The perfect creature?

[Finman]

Man has lived in harmony with the earth for a very long time.

!

As far as I know, human life has been quite a fight for living, food, water, against human enemies, weather, diseases. I would not say it harmony. Short living time of humans tells that.

Human tribes have moved from areas to another and the reason is not that they were tired to the harmony of Eden. The changes in environment put then to move to new areas.eather

I just saw a neardental TV document. It tells about neardental family 50 000 years ago eaten by another neardentals. Caves are in Portugal.
DNA mapping revieled that there was 3 men brothers, 2 women from different families and womens' two children. Their flesh was cutted off with stone knives and bones crushed. Perhaps hunger put another family attack on that family.

 

[oliver90owner]

Man has lived in harmony with the earth for a very long time

You must be jesting! Humans (homo sapiens version) has only been around for maybe seventy thousand years or less. That is a miniscule time compared to the life of the planet.

Rough timings.

Age of planet 4 1/2 billion years.

Life took had about 3 1/2 billion years ago.

Dinosaurs were the dominant higher fauna for around 140 million years.

They got their come-uppance around 64 million new years ago.

70,000 years is nothing compared to the above timings. Just a blip on the Earth's calender/diary. Pretty well insignificant, apart from the havoc the species has been responsible for over the last few millenia.

 

[charlie king]

I should probably have given definitions for the words I used in such a controversial subject!
When I use the word "Harmony" It is meant in the sense that we have interacted with our environment in a way that can be sustained indefinitely.I think that is fair use of the word given the context, and a fair assumption given we are all here discussing this and have had a beautifully abundant and diverse ecosystem until recent times. Perhaps you thought I meant it more in the sense of us all sitting around a camp fire singing puff the magic dragon!?
I am well aware of the brutality of indigenous tribes and other hunter gatherer societies as well as the time scales involved. Perhaps this was part of their success... keeping the numbers down sure is one way of keeping mans effect on the environment to a minimum! Although I would like to think the future holds more humane ways of achieving this. Perhaps through the sensible use of Genomics, birth/ population restriction - More controversy sorry about that!
70 000 years isn't that long in a geological context, no, but in the context of civilised society it is a huge amount of time. The real world is many shades of grey and there are many examples of all sorts of character types and their activities throughout history., altruistic and non -altruistic, The Selfish Gene cant really account for this .. but Group Selection comes very close and sits well with other systems such as Complexity Theory.

Anyway to get back on topic.... the only perfect organism I know of is lurking in the corridors of the spaceship Nostromo somewhere in deep space!!