Human Evolution and Rarity of Human Birth

The Watercooler
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Recently I watched a creationist believer got private tutoring on Evolution theory by a scholar, free on youtube.

The evidence of human evolution, evolution in general, and the age of the earth is overwhelming and robust.

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Now if we are talking about humans. Modern human appears only around 300.000-60.000 years ago.

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And then the civilization (marked by development of agriculture) only appears 12.000 years ago. It is assumed that Gobekli Tepe is the evidence of earliest agriculture revolution.

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This got me thinking. Buddha said that it is rare to be born as human. It is even rarer to be born as human in civilized society, with all the right condition, and in time when the Buddha appeared and teaching. (Chiggala Sutta SN56.48 and Akkhaṇa Sutta (Anguttara Nikāya 8.29))

The fortunate human rebirth is one of common topic in Buddhism. I learned it long ago, and the commentary etc always explain this in term of karma requirements. But learning the evolution timeline and human civilization timeline, I have this thought: the condition that support enlightenment only appears around 10.000 years ago, with the development of village and cities.

Because, you can’t expect hunter-gatherer society to have time to meditate, right? They are very busy surviving, walking all day.

Meditating is luxurious thing. This need leisure time, when one is not required to fulfill basic need such as food and shelter. The monastics (monks, sramana, etc) is supported by agricultural society, who can produce surplus of food.

Another thing is the brain. One need to start philosophy before one have the urgency to meditate. To question life and death. And this capability, as far as we know, only modern humans have. Because our brain is developed is such a way and size.

By the same argument, I would argue that whale and dolphin, can’t develop advance civilization. Even if they may develop sophisticated brain, they cant farm inside the sea. They will always remain hunter-gatherer.

Because of that, Buddha can only appear in developed agricultural society. Maybe this is why it’s said that Buddha only appear in “central area”. Presumably barbarian is hunter-gatherer society.

If we compare the age of the earth (4.5 billion years), the first living organism (2.5 billion years), the first ‘human’ (7 million years ago), the first homo sapiens (300.000 years ago), the first agriculture (12.000 years ago) and the Buddha’s dispensation (2570 years ago). Truly we are in the most fortunate period.

Imagine that. For 4 billion plus years, there are no humans. Even if beings have karma to be reborn as human, there are no humans on earth. Maybe these beings will have to be reborn in another planet.

Will this condition persist? If humans become spacefaring civilization, is enlightenment still possible? I am not sure will there be something that prevent humans to be enlightened in the future.

Or will there be another great extinction event? The advancement of human civilization means the gradual deterioration of the planet. example: global warming.

So maybe this brief period will be the only window of opportunity to attain enlightenment.

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ah. edited with other image.

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There’s an adage in Zen circles, that “When there’s ignorance, a Buddha appears and gives voice to Dharma.”

So I’m sure that as long as there’s ignorance, there will be beings who see clearly and explain the Dharma. :slight_smile:

I think your overall exposition is for the most part, in line with the early suttas as far as I can see. Certainly, to be a Buddha with a long lasting legacy of suttas and a sangha seems to require a modicum of civilization to pull off. And I will take any chance to feel more grateful for our current conditions. :slight_smile:

But maybe it could be fun to imagine private buddhas, and the concept of “liberation” more, well, liberally… :slight_smile:

After all, being “content with little” is a virtue of the arahats, wouldn’t it be likewise possible to be enlightened with less than ideal conditions? Maybe a hunter will stop one day, shouldering off the world? I can see such a figure inspiring people likewise to settle down, seeding the first hints of a civilization maybe.

Some say animals can’t be enlightened because they’re not as conscious as we are. Others yet say they don’t need to be enlightened because they aren’t afflicted with our problems. Suttas certainly make it seem that only humans can get enlightened.

Still, every time I watch a cat in meditation, I wonder…

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Thanks for the interesting thread. :slight_smile:

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But what about Non-Returners? :slightly_smiling_face:

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Right! I must’ve meant “be Buddhas”, but indeed, we have other formless beings that can get enlightened. :slight_smile:

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Actually, hunter-gatherer societies generally spend only about 3-5 hours per day hunting and gathering!

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Really interesting OP. Thank you.

I guess that the previous Buddhas (i.e. the Buddhas before Gotama), also had disciples who became arahants, etc., and this all happened well before the appearance of modern humans. So maybe the term ‘human’ (manussatta) in the suttas, means something different to ‘human’ in terms of modern evolutionary biology?

I would be interested to hear the views of any of the translators on the forum regarding maybe alternate translations of manussatta, or is ‘human’ an accurate translation and is it equivalent to a modern scientific understanding what it means to be human?

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So while I’m sympathetic to exploration of manussatta being potentially referring to other humanoid beings, even the Sanskrit cognate mānuṣatva has a clear, straightforward meaning, like “humanity”, with very much the side meaning it entails, like “humanities”, benevolence, etc.

One may imagine if Buddha might’ve used the term more liberally, but “Humanhood” / “Humanity” is a quite straightforward standard rendering. :slight_smile:

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Yeah. Sure. I guess I also see in the source that you’ve supplied, the following

virtue such as being compassionate, kind, having the feeling of brotherliness, not being selfish, petty, etc.

Which might make a more general reading. One can imagine some Devas with those qualities. Maybe even some higher form animals.

I’ve also heard it talked about as ‘possession of a mind’ in the past. So I’m still interested to explore this.

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there’s also a phrase, “the best among beings with two legs, The Buddha”.

Now the explanation is that “beings with two legs” is obviously human. So it means “the best among humans”.

Well I learn today that birds are also bipedal, but obviously birds do not display any special spiritual qualities.

