5 metre walls and electric fences reinforcing the division. The rich, the aspiring middle class and the desperately poor tolerated each other.
Thai society isn’t without its problems, including crime and violence, but the different classes seem more willing to share common ground, and more than willing to accept the poor becoming middle class and the middle class becoming rich. In Phuket, unlike Johannesburg, divisions aren’t fanned by a history of oppression on one side and fearful insecurity on the other.
Compounds are most common in Gauteng Province, especially its two main cities: Johannesburg and Pretoria. Divisions certainly exist in cities like Cape Town, but I didn’t see many examples of whole communities being fenced off from the world outside.
What strikes me most about South Africa and its people is its sheer potential. South Africans I have met are hardworking, smart, confident and optimistic at heart. The country has natural resources aplenty and for its size a large but not excessive population for Africa (around 60 million people in a state somewhat larger than New South Wales). The people genuinely value democracy, freedom, education, initiative and creativity. It seems to me that all the important elements of a successful society are in place; the fact that it is not yet a successful society speaks to its recent history and the scars it’s left behind.
I have to stress that these are impressions on my part, and I’m an interloper. I come from a wealthy, predominantly white middle-class background from a land far, far away. I am a member of the most privileged class of human beings that has ever lived. I have no right to give advice to anyone who lives here, to all those who have struggled through decades of repression and fear, let alone to the new generations that came after the end of apartheid – the ‘Born Frees’. I also know how hard it is to talk about a society as rich and complex as South Africa’s without making generalisations, some of which are unfair to all those who struggle every day against any division, racial or economic.
But I cannot help feeling that greater progress in South Africa cannot be made until there is genuine social and economic freedom for everyone, and I cannot help feeling that will not occur until the walls come down.
[i] The thing you notice most of all about Johannesburg is all the trees. For a city that has grown in South Africa’s Highveld, dry rolling plains that resemble the dry rolling plains around Canberra and Yass, there’s an awful lot of perpendicular vegetation. It’s sometimes claimed that Johannesburg is home to the world’s largest artificially created forest, and I can believe it. A lot of the trees are introduced – eucalypts, lillipillies, jacarandas – but the city still manages to look very African, as if at any moment the traffic weaving along the streets inside the forest could be replaced by herds of wildebeest.
Strange Borders 
