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Rise and Shine

I’m wondering if it is easier to relate to animals than to our ancestors. Is it easier to get to know the characters in an exciting story, than those of your ancient flesh and blood -especially if there is no actual blood, and likely no flesh being hidden somewhere either? For that matter, what does it mean to know something…? What am I missing here? There is an unsettling notion circulating in the current zeitgeist that I should know that I am more connected with those to whom I owe my genes than to those who might fancy consuming them: to Family, rather than Nature; to people I’ve never met, than to those still watching in the forest as I walk by. To whom, then, do I actually owe allegiance? And why do I even find myself asking…?

Retirement is a funny thing though: it allows me the luxury of delving into these long-buried questions, and rummaging around in sacred mental middens for detritus once considered beyond obvious. But in the grand scheme of things, even with the passage of time, nothing is ever satisfactorily solved, I guess: things reappear, but in a different guise. Our approach is different, the social Weltanschauung changes, and we only get to act in whatever era we’re allotted.

In the old days -the really old days- we were probably only designed for the daytime. You tripped over stuff far too often to hunt effectively at night; you stubbed your toes and swore on moonless nights as you searched for the privy; you were prey, not predator after dark. Sometimes it’s too easy to forget things like that; too easy to flick a switch nowadays. We are not our ancestors…

So why should I even care what my progenitors thought about? Those were different times, and clearly those who mattered somehow waded through them to produce another generation; I expect we still do. I don’t think the need to cope ever ends; we just have to attempt new things, knowing there’s always a tried and true muddle to fall back on if all else fails.

With that in mind, is it too late to question why our ancestors had the nocturnal habits some of us have lately come to eschew? Should it matter if they’re something that many moderns see as a curse, or at the very least, an aberration: a quaint leftover from a time before electric lights were invented? Should we still lock the doors, put the dog out, then go to bed shortly after supper? Should we yearn for their recently discovered two-pronged sleep with its interval of wakefulness in the middle of the night so they could appease their bladders, procreate if they were lucky, and then start each day in time to see the sun just peeking over the horizon? Or, with the exception of the procreatory thing, have I already answered my question?

At any rate, I think they may have offered me an acceptable excuse for a behaviour that used to drive my wife nuts: I am an early to rise, early to bed person. If the invitation to a dinner party required arrival after dark -especially if no dinner was involved- I would usually suggest that she go alone. Of course, maybe that’s why I am what I currently am -alone, that is.

As I was a busy obstetrician at the time, I used to invoke my job and insist that when I wasn’t on call, nights were too hard on my system to recreate in my leisure time. But I knew it was just an excuse, and so did she, so I have spent my retirement -all of the hours between 5:30 A.M. and 9 P.M.- in search of answers more credible than simply suggesting that I am antisocial, or worse, just a boring person.

Finally, though, I think I may have stumbled upon something. Let me set the stage. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, we Homo sapiens (I use the latter species designation with some lingering doubts) contain around 1-4% of the genomes of non-African modern humans, depending on what region of the world our particular ancestors come from. And those humans who lived about 40,000 years ago have been found to have up to 6-9% Neanderthal DNA. I blush to think how that happened, but there you have it.

And now, in some recent research published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, ‘researchers compared DNA from today’s humans and DNA from Neanderthal fossils. In both groups, they found some of the same genetic variants involved with the circadian rhythm. And they realized that modern humans who carry these variants also reported being early risers’.[i] They had faster, more flexible internal body clocks, which allowed them to adjust more easily to annual changes in daylight… Yesss!

Even in the dead of an early prairie winter morning, my mother always seemed to have breakfast on the table by the time I had dressed and my father had finished in the bathroom; I now figure she must have had particularly rich genome. My father, however, lingered in the tub unseemingly long for a wannabe early riser. Of course, he had his own genes to worry about, whereas I am a mélange and have few loyalties other than to my stomach -and my bladder nowadays, of course.

But in the halcyon days of my Winnipeg youth, I don’t think we paid as much attention to the niceties of Time as we do now. I mean, only a few families in my neighbourhood had TVs in the early 1950ies, so when the winter sun disappeared there wasn’t much for a kid to do except snuggle under the covers with a flashlight and a good comic book; perhaps lifelong habits are formed by that kind of thing.  

But what worries me nowadays is the ‘othering’ involved in the way we’ve come to view the idea of Neanderthal genes. It’s as if we modern sapiens feared we had trespassed and crossed a line somewhere long ago, before we decided that it might be considered creepy to do so; we consider it forbidden because they weren’t actually us -although the lines were perhaps not as recognizable in the dark when the Neanderthals were already in bed. I imagine that the Pleistocene was a rough time for both of our two species, though: everything was prey, predator, or uncertain. You dealt with what you found; you didn’t even try to decide in the dark -not if it was warm and didn’t bite…

[i] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/neanderthal-dna-may-help-explain-why-some-people-are-early-risers-180983438

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