Why I am an Environmentalist

ADDRESS FOR THE 16^th ANNUAL SHARON AUDUBON FESTIVAL

Armand M. Oppenheimer, July 30, l983

Synopsis

Environment had a controlling role in shaping the evolution of man and the primates. At just the right time there were remarkable concurrences of major natural phenomena, such as the appearance of the angiosperms (flowering plants that bore fruit and seeds and nectar), the evolution of the grasses, volcanism, glaciation and fire.

Salutations:

Some of my Audubon friends expect me to review the recent history of the Housatonic Audubon Society, to recall the fight against pumped storage; the sounding of the tocsin on PCBs in the Housatonic River; campaigning for clean air and clean water; concern with acid rain; disposal of solid waste and toxic and radioactive material, and promotion of environmental education. I might berate James Watt and the Reagan Administration and bewail the good old days of environmental protection under Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and here in Connecticut of Dan Lufkin and Douglas Costle.

However I have chosen to address a broader subject.

Over more than half a century the study of man's origins has been of compelling interest to me. I have been impressed by the governing role of environment in molding his genes and shaping his destiny. Relatively slight changes for example, in average temperature, wind patterns, periods of volcanism creating atmospheric dust, have had profound effects. The concurrence of evolution in the plant kingdom on the one hand and the animal kingdom on the other and their critical interactions have determined the course of primate evolution from its early stages to the human condition. Although it is highly likely that life and intelligence in one form or another exists on some of the planetary systems circling the billions of stars in the cosmos, technological civilization depends on special adaptations which are uniquely human and the result of serendipitous environmental coincidence. To this audience I might add that man is a rara avis -- a rare bird. Carl Sagan and Robert Jastrow notwithstanding we may well be alone in the universe.

Let us imagine ourselves in the terminal stage of the age of the dinosaurs, 70 million years or so ago, the Cretaceous period, so named because of its chalk deposits. Reptiles great and small hunted and browsed through exotic tropical forests very different from those of today. Giant tree-ferns, equisiti (horsetails), cycads, ginkos, and many other gymnosperms dominated the landscape. (gymnosperm as you know means "naked seed" -- the kind formed in pine cones and other conifers.) In the understory mosses, liverworts, ferns, algae and fungi abounded. Here and there the first members of a new family of plants were beginning to appear but in general the flora was little changed from that of the Carboniferous period when the great coal deposits were formed.

The first known birds, archeopterygii, had been testing their clumsy wings for some time past and a few small primitive mammals hid by day from voracious carnivores. The environment had remained generally static -- a persisting tropical climate prevailing over most of the planet for well over a hundred million years.

But now momentous environmental changes virtually exterminated the reptiles. Simultaneously there was a revolution in the plant kingdom which unquestionably was due to the same forces which brought about the extinctions in the animal world.

No one surely knows the cause of this colossal extinction. Extinctions on a grand scale had occurred many times before and were to occur in the future. In this instance there may have been a collision of the earth with a large meteorite, as has recently been suggested. Such a catastrophe would have thrown great clouds of dust into the air preventing sunlight from energizing the vegetation. Deprived of the food supply large herbivores and the carnivores preying upon them would have starved. Volcanic eruptions likewise fill the atmosphere with dust clouds and could have had the same effect. The recent eruption of a single Mexican volcano has had a profound effect on our weather patterns this year; rerouting the jet stream, excessive rainfall, severe storms, beach erosion, mud slides and consequent crop destruction. Eccentricities in the wobble of the earth's axis, cosmic events, irregularity in solar radiation -- there are endless possibilities. The environment is extremely sensitive to disturbances and a seemingly trivial cause may have far- reaching interactions and profound consequences.

To return to the end of the Great Age of the Reptiles: we see the curtain rise on a new act and a new setting. The time of the angiosperms -- the flowing plants -- had arrived, and some of the liberated, erstwhile hunted mammals were on hand and ready to exploit them.

What a paradise lay open to them. Brilliantly colored flowers, succulent fruits and berries, nuts, seeds, nectar, all bathed in enticing perfumes -- a cornucopia of new and nutritious foods waiting for harvest. Birds and mammals and insects too, came to the feast and there began a rich diversification of species adapted to the many new life patterns or econiches afforded by the differentiating angiosperms.

Among these enterprising mammals were the ancestors of the primates, the order to which we belong. The timely appearance of flowering plants created the habitat peculiarly essential to the rise of the primates. Adaptation to life in the trees directed the physical and mental characteristics of our primate ancestors toward the human condition.

Several anatomical changes developed. First of course, was a modification of the paws to enable the primitive primates to climb about. Others, like the rodents, retained sharp claws, but primates resorted to gripping, clasping paws with friction ridges on the fingers and toes. Their inherited claws gave way to flattened nails -- a portentous alternative, for no clawed animal could ever have aspired to the use of a monkey-wrench, a computer, or to repair a watch or an electronic circuit.

