In my last book ("I, You, and All of Us") I propose to return to the natural unity of every human society, the basic family. For I have recognized that all life in our universe is energetically quantized. This means that also the human groups, which are nothing else than "naturally organized ener-gy", must also follow this pattern of the quantum spectrum. The natural quantum levels of a human world community are presented in the following table.

Only this natural hierarchy of the individual levels of our world community provides us with a real possibility to create a family-participative democracy, in which not the impossible is attempted (namely, to consider billions of individual voices), but the rule is accepted, which is quite often observed in nature, that a representative of a certain group may and can represent this whole group on the correspondingly higher levels of the demographic hierarchy. This rule is caused by the natural limitation that each of us can actively accompany at most 140-150 other people through the whole life. For more active "humanity" our biological "recognition capacity" is not sufficient. In the practical example (from my book) I explain this a little more precisely:
"The democratically elected administrator (leader) of a higher subgroup still personally knows the administrators of all 140 subgroups two levels lower in the entire organization of the Worldwide Human Community. For example, the administrator of a city knows personally all the leaders of the 140 clans living in his city. This enables him to solve all the daily problems, as well as the future plans of this city, together with all the inhabitants. This, in turn, is possible because the leaders of the clans, in turn, already personally know the representatives of all the base families in each individual clan. In a similar way, the head of a world administration, whatever we want to imagine as such, knows the leaders of all 140 (today a little more) nations of the whole world. Only then, I am convinced, can we hope for a just and productive cooperation of the entire world community. And only such just cooperation, based on the real trust, can really end the bloodstains of history and secure the future of several generations to come."

One of my practical suggestions on how we need to reorganize the world is that no more private ownership of any piece of the earth can be allowed. The Earth (the land, the waters, the atmosphere) belongs to all of us and must be managed by a Global World Administration. It is obligated, among other things, to provide each basic family (of about 12 people in 3 or 4 generations) with 1 acre of land for a lifetime lease (free of charge, of course). In the book cited before, I presented the following sketch of such a housing complex of a base family.

The whole plant has an area of one hectare (i.e. 10,000 m²). So each box of the sketch corresponds to an area of 100 m². The "blocks" A are houses for the individual generations, or otherwise divided subgroups of the base family. B is meant as a house of meetings for all family members and for guests, and W as an economic house for furnishings that can be shared by all (and thus would have to be procured only once for the 12 people). The remaining yellow areas are free to the creativity and dreams of the inhabitants.

Recently I drew a 3D image of such a facility that presents its advantages even more clearly.

[For larger image click here]

However, such a base family (called BaFa for short) does not live alone, of course. Ideally, the other members of the extended family of our example Basis family (the siblings of the grandparents, the parents, the - when the time comes - adult children with their own Basis families) live in the neighboring areas. It is estimated that there will always be about 12 base families. If we now imagine the new 1-Ha home as a leaf of an abstract tree, a settlement for such a large family can look like a branch with twelve leaves (which include the blue ellipse on the upper left or also on the lower right). The whole tree symbolizes then the dwelling place of a clan (with statistically 1728 persons).

In the red ellipse you can imagine all the facilities that the whole clan wants or needs to share. Such a residential complex of a clan thus occupies a land area of about 2 km².

We dream now only one stage further. A district of a "city" of the future, housing 11 other clans, could look like the one shown below.

A district, with about 21 thousand people, occupies the land area of about 25 km². The gardens, the sports fields, the playgrounds for children, and still miscellaneous, can be quite nicely embedded in the nature by appropriate forestation. And still, one needs at most a bicycle to reach the (professional, cultural, spiritual, or administrative) district facilities.

In order not to let the fantasy end only as utopia, here still some numbers, which are to prove that also so rela-tiv densely populated country, like Germany, could permit itself such a dream, if one only dares to convert the fantasy into the reality.

1 million people means (statistically) about 580 clans = 48 districts = 4 cities. A branch of our abstract tree (1 clan with 1728 inhabitants) needs an area of about 2 km². This results in about 1200 km² for 1 million inhabitants. Or: 25 km² / 1 district; 300 km² / 1 city; 3600 km² / 1 big city; 44.000 km² / 1 statistical nation (36 million inhabitants); or in the end about 100.000 km² / 80 million inhabitants in Germany.

Germany's area is 357000 km². Of this are: Green areas (2,2%) 7.686 km² ; Agriculture (53,5%) 191.119 km² ; Forestry (29,5%) 105.432 km² ; Water areas (1,9%) 6.749 km² ; Built-up areas (8%) 28.500 km². For Germany, the official land statistics show 51,693 km² of land for settlement and transport at the end of 2020; of this, about 43.7% was sealed.

