It appears that human life emerged in a physical environment in East Africa very similar
to that in the sea where life itself may have evolved—around volcanoes and volcanic
vents. This should not surprise us; early modern humans behaved in many ways very
much like prokaryotic bacteria. They laid the foundation for a nucleated society just as
bacteria did for the eukaryotic world. We will continue to see such manifestations of
modern humans’ integral relationship with nature if we will only keep our eyes open.

Let’s be careful as we try to determine the origins of modern human behavior and what
connects people, past and present, but let’s not be too careful. Far too often common
sense is sacrificed as the focus hones in on minutiae. Let’s keep in mind that science is
about the discovery of new knowledge, or maybe I should say the awakening to it.
Ultimately, it is about ascertaining the truth as much as is possible at that moment. The
paradigm-enforcers of society stand ready to define the truth for you. They will also tell
you if your discoveries are legitimate or not. I would recommend that you try to figure it
all out for yourself—with the help of others who are equally open-minded.

Human beings have been around for 5-7 million years, but of course there were many
different species before we emerged. Hominids came first of which there were several
species, including Australopithecus afarensis, the species of the famous Lucy skeleton
found in 1974 in Ethiopia. Lucy is believed to have lived 3.2 million years ago. Then
about 2.5 million years ago rudimentary tools started being used and hence a new genus
emerged, that of homo. Some of these species included homo habilis, homo
heidelbergensis, homo neanderthalensis, homo ergaster, homo erectus, and others.

Homo ergaster lasted a million years, using the exact same tool the entire time, never
even putting a handle on it for more control and leverage. No innovation, or certainly
very little of it. That is what marks the difference between the other human species and
us—innovation. But modern humans have only been here about 150,000 years or so.
That means another 850,000 years before we can equal homo ergaster’s longevity. Will
we make it? As a friend of mine put it, this human species is morally expensive as it
relates to life and the earth. We are innovative, yes, but we are destructive too, far more
than all of the previous human species combined many times over. In fact, there is really
no comparison.

In his book A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson relates that there is an
ancient tool manufacturing area in southern Kenya known as Olorgesailie. Geologist J.
W. Gregory discovered the site in 1919, but excavation was not begun for over two
decades when it was undertaken by the husband and wife team of Louis and Mary
Leakey. It appears that the site, which was next to a large lake while in use, was utilized
for about a million years up until 200,000 years ago. Axes were made from quartz and
obsidian that had to be carried to the site from about six miles away. Organization was
evident with some areas devoted to crafting new axes and other areas used for re-
sharpening blunt ones.

Who were the people who worked here for a million years? No human bones have been
found on the site that would offer clues. It could have been an early aggregation site
where various groups assembled, something we will see frequently as we travel forward
through the development of modern humans. It could quite possibly have been the
proto-San, the San being, as we will discover shortly, the first modern humans.

Two hundred thousand years ago, when it is believed that this group met its demise, is
about the time of the birth of homo sapiens. The lake appears to have dried up about the
same time that the Great Rift Valley transitioned into the challenging environment it is
today. A new species could possibly have formed on the periphery out of this tool-
making group as the changing climate required new adaptations.

No matter who the early homo sapiens were, it would take another 50,000 years or so for
the transition from homo sapiens to homo sapiens sapiens, or anatomically modern
humans, to be completed. It was ‘knowing human’ to ‘extra-knowing human’. Some
refer to this transition human as homo sapiens idaltu.

Let’s look briefly at the geography and topography of the cradle of human beings. This
birthplace will tell us a lot about the development of human beings as they spread out
around the world. The East African Rift System, also called the Afro-Arabian Rift Valley,
is about 4,000 miles long and averages a 30-to-40 mile-width, running from Lebanon and
Syria in the Near East southward through eastern Africa to Mozambique. It is one of the
most extensive rifts on the earth’s surface. A rift is a crack in the earth’s crust caused by
the movement of tectonic plates.

The Rift Valley is often lined by stone cliffs hundreds of yards high. From its beginnings
in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, it runs through Israel, becomes the Jordan River and the
Dead Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea, and then becomes part of Africa at the Afar
Triangle or Danakil Depression of Eritrea adjacent to Ethiopia. The Afar Triangle
appears to be a triple junction where three tectonic plates are pulling away from each
other.

This pulling action has already separated Saudi Arabia from the Horn of Africa, forming
the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Part of the rift continues eastward underneath the
Gulf of Aden and then as a ridge under the Indian Ocean. Another fork heads in a
southwesterly direction as the Great Rift Valley, splitting the Ethiopian highlands. It
then forms two sections on either side of Lake Victoria in Kenya, the Western Rift and
the Eastern Rift. Lake Victoria, the second largest fresh water lake in the world, is shared
by Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda and forms the headwaters of the Nile River.

The Western Rift, home to some of the world’s deepest lakes, is also lined by some of the
highest mountains in Africa. Lakes also abound in the Eastern Rift though they tend to
be shallow with high mineral content due to evaporation and no outlet to the sea.
Because the Rift lies along parallel fault lines, it has always been a very active volcano
area. Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is part of the Rift Valley system.

This ‘unbalanced’ environment with its clash of forces also happens to be fertile ground
for life and its development. That will be one of our major themes—‘good stuff’ occurs
around rifts as forces work to bridge the divide and restore balance.

Ethiopia has been called the ‘water tower’ of east Africa because of the many rivers
created by its highlands. In southwestern Ethiopia, the Omo River, which shares a
drainage divide with the Nile, is one of those. The Omo travels about 200 miles through
a steep-walled valley before it runs into the northern part of Lake Turkana, most of
which lies in Kenya. The Omo National Park is the largest park in Ethiopia. Wildlife
abounds including elands, buffalo, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, lions, leopards, zebras,
monkeys, hippos, over 300 species of birds, and many other animals. Today it is a
tremendous expanse of wilderness, but it appears that for millions of years it was an
important incubator for the development of various human species. And you can see
why—rich soils provided in part by many volcanoes, water availability due to the many
lakes and rivers, a temperate climate due to higher elevations though situated at the
equator, and an incredible abundance of wildlife and therefore food.

It was on opposite sides of the Omo River where anthropologist Richard Leakey
discovered the bones of two humans in 1967. They have recently been reexamined, and
now the bones of each are dated at about 195,000 years old, the oldest modern human
bones ever found. Omo I appeared to have modern features while Omo II appeared
more primitive. We mentioned previously that new species generally begin in small
groups on the periphery of the existing population. Did it happen here? Possibly.

DNA Studies
There is very little genetic diversity among human beings no matter who they are or
where they live. A Chinese and an American have less genetic diversity than do two
chimpanzees sitting next to each other. That is because chimpanzees have been around a
lot longer than we have. All things considered, we are recent newcomers.

There are several approaches that researchers use in their efforts to try to understand the
social and cultural development of human beings and their movements around the
world: archaeology (artifacts mostly), paleontology (bones mostly), and more recently,
DNA studies. Surprisingly, all of the bones found around the world from early humans
would fit in the back of a pickup truck. Not much to go on there.

DNA studies suggest that the San of Africa, often called the Bushmen, are the oldest
modern humans, and the San themselves say they are the ‘first people’. The Sandawe of
Tanzania, a San tribe, may have been the first San people and then spread out from
there. Most of the surviving San people today, numbering between 50,000 to 100,000,
live in southwestern Africa in the Kalahari Desert, which is located in parts of Namibia,
Botswana, and South Africa.

With the Sandawe and other San tribes that still survive, even after tens of thousands of
years of living apart, they continue to exhibit almost identical behavior. We see it also in
the San and another tribe, the Hadzabe, which split off from the San probably 70,000-
100,000 years ago. Genetically, the Hadzabe people appear relatively distant from the
San (because of the length of time living apart) but behaviorally very close. With these
two very old groups both using a language based on clicks and tonal expressions,
illustrated by the ! in !Kung and the / in Ju/’hoansi, it demonstrates that the click-
language may have been the beginning of modern human language.

The click-language in use by a San group today has about 141 different speech sounds,
or phonemes, whereas English has about 40.  The only known non-African group to use
a click language was an Australian aboriginal group, another very old group. You will
see why that makes perfect sense. Incidentally, the clicks may have initially been used as
communication tools among hunters, and then language developed from that. The click
sounds make up about 40% of the San language.

This similarity in behavior is the same thing that author and biologist Stephen Gould
saw in other species; species can go through long periods with very little change and can
therefore become very homogeneous. Consequently, a stasis develops. If a human
population remains large enough to maintain homogeneity and stays fairly isolated,
behavioral and other traits can go on for tens of thousands of years as they have with the
San and the Hadzabe. But if the climate changes dramatically, then a modification of the
species may occur—unless the species is very adaptable. And that adaptability is what
modern humans seem to have.

A lesson should be drawn from the Hadzabe-San example. Though genetically different,
relatively-speaking, their behavior is very similar. DNA studies can lead us to see
differences among people which behaviorally might not exist. As noted earlier, humans
are vastly more alike than different. The differences genetically are miniscule.

The true differences that exist today among people and have for the past few thousand
years are due in large part to SN leaders who attempt to accumulate power and control
and thus divide human beings. All cultures have as their foundation the IMPACTS and
IMPACTS energy. But after the culture has started its development, it can go in many
different directions because the creative-formative-productive IMPACTS energy will, in
most cases, become subservient to the SN energy. It will be captured. Therefore it will
lose much of its influence in the future direction of the culture. We will see as we go
forward that the creative-formative-productive IMPACTS energy of the San is still with
us, but it has been redirected and diluted over time. There is a natural explanation for
that and again it is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. We will explain as we go.

Climate has been a consistently strong variable in the development of human beings and
everything else on earth. The earth seems to have an ice age about every 100,000 years,
or has during the last two million years or so. Partly this is due to a slight wobble in the
earth’s rotation on its axis that takes about 25,700 years to complete. Also, the tilt of the
earth’s axis moves between 22.5 degrees and 24.5 degrees every 41,000 years. And then
there is earth’s orbit around the sun which goes from elliptical to circular every 100,000
years. Plus volcanoes and the earth’s tectonics are always changing the surface of the
earth, sometimes rearranging the flow of water and air currents. The last 10,000 years
have been mostly stable climate-wise and have allowed modern humans to develop as
never before.