The alternative explanation I can think of is the thing that made we, humans, the king of the world (currently).

We stand upright on our two legs. And that means our two hands are free. We have dexterous hands and can create tools. We used tools to do things, and create more tools to create another tools, and so on.

Well birds don’t have hands. Their hands got occupied by wings, so they can’t use tools, or create complex tools.

The development of agriculture is related to tools. So I guess birds can’t farm.

So far there’s no other creatures in the past that has features like human: stand upright, have hands. At least no such fossil has been found.

If there are past Buddha that appeared in the past in this same earth, they must appear between 4 billion years ago - to 60 million years ago. 4 billion because need earth to cool down. 60 million because that’s the date dinosaur extinct and the record after that is relatively clear.

There are no human-like fossil or humanoid shape fossil in that period. Can advance society or intelligent beings appear among such things as dinosaur?

We are applying our bias here, because the civilization and society as we know it is the one that exist for humans. I just can’t imagine how dinosaur create civilization, or how Buddha appear among dinosaurs.

I argued that agricultural society is needed for a Buddha to appear. And agriculture need tools. And tools need hand. Only humans have functional hand and brain to create tools. Thus, Buddha can only appear among humans.

If somebody can prove that Buddha doesn’t require agricultural society, that one can have leisure time even in more primitive lifestyle, then…

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It’s an interesting tangent.

Still, isn’t what’s required for leaving samsara the reflection on suffering? Isn’t that what we humans can do?

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The time in human history when Buddha lived would be considered by today’s standards to be quite primitive, yet that culture, and other cultures around the world at that time, were very introspective and philosophical. Going back farther, there are cave drawings, art forms and tools that go way, way back. We don’t know what they thought or how deep their minds went. To imply that hunter-gatherers are primitive is forgetting that there are still hunter-gatherers to this day, 2500 years after the Buddha.

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Agreed. It probably does mean humans. But even if you include birds, and apes, and whatever else has two legs, (Gotama) Buddha is the best among them all.

Birds certainly don’t display those special spiritual qualities to us, but who knows what they display to other birds. :wink: There are of course many human beings who don’t think that the Buddha displayed any special spiritual qualities either.

I think what you say is crucial—if being a bird does not allow for the arising of these special spiritual qualities, what is required? And do we (who are labelled humans) still have them today 2½ millennium after the Buddha?

I guess there’s a little evidence. E.g. Danuvius guggenmosi

Yes. You’re right. It is very difficult to imagine what it’s like to be other creatures. We always think of them through the lens of us as humans, and this has led to some wrong understandings of other creatures capabilities in the past. Many people don’t think that animals are even sentient.

To be honest, it wasn’t very long ago that many people of the world were not considered ‘human’ by others. I think that attitude is still prevalent in the world today when I hear some politicians talking. :frowning:

My dog has more leisure time than I do. There was a time in the near past where dogs either worked, were wild or were scavengers eking out a miserly living. But now many dogs are just pets. My dog has never done a day’s work in his life, but still gets fed, all his needs met and a warm home to live in completely free. To be honest, he’s a bit of a parasite, but a very lovely one. His name is Bodhi, but he’s far from enlightenment :grin:

Going back to evolutionary biology, I see it as quite narrow in terms of describing humans. It is about genetics, and specifically ‘being human’ in that context is about having human DNA. But humans are much more than that. Just on an DNA level, for example, at least 50% of the cells that make us what we are, are in the microbiome of the gut, so that’s microbe DNA not human. So that’s something to consider. How much has that half of us changed in the last couple of thousand years?

Thanks for the posts. Very interesting.

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I read this article in Live Science the other day in regard to homo timeline. According to this 2.8 million years ago. This changes the timeline we have known…at least for now.

“Although modern humans are the only human lineage alive today, other human species once walked the Earth. These extinct lineages were members of the genus Homo just as modern humans are. The earliest human specimens found yet are about 2.8 million years old,”

“…the early human performed ritual burials of its dead…”

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I think there’s a reason why so many philosophical traditions and universal religions arose around 2.5 to 4k years ago: the Iron Age. The iron axe allowed for forests to be cleared more efficiently and the iron plow meant that that land could be cultivated more efficiently. This allowed for more crops to be grown, which led to surpluses and to trade, which iron-rimmed wheels made more practical.

Now we start to have a class of relatively rich and educated people who could think seriously about the purpose of life. We have a philosophical class. Surpluses could also support a larger class of spiritual seekers and philosophers, either because they were sponsored by the rich, or because ordinary people had become wealthier and could afford to donate food and other requisites.

A long time ago I wondered about paccekabuddhas. In Ray’s Buddhist Saints in India (I know, not a perfect book) he describes paccekabuddhas as living in communities and as having disciples. The idea of paccekabuddhas being unable or unwilling to teach does not fit well with those scenarios. So I wondered of perhaps paccekabuddhas were enlightened individuals whose lines of spiritual transmission (lineages of disciples transmitting enlightened teachings from one generation to the next) because economic conditions weren’t favorable enough in pre-Iron Age India. Perhaps they were not socially and spiritually isolated, but isolated in time.

It’s not hard to imagine a few years of famine in a subsistence economy being enough to collapse a spiritual movement. Perhaps people got enlightened, their lineages fizzled out, and only whispers of their existence survived to the Buddha’s day. Perhaps we only have the Buddha’s teachings today because economic conditions 2,500 years ago allowed him to create a large and relatively stable sangha. It’s not hard to imagine it being otherwise, leaving us with nothing but rumors of a man, long ago, who discovered a great truth that has since been lost.

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