The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

As mentioned above, in apes birthing produces no physiological problems, and
chimp and gorilla babies pass through the birth canal with room to spare. Lucy’s wellpreserved
pelvis provides us with a picture of australopithecine birthing arrangements.
As is the case with humans, Lucy’s babies would have had to turn their heads sideways
to pass through because the opening is oval. Modern babies, however, have a much
tighter squeeze because the anterior (front) of the birth canal is rounder in shape. The
bones of the baby’s cranium are still soft and not yet knit together which allows for
some squashing of the head without damage, but the whole operation is distinctly
risky, requiring midwifery assistance more often than not to turn the baby’s head. After
birth the baby’s cranial bones remain soft and malleable. The ballooning brain is able,
therefore, to expand the cranium while still in a plastic state into its characteristic domed
shape.
The evidence suggests that erectus mothers were also narrow-hipped and erectus
children would have had to be born at a very early ontological stage, as modern infants
are, and would have necessitated intensive parental care, the mothers requiring a highly
nutritious diet in order to sustain the milk flow demanded by their helpless but rapidly
growing babies. The assumption has to be that the mothers were not left to fend and
forage for themselves but were supported by co-operative social groups, if not actually
within tight-knit family units. Having even two small human children is a handful in a
modern society; living on the savannah definitely called for support, starting with skilled
midwives!
I have already discussed the significance for the development of human faculties
of a prolonged period of gestation and rapid brain growth in the first year of life. The
extension of childhood has profound implications for imitation, learning and the
incarnation of the soul-spirit element into the human being. It also makes significant
practical demands on the parents, the social group and their way of life. Even if
erectus life-histories, the key phases of ontological development, were not identical to
those of modern humans, they must have been far closer to ours than to those of the
australopithecine or even Homo habilis. Nevertheless a recent survey of the evidence by
Karen Rosenberg and Wenda Trevathan suggests that assisted birth has probably been
necessary since uprightness evolved. 20
The Teachers of Humanity
Though many of the regions into which Homo erectus migrated resembled the
open savannahs of the African Rift, some were significantly different. The temperate
climate of the Cape or the Mediterranean and Near East, and the cool uplands and more
arid parts of North Africa and Asia would have provided new challenges. Perhaps most
radically different were the tropical forests of the Indonesian Archipelago. How did the
erectus people deal with these challenges?
First, one has to emphasize the ability to imitate and learn. The fossil record is mostly
silent apart from the stone flakes and hand-axes, and the occasional suggestion of a pile of
stones that may have been the base of a wind break or hut-like structure. Here and there are
hints of hearths. Otherwise we must try to form a picture of the way erectus people may have
responded to the situation, using what comparisons we can. With caution, though without
being too literal and parsimonious, I feel it is possible to go beyond the limits of the material
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20
See Karen Rosenberg and Wenda Trevathan, “The Evolution of Human Birth,” in Scientific
American, November 2001.
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