About 200,000 years ago, another cooling period set in, lasting 70,000-80,000 years. The
drought conditions that arose in Africa, however, were probably the catalyst needed to
facilitate the emergence of homo sapiens, followed thousands of years later by homo
sapiens sapiens. As I have stated before, stars form mostly around turbulence. It is the
same with everything else—no imbalance, no change.

I mentioned that the modern human species probably formed as other species do—out
on the periphery, isolated from the ancestral group. If the San were in fact one of the
early modern human groups, perhaps the original modern group, we would expect to
see characteristics in them similar to an isolated-species-forming group. And that is
exactly what we see in their behavior—semi-isolated, extremely resourceful, strong
group-orientation, and cooperative behavior—just what would be needed if a small
group was to survive on the periphery.

Severe conditions challenging survival would, through natural selection and genetic
drift, produce specific individual and group characteristics that would be advantageous
for dealing with the harsh environment. Genetic drift occurs in small populations in
conjunction with natural selection. A certain randomness of gene selection can occur
which can determine the characteristics of future generations. Genetic drift is not always
a positive. But if significant genetic drift was at play in the early San, we lucked out
because as a prototypical blueprint for the future, it is hard to see how we could have
done much better. Everything positive about modern humans is based on the San—the
negatives came later.

The San may have been the first modern humans (homo sapiens sapiens), but you will
see that the San were never what some people might call primitive. We have discovered
that bacteria are complicated; the first modern humans were no different. In an ironic
twist, we will discover that the basic human and gender rights we battle for on a daily
basis in the modern world have been the foundation of San society for over 100,000
years. After you learn more about the San, you might be tempted to question your
assumptions about what the word civilized means though I suspect that many of you
already do.

Who Are the San?
The San themselves do not really have a collective name for all of their many distinct
tribes. The term San, meaning outsider, was given to them by their genetic cousins, the
Khoikhoi, pastoralists who broke away from the San about 2,500 years ago.
Anthropologists often combine the two groups and call them the KhoiSan. We will focus
our attention on the San. They preceded the Khoikhoi by over 100,000 years.

The terms San and Bushmen are often deemed to be derogatory by the people referred
to as the San. I am not aware of another name that would be acceptable so with
apologies and without any intention of disrespect, I will regretfully continue to use the
term San. But you will see clearly that I have nothing but the utmost respect and
admiration for them.

Recent history has not been kind to these first modern humans. They have repeatedly
been forced by governments and invaders to leave the hunting and gathering areas
where they have lived for tens of thousands of years. When Europeans started settling in
Africa, they hunted the San like wild animals, almost to extinction. Plus they were
tortured, harassed, kidnapped, raped, enslaved, imprisoned, and used as fodder in the
Europeans’ wars.

White Christian settlers debated whether they were really human and if the Biblical
scriptures applied to them—then slaughtered them by the thousands. Consequently,
their population has fallen from several million to 50,000 to 100,000 today. It is not
treatment that should be borne by anyone, let alone the world’s oldest living human
group, and the people who assured survival for modern humans. It shows clearly the
ugly elements that have managed to solidify a spot for themselves in the human race
over the past few thousand years. Even after what they have been through, the San have
continued to cooperate with those who have studied them. They want the world to
know their story, and it is a great yet tragic story. But it is also the same story repeated
throughout nature and seemingly throughout the universe. It is the tale of two different
kinds of energy—one connecting, sharing, creating, and producing, the other taking and
dividing.

It is believed that the San basically had the free run of central and southern Africa for
tens of thousands of years. The San included many different groups and tribes; for
example, Sandawe, !Kung (also known as Ju/’hoansi), /Xam, and Hai//om, just to name a
few. All San tribes have always been very independent and largely self-sufficient, living
nomadically in semi-isolation and often having little to do even with other San tribes.
The contemporary world is built largely on the model of the independent San tribes
except that today an SN structure is running each ‘tribe’ or country.

The San were a hunter-gatherer society, with 80% of the food gathered by women—
edible plants and roots, fruits, nuts, berries, and small animals providing most of the
protein for the group. What was gathered was usually only shared with their own
family while meat was shared with the group. Gathering provided women with a social
platform that solidified their relationships. During their gathering, they might also
discover animal tracks and other secrets of the bush, including new water locations.
Everyone worked together and shared knowledge.

San Family Life and Gender Roles
Women were very autonomous and were treated as equals. But then, why would they
not be? The San would not have understood a concept of inequality just as they did not
understand what property meant. Later, their genetic cousins the Khoikhoi and
Europeans too would accuse them of stealing cattle. But to the San nobody owned cattle
or the land on which cattle grazed.

Men and women alike had extensive knowledge of plant life, including those plants
with medicinal properties. Men hunted the bigger game, antelope being the most
targeted. Meat was distributed to the other members of the group by the ‘owner’ of the
successful arrow that killed the animal. That arrow could be owned by men or women.
Men also produced clothing from animal hides and crafted various tools, weaponry for
hunting, and musical instruments.

For these early San hunter-gatherers, life could be precarious, but it could also be joyous
and festive. They learned how to survive and enjoy life at the same time. Some have
called it the first affluent society. If a large animal was killed, other bands might be
invited to share in the bounty since there was no way to preserve the meat. Such
behavior increased goodwill which might be needed in difficult times ahead.

The nuclear family was the primary social unit. Hunter-gatherer bands would be formed
of different families, each band comprising 20 to 50 people. Some of these mobile groups
followed game, water, and food around the countryside, living in harmony with nature
and the seasons, having no domesticated animals or crops and only minimal
possessions. Other groups lived along the coast, dining on seals, shellfish, crayfish,
birds, and even an occasional beached whale.

There was no hierarchy and no leadership position based on heredity. The male head of
the main family or another elderly man with respected qualities would most likely lead
the discussions where a group decision was required. Lengthy discussions would
accompany the resolution of disputes. Everyone would be encouraged to offer their
thoughts and opinions until a consensus was reached. True democracy was a way of life.
If a consensus could not be reached, the families would simply divide up and go their
separate ways. Among San tribes, there was no formal military system; there was no
need for one with San generally being pacifists.

Male behavior extolled in today’s society would not have been tolerated in San society.
Aggressive competition, one-upmanship, self-aggrandizement, or any other display of
‘non-cooperative’ behavior would have been summarily discouraged. Alpha-like
behavior would have been a threat to harmony and therefore survival. Even if a large
animal was killed, the hunter’s achievement was downplayed while sharing was
promoted.

Sexual roles were minimal, but women did assume the principal duties of child-rearing
and cooking. But those responsibilities were coupled with the major decision-making
that developed around the children and their eventual marriages. 

Children were adored by the entire San tribe and lavished with love and attention. San
fathers were affectionate and devoted though most of the children’s time was spent with
the mother. Relationships between parents and children were usually emotionally and
physically close, and non-authoritarian.

A look at a present-day !Kung mother indicates the influence and devotion of the
mother in San culture. A !Kung mother generally nurses the baby until the age of four
and sometimes to age six. Such suckling induces hormonal changes that inhibit
ovulation and hence pregnancy. Carrying the baby in a sling, he/she suckles almost at
will throughout the day during the first two-to-three years, creating of course a strong
bond between mother and child.

The young children of the !Kung accompany their mothers wherever they go; they may
travel thousands of miles together in the first few years. But as tough and resourceful
and nurturing as they are, if they have the average of five children, generally they can
expect only two to survive to adulthood, marry, and have children. Can you imagine
what it was like when the climate was even more challenging? That is why it took tens
of thousands of years for the population to grow appreciably.

Public life and domestic life were basically the same for everyone in the San tribe. There
was no place to hide in social relations. The structure of the group was built on
egalitarianism and cooperation, and those aspects were promoted by the openness of the
living situation.

The San were efficient in their utilization of the environment. For example, they would
bury ostrich egg shells filled with water for later use, drink the stomach juices of freshly
killed animals, and to prevent dehydration, smear their skin with animal fat. The trick
was to not overlook any aspects of the environment that might aid survival.

The San Community
Though the San were very cooperative, it was a cooperation built on individual
empowerment. Individual decision-making was highly valued; individuals would have
to be able to approach and resolve many issues of everyday life on their own.

Their community life and concept of society can be symbolized by a circle. A circle has
no beginning and no end, no gaps, no top, no bottom. That was their philosophy. Their
living environment reflected that circularity. They would build their huts in a circular
fashion around a large communal area, the door of each hut facing the center of the
communal area. A campfire would burn in front of each hut. All activities of the group
(except sleeping and intimacy) would take place in this communal area: storytelling,
children playing, dancing, singing, healing ceremonies and rituals, and cooking. At
night, families might move from campfire to campfire, socializing and exchanging gifts,
always showing respect for one another and exhibiting a certain dignity. This was the
foundation of modern humans. These were our beginnings.

Storytelling by elders preserved San history, traditions, and wisdom. In many of the
stories of the Sandawe, the San tribe of Tanzania, San identify with small animals which
have to use their cunning and intelligence to defeat their larger and more powerful
enemies. The !Kung of the Kalahari region sometimes refer to non-San people as
‘animals without hooves’—meaning they are as dangerous as predator animals.

Cave spirits occupied a central place in Sandawe spiritual life along with ancestor
worship and divination. The Sandawe regularly made sacrifices to cave spirits living in
the hills, and were very careful not to hunt or herd or gather wood near the caves. They
also sacrificed at the graves of their ancestors in order to maintain good relations with
the spirits of the deceased. Ancestor worship and caves would play prominent roles as
people spread out around the world.

Bands would have remained for long periods in particular environments if food was
plentiful and conditions were good. But during lean times, they would often split apart
and join other groups. That meant getting along well and cooperating with other people.