If we would start right away to convert the agricultural areas, which are misused to produce the edibles that we throw away every day or misuse in another form, and also the highways, the fallow industrial areas and other unused areas, into our "green" settlements, our grandchildren could already have completely different childhoods, much more closely tied to nature, than the generation of my children still experienced.

By the way, a basic family could still live quite comfortably on an area two times smaller. In regions of the world that are more densely populated than ours in Europe, other solutions could be devised. But the earth as a whole must be used quite differently than it has been up to now. But we must never lose sight of one thing: the basic family and the extended family must always be at the forefront of our thoughts and activities. According to the motto: Make Family great again!

The most important book I read after my "summer series" is by Samira El Ouassil and Friedemann Karig and has the self-explanatory title "Erzählende Affen" and the equally clear subtitle "Mythen, Lügen, Utopien; Wie Geschichten unser Leben bestimmen"; (Ullstein, 2021).

It's another groundbreaking book, like the last one I cited here (about the feelings of Neanderthals). Although the book once again traditionally places us in a row with apes (in the lower sense: with apes), this title should not be interpreted as an insult here either; it could easily be called "Narrating Animals". This fascinating book is primarily about the narratives, tales and stories that we have been telling ourselves since the dawn of humanity. And about their power to determine, orientate and change our collective (but also individual) lives. Even if many of these stories are not just utopias, but also myths or brutal and deliberate lies.
The most important thing for me personally, however, I only found on the last page of this book. That's why I'm quoting it here word for word.

"Our thesis was and is that narratives, packaged in powerful cultural products, political programmes or platitudinous pop songs, have the greatest transformative power today. And not despite, but because we rarely perceive them as such, but pass them on with all the more relish. But we have also recognised this: Some of the strongest (and most mendacious) narratives of our time are anti-hero journeys. They promise people no adventure, no journey, no transformation. Their message is as fatal as it is seductive: everything can stay as it is. We don't have to change at all.
If you could knit yourself a narrative, what would it look like? Would you rather be a hero or a mentor? How willing are you to put everything on the line? Where are you an antagonist, but no longer want to be? What story of ourselves and humanity would we like to tell? Perhaps the moment has come when, as in the film Matrix, we have to choose between the blue pill and the red pill (with all due caution about this often abused motif): Do we want to wake up or go back to sleep?
If we have one piece of advice at the end of this book, it is the one you hear most often in safety training programmes for crisis situations. If we are faced with danger, it is advisable to act before things get dicey. So: Don't be a hero. Don't be a hero. Remain a storytelling monkey. Tell yourself and your loved ones the story of a good future. Let this story begin with a bet on a happy ending. Ask yourself honestly where you are the protagonist and where the antagonist. Invent utopias, fantasise paradisiacal conditions, be courageous. Join forces with others who have so far only dared to dream.
But above all: don't wait for the trigger before you act. Start your journey today."

I have followed this heartfelt appeal before, not only "fantasising" about the possibility of creating "paradisiacal conditions" on Earth in the near future, but also substantiating them scientifically. I have sent a message to Samira El Ouasill with a link to my book "Me, You, and All of Us; Where Do We Come From and How Can We Build a Family Democracy" (https://www.bod.de/buchshop/ich-du-und-wir-alle-peter-jakubowski-9783754341483). Let's see if she will be the first to recognise this utopia as her own.

The last book in my "summer series" is by Rebecca Wragg Sykes and has the exciting title "Misjudged Man" and the explanatory subtitle "A New Look at Neanderthal Life, Love and Art".

The book is so important, indeed groundbreaking, in the long series of books dealing with Neanderthals that I would like to write a longer polemical description of the theses of the highly competent author. Most of these theses are new, even highly topical. The important problem that also runs through this valuable book is the lack of a global theoretical time scale that allows the various artefacts and events from the past to be arranged in a correct relationship to one another. This is also closely linked to the most important weakness of every previous theory of evolution, namely the lack of theoretical and practical time spans for individual species, genera, families, orders, etc. It was only thanks to my unified science that these time spans could be precisely defined.
I'll start with a few sentences from the first sections of the book. Rebecca Wragg Sykes writes (on p.45).
RWS(p.45-46) "It also shows how wrong 19th-century scientists were to see Neanderthals as the missing link between humans and the other apes. ... Over twenty hominin species are known from the past 3.5 million years alone. ... When the Great African Rift opened up and the earth cooled down, the broad diversification of the great apes took its course. Between 15 and 10 million years ago, at least a hundred species emerged."

I will place my comment (if necessary!) directly below the quoted sentence and mark it with my initials.
PJ. It wasn't as big a mistake as people think today. The question remains, however, at what point in primate evolution did the first family of the "family group Homo" (which Rebecca Wragg Sykes continues to refer to as hominins; with which I also agree) separate from the order Primates.

