Sally Tarrant Cobb did research in neural synaptic brain functioning in the 1970's.  She published seminal work depicting dendrite proliferation processes.  Spinule mechanisms.  Sally is also a creative applier of scientific principles to environmental context and historical implications.   Life may be a grand collage of biochemistry, but all that stuff does something.  Here is her image of what all that increase in brain connectedness did for our forebares and us.

Mitochondrial Eve

by  Sally Tarrant Cobb © (1994)           

 

              She was slow. Slow... irritating... lagging behind. Hard to rouse in the morning, lost in a fog. When the others walked off to find berries, she dreamed she was going along, envisioning the berries, smelling their sweetness. But except for an occasional tremor, her sleeping body remained quiet.
                                    Only her eyes were awake.
            A nudge from her mother awakened her still body. The dreaming stopped. The feeding troop was near and the strange child ran to regain her place.
            Now she moved easily, long limbs stretching for bright fruits, precise fingers plucking at fine seeds. Her dark body led and followed, guided by glance and gesture, like the others, at one with her world.
                                    A sudden need to listen brought a stillness.
            The stillness caused her to drop to the ground, limp and motionless, useless, dreaming again.  The attentions of her family enabled her to survive. In time, the whole troop learned to accommodate her strangeness, as she sat immobile ... mute in wide-eyed dreaming. Their interdependent ways assured that she was not abandoned, imprisoned in her dream/time.
            So, with their help she grew to a woman. When she bore children, their touch and their needs were a source of dream-stopping and she cared for them well. But some of her seemingly healthy children grew to be the same slow starters, different, handicapped. No matter, she rejoiced in their company and would sit silently dreaming with them, arms and legs immobile, until physically roused to a task.
            One of her progeny discovered that she could arrest the awake/ dreaming. Her stillness in the dream time was not as complete as that of others. At times her twitching hands would move in concert with her awake/dream. The movements caused the dreaming to stop.
            Over time, she learned to start the movements at will, giving her some measure of control over the handicap. She was not alone in her discovery. The ability to self-stop awake/dreaming was lying quiet, waiting to be learned.
            Despite their increasing competence, the awake/dreamers were the least valuable members of the troop and, as such, many were cast off to other communities. The handicap spread through surrounding populations. But in these different environments the women did surprisingly well. For despite their disorder, they were useful females, fertile and healthy, unusually skilled at nurturing, with a special bond to their children who suffered from awake/dreaming.

            Generations of living with the affliction in different environments brought many changes. Out of necessity, most sufferers learned to self-stop their dreams. They managed to combine their daily activities with awake/dreaming, although to normal troop members they still appeared strange, not quite "all there".
            One member of the fortieth or fiftieth generation became particularly adept at controlling her dreams. At times she was able to select them at will. She was lively and energetic, and bore many children, successfully raising them to adulthood.
            A novel amusement a among her descendants who received the handicap. They found the small sounds and gestures that accompanied their awake/dreaming, would at times, engender the same awake/dream in another. This only happened when they had shared the same experience. But when it did, the sisters or brothers would smile and show that they too were seeing the spirits of the hunt, the ghosts of the non-present. And they enjoyed dreaming together, the feeling of oneness was welcome for they had been different for a long time now.
            Some began to play with their dreams, to start them, stop them, change them, turn them upside down. Elaborate on them, add to them, take away parts, creating ghosts of events that had not even occurred!
            These playful activities, eventually developed in many places, exposed another disadvantage of the handicap. In experiencing different environments, and in playing with their dreams, they were changing their internal environments considerably.
            In the days before the handicap, their growing, changeable brains had reflected, in the main, communal experiences. But now, playing with the awake/dreams, changing them, distorting them from a faithful reflection of the environment, was dangerous. These novel dreams were embedded in their tissue, creating different perspectives of the world.
            The awake/dreamers were in danger of becoming even more isolated, inhabitants of different      personal worlds. The old ways that had enabled their community were no longer sufficient. Without a means to communicate their diversity, the awake/dreamers could not survive.

            The women persisted. It was necessary to achieve the feeling of oneness that accompanied their awake/dreaming together. They devised new gestures of touch and sound, trying to engage each other in their separate dreams. Striving to make parts of their awake/dreams explicit enough to light up another's eyes in recognition. Shared dreams became common. But shared dreams also brought shared errors. The ability to manipulate awake/dreams created visions not seen. Some visions were felt to have substance. Communal dreaming of these visions, these ghosts, these spirits, these artifacts of perception, tended to solidify the errors. The substantiation could take on a life of its own, accruing place and powers, mysterious and frightening.
            I say the women persisted, because up until now, the boy children, once they had matured to adulthood and learned to control their awake/dreaming, preferred to act in the old ways, living in the real world. They were inclined to choose mates unaffected by the awake/dreaming disorder.
            But the handicapped women had by now gained a reputation for their ability to protect and raise their children. On occasion, the whole troop would benefit from their strange behavior. Water would be collected with no dry season in sight. Dangerous encounters avoided by an unusual choice of paths. Novel objects found hidden beneath layers of wood or stone.
            The reproductive success of the awake/dreaming women resulted in greater access to the tribal males and the bearers of the affliction multiplied again, producing more and more awake/dreamers.
            In time the males, often silent victims themselves, became comfortable with the disabilities of their mates. At first privately and reluctantly, seduced by, but fearful of the intimacy of awake/dreaming together, they began to use their powers.
            Some found it enjoyable to be not wholly engaged in the environmental moment. Learning to attend to their awake/dreams created an awareness of self that was useful. Those who gave freedom to their awake/dreams began to reap the benefits.  They dreamed of a hunt, a tool, a battle, and inwardly changed the actions, and dreamed the effects.
                            Finally, they allowed their awake/dreams to change their behavior.
            Some found use for even the shared errors. The need of the awake/dreamers to escape diversity was strong. Restorative shared errors became a powerful cohesive force, a basis for community action.
            Observing the improved skills of the awake/dreamers, others wished to learn, and the need to display and comprehend the awake/dreams was felt strongly. Like the women before them , the men struggled to find ways to make their dreams explicit, to somehow reveal these inward sights.
            The normal males noticed the successes too, but lacked the ability to awake/dream. They found they now lived in a different world, an unbridgeable gap separated them from the awake/dreamers. They had to remain imprisoned in the moment, responding to the environment in a stepwise fashion. Not understanding their loss, they remained content, at one with their fellows and their world.
            And the awake/dreamers could still enjoy this feeling. For when the hunts would begin, and the battles begin, the isolating awake/dreaming would stop, and the men moved as one, together in the old way.

So here we are, Eve's children, 10,000 generations later. Sitting quietly, arms and legs immobile, changing our awake/dreams, adding to them, subtracting from them, organizing and ordering them. 200,000 years of creating inward sights and errors, striving with sound and gesture to make them explicit. Sharing our thoughts, all of us, awake/dreaming together.

Sally Tarrant Cobb

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