One way this was accomplished was by setting up what was called hxaro exchange
between neighboring groups. One person in one group would be the hxaro partner of
someone in another group. Gifts between the two would be exchanged although the
gifts would have no relation to survival needs or economic needs. The purpose was to
form a relationship; what was exchanged was of no consequence. In the future if there
were hard times, the social networks were in place that could be utilized for helping
people through the crisis.

Steatopygia
Even the physical appearance of the San is particularly unique among African tribes.
They are of short height, light-skinned (copper-brown), and have tightly-coiled
‘peppercorn’ hair, high cheekbones, and epicanthic eye folds commonly seen among
East Asians. San facial features are seen around the world, from Asians to Eskimos to
Latin Americans to Caucasian Americans to Europeans. That should tell us something
very important if we will stop to think about it for a second. Major insights are right in
front of us. All we have to do is look at them and think about them—open-mindedly.
The reason that San features are found around the world is because we are all derived
from the San. It is not a mystery. The force of the SN hierarchal structure prevents us
from seeing the obvious because it distorts our picture of reality. It is the people version
of Einstein’s general theory of relativity where mass distorts space-time around it.

Another feature seen prominently in the past among San women, and to a lesser degree
among San men, is a condition known as steatopygia, though it was probably prominent
in both sexes among early modern humans. The body stores fat in the thighs and
buttocks and midsection so it can be used when times are lean, leaving the arms very
skinny. This would have been an indispensable aid in the survival of modern humans in
Africa during the harsh environmental conditions—and there were many such
conditions.

Steatopygia has not been observed among farming people. It is primarily seen today in
two living populations: the San of Africa and the Andamanese of the Andaman Islands
off the eastern coast of India. Plus these two groups share the same peppercorn hair.
However, the Andamanese are very dark, while the San are light-skinned. The
Tasmanians, who formerly lived off the southern coast of Australia until they were
exterminated by the British in the mid 1800s, had the same physical characteristics as the
Andamanese, including the peppercorn hair and dark skin. 

Many of course will say that the two groups were not San-derived because the color of
the skin was much darker. But that is simply because we do not know all there is to
know about skin color or anything else. Common sense should prevail when given the
opportunity. This is a case in point.

You will note that the two San-like groups above were both living on small islands. That
will be seen frequently as we go forward.

With the disruption of their traditional lifestyles, the prevalence of steatopygia among
the San has declined. Access to food is not as unpredictable as it was in previous times.
Hence, there is less need for the body to store so much extra fat.

The Shaman
At the center of the San community was the shaman. If you understand the San and the
role of the shaman in the San’s everyday life, you will understand how the IMPACTS
personality profile developed and how and why it has been both the fuel and the engine
that have driven human society forward since the beginnings of the San.

Who was the shaman and how did he/she come upon the scene? The first San-shaman
may have been the progenitor of homo sapiens. The biggest difference between us and
previous human species is innovation, which I believe came in with the shaman. There is
no evidence of a shaman role in previous human species.

As we have seen, creative-formative-productive energy (CFPE) helps develop the
structure and then serves as the maintenance-improvement energy when the nucleus
emerges and captures it (the CFPE). At this stage in the process of human development,
we have a ‘prokaryotic cell’ with a loosely-defined nucleoid and a circular configuration
of its DNA. The shaman is the DNA and everything revolves around him or her. The
shaman is carrying the information needed for ongoing duplication of the tribe. The
model is exactly the same. 

Bacteria ruled the earth for 2 billion years or so, laying the groundwork for eukaryotic
life forms. The same happened with the San and shaman blueprint—they and their
descendants ‘ruled’ basically by themselves for tens of thousands of years, until the
nucleated structure developed alongside agriculture. Then, just as happened with
bacteria, they were brought inside to provide the primary energy for the structure, both
creative-formative-productive and maintenance-improvement.

You will note that an atom does not exists until the proton captures the electron; in other
words, until the electron becomes ‘semi-stationary’. That is when a proton becomes a
nucleus and not before. Prior to the formation of the atom, a proton is just a proton. With
the capture of the electron, it becomes the nucleus of a structure. That is precisely what
happened with agriculture and the development of the nucleated (hierarchal) society—
the electrons, the San and shaman descendants, were captured and became semi-
stationary. Thus a nucleus could begin forming, and it has been strengthening ever since
as the valence electron-IMPACTS, the San and shaman descendants, have been forming
chains and chains of complex ‘molecules’.

We saw that creative-formative-productive energy is female in nature—like the valence
electron. CFPE is connecting, sharing, innovative, searching, duplicative, and it clusters.
(Star formation is a good example.) Alpha behavior appears to be ubiquitous among
primates, including modern-day humans. But it is conspicuously absent among the San
tribe and always has been. At this particular juncture in human development—120,000
to 200,000 years ago—something out of the ordinary was needed in order to ensure
survival of humans.

In times of deep stress, nature will sometimes provide a virgin birth. It has been
observed in sharks, lizards, and other animals. This allows the species to continue
though of course it is a clone of the mother and does not have any additional genetic
diversity that might be needed to adjust to a changing environment. But it is a stop-gap
measure just to keep things going.

That is what was needed at the beginning of modern humans—a virgin birth of sorts, a
genetic community awash in female creative-formative-productive energy without the
male issues of dominance and aggression. And that is what it was. Should it be
surprising then that the San are so clone-like? After 100,000 years, their behavior is
basically unchanged. But you might say—“I thought innovation came in with the San-
shaman. How does that equate?”

For the San to have survived for such an extended period shows immense innovation.
You don’t have to invent a machine in order to be innovative. Sometimes just finding
ways to survive is enough. San-shaman innovation started from the intense desire to
help others—all other forms of innovation sprang from that goal. That is why so many
of today’s IMPACTS are in health-related professions and why so many great inventors
and discoverers stress that their work should be used for peaceful purposes and to help
mankind.

I believe that the first San-shaman may have been from the autistic spectrum, possibly
an Asperger-syndrome-type profile. Of course during this period there were no
categories of normal and abnormal and no spectrums of any kind. All of that is a fairly
recent invention with the number of categories growing by the day. But as we will
continue to see, that is the way a hierarchal structure operates—it keeps dividing people
instead of looking for commonalities. It is exclusive and not inclusive. During the
beginnings of the San and modern humans, there would have been no stereotypes and
no need for ostracism or shame. We can be confident that the tribe was accepting of all
members. Differences were probably celebrated whereas today homogeneity is the goal.

As the shaman became the center of community life because of his ingenuity and deeply
caring nature, the genes and profile became solidly entrenched within the San
community. The ‘beyond-the-norm’ caring and nurturing attributes and the pulling for
the underdog could actually have developed from the need to deal with the difficulties
and sufferings emanating from autistic family and community members. A scientist on a
recent History Channel show suggested that the mutation that started our human
species probably occurred in a male. He did not say why he thought so. If it was an
‘autistic’ mutation of some kind, that would make sense in that it would be a way to
‘feminize’ the male half of the species; masculinity and the male ego were not needed at
that time. It would also explain why autism is found almost exclusively in males.

Contrary to what the public usually thinks, tremendous advantages for the human race
emanate from the autistic spectrum including the extraordinarily inventive Asperger’s
part. The autistic scale would have no advantage for humans among females but it
would for males. Not only would it have feminized males during a period when
creative-formative-productive energy was desperately needed, but it would also provide
a ‘carrier’ gene for inventiveness in males that had not existed previously.

Essentially it appears that males exhibiting autistic-spectrum traits are detached from
certain aspects of typical maleness or left-brain emphasis. Part of the masculinity
appears to have been stripped away along with much of the male ego. We see this same
lack of ‘maleness’ in varying degrees in IMPACTS men, by and large. That is one reason
why I think IMPACTS males exist close to autism on the continuum of human behavior.
Another is their natural innovation.

So as we mentioned, the San basically became a ‘female’ group. Remember, change
comes from the periphery and what appears to be ‘mutation-type’ behavior can actually
be the blueprint for a new species. I suspect this is how modern humans began their
development—with the ‘flawed’ San-shaman. But those flaws also contained
tremendous assets. It is the yin-yang again—opposites.

The San-shaman was the creative-formative-productive energy of the new human
species and the maintenance-improvement energy as well. And let’s not forget the
strong protective element that comes with CFPE. So innovation was housed
permanently within the shaman, to be called upon as needed—and often that was
during turbulence. As we have seen with star formation, turbulence often ignites ‘new
beginnings’. That is what creative-formative-productive energy (IMPACTS energy) is all
about—new beginnings. We see it in the valence electron bonding with other electron
energy to produce a molecule, in molecular hydrogen gas clouds where stars are
formed, in bacteria that laid the foundation for eukaryotes, in San-shamans who
searched for solutions, and in today’s IMPACTS who innovate and discover.

Seen within this context, the Big Bang was an IMPACTS event—a ‘new-beginnings’
event that resulted from turbulence of some sort. Comets and meteors are ‘new-
beginnings’ energy too. They reside on the periphery and, as we have noted, contain
organic molecules and water—the ‘new-beginnings’ of life. New-beginnings usually
emanate from the periphery.

The value of the shaman to the tribe was more than a search for answers; after all,
anyone can search. It was the passion and commitment that the shaman possessed to
find the answers, and this existed around the clock. The passionate search was a catalyst
for a more expansive view of the world and reality—a view that was constantly evolving
because of the efforts of the shamans. Most importantly, the human environment
revolved around the shamans and consequently demanded innovative, caring, searching
shaman-genes.

Tribal members were very much a part of the shamans’ work and efforts. The early San
tribes had so much of this searching-solution energy that often one-fourth to one-half of
the entire tribe would be shamans—men and women—but usually more men.
Sometimes the solutions would be found—sometimes not. But the problem-solving
mechanism was in place, and everything was built around that. When the SN came
along after agriculture, it would do the same thing—build itself around the problem-
solvers.

In many shamanic societies, if a young person showed special abilities such as
predictions through dreams or more sensitivities to others and nature, or displayed even
small amounts of psychic or artistic ability, he or she would often be chosen for training
under the tutelage of a shaman. Even those who had physical problems such as
migraines, epilepsy, and skin disorders, were often considered to be future shamans.
Why? Probably because shamanic tribes had learned that ‘imperfections’ might be
masking other abilities, that dealing with adversity and turbulence can often be a
positive for a person and the community.

