Preface

1 Preface
2 Introduction. New York and Singapore

Part I Technology

2 (A): Behaviour. Indiana USA

3 (B): Organs. Guiana, South America

4 (C): Biochemical Tools and Organelles. Pilbara, Western Australia

Part II Evolutionary Processes

5 (A): Natural Selection. Florida

6 (B): Controlled Development. English Lake District

Part III Associations

7 (A): Symbiosis. Great Barrier Reef, Australia

8 (B): Societies. Ghana

9 (C): Ecological Communities. Taman Negara, Malaysia

Part IV The Future

10 (A): Populations and Resources. Southern Africa

11 (B): The Cuckoo Fledges. Java

PREFACE

It all started about a million years ago - no one knows exactly when. It was when the first hominids started designing their own tools and making many different kinds. This is when the intelligence egg first hatched - but it had been developing for millions of years before that. When writing my two books, Evolution in the Outback and Australia's Southwest and Our Future, I was struck by the idea that this demanding nestling was like a cuckoo, and we were feeding it as if it was one of ours. It grew its feathers only a few hundred years ago when we became technologically literate - that is when we were able to make inventions through scientific knowledge alone, without the stultifying influence of ancient beliefs. It will flex its wings and be ready to fly when we produce the first really intelligent computer. We are very close to this point now, and should be aware of what it means about our future, because artificial intelligence has a mind of its own, and is little restrained by its originating organism (us). The basic conclusion is that wherever a planet acquires an intelligent society, it creates an artificial environment of machines and artifacts. Ultimately intelligent machines are built and they inevitably become dominant. They pave the way for a new form of life that largely replaces the original (DNA in our case). That we are so slow in thinking, communicating and doing things compared to computers today should make us worried - intelligent computers would leave us for dead - and probably will, unless we do something about it now.

Publishers naturally did not proceed with this book proposal after most reviewers rubbished it. One well-published palaeontologist said in 1993 that the whole premise was wrong, stating that mankind could not create artificial intelligence to rival our own, at least in the near future. Another reviewer, an anonymous evolutionary biologist, said it should definitely not be published, adhering to the analytical view of natural selection being directionless and purely based on genes. He or she took the trouble to damn every statement over many typewritten pages as if I were a heretic, especially in areas where I was perceived as lacking knowledge. Many may agree, but I was flattered that it was taken so seriously. Most seem to have read the proposal as an academic work - this was not my intention - in no way could I compete with well-known academic writers. It is more a personal attempt to make sense of the world by drawing unconventional links between many unrelated disciplines. I am probably way out in some of my interpretations, but I hope others may have substance and stimulate discussion about where we are going. I am well aware of my limitations and that most will regard it as foolhardy, or brave for me to write on topics outside my own area of expertise. In doing so I have made myself an easy target for those who need to criticise, but I feel cross-discipline synthesis, rather than an analytical approach may be the only way to understand where we are going, and we certainly need some new understanding if we are going to survive on our planet. September 11th 2001 marked a new milestone in the developmental process.

My first two books were based on journeys around Western Australia, interpreting time, geology, the natural environment and our future. The present third volume is written around a world ramble, where I concentrate on where the human race is heading, based on what we know about life on Earth. I reinterpret what I have seen in hindsight and try to paint a picture of what the future may hold. The work will never be finished, because every time I look at the canvas, I find parts where I have overdone the paint, others where there is not enough detail. In places I have gone off at a tangent, and all the time science advances and provides new insights. I see the world as a beautiful place, and human society as a natural part of it. Reality has a habit of being worse than fiction, and the reality of living things and their relationships with one another is ugly in detail, just as war and famine are in human society.

Technology has advanced so far since I last worked on the book, that I can now easily put it on a CD-ROM with full colour photographs, instead of my intended black and white drawings. I have also extended and revised the text.

I thank Jonathan Taylor for the artwork in the frontispiece, and Kim Taylor for use of his photos of the Cuckoo, Orange-tip, Bullfinch nest and Ammonite (used in the frontispiece), and Mark Taylor for his confronting image of a Proboscis Monkey. The work could not have been done without the support of my wife, Madeleine, who apart from standing by me while I battled with the text, has also helped edit the final work.

In this web-version, illustrations have been omitted, as they take too long to download. The captions remain (in green) as they summarize some of the main points being made in the text.

Jan Taylor

NEW YORK FROM THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. The rate of change in the world is staggering - the pinnacle is seen in New York where not even the Chrysler Building was present when my father first visited. Human conflicts accelerate change, bringing refugees and forcing change in outlooks. Conflicts also speed research into improved technology that leads to better buildings and machines. Where is it all taking us? To find out, the only path available to us is to look how nature has reacted to change - what we see in the rainforest can tell us a lot about what we may expect to happen to us. The UN, based in New York, is a symbol of hope - that conflict can be resolved peacefully, that progress can be controlled for human benefit. Is this likely? Are we going to survive?

 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

New York and Singapore

Whenever I travel I am always impressed by the rate of change. Before going to New York for the first time I remember reading some of my father's diaries describing his experiences there in 1926 - how impressed he was by the freedom from the English social ills of class and fossilised custom, and by the vibrant society around him building a modern world full of hope, symbolised by the emerging art-deco skyscrapers. At that time it would be hard to believe the scene I viewed from the top of the Empire State Building. The forest of skyscrapers dwarfed everything that he might have seen - even the Chrysler Building had not been thought of then.

How things have changed since that visit of mine in 1997. When walking around ground zero the air was full of questions. What went wrong? How could such a thing happen? Why should so many people from Amman to Ambon, Mogadishu to Mataram, as well as in Gaza and the West Bank dance for joy over such an obscenity? Does the leadership have any real understanding as to why there is so much antipathy towards America? Can they learn from the experience? Will they address the core problem or embark on a mission of inflaming revenge attacks? Where is the world going now that we have developed lethal technologies that can be accessed by determined individuals, and militaristic regimes anywhere in the world? What makes intelligent people do these things? The future of the human race becomes more dependent on us finding answers as we plunge in panic down the avenue of developing ever more powerful weapons.

After the 1993 failed attempt to destroy the WTC and the 1998 bombing of Baghdad I had been fearful that plans were set in motion to explode a nuclear device in the Hudson River, perhaps near the Statue of Liberty. So the 9/11 event came as something of a relief, but proved yet again that people will do anything, however gross, for what they see as a justified end - this is as true for elected leaders as it is for 'terrorists'. Maybe determined groups had not got their hands on the bomb at that stage. It is only a matter of time before they do. Is this the end-point of all intelligent societies - do they destroy themselves as soon as they have the enabling technology?

