Almost Human

From Baboons to the Borg. My 12 year old daughter was home sick from school today and she wanted to watch one of the Dvd's in our 7 year collection of Star Trek: The next generation from 90s tv.

She chose the Borg attacking earth and destroying part of the Federation fleet. Captain Piccard is turned into a Borg called Lucutious and then is recaptured by his First Officer and turned back into a human. As he emerges from hive consciousness he is asked how he is and he says, "Almost Human".

This took me back to an excellent book I read while I was studying Anthropology at the university called "Almost Human" about a study done in Africa about Baboons.

What the researcher couldn't figure out is why adolescent teenage type male baboons would sacrifice their lives for the good of the group. She soon realized that this was similar to human tribal societies.

The Baboon group of families she studied had an Alpha male and alpha female surrounded by many beta males and beta females. Most of the time the stayed safe from lions and other predators in a large tree. But certain times of the year they had to move as a group. And this was the traveling configuration of the group. In the center of the group was the Alpha male and alpha female surrounded by all the beta females with babies. Circled around this core group were the beta males and then finally circling around the total group were the young male scouts who would be the first to be picked off by lions and other predators.

The female researcher couldn't figure out why these young adolescent teenage type of males regularly sacrificed their lives for there extended family group being the first to be killed in any attack on the group.

She finally realized that much like human tribal society the young males knew that
if they weren't killed and eaten they would be moved up the ranking system and be allowed to mate with better and better females. And one day they might become one of the Beta males in the inner circle of the Alpha male and female and possibly even become the alpha male. So much like ancient and some present day tribal societies the baboons function on a military level much like tribal and even more socially developed and organized societies of millions and billions of people.