Many of these young people undoubtedly leaned towards the autistic side, a situation
that has a negative inference today. But that is because our modern world is distinctly
left-brained, and its SN leaders are looking for a homogeneous following. They are not
generally inclined to place value on those who are not necessarily contributing to that
homogeneity. The San world focused on finding value in everything in the environment,
and we can be certain that that especially included people.

If you were in control of 100 people and they were working on an auto assembly line,
would you prefer that they be mostly alike or very different? That is our world today—a
production machine. If we are all alike, it makes it a whole lot easier on the SN.

On our straight line signifying the engaged?autistic spectrum with the left end engaged
with the environment and the right end disengaged, the San-shaman would have been
somewhere on the right side. This follows the model of the human brain also where the
right hemisphere is the creative and random yet holistic side. Some shamans would
have been farther to the right than others. This position placed the shaman basically
between two energy fields—everyday reality and a ‘spiritual’ reality where he could go
to search for answers to the problems of individuals and the community. Transformative
ideas did not come from the mind that was tightly engaged with regular reality; they
came from ‘out there’—the spiritual reality. This will be the recurring model as we go
forward, even within fairly recent times such as with Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein, and
others. The discoverers will quite often have only a loose connection with the everyday
world. That is one reason Asperger-profiles can be so inventive—their energy is not
being ‘wasted’ on connections with everyday reality and its endless demands.

The spirit realm has been passed down through the ages, and humans still often think of
the really important answers as coming from a vague ‘spiritual’ reality. But there is no
evidence that any such realm exists except in one’s imagination—which is exactly where
it existed with the shaman. Spirituality has become the abode of the unknown.

We mentioned that the left side of the brain is usually the masculine side and that the
San were mostly female-oriented with a clear diminishment of masculinity. That is why
we see so many IMPACTS men displaying female qualities and why so many of the
great innovators and thinkers through the ages including today look un-masculine. They
are disconnected from much of their masculine side and therefore have more freedom to
think creatively. Creative new-beginnings energy is female energy.

Even the yogis and others who live lives of meditation appear to be trying to let go of
the ego. This may actually mean letting go of the left-brain masculine side and thus
allowing the right brain to ‘nurture’ and create the conditions for realizing potential.
After all, we don’t see many female yogis. Think about Gandhi, Buddha, Martin Luther
King, Jr., many of today’s philosophers, and peacemakers through the ages. What were
they all espousing in one form or another? Giving up the male ego or stereotypical male
behavior—in other words, going all the way back to the roots of modern humans which
just happen to be the San tribe and specifically the San-shaman. Even Jesus and other
religious leaders were essentially San-shamans. Almost everything in the modern world
emanates from the San-shaman profile.

Isaac Newton was only tenuously connected with the everyday world. When he made
his most important discoveries about the universe at ages 22-24, he was on a two-year
break from the university because of a plague epidemic. But isolation was a way of life
for Newton. He did not really have any strong personal relationships with anyone,
except perhaps a lover or two. We now know that Newton was just as interested, or
more, in alchemy as he was in science. Most discoverers are not as estranged from
everyday life as was Newton, but they are usually on the periphery in one way or
another.

It makes sense when you think about it, and when you think about the valence electron.
Change comes to the atom from the periphery because the energy of the nucleus has a
tight control over the electron energy closest to it. It is the same with a powerful human
organization or human paradigm; the strong pull of the core produces a homogeneity
that can cause change to be extremely difficult from within and without. Therefore,
change energy usually has to connect with like-energy on the periphery if the structure
is to change. By the way, so estranged was Newton that he did not even share his
discoveries with the world until 20 years after he made them.

The analogy between the shaman and the valence electron is again very relevant. The
valence electron is semi-engaged with the nucleus. It has the freedom and ‘motivation’
to look for a connection with other electron energy—therefore, restoring balance. It
‘steps outside’ of the energy field in which it is semi-captured and produces a solution—
a molecule. The San-shaman has the same freedom and motivation to find solutions to
the imbalances in his environment and he too will step outside of the predominant
energy field—everyday reality—and return with solutions.

You can see that the developing civilization of the San and shaman is following the
model of the physical world. That is why modern humans have ‘progressed’ as rapidly
as they have—the model is in sync with the universal model though it is obviously not
an exact calibration.


The whole philosophy of the San-shaman was built around these questions in the
shaman’s mind: What needs to be done at this critical moment in order to optimize the
potential of the situation, including the short-term and long-term? What can be done to
make the best of a not-so-great situation? How can I bring wellness? If the valence
electron could ‘think’, it would probably be asking itself the same questions.

The San and shaman did ascribe ‘humanness’ to everything, or at least that is the way
we would phrase it. The mostly right-brained San tribe believed that everything was
alive and interconnected—trees, rocks, people, animals, water, dirt, clouds, stars, the
sun, and everything else, and that all these things had spirits which were active. With
our increasing knowledge of how everything works, including the recent discovery that
snow flakes and rain drops often form around bacteria, their beliefs do not seem so far-
fetched.

Our view is pretty much the opposite of the San’s. Ours is atomized, separated, chopped
into pieces, disconnected, and divided. The wholeness is hard for us to see. But again,
that is the way a left-brained hierarchal structure works. The flow of energy to the top
makes it difficult for the components to see and experience cohesion. Plus the structural-
SN will accrete energy and resources from distant lands if ‘needed’.

This happens all the time in business. A company might have its home office in one city
but ‘pull’ energy and resources from its branches around the country and/or world. That
was the purpose of colonialism and slavery—a diversion of energy and resources to the
‘home office’. All are just forms of accretion, standard operating procedure for a
structure that needs additional energy or resources—or wants them.

Original IMPACTS energy enables the development of a structure and its SN, but the
SN, being predominantly male energy, seeks more power and control, and thus looks for
ways to accrete the energy that will provide it. Either IMPACTS have to come into the
SN-controlled area—immigrate—or the SN has to go out and get them—or both. The
U.S. is a vivid example of both. The SN can develop an insatiable appetite for power and
control, and today that appetite is fueled in the economic arena.

If everything around you was alive and made up of spirits, and you were then able to
please those spirits through good deeds and sacrifices, you had a fighting chance of
living harmoniously with the environment—or so it was believed. You can see how this
could easily morph into gods and goddesses—the sun spirit could become a sun god—
and just as you had to please the sun spirit, you would have to please the sun god.

It is clear how religions would develop where you would be judged ultimately by the
good deeds and actions you performed during your time on earth. Such thinking was
not that far removed from the San but the focus was entirely different. The San were
concerned with the well-being and survival of the tribe or community with little
emphasis on the individual. Religions were mostly concerned with the well-being of the
soul of the individual. But that was just a reflection of the gradual shift in the structure
of humanity from a circular environment to a hierarchal one. SN development meant
that individuals would become more and more responsible for their own lives, the
hierarchal structure preventing them from looking to one another for ‘salvation’. They
would have to find the answers elsewhere.

As the SN solidified its power, one God became the norm—often through force. “Believe
in our God and convert to our God or else.” This was just another tactic in the hierarchal
war on cohesiveness and community waged ostensibly against paganism, which was at
heart a ‘religion’ centered on the earth. Paganism was essentially a holdover from the
San, and therefore female-oriented. You can see that religion as we have come to know it
is pretty much the opposite of paganism just as the SN is the opposite of the San.
Paganism has a negative inference today, a result of thousands of years of demonization
by the SN. When the SN doesn’t like something, it demonizes it rather than trying to
work with it. We can see that clearly on the world stage.

The SN took the earth-centered ‘religion’ and stuck it in the sky—‘out there’ somewhere
far away from the earth and people, making it easier for the SN to exploit both. If the
‘spirits’ were in everything around you, you were never separated from them. If they
were in the sky, they were harder to reach. You can see why Jesus and others said, “God
is everywhere—always with you.” He was talking to the ‘underdogs’ of society who
were receiving little in aid from the SN leadership. That brought God back into people’s
lives where SHE had been originally, before the SN had arrived and changed her to a
HE.

If you are at the top of a hierarchal structure, you don’t want a bunch of gods and
goddesses diverting the attention, energy, and loyalty of your subjects. You want all of
that flowing in a stream in your direction. How better to do so than to actually proclaim
that you are part-god or the offspring of a god, which many ‘leaders’ did.


The San and shaman placed themselves in a subservient position to the power they saw
all around them. They were humbled by their surroundings. The present-day world has
done the opposite—the controlling-SN has put nature in a subservient position. The
serving-others attitude of the San and shaman would be taken advantage of by the
nucleated forces that would arise after the San and shaman had laid the solid foundation
for modern humans.

Interestingly, the San tribe’s ‘reliance’ on the shaman appears to have created an
ongoing need in much of humanity for a force that could be called upon to help in
critical situations—an omnipresent savior, protector, and healer. As the development of
human beings continued, religions would emerge that would try to satisfy these needs,
and SN ‘leaders’ would profess their ability to do the same. Religious and SN leaders
were just trying to take the place of the shaman and wield his power at the same time.
But generally they could not provide the essential elements that made the shaman so
valuable: proximity, availability, ongoing innovation, personal commitment, an
expansive view, and genuine concern and caring—person to person. The attempts to
step in and re-create the shaman-community trusted relationship would invariably meet
with limited success.

These saviors and their religions started emerging after the development of agriculture,
after the structural-nucleus (SN) of society had started taking control. Human beings
were relegated to unequal status as the hierarchal structure broke cohesion among
people and accreted their energy, directing it away from one another. In the San
civilization, everyone had been equal, and people had relied on each other for help and
sustenance. In the new SN world, people were not equal, and they were being
continually divided from others. The world had been turned upside down. That is why
‘saviors’ were needed and welcomed by regular everyday people, but not necessarily by
the SN.