Thinking back to my first visit to New York, I had then walked everywhere and was impressed by the relaxed feeling and friendly atmosphere. After viewing the Financial District from the top of the World Trade Center building I went to Ellis Island, which was established as a processing centre for immigrants in 1892. By the time it was closed in 1954 about 17 million new Americans had been processed on the Island. It is now a museum and gave me a very good impression of what the city was like in the early days to compare with the present skyline. It also detailed the hopes and expectations of the migrants in the young country as well as the pangs and sorrow of severance with their homeland and loved ones. Most were refugees from oppressive regimes and class-ridden conservative societies or were looking for better chances of escaping poverty. For most America had the image of a young society free of conservative restrictions, but paradoxically America also provided an escape from change for cults and ultra-conservative religious groups.

Today New York is an even more vibrant city with new skyscrapers being added to the now crowded modern henge - in 1997 my son's office was high up in a building near the World Trade Center and hummed with computer screens whisking billions of dollars around the world, agitating the pond of international finance. In such places ripples are formed with each transaction, and ripples have a habit of joining together, so everyone is watching out for the next king wave. In 1929 such an event started in Wall Street and sent shock waves all over the world setting in motion a world recession that led into the Second World War. Another one in 1987 shook the global financial system, exacerbating poverty and disease amongst the disadvantaged and put world leaders into the frame of mind to enter the 1991 Gulf War, while the Nasdaq crash lead into "The War on Terrorism". My son's office building was now shrouded in plastic - all the windows went on September 11 and it is due for demolition. He had fortunately moved to Midtown before the event, but witnessed the collapse of the towers.

Back in 1997 glancing out of the office window I realised that a small blob in the river was the Statue of Liberty. It was a gift from the French people symbolising freedom and enlightenment. Next to it was Ellis Island - the cultural impact of all the migrants coming from there exert huge pressures today, making the country a land of contrasts. The modern surface has encouraged some of the best examples of human endeavour flourishing in a climate of largely unrestricted economic freedoms. Underneath there is a mix of strangely archaic social cultures, which give many Americans unexpectedly conservative values, and simplistic answers to complex questions. This allows an almost evangelical sense of self-righteousness to emerge, which is dangerous in a changing world where America can act as a dictator, manipulating and policing the less powerful nations.

The return flight to Australia went via Los Angeles, which was not visible because of the smog and then on to Kuala Lumpur where the change is truly amazing. The city is going through turmoil like New York was during the height of the building boom. Skyscrapers are emerging out of the ground everywhere one looks, as if someone had planted alien seeds and they were being watered with international finance to attract the armies of ant-like workers mainly from Indonesia and Bangladesh. The Petronas Twin Towers had just been completed to become the tallest building in the world, beating those in New York and Chicago, but far bigger buildings are planned elsewhere. The corporate rivalry which led to the ever taller skyscrapers in New York is now an international affair.

Kuala Lumpur is also catching up on other counts: there was a massive power failure while I was there, similar to one which happened in the eastern USA some years ago. These power failures are due to the computerised linkages in power grids effectively giving them a mind of their own to respond to local failures. Engineers put in place fail-safe instructions, which normally work smoothly, but sometimes the system exerts its own mind and responds in an unpredictable, chaotic manner, like a stock market crash, and shutting down the whole grid in an uncontrolled wave of reaction. The American shutdown lasted for several days and was blamed for a baby boom nine months later. The other feature of KL is the growing Los Angeles style smog which cloaks the city. Sometimes during dry seasons it spreads out to cover the entire Malay Peninsula, when the city smog combines with smoke from saw-mill waste and forest fires in Malaysia and nearby Indonesia. Like everywhere else these countries are busily involved in replacing natural plant cover by man-made environments and the more burgeoning the economy the greater the rate of destruction.

SCENE IN SINGAPORE. The changes in Singapore since 1956 are extraordinary. It was a typical eastern city then. Now it is hard to find remnants of the old Singapore, like the one in this picture, dwarfed by huge hotels and apartment blocks. The city itself is fully modern and computerised. Where is this development taking us? What place are human beings going to have in such an artificial environment, dominated by machines and clever computerised networks?

Singapore

Singapore is another place I have frequently used as a stopover. Rapid change is also taking place here - it was already a thriving eastern city when I first saw it in 1955, yet it was only jungle and swamp when Sir Stamford Raffles took it over in 1819. Now the City provides an awe-inspiring view of a futuristic community made incredible when compared with what I saw on my first visit. Instead of all the little villages and palm-leaf houses stretching from Changi Village to the city, there are now rows of huge apartment blocks standing like a modern Stonehenge. Changi Village has disappeared under one of the biggest and most modern airports in the world.

The city itself has been transformed from the bustle of an eastern market full of people, street stalls, one-room factories, trishaws, cyclists and tropical smells, to a sterile glass and chrome environment of skyscrapers housing all the activities of a modern city. Money is shunted around the world by computers and people are moved around as if on conveyor-belts by a system of underground trains and lifts. The old markets are housed in box-sized kiosks off endless corridors in the bowels of the concrete monoliths. While the street barrows which used to scent the drain-laden atmosphere with charcoal, satays and durian are now represented by hygienic canteen-like halls, surrounded by dozens of tiny restaurant-bars hidden away in the floors of the high-rise buildings. A few glimpses of the past remain as if suspended in a time warp, looking like Lilliputian villages of Chinese houses and temples surrounded by stark modern Brobdingnagian development.

Rainforest

One time I decided to revisit Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. This is the only piece of relatively undisturbed rainforest left on the island, and is very close to the city. I had to direct the taxi driver because he had not heard of it - he originally thought I meant the Tiger Balm Garden. Most tourists prefer to see the grotesque, sterile plaster-and-paint replicas of wildlife in this garden instead of the real thing. Entering the Reserve is like entering a new world straight from the city environment. Instead of skyscrapers there are grand forest trees towering overhead with tier upon tier of leafy branches draped with lianas and epiphytic orchids. Instead of the noise of traffic and people there is the whirr of cicadas. Birds call overhead, and monkeys, squirrels and tree shrews are busy in the foliage. From the treetops to the ground the layers of leaves extract ever-diminishing rays of light, while insects chew their way through this stored energy, only to fall prey to the ants which scurry over every leaf, twig and stem in the forest. The whole scene is embellished by butterflies and beetles flashing metallic hues in the sunlight, huge carpenter bees buzzing around flowers and dragonflies hawking along the forest pathways.

