Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (38 page)

What would it feel like from the inside if you were a member of a species that had, through natural selection, made arrangements for genetic drift? You would enjoy living in small groups. You would hate crowds. For accidents of sampling to work on an appropriate time scale, a group might have to comprise no more than one hundred or two hundred individuals, and—according to Wright—would probably be best with only a few dozen members. Groups of six to eight or fewer tend to be unstable; they’re too vulnerable to being wiped out by predators or flood or disease, a different example of accidents of sampling. You would conceive a passionate loyalty to the group, something like intense family feeling, superpatriotism, chauvinism, ethnocentrism. (Especially because most members of your group are close relatives, you might when necessary be moved to something like altruistic or even heroic actions on their behalf.) You would also need to avoid any merger of your group with another, because much bigger groups would inhibit accidents of sampling. So it would be helpful if you conceived a passionate hostility to other groups, a vivid sense of their deficiencies, something like xenophobia or jingoism.

Those other groups are, of course, composed of individuals of the same species as you. They look almost exactly like you. To fan the flames of xenophobia, you must examine them with minute attention and exaggerate whatever differences can be discerned, always to their
disadvantage. They have slightly different heredities and slightly different diets, so they don’t smell quite the same as you and yours. If your olfactory powers are sufficiently finely tuned, maybe their scents will render them grotesque, hateful, odious.

It would be even better if you could
establish
some distinctions. If differences in dress and language are unavailable—having not yet been invented, for example—differences in behavior, posture, or vocalizations would be helpful. Anything that can distinguish your group from the others could work to keep hatreds high and resist merger. Other groups, conveniently, are similarly disposed. These nonhereditary differences between one group and another—even arbitrary differences, only distantly connected with any adaptive advantage, but serving to preserve group independence and coherence—are called, collectively, culture. At a rudimentary level many animals have it.
¹⁹
Cultural diversity helps preserve genetic drift.

At the same time, avoiding too much inbreeding and guaranteeing at least occasional outbreeding are essential. So you would feel a revulsion about incest, or at least about the most consanguineous matings. Wherever possible, this revulsion would be reinforced by your copying the attitudes of your fellows, by culture. There would be an incest taboo (relaxed perhaps if the population is reduced to only a few survivors). Outbreeding might be officially proscribed—perhaps, among humans, by young men attacking males from other groups who, even accidentally, wander into the neighborhood, or by fathers mourning, as if dead, daughters who run off with foreigners. But despite the pervasive ethnocentrism and xenophobia, now and then you would find members of other, hostile groups unaccountably attractive. Surreptitious matings would occur. (This is, more or less, the theme of
Romeo and Juliet
, Rudolph Valentino’s
The Sheik
, and a vast industry of books on romance, targeted at women.)

A promising survival strategy, in short, is this: Break up into small groups, encourage ethnocentrism and xenophobia, and succumb to the occasional sexual temptations provided by the sons and daughters of enemy clans. Devise your own culture: The more your species is capable of learned behavior, the greater the differences that can be established between one group and another. Behavioral differences eventually lead to genetic differences, and vice versa. Incomplete isolation—just the right mix of aloofness and sexual abandon with other
groups—generates diversity. And diversity is the raw material on which selection operates.

There seems to be, then, a reason—at the heart of population genetics and evolution—for small semi-isolated groups as the substructure of larger populations, for xenophobia, ethnocentrism, territoriality, incest avoidance, occasional outbreeding, and migration away from the most successful communities. These mechanisms work especially for those species that find themselves in a swiftly changing environment, biologically or physically. Archaebacteria, ants, and horseshoe crabs have not much been in this category; birds and mammals have. So next time you hear a raving demagogue counseling hatred for other, slightly different groups of humans, for a moment at least see if you can understand his problem: He is heeding an ancient call that—however dangerous, obsolete, and maladaptive it may be today—once benefitted our species.

A solution has been found to the problem of how to arrange for gene frequencies to respond quickly to a volatile, changing environment. And the solution seems eerily familiar. After a journey into an abstract world of population genetics and gene frequencies, we turn a corner and suddenly find ourselves gazing at something that looks very much like … ourselves.

GANGLAND

T
he Big Guy, he gets respect He walks by, folks bow. Stick out their hands. Most times, hell touch you. Hands stretch out, Big Guy touch ’em, one after the other. You feel real good. He looks you in the eye and it’s like, you gotta do what he wants. I can’t stand it when he looks at me like that It makes me feel so good, I gotta look down at my feet

He’s crazy about me. The Big Guy, he’d as soon fuck me as look at me. Truth is, he’ll fuck anything that moves. With him you don’t try “I’m not in the mood” or “I got a headache”—all that gets you is hurt and he still gets what he wants. Forget that. You have to give in anyway. So whatever he’s in the mood for, you’re in the mood for. Lucky I really like it with the Big Guy. But who wouldn’t? Anyway, he don’t care what I do on my own time, long as I don’t get knocked up
.