A good example of what has happened around the world is seen in the Kalahari Desert
today where many San have been relegated to basic serfdom on farms. Shamans have
become itinerant, traveling among farms to perform rituals and maintain a sense of
community. But as the San civilization unravels due to modern world encroachment,
fewer shamans are found because the new structural environment will not tolerate any
remnants of the prior power structure. The community revolved around the shamans; it
adopted the beliefs and insights and views of the shamans; shamans carried tremendous
influence. As the San society has become threatened, shamans have become protectors
‘politically’ as they encounter ‘non-egalitarian’ conditions on their travels. (The Mind in
the Cave, p. 142.) In other words, injustice has reared its ugly head, and the shamans are
attempting to combat it.

What they are trying to combat is the accretion of energy by the SN in tandem with its
general disregard for the communal standards that existed before agriculture. But the
shamans will be defeated as the hierarchal structure will methodically squeeze the
protective-communal part of their energy from the ‘fields’ and send it in other
directions—or destroy it. After all, the SN has decreed itself as the protector of
everything and everyone within its own self-defined community. Outside agitators are
not welcome.

This has been a consistent problem for the SN—how to deal with these protective-
communal shamans, or IMPACTS, who also possess many other abilities badly needed
by the SN. The solution for the SN has been to reward, through natural selection, the
skill set desired and to get rid of or ignore the people who do not possess the ‘correct’
traits.

In today’s world most of the political leaders are looking out for the SN and not the
people. Actually ‘the people’ has become a term with negative inferences as the SN
again has demonized anything that smacks of cohesion. Why do you think the Church
of the Middle Ages was so opposed to pagan practices and ‘witches’ and even
midwives? Because they were part of the cohesive elements of society that the hierarchal
structure wanted to dissolve—they were impediments to the flow of energy.

The SN in charge will generally refer to ‘dissenters’ as terrorists if their opposition
reaches a certain strength of expression. You might consider looking at it another way as
you learn more about the two major forces in human society. The ‘terrorists’ are more
often than not trying to find some way to stop continuing abuse and exploitation
committed by the SN against them and their people. The SN believes in the phrase—
“Might makes right.” Their actions are actually very transparent though it is hard for us
to see because, first of all, we get emotionally involved in country and God and all of
that. If we could strip away the emotions, it would be as clear as glass. The second
reason is that we have never looked at society as being composed of two distinct parts,
one part producing and the other accreting—just as it is in the atom. Our problems are
not usually between cultures and people at all—they are mostly generated by one SN
against another as one or both try to attain more power and control.

Look at it this way. Imagine that the nucleus (proton) of the hydrogen atom is happy
with its situation—it is just him and the electron. But the female electron wants to bond
with other electron energy—it wants to ‘partially’ leave the confines of the atom and
reach out. It doesn’t like the structure as it is; it wants to change it. The nucleus calls the
electron a terrorist. Silly? Yes, but what we have in the people world is only a few steps
removed from the hydrogen atom.

Another reason we cannot see what is happening is because of what I mentioned
earlier—we have been bred through natural selection not to see it. We think we are
looking at the world through ‘free-will’ eyes. We are not—we are looking through eyes
that have been naturally selected by the SN over the past 5,000 to 10,000 years. But
nature knows the process at work. That is why she keeps creative-formative-productive
energy—IMPACTS energy—on the periphery in her bag of tricks. She knows that if she
doesn’t, the SN will construct a homogeneity that will destroy it and everything else.

The microcosm of what has been going on around the world is this: To a large extent, the
hierarchal SN has gradually broken up the original creative-formative-productive
energy—that of the San and San-shaman, especially the shaman. The same happened
with the development of the universe. First there was the Big Bang of course, followed
by billions of years of creative-formative-production, energy and matter flying all over
the place. Gradually hierarchal or nucleated structures known as galaxies formed, each
capturing creative-formative-productive energy in the form of stars and star-making
potential. You will note that these galaxies are now moving apart from one another
though some will still collide and merge. SNs are doing much the same on earth, each
gathering as much IMPACTS ‘star-making’ energy as possible.

The SN though does not want only IMPACTS and their innovative energy; it wants
IMPACTS and workers. The original innovative energy of the San-shaman was based on
the needs of people. The SN wants innovation based on its needs which are structural.
The SN just wants to grow—it is male energy. As it does, the bonds holding IMPACTS
energy together are broken even as the IMPACTS try to hold them together. It is the 2nd
Law of Thermodynamics—concentrated energy disperses if enough activation energy
can break the bonds.


Interestingly, we find that many shamans in North America were more secretive than
were San-shamans, and more feared. They were sometimes aligned with secular leaders
also, placing themselves in the political arena. The leader could utilize the ‘spiritual’
powers of the shaman to increase his power, control, and wealth, and the shaman could
obtain protection—theoretically. This is the model in operation by the SN around the
world—‘spiritual shamans and secular shamans’ are enabling the SN to survive and
prosper. Many modern countries also believe that they have God on their side as well.

In the Aztec empire that was based in present-day Mexico, thousands of people would
be lined up to have their hearts cut out and offered to the sun god. Usually these were
prisoners of war, another reason for the chiefs to conquer other lands. This kind of
activity would most likely not have been possible without the help of shamans. After all,
if they did not help the chief, they knew what awaited them.


It is often called the ‘shamanic sickness’, an originating challenge that led many to
become shamans. Shamans and would-be shamans were undoubtedly more sensitive to
their environments than were others so therefore their reactions to events would be
different, illness often being the result. This sickness could have been caused by the
death of a family member, an injury from a wild animal, the rejection of a lover, a
congenital condition—anything. Sometimes this sickness was so harrowing that the
would-be shaman felt that his mission in life was to recover from the illness and then
save others from the same experience. He had been ‘chosen’ to help others by events
beyond his control. 

Every member of the tribe did not have the shaman’s particular combination of traits. If
so, the functioning of the tribe would have been in jeopardy and its survival in doubt.
There were various roles that needed to be filled. The shaman’s role was just the most
prominent. 

One word best describes the attitudes, goals, and actions of the shaman and that word is
transformation. And as we will see the shaman was ready and willing to ‘travel’ far and
wide to aid that transformation. Think about the valence electron—what is the result of
its actions? Transformation of the atom and the environment—the realization of
potential.

The Shamanic Trance
Transformations were always needed: from sickness to health, from drought to rainfall,
from poor hunting to plenty, from dissension to harmony, from the souls of the
departed from this world to the spirit world, from disorganization to coherency, from
imbalance to balance, from hopelessness to optimism, from unusable to usable, from
marginal to the best it could be. In other words, the shaman was often consumed with
the desire and need to optimize the potential of everything around him, and to discover
the means to do so, whatever it took and wherever it led him. To facilitate these
transformations, the shaman would have to transform himself, from a person in
ordinary reality to a seeker of solutions in the spirit world where only he and other
shamans could travel. The San believed in a tiered universe—a world below our
material world and a world above. And you wondered where the concept of heaven and
hell came from. It did not come from the San, but the model did.

How did the shaman enter into a trance? South African author and anthropologist
David Lewis-Williams discusses the process in The Mind in the Cave and in Inside the
Neolithic Mind. Repetitive sound and motion were tools. These could be expressed in
music, chanting, singing, clapping, and drumming. Trances could also be induced
through sensory deprivation, prolonged social isolation in dark places such as a cave
(possibly with flickering lights), sleep deprivation, rapid breathing, seering pain such as
a migraine, fatigue, focused concentration, hyperventilation, intense emotion, stress,
food and water deprivation, even pressure on the eyeballs. The shaman would utilize
those methods that worked best for him.

In some parts of the world, there is evidence that psychoactive plants were used by
shamans to induce trance, but there is no evidence that they were utilized by the San-
shaman. The San people were the first; they were purists, and purists were needed to
build the solid foundation for all of humankind.

According to Lewis-Williams, the stages of a trance are universal; the process works the
same in all human brains depending of course on physiological and psychological
factors. The geometric forms seen first—dots, zigzags, grids, parallel lines, concentric
circles or U-shaped lines, filigrees (meandering lines)—are actually patterns of neurons
firing in the visual cortex. The normal state of the brain has been destabilized—the
person in trance is seeing the brain’s reaction. Let’s note that the journey begins with
destabilization or imbalance or turbulence. Turbulence is seen within the mind of the
shaman and turbulence in the environment is generally the reason for the journey to the
spirit world for solutions.

In the second stage, the brain tries to make sense of what is happening. The geometric
forms morph into objects or animals that have emotional and cultural value to the
person or possibly represent a current concern. In the San-shaman in southern Africa,
the geometric forms might take on the shape of the eland or other animals in the
environment or perhaps the shape of a honeycomb since bees are a symbol of
supernatural power for the San.

In the third stage, the shaman enters the Underworld through a vortex or rotating
tunnel. Objects become real; there he meets up with his animal helpers/guides such as
the eland. The person in trance becomes a participant in and an inhabitant of the
Otherworld rather than a spectator.

Certain animals guarded the power of shamans and humans; a person would have his
own animal guardian. It was believed that man and animal could combine into human-
animal hybrids or actually trade places with each other—transform themselves into the
other—at the spirit level. By doing so, a shaman could better understand how an animal
behaved which could facilitate the hunting of that animal. It was believed that the
shaman could actually lead the hunted animal to the hunter, sometimes by singing. The
southern African San believed that the potency of the eland could be acquired just by
hunting the animal. This potency could then be used in a healing or trance dance. (Inside
the Neolithic Mind, p. 116.)

You can see that the San-shamans were trying to gain strength or potency, and to solve
problems, through study and empathy. That is still the process in use today by
IMPACTS. That is not however the process utilized by the SN; theirs is usually the
opposite.

The trance was also a journey of death and resurrection. The shaman had to suffer and
‘die’ first; then he could travel to the spirit world for solutions. Resurrected, he would
return to earth with the answers. Now we can see why death in many religions and
cultures meant that souls would travel to the spirit world. After all, that is what
happened to the shaman when he ‘died’ during trance. Keep in mind that just about
everything we have in the modern world came from the San-shaman, including religion.

The Ju/’Hoansi (!Kung), a San tribe, describe the energy n!um produced in a trance as a
burning liquid at the base of the spine, which then boils as it travels up the spine,
exploding painfully out of the head. Sounds like the description of a volcano which also
forms around conflicting forces and which can also have positive benefits.