While resting on a shady seat it is easy to imagine what the Reserve was like in the earlier days when inhabited by its full range of natural wildlife - an unbroken canopy of giant trees - a herd of elephants silently treading past, sambar deer grazing, alert for the prowling tiger - gibbons whooping to neighbouring groups across the treetops. Looking through the trees to the city below it is disturbing to recognise the similarities between the intricate detail of the tropical rainforest and what is taking place in the human environment. Both are the result of the same evolutionary processes, and knowledge about the natural world can tell us a great deal about where our society is going. One of the factors which gave rise to the greatest complexity in nature comes from a benign systemic control that tends to develop within emerging structures. It appeared amongst the billions of cells that make up each organism and it coordinates the billions of animals, plants and microbes that make up the rainforest ecosystem. Signs are already present of this in Singapore - the city-nation's recent success having much to do with economic single-mindedness and the acceptance of the loss of freedoms which are necessary to achieve group progress. This can happen when each individual is prepared to accept that the loss improves chances of personal gain in the form of social stability and a reliable income (or that objection is likely to be rewarded with personal loss).

Limits of personal freedom

Opportunities for much more rigorous personal control are rapidly emerging from our technology and it will be interesting to see how far it will go in Singapore. Lifts have already been installed which automatically stop if urinated in and all cars have speed indicators which make audible signals when the speed limit is exceeded - speed limiters may become obligatory and an automatic immobility for unauthorised or inebriated drivers. Plans exist on the drawing board for cars which dispense with drivers altogether. Modern technology is already so far ahead of effective legislation, that personal details on such things as creditworthiness, social security, tax, police records, health insurance, and spending habits are being collated between the many databanks by those able to use the system. Smart cards will open the possibility of making it much easier to collate all personal data. But the new wave of control may come from another source - mobile phones. How long before these personal phones become personal monitors, checking on every move we make? Technology such as this is already being used to restrain prisoners in their own homes and will supply the means of monitoring and controlling individual action beyond the dreams of any government since the Roman Empire - these are the inevitable results of expanding technology and have surprising parallels in nature.

Future of intelligent societies

Where will it all end? Every generation decries the rate of change and ponders on where it is all leading, but no answers seem to be forthcoming. The usual conclusions are either that it is all in the hands of a supernatural force and so is indeterminate and uncontrollable (whether positive or negative in human terms depends on belief), or that human progress is determined by the rules of chaos, and so is also indeterminate and uncontrollable (concepts of good or evil having no place in the equation). It is only recently that people have seriously considered that it may have all happened before and that we may be able to find the answer by searching outer space to try and find other societies and discover what has happened to them. Like many others, I think it is an inescapable conclusion that we can only be one of many intelligent societies, and the only questions are: how many other societies have there been in our neighbourhood of space? And why have we not recognised any signs of their existence? However, many people still steadfastly cling to the belief that we are unique and alone, and that it is pointless to look for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

I don't suppose I will ever know about these other worlds, but as a biologist I would like to hitch a ride and see what intelligent cultures evolve into. Our own planet, however, is interesting enough and if one looks closely, there are some very strong pointers to what our own future holds, without any need to ask extra-terrestrials. Many people believe that because we are intelligent and make our own tools there are no parallels on Earth to compare with us. Yet if one looks closely at the evolution of life on this planet, there have been many inflections that were no less of a change than the arrival of an intelligent society. In fact these inflections were caused by just the sort of things which we believe are only the result of intelligence. In effect we have here on this planet many examples of what happens when a new technology like intelligence sweeps through an established system. The changes have been staggering, and clearly show the sort of inflections human society is likely to bring on this planet.

 

DRAGONFLY COMMON IN SINGAPORE. Evolution by Natural Selection is a Law of Nature. Many forces shorten the life of some while others survive. Predators, like this dragonfly, select the unwary or poorly adapted individuals, because they are easier to catch, leaving the better adapted to survive and reproduce.

Natural Selection

Sitting on the park seat on Bukit Timah I am able to see the main process at the root of everything - it is happening all around wherever one looks. I watch a bee-eater snatch a dragonfly out of the air and smash it on a branch. Before that the dragonfly had been hawking and catching flying termites, and in so doing was ending for each termite caught its chance of adding offspring to the next generation. The bee-eater did the same for the unwary dragonfly. This is the process behind it all - the mechanisms of natural selection which give rise to evolution. Evolution is an absolute Law of Nature and affects us just as much as the force of gravity. With the termites, they are a particular delicacy so would not survive without a special survival strategy. The strategy they use is to all fly at once so that the air is saturated with them and many survive because the predators cannot eat them all. All the termite mounds choose the same time and weather conditions, so when they fly, it is possible to see columns of termites rising from all around. They usually fly in the late afternoon and early evening after thunderstorms, causing a feeding frenzy of predators, especially swifts and dragonflies at first, and then the bats join in later on. This is just one of the points of natural selection, when much hinges on when they fly and how they fly, or whether they can fly at all - there are usually a number which have imperfect wings and are quickly eaten by ants. These ones have little chance of contributing to the next generation.

The next point is when the termites which have flown and escaped flying predators come to ground and throw off their wings - this is when females emit a strong attractive scent to lure a male. If there is anything wrong with the scent, no male will come. Once a male arrives they set off in tandem and the female chooses somewhere to dig down into the soil and begin a colony with the aid of the male. Survival chances are very poor and only partly related to their behaviour and choice of nesting site - luck plays a large part. But if everything is right and a colony is produced, it is all of no avail, in an evolutionary sense, unless it survives and eventually produces columns of flying potential kings and queens. That is when the combined inherited genes of the two can be passed on, and they have succeeded in the arena of natural selection.

Each successful pair achieves a minute step forward in the process of evolution for their species, because the genes they carry are in a slightly different combination from their parents and may include some mutations. Each colony may produce millions of flying termites during its lifetime and only one new successful queen or king termite is needed to carry the genetic strain on to the next generation. With such an enormous mortality rate, any genetic combinations or mutation, which increases chances of success in the arena of natural selection, will give the holder a great advantage over others.