Some new-world monkeys, as for example the marmoset, still retain claws on one or two digits. They serve well for scratching insects from tree bark. But new-world monkeys are off the main line. The Americas were separated from the eastern hemisphere before the apes evolved.

The second crucial adaptation to the arboreal life was the transformation from an essentially smell-oriented, ground-dwelling creature to a dominantly sight- oriented pattern, an obvious requirement for survival in the treetops. The eyes moved from the side of the head to the front until their visual fields almost completely overlapped; the optic nerves divided, each eye sending half its signals to each side of the brain and the result was binocular, stereoscopic vision, with color sensitivity added. Accurate estimation of distance is a prerequisite for cavorting about on a high wire or the highways in the trees.

The two great physical improvements -- dexterity of the opposable thumbs and fingers, and keenness of vision afforded superior perceptions and means of investigation of the world about. The four dimensional arboreal environment (timing was paramount importance) put a premium on quick and accurate judgement, learning, innovative behavior and conceptual evolution, and favored brain development. Objects could be brought before the eyes for minute examination. Ripeness of fruit could be judged by color changes. The need to remember seasonal changes in location and readiness of foods selects for survival of the smarter ones of each generation.

As time passed, the forelimbs and forefingers were employed increasingly for handling food and objects of all sorts while the hind limbs became sturdier for supporting the body. Rest position was sitting upright, and even walking for short distances, carrying food became possible.

The Capuchin or white-faced monkey, darling of the hurdy-gurdy, can be trained to sustain this stance for long periods, and of course apes are a long way down the road to bipedalism -- moving on two legs. Bipedalism is quite common in the animal world. Birds do it all the time, and have you seen pictures of the penguins?

The environment of the angiosperm forest was the primate school in which the ancestors of man qualified for higher achievements and just as they were ready to graduate the natural environment provided new opportunity -- another remarkable concurrence.

Some thirty million years ago, in a period called the Oligocene, a new family of plants started to evolve -- the grasses, now constituting the economically most important plants in the world. They include all the cereal grains and even woody plants such as papyrus and bamboo, over 4000 species in all. For a very long time they were scarce and had great difficulty in establishing themselves because of the unbroken forest cover. But old Mother Nature had a new act in her repertoire -- an outbreak of widespread volcanic eruptions which poured out lava and fire and volcanic dust. It seems to have been associated with movement of the tectonic plates. The forests were transformed in many places and open areas available for the establishment of savannah and prairies appeared.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and presently some herbivores became adapted to grass-eating and great herds of grazers populated the rich grasslands.

One of the regions in which this occurred was the Great African Rift Valley, a fault line which runs from the Valley of the Jordan River in Asia Minor, through the Gulf of Aqaba across the Red Sea and south through East Africa as far as Mozambique. To this day it is dotted with active volcanoes and hot springs and it is the site of a wide belt of grasslands including the Serengeti Plains with its vast herds of antelopes and zebras, rhinoceros, buffalo and elephants -- and of lions, leopards, cheetahs, -hyenas and still other predators and scavengers. It is also the birthplace of man.

Back in the Miocene the fauna was made up of the now extinct ancestors of these animals including the sabre-toothed tigers, mammoths and swine and also several species of monkeys and apes, never backward at seeing new ways to make a living.

Among the ground-adapting primates was a group of apes who were the common ancestors of the living great apes and the hominidae. The great apes differ from monkeys in several ways. Their short, sturdy legs are pre-adapted to walking and their arms are freely hinged at the shoulder and suited to reaching and carrying. Spines are stout and stiff, contrasting with the slender, springy spines of quadrupedal monkeys. Apes had developed a way of suspending their bodies vertically in the hands, swinging from branch to branch in a manner called brachiation -- one way of getting about in the forest environment. Their internal organs are hitched to the chest, suspended from above to the pelvis, instead of hanging down from the backbone as in monkeys. The coccyx,-remnant of the tail, bends forward to support the pelvic contents in the upright position.

So, as the curtain went up on this new environment the anthropoid ancestors of man literally walked on the stage. But bipedalism while it frees the arms and hands for carrying and fabricating, exacts what would seem to be a heavy price. If walking and running are to be efficient means of getting about, the spread of the pelvis must not be too great, else a duck waddle results. On the other hand hominid brains and heads were getting bigger. Since the birth canal could not be enlarged, the young had to be born increasingly immature. Too high a price? Well no, a hidden priceless boon. As infantile dependence became longer and longer and maturation of the brain increasingly deferred, the opportunity for learning and teaching correspondingly increased. Cultural transmission, handing on from generation to generation, of acquired knowledge, techniques, traditions and social customs, including magic, superstition and religion, ethics and morals, arose out of this prolongation of the maternal child and later parental bonds.

The origins of the human condition are directly linked with this long period of development and slow maturation.

