JustAdventure+ Book Group discussion

I see you have also decided to embark on the sequel to Homonids, Jeff. Since a few of us seem interested in Sawyer, I though I'd make a few comments as I go along.

Well, about a third in, I'm certainly enjoying Humans more than Homonids - there seems to be more interesting scientific tidbits, and the story is certainly more "natural" and exciting!

In fact, the cause of the excitement is even pretty darned realistic as far as us humans are concerned; (Not saying too much for fear of spoilers) and in general it just feels to me (thus far) as if Sawyer has upped his game a notch or two.

Let's hope I remain this enamoured with the rest of the book. :)

I quite liked Hominids, but gave up on Humans a few chapters in. I'll probably get back to it eventually.

Something I do find pretty silly, is Sawyers' apparent assumption that Neanderthals would still follow the exact-same patterns as they did tens of thousands of years ago.
Do humans still do the exact same things they did 40 000 years ago? Of course not; -so why Neanderthals would keep their males and females apart, for instance, based on some dubious evidence from millions of years ago, I cannot imagine.

Also, Sawyer makes many daring statements, such as his theories regarding the big bang and geodynamics and so on.

I think I actually like that he is trowing the cat amongst the pigeons on so many fronts - after all, this is what speculative science-fiction is all about; the testing of ideas and theories.

Another one, for instance, is his assumptions that Neandertals would never have had religions or superstitions, because of a lack of burial rites, yet I have for instance, in a simple Google search (which may not necessarily yield reliable results, of course,) found the following:
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Burials and Ceremony: Some evidence of purposeful burial, perhaps some grave goods, but this is rare and controversial as yet. Some evidence that babies and infants were buried in shallow pits, and others in natural fissures as well as shallow excavated graves. Possible grave goods include bone fragments and stone tools, but these are again somewhat controversial.
Social Strategies: Neanderthals apparently lived in small nuclear families. There is clearly evidence for some amount of social networking, including interaction between family or neighboring groups.

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...so yeah, the evidence is "dubious" either way.

I could perhaps bite on the "lack of ritual and therefore lack of religion and /or superstition" thing, but I'm finding it much harder to accept his idea of a social structure where men and women live apart, pheromones or no pheromones...

My understanding of the modern-day Neanderthal living-arrangement is that it's a relatively recent development. The youngest extant generation is 148, and there's a new generation every ten years, which suggests the system of gendre segregation came into being roughly 1500 years ago. Prior to that I get the impression that there was procreation haphazard like we see in our own world.

Certainly it's an alien concept to us, but human society has seen many changes in family life and child rearing in the last millenium and a half, so I don't find it particularly infeasible. I'll be happy to be proved wrong, though.

If you find Sawyer's cosmological viewpoint daring in Hominids and Humans, Jennifer, I'd suggest you read Calculating God; he truly goes off the deep end in that one. ;)

The Neanderthals not having religion is indeed curious, because it's hard for me to imagine high technology coming about without belief in the intangible. Belief in a god and belief in a dream are related, aren't they? Ah, well.

Liking the book so far, though.

Well, since this is a public forum, and I am certainly not homophobic anyway, I certainly don't want to belabour the subject too much here, (we could perhaps take it further via PM?); since I wouldn't want to offend anyone of homosexual orientation; but be as it may, I find it rather... unlikely that the heterosexual majority of humans would so comfortably live in a homosexual relationship for roughly 29 days of the month, and be quite happy to spend only 4? or less? days out of every odd 30 with their heterosexual mates. I mean - there are many much easier methods of contraception than living apart from your partner almost all the time, and than basically turning gay as a method of contraception..

Hmm, and another thought - I certainly would personally hate it if I had only had, say 2 sons (quite possible in their world, since they believe in restricting their birth rate ) and my sons had to leave at the age of 10 to go and live with their father, and I would hardly ever get to see him anymore; -not to mention that the 2 brothers would also miss one another when the first one leaves 10 years ahead of the other one -in fact, they would never get to know one another, actually. No, I think that Sawyer has a too pat description for a rather cruel system.

Also here we are back to the sexist system of the task of child-rearing falling squarely onto the shoulders of women only. With the men away for most of the month, it of course falls onto the women to feed, change and nurture the children. No daddy joining in and bonding with his kids and seeing them grow up and sharing in the joys of their babyhood.

Nah, I'm sorry, but it doesn't work for me... :(

For what it's worth I agree about the bisexual aspect of their society. It doesn't ring true to me. If sexual orientation is indeed innate, then the whole thing wouldn't work, would it?

The more I read, the less I'm sure what to think.

Yup, if sexual orientation was that easy to switch off and on, then why have homosexuals been prepared to face the ridicule and hatred that they used to have to endure in previous eras, and things like excommunication from the church and all that sort of thing, and even to this day, in certain societies they receive the death penalty... so, as you say; if it were that easy, then, in our reality our sexual orientation would also fall in with society's acceptance, but it doesn't, does it? :/