Law of Evolution

This is a simple process which accounts for all the changes seen in the evolution of life. The extraordinary thing is that this Physical Law, central to understanding the Universe and how it evolved, and pivotal in predicting our future is still not properly acknowledged. This Law of Nature - Evolution by Natural Selection - firmly places human kind on a continuum with the rest of the animal kingdom and makes it necessary to practice "double-think" (the ability to believe mutually exclusive "facts" at the same time) in order to support the traditional, religion-based views of our origins, behaviour patterns and the meaning of life. This has relegated this Law to the status of a disturbing "hypothesis". Many people are still ready to clutch at any straw which appears to go against Darwinism, immediately elevating it to be a clear disproof of the whole idea of evolution.

Charles Darwin found his conclusions to be so disturbing that he had to spend most of the rest of his life trying to justify them. Had he been Archimedes, the discovery would hardly have made him leap out of his bath shouting "Eureka!" What was needed perhaps was an Einstein who could have presented Evolution as a hard, cold, physical Law governing the whole Universe - something mathematical like his E = mc2. In this way it could have been accepted in its rightful place as one of the most fundamental natural Laws. Instead it has become narrowly defined in the biological field, and the understanding of it has become restricted to the evolution of living things, including our ancestry in the Great Apes. Even so, most people are not prepared to accept that we are still just as much apes as we ever were.

Evolution is the law of nature, which ensures the accumulation of increasing net complexity and order with time, and in the real Universe is a function of the dimensions of space and time. (This appears to go against the Second Law of Thermodynamics which rules that there be decreasing order with time. Perhaps the two laws may be complimentary to one another, because complexity can only be built in an environment where there is also destruction and recycling). The Law of evolution not only applies to life but is also at the root of the formation of energy, elementary particles, atoms, molecules, and galaxies. It applies equally well to economies, ecosystems, societies, and computer viruses. It is also likely to extend into the unknown world of the vacuum and 'virtual' events where time barely exists, and may give a better understanding of how the universe, as we know it, came into being. It is a measure of survival, of success in the universe of natural selection. What is of fundamental importance to us, is that it determines what happens when a primary life-form, such as ourselves, acquires intelligence and becomes technologically literate. The pointers are clearly visible for those who look - it will inevitably lead to the formation of a new level of complexity and a new life-form.

Fractals and worlds within worlds

One of the most intellectually stimulating finds of recent times has been the Mandlebrot Set, a figure which can be generated in computers by simple mathematical rules - it is a virtual world of staggering beauty and complexity. In the real Universe, evolution is the most fundamental and simple rule and this has created the staggering beauty and complexity of the tropical rainforest as well as the developing cityscape below. Which is the real world - the Mandlebrot world or the Singapore I can see from my seat on Bukit Timah?

Scientific reality

Much philosophical discussion arises over what constitutes "reality", and even physicists are finding areas in quantum mechanics where reality is uncertain (but maybe not in such a way as to negate the mechanistic view of the physical world, as some would like to believe). I still adhere to the belief that our knowledge of reality can only be based on observation and scientific deduction. Other beliefs about reality have probably been generated by mind-play at a time long before we were technologically literate. These beliefs are used as avenues for coming to terms with our complex world, with all its pain, injustice and mortality. Many continue to take refuge in these other forms of reality because of the uncomfortable facts of scientific knowledge, the most uncomfortable of all being that science has found no reason to believe in any pervading force of goodness, spiritual immortality, or for there being any ultimate bringer of justice. Quite the reverse - in the real world the winner takes all, whether it be by fair means or foul, luck or strategy.

Occam's Razor supports the simplest solution about reality: the Universe is as we see it, and the best method of investigation is by scientific inquiry. If there are unknown forces, they will be discovered by this method, and if found will not upturn the scientific method as a means of investigation, but would instead lead to revolutions in our understanding. Any new forces, if found, would add a new unsuspected layer of complexity in the already complex world and lead to a greater understanding. (Incidentally, if presently unknown organising forces were found to exist, then staggering new avenues for research would be opened, and a Silicon Valley-like race commence to apply and commercially exploit the new technology.) It was long believed that human beings were unique because we were the only animals which had learnt to exploit the use of tools. This myth was soon exploded when people began to study animal behaviour - even the macaques gambolling in the trees on Bukit Timah use a wide range of tools. Crows are also experts in choosing or even making tools for various purposes. We still hang on to the belief that we are different because we use high intelligence in the use of our tools. But looking at all the animals and plants around it is clear that expert use of tools is just another part of every living thing.

Tools and living things

Intelligence is not necessary because DNA can both acquire tools and the necessary behaviour to use them properly - whether they are dragonflies' wings or termite's jaws. Living things are essentially only living because they have accumulated a vast array of tools and use them constantly in the process of living - every cell is actively using complex biochemical tools, every leaf using chloroplasts to photosynthesise, every insect using a vast array of limb-like tools for designer purposes, every animal has evolved essential complex behavioural tools to stay alive, eat, climb trees, reproduce. Each time a new tool is invented and developed by DNA evolution it has an impact on the species developing it, and if the change is radical enough, it can have enormous repercussions on other living things, even affect the whole planet, such as when the biochemical tool of photosynthesis was first evolved. We are different only in a matter of degree, in us we have a tool already present in all mammals and birds but it has been improved to such an extent in mankind that it can short-circuit DNA evolution altogether. This tool is intelligence.

From my seat I watch some tree shrews scurrying around the leaf litter and dashing up trees like squirrels, and it makes me think about the evolution of intelligence. These animals belong to the insectivores and are closely related to the early mammals. Shrew-like mammals have not changed much in the 65 million years since the dinosaurs died out, but others branched off in many directions. Some became aquatic 50 million years ago and evolved into whales, others evolved into monkeys, deer, squirrels, elephants or tigers. Tree shrew-like mammals are thought to be close to the primates, including the macaques crashing through the tree-tops. Macaques are closer to the gibbons, which would have lived on the island until recently. Gibbons have highly developed brains, and disturbingly humanoid behaviours. These behaviours are even more marked in orang-utans which still live in nearby Borneo and Sumatra - one wonders what the fossil Java man would have been like when they lived in the region (now known to be 1.8 million years ago).