Time does not permit of detailed discussion of the importance of hunting in the evolution of man. His nearest relative, the chimpanzee, is an occasional meat eater and Jane Goodall has seen two of them cooperating in trapping and killing a vervet monkey, then sharing the prey. Suffice it to say that hunting sharpened man's wits, promoted cooperation, inspired invention and stimulated the perfection of communication through language. It shaped his social organization and sexual roles and allowed him to spread into temperate zones where winter killed off vegetable food.

The famous anthropologist Henry Field regularly introduced his lectures by defining his subject as "the Study of Man Embracing Woman." As a male I concede that the major contribution to the food supply among primitive peoples remained in most cases the plant food gathered by the females -- the original botanists and the precursors of the garden clubs of today.

However, we might say in passing that had man remained herbivorous he would have spent all his waking hours consuming huge quantities of plant material, like the gorilla, never sharing his food, never planning and scheming with others of his kind, never having leisure time to make tools and wonder about the world about him. His teeth and his intestines bear the evidence of his omnivorous adaptation. Of course today it is possible to be a vegetarian because a great variety of vegetable food is available in harvested, prepared, convenient and nutritious quantity year-round.

Two more examples of the role of the environment on human development include the discovery of the use of fire and the onset of the glacial periods. The promethean gift undoubtedly took the form of naturally occurring forest firs in which animals perished. Primitive man discovered the attractions of roast meat, somewhat in the manner of Charles Lamb's story of the Roast Pig, and learned to keep embers alive, then to make fire himself. A hearth of a million year old fire has been found at Terra Amata near Nice, and Peking man had fire five-hundred thousand years ago. As was to be expected, people living in the temperate zones had greater incentive to explore and use this powerful tool, initially for heat in winter as well as for cooking. Fire rendered tough foods tender, poisonous and inedible plants edible, greatly expanding the food supply. Cassava, the staple food of the pre-Columbian indians of Brazil and the potato, the mainstay of the Andean indians are two cases in point. Both are highly poisonous until cooked. Somehow the indians discovered that manioc or cassava needed to be pressed before being treated, by fire.

Fire left its mark on man's anatomy too, for those who regularly employed it no longer needed a huge masticatory apparatus. Their teeth and jaws became smaller and less protrusive. Tropical races discovered the use of fire much later and retained a primitive dental apparatus.

Fire greatly increased primitive man's resources. He used it not only for cooking and warmth but as a defense against predators, a means of driving game in the hunt and of hardening wooden spears and fabricating tools. Its utility increased as his inventiveness burgeoned. It enabled him to move into almost every region of the earth.

I must not digress too far from my theme so I shall mention only one more great natural force which shaped man's destiny by changing the face of the earth -- the recent glacial cycles.

Starting about two million years ago and the last phase ending only some ten thousand years before the present, the Glacial and Interglacial periods are contemporaneous with Homo himself. As he spread over the face of the earth he was prodded into moving hither and yon by the harsh alternations of climate and weather. Had remote populations remained isolated man might have split into several species. However the intermixture of colliding groups kept the gene pool a world-wide reservoir. We have races but only one species -- Homo sapiens.

Nevertheless different environments have left their mark on his physique. Tropical peoples tend to be ectomorphic - slenderly constructed, the better to radiate body heat. Subarctic and arctic peoples are generally endomorphic -- stoutly built with less surface area per unit of weight in order to conserve body heat. There are differences in skin color, a function of exposure to solar radiation. Northern peoples have thin nostrils to warm and moisten cold air before it reaches fragile lung tissues. Tropical man has broad, open nostrils for the opposite reason.

Peoples of northeast Asia, cut off by Himalayan mountains during the last glaciation acquired eyes deeply buried in their sockets and protected by fatty folds, noses flattened into their faces and a diminution of facial hair, as defenses against frost bite. Baltic fog and reduced exposure to sunlight produced the Nordics. The examples are many.

Since the end of the last glaciation -- ten thousand years B.P. - man has had an increasing impact on the environment. In his arrogance he has believed that he was independent of natural controls, that he could create his own environment. Well he has tried to do just that and it is his own environment that may well do him in.

He should have been warned by his own written history, by the fate of the great irrigation civilizations which were brought low by salting of the soil, by the desertification of lands once flowing with milk and honey because of pasturing of goats and sheep, by the soil erosion and sedimentation and malarial swamp created by deforestation especially of hilly areas. Oh ye shades of Greece and Rome and Egypt and mighty empires between the Tigris and Euphrates!

Man is a part of nature, product of his genes and the environment. It is no accident we speak of Mother Earth. Earth gave us birth.

The crucial role and the timing of the rise of the angiosperms; the similar fortuitous concurrence of the emergence of the grasses and the readiness of man's precursors to exploit the new habitat; the impact of fire, of the glacial ages, the myriad ways in which the environment has forged human destiny have made me an environmentalist.

I shudder at the myopic pride of those who would consign us to completely man-made environments in space colonies.

All material on this page is copyrighted by Violet Oppenheimer on behalf of the estate of Armand Oppenheimer. None of the material on this site may be reproduced in any form without permission. Please contact the Estate of Dr. Oppenheimer for details.