A lot of the guys, they don’t get much respect. They’re not much fun to make it with. You got to do it anyway, though. They give you the look and you don’t come running, they beat the shit out of you. Those guys, all they’re interested in is one thing. One time, when the Big Guy is away, I won’t do it and this guy, he picks up a big rock. Huge. He means business, so I have to let him. They’re all like that You don’t come across, they get real pissed off. Those little guys, they think they’re so big. They think they’re hot stuff. They think they can have anyone they like
.

When the Big Guy’s around, sometimes he lets ’em and sometimes he don’t. When he’s away on a trip, or when his back is turned, we give the boys a little if we like ’em. You never know, one of ’em might be high rank some day. One of ’em might be the new Big Guy some day. But when the Big Guy’s watching, if he don’t want us to, we don’t even look at the boys. We know what to do. We know our place
.

Guys take a lot of stroking. Sometimes what they need is petting or kissing. Sometimes they need more. After, they’re not so grumpy. You come across right away, the guys are nice to you, know what I mean?
Before I had my kid, I make it with ten, fifteen guys, one after the other. They can’t wait to get on me
.

The Big Guy, sometimes when he gets outta hand, all I gotta do is stroke him a little, and it’s like he can’t remember what was getting him so hot and bothered. The Big Guy, he’s real nice to me. One time my kid’s watching us in the act and tries to stop us. He climb on, hitting Big Guy with his little fists. Big Guy, he don’t touch him. He think it’s funny. He don’t hurt my kid. He don’t hurt me
.

Buddy and Squint, they get lots of respect too. Not as much as Big Guy, but almost. Squint’s the Big Guy’s brother. He’s got a thing for me, too. Squint takes the patrols out at night, far away, near the end of our turf. There’s a gang that hangs out on the other side. They’re the Strangers. Sometimes they raid us. We don’t like Strangers. Our guys see Strangers, they go crazy. Strangers come here, they get what they deserve. We catch ’em, we tear ’em apart. Our patrols, they’re out there protecting us and our kids. From Strangers
.

One time everybody was tense. You could smell trouble. Me and the kid, we was scared. We was hugging each other real tight. Some Strangers come tearing through. Looking for sex and trouble. Rampage. Well, the Big Guy, he give ’em trouble. He come down on ’em hard. Before Buddy and Squint could help or anything, Big Guy stomp ’em real good. Those Strangers, they run away fast. They stay a little longer, they’d be dead. Best part was, even before the dust settled, they come ’round—Big Guy and Buddy and Squint—to me and the kid and all the others. They make sure we know everything’s all right. Big Guy put his hand on my shoulder. He touch my cheek. He gimme a kiss. Big Guy, he’s all right
.

——

I like a little ass, same as the next guy. But what I really like is combat. You’re out on patrol, you gotta be real quiet. You gotta be ready for action. Strangers could be anywhere. Anything could happen at night. Night’s the most exciting.

We catch some Strangers, they’ve had it. One time Squint come on a Stranger mother holding her kid. He take the little brat by a leg and smash its head on the rocks. That’ll teach Strangers to come around. Days later I seen her again, real sad, carrying that dead baby like it’s still alive. But that’s the way it goes. Strangers mess with our turf, they get what’s coming.

Big Guy, he don’t go out on patrols no more. In the old days, before Big Guy take over, it’d be him and me and Squint on patrol. That was great. Those Strangers, they come over here to steal our turf and fuck our females. Some of ours, the younger ones, they don’t mind so much—they got a thing about quickies with Strangers. But us guys, we mind. Strangers, they ain’t like us. We don’t watch our step, they pick us off one by one.

They’re fast and they’re quiet. When we can’t catch ’em, sometimes we throw rocks. I’m real good with rocks. I get high up somewhere and they don’t see me, I cripple ’em with rocks, I break their ass. I hurt ’em and they can’t hurt back. Them Strangers, they better not mess with me.

You gotta be careful, though. Old Boss, the boss before Big Guy, he was off chasing Strangers once. Soon as he was gone, some of the guys take his girlfriend—you know, the one he went off on a honeymoon with. They take her into the bushes. They try to cop a fuck on the side. She don’t mind. Boss come back, he don’t get so much respect like before. You really like a female, it gets you into trouble. Especially if you want to be a boss. It turn out OK for him, though. After Big Guy take over, Old Boss, he just spend all his days fucking. His hair’s gray now, but he’s happy.

Sometimes one of those Stranger females, she sashays over here, all young and sassy, looking for a little action—a real piece of ass, you know? Myself, I’d rather fuck ’em than kill ’em. But some of the guys, they get carried away. We don’t like Strangers here. Still, sometimes she’ll suck up to one of the guys and before you know it he sorta ease her into the gang.

In our gang everybody knows their place. Females especially. They do what they’re told. Or else. Sometimes they make believe like they don’t want it, but I know what they really want. Sometimes you gotta slap ’em around a little. Mostly you give ’em a look and right away, they’re shaking their ass, they got that smile, their eyes are staring, they’re moaning. Most of the time they beg for it.

Us guys, we don’t want the Big Guy to get nervous. We show respect. So we let him climb all over us. It’s not real; it’s just for show. We suck up to the Big Guy. I’m high up, but on this I’m like the rest. He’s my boss. If some tight-assed young guy don’t wanna show respect, he better change his mind or he don’t last long.