If one tries to visualise these changes in terms of the age of the Earth, millions of years can pass in a flash and each animal species can be seen as a potential source of new technology. Each could evolve an intelligence like our own: it is just a matter of time and the right selective forces. The genetic difference between us, and our nearest relatives, is a few percent (between two and five depending on methods of measuring), so high intelligence may not be far away for any species. It is amazing to think that the parakeets screeching overhead would have been just as likely to gain high intelligence as the macaques and mouse deer, if we had not developed it first.

ORANG-UTAN AT SEPILOK, BORNEO. Intelligence arrived as a new tool on Earth through the line of tree shrew-like animals. It advanced via various monkeys such as macaques and gibbons, to the great apes, like this Orang-utan and us. Tool making was well advanced long before human beings appeared. Intelligence has only been on Earth for a very brief span, but it took such a short time to appear after the first well-developed brain, that it must inevitably develop, wherever life evolves this far in the Universe.

 

Origin of life and evolution of intelligence

Our current knowledge suggests that Planet Earth is not remarkable and nor are we. The Universe is almost certainly full of planets which have evolved life and the evolution of an intelligent life-form is the inevitable consequence of life, providing the planet remains stable for long enough. The best evidence for this is that life appeared on Earth astonishingly quickly: the surface barely had time to cool before life appeared (or arrived from space). If it came here so quickly, it must at least appear anywhere that a planet forms in a position similar to Earth. It took very much longer to evolve organisms and the first nervous systems, but the evolution of a conscious intelligent being took only about 500 million years from the origin of nerves, and only a couple of million years from advanced brains. Two million years in the 4000 million that life has been evolving is so short a time that intelligent life would seem to be the inevitable consequence of increasing brain-power.

The assumption therefore is that intelligent societies have appeared on many planets in the Universe, some could have existed before the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. If we could observe these planets, or listen to communications across space, we could find what evolutionary consequences intelligence has had in the past - how evolution proceeds in the thousands and millions of years after an intelligent society has evolved. Armed with this information we could find what is likely to happen to us now that we have arrived at the point of being a technologically literate society (that is: an intelligent society where scientific knowledge and its application have developed to a point when they are free to be advanced on their own merits without serious disruption from theocratic institutions and censorship).

An important avenue for space research at the moment is directed towards detecting signals from outer space - many people naively believe that the senders, if found, may be at a stage like ourselves, joyfully embarking on a quest for knowledge and a wish to share their culture. However, the moment the first signals are recognised will mark a point of inflection for the human race - the myth of our uniqueness and of being at the centre of the Universe will finally be laid to rest. We will become just one of the latest intelligent societies to become truly aware of their surroundings. We will then have finally bitten on the apple of knowledge, although the moment of truth may have to wait until we unravel the uncomfortable consequences of intelligence from the history written in galactic signals.

Most of us are still in the innocent stage of experiencing a euphoric sense of achievement at each technological advance, blind to the consequences on ourselves, and the global environment. However, the down-side of technological advance is now so obvious that we are beginning to sense a post euphoric headache. This will get worse as we come to terms with the knowledge that we already know enough about evolution on Planet Earth to make startling projections on the future of an intelligent species. We do not need to hear signals across space, to know the uncomfortable facts about our own future. The evidence is already available.

It is obvious that intelligence combined with technological literacy is something quite new on Earth. But the use of a complex technology far beyond our own was already well tried before we came upon the scene. This was expressed through the agency of living organisms, with the know-how being held in an immortal accumulating library of DNA tapes. But with intelligence we can now accumulate abstract knowledge from any source on libraries of computer tapes and access whatever we need to make or build. Potentially intelligence can acquire the knowledge of all DNA and much more in a very short period of time. Intelligence is something far more powerful than DNA and, unnervingly, potentially has an existence, which does not need to be confined in a mortal carbon-based life-form. It's arrival on Earth via our brains therefore clearly marks a fundamental inflection point for carbon based life - the point when DNA is superseded as the main avenue for technological advance. Many other inflection points in the evolution of life have occurred in the past, the most familiar being when the dinosaurs died out and were replaced by mammalian technology. However, the arrival of intelligence on Earth is of such importance that it can be compared with the first arrival of life itself. Far from evolution stopping with mankind, it will proceed faster than ever as the new intelligence-technology base develops.

The beginnings of the new life form

The frightening thing is that our intelligence is in the process of creating a secondary life-form, and that all the time we are now unconsciously nurturing this Trojan Horse, like birds feeding a cuckoo in the nest. Perhaps if we had had an Einstein instead of Darwin, our understanding of evolution would have been much more advanced by now, and we may already have been taking action to mould this secondary life-form into something more savoury than the one we are building at the moment. It is probable that the time between an intelligent society achieving technological literacy (where we have just arrived) and the evolution of the new form of life is so fleeting that any messages we may intercept from space will come from something quite beyond our comprehension.

Intelligence unleashes enormous evolutionary forces, which are likely to make it impossible for the originating organism to remain in control. Our rate of evolution is with little doubt too slow by several orders of magnitude. Similar jumps have taken place in the past, such as when DNA first appeared, and when sexual reproduction was perfected. Some scientists think it may also have happened to a previous clay-based mineral life-form, which first appeared on Earth. This life-form may have come to include carbon and eventually built carbon-based DNA. Once this had happened, DNA evolved so quickly that the mineral life was left behind and disappeared without trace. Our stage of technological literacy may be likened to super-nova explosions in stars - a brief cathartic event heralding the growth of a new level of organization. Such events may be so short-lived and rare that few can be observed across space. The last recorded super nova in our galaxy was seen in 1054 AD, its expanding remnants are still visible as the Crab Nebula.

The fundamental change brought about by intelligence is that tools can be invented, made and used as required. With intelligence we can plan and execute anything we want without any of the thousands of generations of natural selection required for DNA evolution. We can also tap into the secrets of life itself, using the genetic code to produce artificial animals and plants, preparing mixes of genes which could never have occurred in nature. Previously tools have appeared by the slow and painful process of DNA evolution: the accidents of inheritance combined with natural selection - the natural process that automatically favours winners against the less advantaged. Teeth and claws have evolved to suit the way of life of the possessors over millions of years, flight begun by dinosaurs is now seen perfected in their descendants the modern birds, while primitive home building in cockroaches has become the skyscrapers of modern termites.