The trance ritual was a social occasion as well. People laughed together, renewed bonds
of friendship, and sang and danced. The women directly influenced the strength of the
healing energy, or n/um, by clapping, dancing, and singing. Plus they also protected the
shaman from falling or hurting himself when he was in a trance.

Please allow me to interject one little tidbit of IMPACTS relevance to today’s world.
Most of the members of your church choir are going to be IMPACTS. Look at what they
are doing—they too are influencing the power of the message of the minister. This is
another instance of the template we use today being formed long ago by the San-
shaman.

The shaman knew that the answers that the tribe needed would not be found in
ordinary reality. Feeling a responsibility to repair the world, he would have to build a
bridge to the compassionate spirit world where his soul would travel for power and
knowledge not found in everyday reality. He was the middleman, the medium, the
facilitator. He was the link between the known and the unknown. In his world, the
shaman looked for connections, underlying meanings, patterns, threads of knowledge—
anything that would aid him in his task. And it was an ongoing search as the demands
were continuous.

Everything had to be studied because the answers could be anywhere. The heavens and
the motions of celestial bodies were studied; so too healing properties of plants and the
meanings of dreams and visions. The quest was spiritual (in another realm), and it was
also rational. The shaman was the first scientist, collecting empirical data and
formulating theories, trying to discern the order that existed in the universe, much as I
and millions of others are trying to do and millions before us have tried to do. If he
could determine this order—if he could determine why the world worked as it did—
then he could help his community. Knowledge was power, and of course it still is. But
knowledge was only part of the solution—it had to be applied in ways that would
benefit his community and its members. That is why today’s IMPACTS are so obsessed
with the application of their ideas. They are seeing the world through San-shaman eyes
and they want to improve it.

San-Shaman Art
What I am trying to do is make a clear case that the San and especially the San-shaman
were the template for modern humans. This template was carried around the world
within their genes and within their shamanic culture, one aspect of which was
storytelling. Storytelling required an excellent memory since there was no writing until
about 5,000 years ago. Dr. Nigel Spivey, in How Art Made the World, relates that among
Aboriginal groups in Australia, storytelling accompanied by music and dance could last
for hours or even days with very little change over hundreds or thousands of years.
Now you can see the true derivation of modern movies.

We can be certain that this was passed down from the San culture as was, in fact, most
of human culture around the world. Where else could it have originated? With a genetic
blueprint and a mechanism for passing along cultural customs, basic duplication was
possible for many thousands of years, even tens of thousands of years. Even today we
are reinventing much that had been developed thousands of years ago but was then lost
as the ascendant SN put a stranglehold on cohesion and innovation. The SN has still
learned very little about how to treat human beings and optimize the potential of both
people and structures.

What we call art was one of the San-shaman’s primary means of delivering the power
and knowledge from the spirit world. The shaman would not have used art for art’s
sake—art always had a function. Art was the bridge between the everyday world and
the Otherworld just as the shaman was. One could not exist without the other; the
shaman and his ‘artistic’ expression were both needed for transformation. What the
shaman experienced in the spirit world often became part of the everyday world. For
example, experiences in the spirit realm during trance became paintings which were in
effect stored energy that could be harnessed by people at any time for generations to
come. Thus, though the paintings were functional to the San, they became the principal
derivation of art as we know it in the modern world.

San tribes over many thousands of years made southern Africa the largest art gallery in
the world, replete with rock art and cave paintings. Not only are the paintings
ubiquitous in southern Africa, they also exhibit a remarkable elegance and sensibility.
There are about 15,000 known San rock art sites in the country of South Africa, with
perhaps 50,000 in southern Africa. The oldest paintings, which were found in Namibia
on rock slabs, are dated from about 27,000 years ago. The next oldest are from the Cave
of Bees in Zimbabwe from about 10,500 years ago. 

San artists in southern Africa especially prized a pigment made from red ochre or
hematite (iron oxide) that produced shiny, sparking images. This pigment was found
high in the Drakensberg Mountains, which would have required a lengthy hike to
obtain. Men or women would heat the ochre and then ground it into a fine powder
whereupon it would be mixed with the blood of a freshly-killed eland but only an eland.
In that way the potency of the eland could be captured within the paintings and then
withdrawn as needed. (The Mind in the Cave, p. 159.)

I have absolutely no doubt that the inevitable development of pottery and ceramics and
later iron and steel emanated from the San’s early use of fire to heat red ochre for
pigmentation. Somewhere along the line the discoveries were made by their
descendants accidentally which is the way that most discoveries are made.

The journey to the Drakensberg Mountains to acquire a special pigment is an example of
what we will see with the San and their descendants around the world—they will travel
long distances or engage in Herculean efforts if a specific material is needed to complete
the task, whatever it may be. This demonstrates a commitment to precision and to
excellence, which the SN would later use to its benefit.

Let’s look briefly at a few examples of this commitment to precision and excellence
found around the world. At Stonehenge about 4,500 years ago, the builders in one phase
of its development transported tremendous tonnage of bluestones from the Preseli Hills
in Wales 240 miles over water and land to the Salisbury Plain in southern England. What
was the purpose of Stonehenge and other such henges found in Europe, especially
present-day Britain? They were probably healing centers or ritual centers. The southern
African San most likely used rock shelters for the same purposes.

At 9,000 feet in the Andes of Peru, a pre-Incan people constructed the city of Machu
Picchu, carrying some stones weighing 200 tons up the mountain, and then placing one
on top of another right on the edge of a precipice. Using no mortar of any kind, the
stones fit together so precisely that even a razor blade can not be inserted in the joints.
How is that possible?

Also in volcanic Peru, the Nazca Desert, which has had no appreciable rainfall for the
last 10,000 years, is home to hundreds of lines hundreds of miles in length, portraying
everything from geometric shapes to humans to birds, spiders, fish, and other animals.
These lines, some of which extended into the Andes Mountains, were constructed by the
Nazca culture from about 200 BCE to 700 CE by removing the top few inches of the
reddish-brown iron oxide (ochre) coated pebbles that cover the desert floor. Many
believe that some of the lines are related to astronomical or astrological concepts. As
early humans spread out around the globe, they sought out environments that ‘were in
their blood’. That is why we see volcanoes and red ochre over and over.

Not only did the Nazca culture produce beautiful pottery, gold jewelry, and intricate
weaving, but 1,000 skulls have been found with holes that strongly suggest that brain
surgery was performed! Why would brain surgery be necessary on such a large scale
2,000 years ago? I suggested earlier that ‘psychiatric’ conditions including Asperger’s
syndrome-autism may intersect with portions of the IMPACTS profile. That does not
mean that all IMPACTS or even a significant percentage are afflicted—just that
anecdotally there appears to be a correlation.

What suffering were the Nazcans hoping to alleviate? Was it autism?

In the country of Bolivia located southeast of Peru, there is a place called Tiawanaco
which was built at over 12,000 feet in the Andes. Pieces of volcanic rock, some weighing
150 tons, were transported from 200 miles away. Pieces of stone weighing 400 tons were
also used, some of which were ‘stapled’ together with some kind of molten metal. It
appears that Tiawanaco may have been constructed as many as 10,000 years ago or
more.

On Pohnpei, a tiny island that is part of Micronesia located in the Pacific about 1,000
miles north of New Guinea, is a city known by the natives as Nan Madol for City of the
Gods. It was constructed around 1,500 years ago on 92 man-made islands covering 11
square miles. About 250 million tons of basalt logs were used, sometimes stacked 40-50
ft high and weighing 50 tons each. Probably no more than 25,000 people lived in Nan
Madol at its height.

Some natives say that the stones were levitated into place while others say a pepper
plant gave the workers extraordinary strength. Archaeologists believe that ropes made
from hibiscus vines were used to pull the stones along on tree trunks before they were
somehow raised into place.

How was such stone work possible in the areas just discussed and other areas around
the world? Let’s not forget that modern humans and even prior human species had
worked extensively with stone in east Africa, especially limestone and volcanic rock.
Certainly the San would have been proficient stonecutters. But what they had that
mattered most was innovation and innovation traveled wherever modern humans
traveled.


You will recall our prior discussion of the shaman’s three-stage trance model. When
anthropologist David Lewis-Williams compared that model with San art, he found all
six entoptic signs in stage one (dots, zigzags, grids, parallel lines, concentric circles or U-
shaped lines, and filigrees [meandering lines]) in their art. The evidence pointed to San-
shamans as the artists.

Lewis-Williams once met an older woman whose father had been a shaman. She
demonstrated how dancers seeking power turned to face the paintings on the wall of the
rock shelter and how some placed their hands on the paintings of eland to gain power.
The paintings were repositories of energy that was available to those in need.

The eland is the most frequently depicted animal in San art and the most revered. Why
would that be the case? The eland held a special position in San life and opened the
power of the spirit world for the shaman. The eland is the largest antelope in the world,
its weight sometimes exceeding one ton. Its meat is very tasty and has the most fat of
any animal in southern Africa, very important to a foraging society. Beautifully athletic
animals, they are sometimes seen jumping over each other. But they are not blessed with
great intelligence, or so it has been said. All of these factors combined to make them the
perfect animal of prey for the San—and a lifesaver for them. Today we might say they
were ‘heaven-sent’. To the San, they were spirit-world-sent.

Other indications of the trance in San art: depictions of nasal bleeding, dancers bending
forward with their hands thrown backward, the use of sticks in each hand to support the
shaman’s body, mythical and ‘hybrid’ animals, and the partial or whole transformation
of the shaman into the therianthrope—part man, part animal. The rainmakers were
drawn: hippos, elephants, and giraffes. There were also underwater images seen during
the trance along with others of animals suspended in air as if flying through the spirit
world. 