Our primate order (with its standard time span of life on Earth of 24.31 million years) has so far completed 16.36 million years.

During this time, eight evolutionary splits to smaller but more advanced groups of families of organisms could theoretically have taken place. According to the facts known today, the first family of hominins was the Australopithecus family. It must therefore be regarded as a descendant family of a family of gorillas that existed 4.34 million years ago. The families of apes that are still around today have found their niches in which they were not subject to further evolutionary constraints. However, our first ancestors, the australopithecines, were forced to make such an evolutionary leap. I suspect that it was the discovery of the possibility of sustaining naturally ignited fire that ensured the survival of the representatives of this family in the world of that time. This leap separated them from the apes once and for all.

We still know far too little about this brave family because we have found far too few fossils. Rebecca Wragg Sykes estimates the number of ape species at one hundred in five million years. In reality, however, there were many more. According to our Universal Time Scale, there should be at least 75 species in every million years. To date, therefore, it would have taken not a hundred, but a thousand (~75x16) fossils of different species to feel the whole "fan of apes".

RWS(p.48) "It is not clear which of the early hominins gave rise to the genus Homo, but the first confirmed common ancestor of Neanderthals and sapiens entered the scene about two million years ago. It was Homo ergaster (the African Homo ergaster was long referred to as Homo erectus, but this name is now reserved for the Asian representative) and a million years ago it was already living as a true hunter-gatherer and was technically much more advanced than earlier species. They were already using carefully crafted stone tools known as bifaces or hand axes, and carried them further and further out into the countryside as their lives were characterised by greater planning and expanding social networks.
Homo ergaster had an essentially human body. They were tall, good runners without a trace of prehensile feet, and the relatively flat face, diminishing teeth and well-proportioned limbs identify them as direct ancestors of Neanderthals and sapiens. Their large brains are particularly striking: they were the most intelligent, versatile primates that had ever walked the earth."

PJ. The australopithecines lived out their entire family life span (of 2.002 million years), producing about 150 different species. The last of these species also mastered the cosmic "quantum leap" 2.34 million years ago to such an extent that it did not break the evolutionary chain of generations and individuals and passed on its genes, its knowledge of the environment and technology to the first generation of the new genus of the new family Homo erectus (or Homo ergaster, as today's scientists want to call it). What Rebecca Wragg Sykes does not write very clearly, however, is that this new family (which also populated the earth for its entire life span between 2.34 and 0.34 million years before today) was not a "common ancestor of Neanderthals and Sapiens", but only the ancestor of Neanderthals. Only Neanderthals were the ancestors of sapiens (I'll write more about that in a moment). What Rebecca Wragg Sykes also wrongly adopted from traditional research was the term "the genus Homo of early hominins". There never was such a genus. As we can see from the drawing above, the last (the third family) of hominins to split off from the primate order 337 thousand years ago is the family Homo sapiens. This family, like every other family before it, will theoretically be able to split into twelve genera one after the other. So far, however, only three of them have actually evolved. None of these genera can be described as the genus Homo. It would be a misunderstanding of the nomenclature.

Then, on page 49, Rebecca Wragg Sykes asks the all-important question.
RWS(p.49) "But where exactly did Neanderthals come from?"

PJ. In the picture above I have named the first "realised" genus of the Homo sapiens family as the genus Homo sapiens Heidelbergensis. The author writes about this on page 50.

RWS(50). "It is possible that more than one hominin species lived in Europe at that time, but many of the bones found from the next 100,000 years bear some resemblance to fossils of the same age from Africa, including a massive mandible found in Heidelberg in 1907 and named Homo heidelbergensis. These hominins were long thought to be direct ancestors of Neanderthals, but recent finds at a third archaeological site in Atapuerca, the Lima de los Huesos, have sharpened the picture somewhat."

PJ. I'm more of the opinion that you shouldn't jump around with the old name too often, because you can't be sure that the next excavation site won't point us in the old direction after all.
In the picture above we can now see a direct answer to the crucial question of the book: Where did the Neanderthals come from? The Neanderthals were not a single species. They were a full genus, with (at least) 13 different species that successively felt the life span of the genus (of 164878 years). They were probably even slightly different species that lived on different continents at the same time. However, each of these species only ever had 13578 years of life on earth at their disposal, and never longer. All Neanderthal research must be adapted to these new theoretical, but in many areas of geophysics, astrophysics and climate research also "experimentally" clearly confirmed, time periods of our evolution from the first primates to us today. Rebecca Wragg Sykes' magnificent book shows how important every accessible update of our general knowledge can be and is.