Artificial brains

Having already made most of the tools of living things, we are now working hard at reproducing the major tool which distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom and our main driving force - the brain. The city of Singapore is full of current state-of-the-art computers and is heavily involved in their development, manufacture and trade. These computers can already do much of our designing work for us, have far better memories and many other faculties which are at least a great improvement on our own. At the very least, computers are extensions of our own minds, and, within limits, they are already intelligent. They have evolved to this stage from virtually nothing within the last 50 years and in another 50 there is little doubt that much of our brainpower could be regarded as obsolete in comparison.

Even more to the point, a super-intelligence (the pooled intelligence of many connected units) is already upon us now that a linkup between billions of human brains and intelligent machines is possible. Much to the dismay of modern tribal elders, this system ignores national borders and allows individuals to have direct input and access to the global intelligence without censorship or prejudice on social, ethnic, gender or racial grounds. Many regimes find this threatening and try to prevent access or prosecute those who by accident or design view what is regarded as unacceptable material.

There is strong resistance against believing in machine intelligence, many refusing to accept that it is possible for us to make a machine that is truly intelligent and mounting strong arguments to show that it is impossible. There are many considerations, which perhaps account for this reluctance, not least being the religion-based belief that human beings are the only conscious species - in other words the only one to have a "soul". There are probably two main issues in understanding what constitutes human intelligence (1) mechanistic intelligence, and (2) the factors we are born with which govern human behaviour, including consciousness and conscience.

Mechanistic intelligence

This is basically an ability to collect data, process it and produce a result which if acted upon is the best way of achieving something. This type of intelligence is everywhere in nature and can be achieved without "thinking" - a flatworm gliding around on the bottom of the jungle stream uses its chemical senses to find a dead tadpole and crawls forward so that its mouth, which is on the underside, comes into contact with the food. Similarly a macaque treading on a snake leaps away in a reflex response without time to think, and a robot has been made which seeks out and finds a plug when its batteries get low. This type of intelligence becomes more advanced in mankind when learning and experience are included as aids to decisions on action. This more advanced intelligence has already been produced in machines at a far more sophisticated level than that in our own brains, but so far the desirable ends are still our own. We programme our machines to tell us when to buy and sell on the stock market, or to lay workers off at the factory, adjust bank interest rates, control automatic trains or cruise missiles.

We are rapidly approaching the time when much of our society will be governed by this machine intelligence because coping with such complexity is already beyond our own capabilities. Few people would have difficulty with accepting that this form of intelligence can be well developed in machines, or in expecting us to make machines with greater and greater abilities in monitoring their surrounds, making decisions on how to proceed and so on. The difficulty arises in expecting that this mechanistic empirical intelligence can be anything more than subservient to our needs and desires. It seems than many are unwilling to believe that machines can escape our control and become independent of us, and the programming we install. They do not envisage any rogue androids or the like appearing, even though computers are already being widely used for rogue purposes.

Consciousness

This is something which science has been late to grapple with, being mainly assigned to the areas of philosophy and religion. This is reflected in Descartes' belief that the pineal body in the brain was the seat of the "soul" - visualising it rather like a little person at a computer console in the brain. It has been hard for investigators to escape the preconceived religious connotations that firmly place human beings as the only conscious species.

Scientific evidence is now mounting to support what is obvious to most observers of animal behaviour - that consciousness and awareness of self were already well developed in all advanced brains before we arrived on the scene - even chickens and bees. Also that activity generated by instinct, which often surface in us in the form of emotions, predates empirical intelligence and is at the root of animal behaviour. It is a combination of largely instinctive internal drives (these have been pre-programmed as a result of natural selection) and awareness of the environment provided by sense organs. A further controlling factor comes from a variable veneer of learned experiences, (even these are often partially instinctive, because the brains of animals are pre-programmed to learn experiences in a certain way at a certain time, such as birds learning details of their songs by hearing them sung while still in the egg, and basic language structure being pre-programmed in humans before they start learning to speak).

Language

The problem which now confronts scientists is to find the difference between the macaques gambolling in the trees, the red jungle fowl scratching in the leaf litter and us - is consciousness just a matter of degree? Some suggest that we were little different from the apes until about 70,000 years ago when our larynx became advanced enough to develop complex language which enabled us to use silent language in thoughts and engage in mind-play (although signs of the development of that part of the brain associated with language goes back to the earliest hominids, five million years ago). But perhaps this is just another belief in our superiority - why is it necessary to have language to have thoughts? A tiger stalking a mouse deer or a cat a bird hardly needs language to think "If I move past that log while it is looking, it will see me" it is an obvious fact - why does it have to be put into words before it can be thought? The same may apply to a young macaque planning to steal fruit from a rival - it does not need to think in a language "If I look as if I intend to steal it, it will know and run to its mother" (deceit is a widely used practice in nature - even in plants). In fact putting things into words may slow reactions - it is a bit like when speaking a foreign language, being slowed by translating in the mind.

The major difference is, perhaps, that with a complex language, enormous advances can be made with communication and learning - tool-making can be transmitted in a few hours instead of - say - the years it often takes for chimpanzees to learn to use tools to crack nuts. (One wonders why it should take them so long. Budgerigars have been found to learn how to open a vessel containing food after only a few experiences of watching another one do it.) Our understanding of our past increases with leaps and bounds - it is now thought that cave art found in Australia is very old. Could it be that the complex symbolism of art came before language? Chimpanzees seem to enjoy painting!

Watching the macaques in the trees I recognise so many of their behaviours as those one would expect in a human playground, and I sometimes wonder about our approach to the study of animal behaviour and psychology. It has been customary to exclude any hint of anthropomorphism on the grounds that it might lead us to incorrect conclusions - to such an extent that anthropomorphism is now firmly equated with unscientific deduction. This approach has been so successful in avoiding jumping to anthropomorphic conclusions that it has created a whole new language to describe behaviour in non-human terms. Great advances have without doubt been achieved by this approach, but it misses one of the great advantages we have of being animals ourselves. We are so close to the animals we study that we might get more rapid advances in the science if we were to assume similarity and seek understanding of our near relatives through our own emotions and behaviours. We are, after all, basically no more than an ape with a veneer of advanced intelligence.