Rock shelters, as we mentioned, undoubtedly became places of veneration where bands
of San gathered for so-called aggregations, sharing rituals and initiations, seasonal
celebrations of food abundance perhaps, storytelling related to the history and
mythology of the tribe, and general discussions of life and the exchange of ideas for
dealing with it. In widely separated rock shelters, the paintings would be almost exactly
the same, revealing a close collaboration among the shaman artists along with similar
skills and materials utilized, and of course similar genealogy. This was not a centralized
network but more like a network of independent nodes. This was the blueprint for
human proliferation and emerging civilizations around the world—nodes built around
shamans or their descendants, the IMPACTS. As SNs developed, they would attempt to
draw these nodes under their ‘nuclear’ umbrella. The same is still occurring today.

The San paintings were never considered to be complete as images were painted one on
top of the other over and over again. Thousands of years later, San descendants would
take the same attitude towards the building of their houses—they would build one
house on top of another, sometimes several times.

It appears that cave art found in European caves, art known as Upper Paleolithic (40,000
years ago to 10,000 years ago), is also shamanic in origin. The three-stage model fit the
Upper Paleolithic art just as it did San art of southern Africa. In the Upper Paleolithic in
Europe, the horse and bison appeared to be the sources of potency, whereas the eland
had been for the San. But the Upper Paleolithic art, like the San art, also included images
seen in the third-stage spirit world: therianthropes (part human-part animal), ‘monsters’,
and realistic animals.

In The Mind of the Cave, Lewis-Williams relates how he found many of the same
shamanistic images and motifs in the rock art of the San tribe !Kung (southern Africa),
the rock art of Native Americans, and the cave art of Ice Age Europe. In addition, the
!Kung and other San tribes see stone as a porous membrane separating the spirit world
from the everyday world. By painting on rock and stone, shaman artists were
communicating with the spirit-world and the spirit-world was also communicating with
them. Again, the shaman-artist was acting as the intermediary and facilitator of
communication between the two worlds. He identified the spirits as the real artists,
working through him. 

On Nigel Spivey’s DVD, How Art Made the World, he and David Lewis-Williams
discuss how the European cave paintings from thousands of years ago have a
remarkable resemblance to paintings in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa,
painted just 200 years ago by the San. That is not a coincidence.

Some of the oldest paintings on the planet have been discovered around Oenpelli, a
small settlement in Arnhem Land in northern Australia, dated at 40,000-50,000 years
ago, the first art galleries in the world. Spivey notes in his book How Art Made the
World that the quantity of the San paintings in the Drakensberg Mountains of South
Africa is about the same as that in this particular area of Australia, another clue to the
genealogy of the painters.

The Englishman Baldwin Spencer studied the aborigines around Oenpelli, whom he
called the Kakadu, in the early twentieth century and found them to be obsessed with
painting. The same is true today. They paint the same images over and over, the same
ones found on rocks and hills from thousands of years ago. They appear to be obsessive-
compulsive, a trait we often see among IMPACTS and autistics as well.

The paintings are part of a story; they are only understood within that context. The
symbols trigger memories of the story. The paintings and the storytelling are
accompanied by music and dance. This has been the principal manner of passing down
stories through the generations.


All evidence points to the San as the out-of-Africa group. I cannot possibly imagine who
else it could be. The fact that it is not accepted knowledge shows the power of the SN to
sculpt our view of reality. Just imagine what other parts of reality are being sculpted.
What we see everyday is mostly a product of SN-engineering—a top-down way of
looking at everything which is directly opposite of the way everything develops—from
the bottom up.

The Australian aborigines are direct descendants of the San who left Africa 60,000 to
80,000 years ago or so. That is why their lifestyle and paintings are so similar. If you
have a group of 1,000 golden retrievers which leave Africa and travel to Australia and
they mate only with one another because there are no other dogs anywhere along the
way, then when they arrive in Australia it will still be a pack of nothing but golden
retrievers. And they will still be behaving just as they did when they left Africa.

This is not complicated. It is as clear as the nose on our face. If we showed it to a bunch
of third graders, they would see it immediately. Adults can’t see it because of all the
‘teaching’ that comes between the third grade and adulthood; the paradigm takes over
and tells us what the ‘truth’ is—tells us how and what to think.

It is interesting that the Aboriginal way of combining storytelling, painting, and music
was not practiced during the ancient classical civilizations. As Spivey notes in How Art
Made the World, it was not until the religions understood the power of music combined
with symbols that it was resurrected. That is truly astounding when you think about it.

The SN made a concerted effort to rid society of any vestiges of shamanic behavior. It
wanted the skills of the shaman but not the behavior. As SNs went about their brutal
business of natural selection, they destroyed the dynamic that housed the stories and
pictures and music—they broke the ‘chemical’ bonds that held it all together. But that is
no surprise; that is what hierarchies do. It takes a long time and lots of struggle for the
natural configuration to finally mold itself back into something resembling its former
‘self’.

When atoms formed 380,000 years after the Big Bang, electrons became captured by
protons. Ninety percent or so of the atoms were hydrogen. The remaining atoms were
mostly helium. The universe essentially became dark because, whereas free electrons
scatter light and electromagnetic radiation, atoms absorb it. The dark ages of the
universe were thus electron capture. That is an instructive metaphor for our world today
as well. If IMPACTS are captured and not free to move, the prospects are bleak.

Gradually electrons in hydrogen atoms connected and shared energy, forming
molecules. Some of these gathered into molecular clouds and some of these eventually
formed stars. It was most likely the electromagnetic energy from these stars that re-
ionized the universe—stripping the electrons away from the protons, producing mostly
plasma once more. It appears that the electrons want to get away from the protons and
do their own thing. But the protons will capture them at every opportunity. The same
thing has occurred in human civilization and is continuing today—the SN captures
IMPACTS because without them, it has no supply of energy. And in the universe, if you
do not have a continual supply of energy, you do not exist for long.

Art was a means of communication for early modern humans just as it is today.
Connections were maintained with the spirit world, memories were kept intact, culture
and mythology were transferred to future generations, and sheer enjoyment was
experienced. Art and the shaman were the bridge to another reality, a reality that offered
potentialities that could be meshed with everyday reality. They were the intermediaries
between the real and the possible. It is the same in the world today with the IMPACTS.

What The Shaman Gave Us
The shaman had many roles, but all of them were based on wellness for individuals and
the community. That necessitated being a botanist and a biologist—a scientist, carefully
observing and studying life itself in pursuit of helping aids. Plus, he/she was a singer,
poet, artist, prophet of weather and hunting success, spiritual leader, diviner, sage,
mystic, seer, magician, student of human behavior, storyteller, and guardian-keeper of
the tribal traditions, practices, knowledge, and treasures, including its mythology. He
was also the custodian of the calendar—the tribal time-keeper. Plus he assured that the
souls of the dead traveled to their proper places in the spirit world. Why did he have so
many important roles? Because he was trusted—and capable—and needed.

The female had found a partner that could aid in the survival of the human race—a
shamanic male. This opened up new possibilities for humanity. But just like the
energetic, mobile electron, eventually this bundle of androgynous IMPACTS energy
would be captured.

Shamanic tradition is without dogma, and it is without conventional wisdom. It is
eternally open, searching endlessly for better ways of interpreting and explaining
reality—and improving it. This is the attitude on which the San-shaman profile was
based. This was the San-shaman brain; this was how it functioned. The brain was the
attitude. And now this brain is the IMPACTS brain, the brain that the hierarchal
structure (SN) has been trying to capture within its domain. It is also the brain that the
SN has been trying to split into pieces, and it has succeeded to a large degree. If it had
not succeeded, the civilization we have today would not exist. Instead we would have a
healthier and more peaceful planet with more of a San-like civilization.

It is the same story of accretion once more. That which cannot create its energy must
accrete it. We saw the same scenario when the prokaryotic cell yielded to the eukaryotic
cell. The eukaryotes broke the cohesion of bacteria and brought them in to provide the
energy for the nucleus and its activities. The same has been occurring among humans.
The SN has been breaking up the cohesion of the IMPACTS, both physically and
mentally. Physically, the SN needs IMPACTS in many different places. Mentally, it
doesn’t want the protective-communal-holistic elements—it wants skills and loyalty.

What was the real ingredient in the shaman’s repertoire that enabled healing? Was it
knowledge and power from the spirit-world or were his actions actually a placebo that
worked because of the closeness between the patient, the healer, and the remainder of
the tribe? Surely the confidence, respect, and trust that existed among tribal members
were important elements. But perhaps the most important was the deep transcending
love that the shaman possessed, the love that was the source of the motivation that
drove him to find answers for the sufferings of others. The shaman was willing to travel
to other worlds for power and knowledge at a real risk to himself; some shamans
actually ‘lost’ their mind on these journeys. He was searching for a creative healing
force, and because he had love, he himself became that healing force. There was a lot of
love within the San tribe—for each other, for kin, for the earth, for animals, for life, for
existence. The San saw themselves as part of the uninterrupted chain of life. It all sounds
very Jesus-like, doesn’t it? But that is because all of the questions about life and existence
and the afterlife originated with the San-shaman.

Most of the shamans were probably men, but we need to keep in mind that gender at
that particular time had very little to do with it—the whole tribe was basically female.
The males provided the sperm and did most of the hunting of big animals, but other
than that, there was not much difference between males and females. It was androgyny,
very similar to the IMPACTS today.

The shaman has been portrayed in many different ways, very few of which have been
flattering. But eccentricity is part of the peripheral nature of change. Forces within
homogeneity do not generally change homogeneity. How could they?

The San tribe and San-shaman and the trance gave modern humanity a foundation for
survivability. The San-shaman was the DNA of the modern species. He was the
repository of information that was needed to keep the species going. He was the
duplicative force, the ‘franchisor’ if you will. The shaman was the inventor of the new
and the guardian of the old. It is the same with the IMPACTS today.

The trance and related activities were extremely valuable for the cohesion, and therefore
survival, of the tribe. It also gave us representational art and a spirit world that became
an integral part of religion. But most importantly for our species, the trance embedded
the search for answers in the genome of modern humans through the creation of the
IMPACTS profile. But regretfully, the SN does not take full advantage of all the gifts
offered by the IMPACTS profile. It only takes what it wants and throws the rest to the
periphery—or worse.