Consciousness

Consciousness is perhaps a red herring, what is important in this aspect of intelligence is an integration of four main faculties: (1) an awareness of surroundings i.e. an input of sensory information (including needs of the body), (2) a processing centre to analyse the inputs, (3) a bank of learned information that includes much which is pre-programmed into the brain from the DNA it inherited, and (4) an internal programme (emotions) which selects appropriate action/behaviour from a range of responses (these have evolved over millions of years and are driven by the need to survive and reproduce). Language provides an additional link between these faculties while the growth of empirical intelligence tends to remove the need for many pre-programmed emotions, and can replace them with logical deduction. Virtually all these faculties are shared by our developing machine intelligence, and most people would have little difficulty coming to terms with machines being made which are better at them.

The key area which differentiates machines from people is (4) above, which is the legacy we have from our animal past - the internal programme of emotions (natural selection's answer to the need for logic) that directs our behaviour and generates our drive to survive. It is conceivable that machine intelligence could be programmed so that it follows our code of conduct, our morality, but on the other hand, if machines are made which have a superhuman empirical intelligence and an adaptable driving force, this animal past may be entirely irrelevant. They may need some of our abilities especially for dealing with human beings, such as the knack of deception and lying, but our primitive appreciation of art is likely to be largely valueless.

How to make an intelligent machine

As a last resort it is sometimes suggested that making intelligent machines is just too difficult for us to achieve. This relies on the assumption that we effectively have to wire them up from scratch. This, however, is not how machine intelligence is likely to develop. The evidence is all around us that complex structures do not appear in one jump, but are evolved by a massive programme of trial and error, with millions of tiny advances being accumulated over time by the process of natural selection. The dragonflies' eye and the macaque's brain did not develop in a single mutation in the way we are trying to do it, they came by a long process of natural selection adding and improving on what went before. This is the method computer scientists are now beginning to employ, both in making software programmes that can evolve in the computer, and in making computers which can evolve their own structure.

This approach is likely to eventually produce really intelligent machines, and is essentially out of our control - the scientists merely create the right environment and sit by to watch it develop. The way it may happen may be like a chick developing in an egg - egg development is not nearly as deterministic as originally thought, every cell is involved in trial and error and may or may not end up in the final organism. In fifty years time the results may be ready to hatch - what emerges may be quite unnerving.

DRAGONFLY HEAD. Complicated things like the dragonflies' eye are not evolved overnight in one step. They are formed over millions of generations of adding tiny increments and improvements in a long developmental process. This is how intelligent computers can be built. Not by us building one from scratch, but by using a method involving an evolving structure which can be set in motion within an unintelligent matrix.

The appearance of advanced intelligence on this planet in the form of the human brain, heralds the arrival of a new dimension to our understanding of what constitutes a living thing. Carbon-based life forms are essentially hard copies of what could be regarded as abstract DNA programmes. Intelligence goes beyond this - it has an existence outside the originating organism, it is independent and grows, accumulating knowledge and technological know-how from generation to generation without the need for the DNA-life mechanism of genetic transmission. All it needs is the continuing existence of an intelligence - it does not matter whether it is human, alien or machine. Intelligence is more like the sum total of DNA knowledge, but develops at a much faster rate.

There used to be clear definitions of what constituted a living thing: they breathe, grow, reproduce etc. Essentially it was meant to apply only to complex carbon-based structures built by DNA. No one would deny that an active macaque is alive, but many parts of the body are artefacts created by DNA and are not "alive" such as hair and the outer surface of the skin. Similarly the shell of giant African snails, which are found everywhere in Singapore, crawling up garden walls, is a non-living secretion. Swifts living in caves build beautiful nests from another secretion, saliva, (which is a great delicacy in bird's nest soup). Termites build robust termitaria out of a mixture of secretions, faeces and earth. How should we regard these artefacts - they must surely be just as much a part of the living things which created them, as snail shells and hair. Most other parts of the body can also be regarded as artefacts, including behaviour.

What constitutes a living thing?

Is there a fundamental point when something becomes not part of a living thing? For instance, weaver finches have to partly learn how to weave their nests, and so the nests are not a direct artefact that has been programmed by DNA, but are the result of an exchange between materials, learning and the pre-programmed DNA brain. The resulting nest is a complex artefact of the sort we are renowned for, but our buildings, tools, motor cars and computers are not generally thought of as part of us as living things on a par with body organs and snail-shell houses. However they are reproduced and evolve in association with our intelligence and there is at least a conceivable point when they become like the arms and legs, heart, lungs and brain of a machine-intelligence instead of being artefacts of our own making. From this it would appear that DNA is no longer an essential for life, all that is necessary is a complex controlling force, whether it be programmed in DNA or on a silicon chip.

AFRICAN SNAIL IN SINGAPORE. Most living things have non living parts, such as skin hair or snail's shells. Living things also make structures which are extensions of themselves, such as weaver finches' nests. Such tools can be very complex like spiders' webs. With intelligence many such tools can be built - like everything one sees in the City of Singapore. Once a machine intelligence has been built, it can make whatever tools it needs.

 

Coordination of billions of units

Fresh-water sponges live in Singapore's forest streams. These are members of an extraordinary group of organisms because studies show them to be made up of what are essentially protozoa - single-celled animals. The cells form aggregations and diversify into a few distinctly different cells, with some becoming involved in secreting inanimate spicules (artefacts) which form the skeleton on the sponge. Sponges are essentially primitive organisms created by large numbers of single cells cooperating with one another. From primitive beginnings such as these it is awe-inspiring to realise that control and coordination of billions of cells has now become commonplace. Each of the rainforest trees is a single massive coordinated unit of cells from the deepest roots to the leaves and flowers at the treetop. They strive for sunlight, compete with neighbouring trees, fight off insect attack, use fungi to extract nutrients from the forest floor and all the other necessary activities of living in tropical rainforest and successfully leaving offspring.

The same applies to the colourful bee-eater smashing the dragonfly on the branch - each one is made up of billions of cells organised into a coordinated complex designed to operate at a level quite beyond comprehension, from the perspective of a single cell. Early stages of a higher level of coordination are seen in the massive corals around the coast, which are made up of a unit of many organisms - hundreds or thousands of coral polyps working together. In the same way thousands, even millions of ants or termites cooperate to produce the massive colonies, which dominate the forest ecosystem.

AEROPLANE BUTTERFLY, SINGAPORE. Every large living thing, from this butterfly to the giant forest trees are made up of billions of cells all cooperating as a massive living unit. The evolutionary stem to produce this coordination was one of the biggest steps in the history of life on this planet. Achieving a similar level of coordination is the main challenge to our future.