Great Leap Forward?
Anthropologists have noted that about 40,000 years ago there was a technological and
cultural explosion in Europe. David Lewis-Williams in The Mind of the Cave says there
was more diversity of raw materials, new tool types, regional tool styles, more
sophisticated hunting strategies, organized settlement patterns, and specialized trade.
There was also extensive body decoration, more elaborate burials, and portable and
parietal artwork. The area had some of the markings of today’s world with apparent
social tensions and social conflicts.

Here we probably see the early beginnings of an SN or hierarchal structure. The ice age
conditions at the time would have limited the mobility of the people and produced the
organized settlement patterns that Lewis-Williams mentioned. If IMPACTS are around
in significant numbers—if they are clustered—and the settlements are fairly permanent,
a male SN structural energy will often arise to ‘manage’ the production of the IMPACTS.

It appears that the modern behavior displayed in the Upper Paleolithic in western
Europe was actually an extension of behavior that started much earlier—75,000 years
ago or more—in Africa.  Modern humans are believed to have left Africa 50,000 to
100,000 years ago. To undertake such an incredible journey and then to survive and
prosper as modern man has done would require a powerful and complete arsenal of life-
sustaining aids, or modern behavior. Personally, I believe that ‘modern’ behavior began
with the ‘first people’, the San, probably about 120,000 to 150,000 years ago.

In Blombos Cave on the southern coast of present-day South Africa, beautiful pearl-like
beads dated from 75,000 years ago have been found. These beads, evidently used as
personal adornment or gifts, were meticulously crafted from the shells of small snails
belonging to the species Nassarius kraussianus. Similar beads found in present-day
Israel and Algeria made from the species Nassarius gibbosulus appear to be about
100,000 years old. Other beads constructed from ostrich eggshells have been found by
Stanley Ambrose in Kenya dating from 43,000 years ago. The same San group we
discussed earlier, the !Kung of Botswana, are still making and exchanging beads as gifts
that are strikingly similar to those mentioned above.

Also in Blombos cave, dated from the same time period, about 40 bone tools and
hundreds of aerodynamically-designed bifacial hunting points were also found. The
carefully-polished endpoints entered the skin of the animal much easier because of
lessened resistance.  This same aerodynamic principle was utilized in the making of the
non-returning boomerang (hunting stick) in other parts of the world and the returning
boomerang in Australia, and many thousands of years later in the invention of the
airplane.

Hearths for cooking were also discovered in the Blombos cave. Red ochre was found
engraved with geometric designs, after the ochre had been precisely scraped and ground
to prepare a nice flat surface for the engravers. These engravings are uncannily similar
to some found recently in 150-year-old art produced by the San of southern Africa. Red
ochre is also used to paint the human body decoratively. Thousands of pieces, some in
crayon form, were found in the cave.

The oldest fossilized human footprints were found in the same geographical area as
Blombos cave, at the Klasies River cave sites, dated at over 100,000 years ago. Also
found were indications that fishermen had used boats many tens of thousands of years
ago.

At three sites in Katanda, the Congo, harpoons carved from bone were found that dated
from 65,000 years ago. The quality, exquisite design, and construction material were
very similar to harpoons found in Europe dated 25,000 years ago. Everything about the
harpoons suggested that what we might call the artistic presentation was just as
important as the function. The work of the San indicates a similar attitude.

The harpoons were found with the remains of large catfish, which suggested that the
fishermen were planning their catches during the spawning season. Many
anthropologists had believed that this behavior came much later.

Finds in Tanzania in the Serengeti National Park are similar to those at Blombos Cave
located hundreds of miles away—ochre pencils, bone artifacts, fish bones, mammal
bones, and ostrich egg shell beads.

Elegant rock paintings from 5,000 years ago on the Tassili plateau in Algeria and the Gilf
Kebir plateau in Egypt are very similar in color and style, again, to recent renderings of
the San of southern Africa. The Algerian and Egyptian paintings depict a green Sahara
with flowing rivers and cattle herders, a far cry from today’s inhospitable environment.
The paintings should be another indication of the proliferation of the San and a clue to
the foundation of the Egyptian civilization.

In rock art around the world—southwestern U.S., Middle East, Brazil, Australia, central
India, Sahara, southern Africa—the paintings or engravings all combine three basic
elements: geometric figures or abstract designs (stage one trance), animals (stage two
and three), and human figures. The animal drawings are the most beautifully
naturalistic and precise whereas human representations are exactly the opposite.
Interestingly, landscape renderings including plants, fruits, and flowers are mostly
absent, but then they are not generally seen in shamanic trances. The art around the
world appears to have been generally shamanistic in nature—depicting what was seen
in journeys to the Otherworld.

The shaman would not have ‘seen’ humans by and large in the spirit world; it was home
to spirit guides and helpers and those were animals. Of course human beings were
important. After all, their health and well-being were the reasons for his work. But in his
trips to the world beyond, animals were the potent force and therefore the object of his
paintings. He painted what he saw.

Another aspect that must be stressed—the techniques, colors, philosophy, and tools
utilized by prehistoric artists were remarkably similar around the world. To what do we
ascribe these similarities? Why would art around the world be so uniform during so-
called prehistoric times? Why would everyone be using the same colorants, one of the
primary ones being ochre, the same techniques, and the same three basic elements of
geometric symbols, animals, and humans?

If we look at the image-making as the production of the same genealogy and culture as
that of the San tribe and San-shaman, it starts to make perfect sense. 

In the next chapter, we will talk about the exodus of modern humans from Africa and
the gradual development of human society from a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a
nucleated structure.

Summary
The San could see the connections between people everywhere and took it for granted.
Why can’t we see that the San and their genes were the ancestors of people around the
globe?

We do not see it because the existing paradigm and the forces that benefit from that
paradigm do not want us to see natural connectivity nor do they want us to see cause
and effect. A hierarchal world or hierarchy of any kind abhors a natural systemic
connectedness unless the hierarchy installs that connectedness itself or can tap into the
power of that connectedness—and control it. A natural connectedness can interfere with
the flow of energy and power to the top, and a hierarchal structure wants no
impediments to that flow. Anything is fine with the hierarchy as long as it enhances its
power and control. Anything less than that is of little value or worse—an obstruction. If
people today start seeing the natural connectedness of each other from long ago, that
could spell problems for a power-control hierarchy.

We saw what happened with the development of the eukaryotic cell; it broke the basic
cohesion of prokaryotic bacteria but retained just enough to where the bacteria
(mitochondria) could cooperate with each other inside the cell. The SN has done exactly
the same thing with the IMPACTS—broken the natural cohesion that existed prior to
agriculture but retained enough to where IMPACTS can work together, create, and
produce. The IMPACTS have become the mitochondria of human society.

The San-shaman was of two minds; he was part of the everyday life of the tribe, but he
also traveled to the Otherworld where animal spirits aided him in his quest for answers
to tribal concerns. When he returned to everyday reality, he brought those answers from
the periphery.

An important element here is travel. IMPACTS, the descendants of the San and San-
shaman, travel in order to find answers, just as the San-shaman did. We will see
IMPACTS replicating practically all of the San and San-shaman’s behavior. IMPACTS
possess the same basic personality profile and worldview of the early San tribe,
including the problem-solving aspects. But some IMPACTS, those closer to the San-
shaman profile, are better problem-solvers than others.

To the San, art was not art the way we think of it—it had a function, just as hunting did.
It aided communication between the spirits and people, united generations around
themes of life, aided in keeping the tribe close-knit, and provided a source of great
pleasure.

The San-shaman and the San people in general exhibited an ego that was other-oriented,
almost selfless. This obviously aided group survival. Individual empowerment was
encouraged; individuality with its expressions of ‘me-importance’ was discouraged
completely and totally. There is a big difference between individual empowerment
during the time of the San when it served the survival of the tribe and what passes for
individual empowerment today where it mostly serves the survival of the hierarchal
structure.

The San and the San-shaman formed the genetic blueprint for modern humans. Almost
everything that exists in our modern culture, from business and trade, to art and music,
to science, philosophy, and religion, originated with the San tribe, most of it with the
San-shaman. The foundation for any success we have had was laid a long time ago. We
are the beneficiaries of their hard work and struggles.

One primary element of today’s world is not based on the San or San-shaman, and that
is politics. That is why politics, like war, seems so unnatural, why it is so adversarial and
conflicted, so dark and divisive—it is not a San invention. Politics and war are mostly
post-agrarian inventions. The closer you get to the real power-control centers, the less
IMPACTS energy you find—except in supportive roles. Politicians have learned that
they have to surround themselves with IMPACTS skill levels if they are to keep their
seats. The political structure might be the hardest structure in the world to change. That
is why a revolution is usually the only thing that does it.

The idea that the San are the progenitors of us all has not been accepted by people
around the world or probably even seriously considered. There can be only one reason
for that—the SN forces have been extremely successful at directing human
consciousness away from obvious, underlying connections among human beings. If you
can divide people, you can pit them one against the other, ensuring a steady supply of
hostility and a need for protection against those ‘bad people’. The Greeks called those
who did not speak the Greek language barbarians, and that included Romans, Persians,
Phoenicians, and Egyptians, all very advanced societies. But everyone else did basically
the same thing. It is a trick that has been around since the emergence of agriculture and
chiefdoms. Today, anyone who objects strenuously to the actions of the SN in foreign
affairs, no matter how credible their grievances, runs the very real risk of being called a
terrorist. Not much changes in the political realm. It runs basically on the same fuel it
always has—fear. This kind of fear comes from the insecurity produced by knowing you
cannot create and produce.

Plato, Socrates, and others of the time believed that only ‘philosophers’ should be
leaders. But philosophers at that time actually meant philosopher-scientists—those who
were steeped in knowledge and looking for more, or basically IMPACTS people. Today
the opposite is the reality. There are not many philosopher-scientists anywhere close to
the halls of power. They are not wanted.

Let’s not discount the role of race in our inability to see from whence we come. Race is
just another version of the people-dividing tricks that the SN has utilized so well over
time. Think of the wars that the U.S. has fought since the conclusion of World War II. Do
you see any white people on the other side? Is that a coincidence?