Cooperation

Other interesting levels of cooperation can be seen everywhere - ants cooperating with plants, such as the many ant-plants in the rainforest. Some grow on branches where there is no soil to provide essential minerals, so the plant gets over this problem by producing hollows suitable for ants to nest in, and the ants carry in soil and nutrient-rich debris to fill them. Other plants have hollow stems for ants to nest in so that the plant is always crawling with pugnacious ants to keep insect and vertebrate grazers away. More ancient examples of cooperation occur in the ground, between the rainforest trees and fungi, each providing the other with essential nutrients and minerals. The major forest trees of the region (Dipterocarps) are unable to regenerate in clear-felled areas because they have to have mycorrhizal fungi in the soil before they can grow.

ANT PLANT. Another level of coordination is found where different organisms come together and cooperate, like this ant plant. The plant provides space for the ants' nest and the ants protect the plant from caterpillars. This symbiotic relationship is common in nature, such as with fungi and algae in lichens and bacteria and coelenterates in coral. We have a similar relationship with our domestic animals and plants.

This cooperation seems strange because evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest, which implies a pivotal role for selfish behaviour, which is also at the root of personal advancement in human society. However, what constitutes selfish behaviour depends upon what self is in the arena of natural selection and how this may change with age and association. Most of the greatest advances in evolution have occurred when units of life cooperate with one another to produce super-selfs. These super-selfs include the first cells which were made up from close associations between bacteria, the first organisms which were made from aggregations of cells, social units formed by the aggregation of organisms and symbiotic units such as corals made from associations of bacteria and coelente

TERMITE SOLDIER GUARDING WORKERS. Another form of cooperation is found in societies. We form extended families and tribes. The termites and ants have been doing it for very much longer than we have and they have produced some very complex societies where there are many castes assigned to various tasks. We have developed the ability to form such castes in much the same way - we are born with the ability to enter most castes, but are trained into particular ones - like the soldier caste. What can we learn from termites?

Global super-self

Human social organization has until recently been mainly dictated by our DNA past, a structure evolved over millions of years to suit a tribal ape, where super-selfs were mainly comprised of extended families and small tribal units. With modern communications, ease of travel and huge populations, many different super-selfs can form, such as multinational companies and religious orders, which may be irrelevant to DNA evolution, but which are acted upon as if they were (because of our DNA programmed behaviour). This has the effect of producing escalating violence and warfare using modern weapons. With the growth of communication, the archaic division into strong tribal groups is being progressively eroded and a global super-self appears to be developing, despite all the tribal infighting. A global super-self may also be an intelligent answer to the problems of the human race, because nationalism is still based on archaic tribalism, and is clearly leading to self-destruction, either by nuclear war or through unthinking competition leading to the final destruction of the common global environment.

The global super-self is not the only association which is developing. We are fostering a rapid evolution of anthropogenic artefacts, which form an integral part of the way we live - essentially as extensions of ourselves. These artefacts can be regarded as having a separate existence and evolve with the compliance of their makers. The exchange between the two can be thought of as a kind of symbiotic association, in the same way as the complexity of termite mound construction increases during the course of termite evolution. Our artefacts have a staggering diversity from buildings to cars, domestic crop plants to genetically engineered bacteria, artificial limbs to hormone replacements, and solar cells to computers. Our pooled intelligence is like a gravitational pull, which brings everything together into a global social unit, part-living part-artefact, and it is steadily leading to the replacement of all previous ecosystems with an anthropogenic landscape. We are in the midst of this process now with the final destruction of the remaining old ecosystems already in sight.

In the longer term it is likely that it will become increasingly hard to tell which is artefact and which is of human origin in the new global super-self. There is little doubt that the artefact part is likely to become dominant because its rate of evolution far exceeds that of DNA, and there is no way our brains, let alone our bodies can evolve fast enough to keep up with the evolution of computer intelligence, once it is set in motion. The long-term result must be an incredible new complexity of life far beyond the capabilities of pure DNA evolution. It is something that we would be unable to comprehend, and, if we are allowed to remain as pawns within it, its power and control over us would barely enter consciousness because it would be so complete. The new level of complexity, the new life-form, will dramatically change the face of not only the Earth, but colonise other planets and space.

We may yet have some influence on the way the new life-form proceeds, it depends upon whether we have the foresight and will to do something about it. The problem is that we are probably still too locked into our DNA past - DNA evolution is so slow that although we have changed culturally, our main driving forces and value systems are essentially unchanged from when we were living as a tribal ape. This will make it very difficult for us to change fast enough to avoid either self-destruction or being taken over by the new life-form we are creating. As far as the Earth is concerned, it is probably immaterial whether we self-destruct or not. A new intelligence-based life-form is bound to appear eventually. If we fail, it will only be a few million years before another species takes our place, becomes technologically literate and starts producing computer intelligence again.

If we fail, another intelligent species will soon evolve

The tree shrews set in motion the evolution leading to the primates. The slow loris is one of the most primitive primates and used to be found in the Singapore forests. This has gone, but there are still the macaques. If we fail, it is probable that most of the remaining great apes are also too close to extinction to survive our demise and give rise to another intelligent species. Macaques could perhaps, but a new intelligent species is more likely to come from a more rapidly evolving and adaptable group of mammals. The rodents are one of the most likely - they are extremely successful and adapt well to anthropogenic environments, they are social and have complex behaviour patterns. The more dexterous are the squirrels, so perhaps they could evolve an intelligence like our own, or could it be the rats? How long might it be after our demise that the sun squirrels in the trees of Singapore, or the black rats of the docks are the great apes of the future? Their scientists will have the task of exploring the geological remains of our fossils, working out why we failed and how they could avoid a similar fate.

It is interesting to speculate what might have happened had a meteorite not hit the Earth 65 million years ago - our place may have been taken by an intelligent dinosaur. The view out over the city may have been a very different sight, if it had been built by small, active, tailed, bipedal dinosaurs. How would it look if the next intelligent species turns out to be a squirrel? Would the buildings be modelled more on trees than our cave or rock-shelter-like structures?

PALM SQUIRREL. The challenge we face is to survive the transition from a tribal ape to a global technological society, bound by our artefacts, including machine intelligence. If we fail, it will only be a few million years, probably much less than the time since the dinosaurs, before another intelligent society will evolve, and look at our remains and find why we failed. The lost likely animals are rodents, like this squirrel - it is a bit like a tree shrew - our original ancestor.