If you're interested in what an anthropologist has to say about this book, read on.
This book asks the questions, What if there were a parallel universe in which Neanderthals, instead of Homo sapiens sapiens, had survived and developed civilization? What would their world be like? How would their society be different from our own? How might they interact with us?
I think these are interesting questions and worth the effort to try to answer them via the sci-fi genre. Through much of the book, Sawyer presents in an entertaining way current thinking on and debates about Neanderthal anatomy, physiology, behavior and social structure. Unfortunately, in his attempt to explain why Neanderthals eventually achieved civilization (and why, in our world, our species did the same), Sawyer reveals a fatal flaw in his thinking that demonstrates a distinct lack of careful research and, in my view, undermines his entire project. That is, unless his project is to write a romance novel.
Toward the end of his book, two of Sawyer's protagonists, Louise, a post-doc quantum physicist who happens to be a brunette bombshell "wearing tight-fitting denim cutoffs and a white T-shirt tied in a knot over her flat midriff" (p. 369 in the hardcover version), and Mary, a plain Jane geneticist who happens to be a devout Catholic, engage in a one-sided discussion about the origins of consciousness. Louise has had an epiphany that she shares with Mary after carefully testing her idea on "some guys...in the physics department" (370). It's all become crystal clear to her: the reason humans were able to develop civilization was because, forty-odd thousand years ago, they became conscious through the "quantum superposition of isolated electrons in the microtubules of brain cells" (380). Louise doesn't explain this mechanism, apparently assuming that Mary needs no further details because she's a smart cookie and because the sacred word "quantum" has been invoked.
Mary, perhaps disabled by her envy of her colleague's gorgeous body and disarmed by her romantic feelings toward their Neanderthal visitor, swallows Louise's argument hook, line and sinker. This, despite the fact that she is a specialist in Neanderthal genetics and has some sort of training in paleoanthropology. It also could be because Mary is Catholic and Sawyer would have us believe that Catholics accept that consciousness never existed on earth until humans discovered it during the Upper Paleolithic (circa 40, 000 years ago). If nothing else, it would appear that physicists believe this to be true.
This is where the entire story falls apart as far as I'm concerned. I can suspend my disbelief - after all, this is science fiction - enough to enjoy the notion that multiple parallel universes exist and that it is possible for them to intersect through the intercession of a quantum computer (never mind, read the book). And I can put up with Sawyer's host of two-dimensional characters. But you couldn't pay me to accept the idea that consciousness is something humans invented. Louise falls into the same trap that has caught less sexy but more intelligent philosophers and theologians since humans began pondering the origins of consciousness: anthropocentrism, that is, the crippling assumption that humans are the Cat's Meow of creation. For example, 500 years ago, Rene Descartes, in his "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) revelation, made the same mistake, which led to a widely held belief that humans were the only creatures that could think and feel. This, in turn, led to a perception of all other animals as simple machines that were incapable of feeling pain or making decisions. As a result, scientists conducted many "experiments" on animals that were little more than torture fests. I thought we'd come a long way since then, but Louise (aka Sawyer) has set me straight.
What does this have to do with anthropology? A lot, as it turns out. Louise suggests that "all other primitive forms of life...are just chemical machines" (376). We don't need to mire ourselves in a paleontological debate about whether, to quote Mary, a trilobite showed volition when it "decided to go left instead of right" (376). Sawyer pays out more than enough rope to hang his thesis when Mary, in a rare moment of critical thinking, challenges Louise's theory by alluding to evidence for sophisticated behavior by Homo ergaster, Homo erectus and other hominids that preceded the emergence of Homo sapiens. Amazingly, Louise successfully dismisses her point by saying, "Well, I realize this is your field...but I've been reading up on this on the Web. As far as I can tell, those earlier kinds of man didn't really have behavior any more sophisticated than a beaver building a dam" (377). As far as she can tell. Who needs a Ph.D. in anthropology when rigorous research is only a few mouse clicks away?
Louise should have tested her idea on "some guys" in the anthropology department before she talked to Mary. Mind you, they may have become just as distracted by her cutoffs as her physics guys seem to have been. ("Louise, I think you're really onto something here!") Or maybe she was using the wrong keywords in her Google search. She obviously didn't think to enter the word "Acheulean" (why would she?), which would have brought her to websites depicting the famous stone hand axes that Homo erectus and their ilk started producing over a million years ago. These Lower Paleolithic stone tools have been found in many places in the world and were made on a variety of rock types. If you're a skilled flintknapper (stone tool chipper), you can make one with relative ease, but that's because you've learned how to work with the quirks and subtleties found in each piece of stone. Every whack you take at a rock has to be calculated and the finished product has to remain in your mind as you work. Can this be accomplished without consciousness? Perhaps Sawyer should try it in his sleep. Moreover, I call on beaver biologists to rise up and refute Louise's implication that beavers lack consciousness, too. Fiddlesticks!
In my opinion, quality works of science fiction build on what we already know or think we know and, based on this knowledge and theory, speculate about what might be possible now or in the future. Sadly, Robert Sawyer's book, Hominids, while making Neanderthal studies palatable for a wider audience, stumbles as a fictionalization of science and work of science fiction. Will I read the next two books (Humans and Hybrids) in the series? You bet. I've just got to find out how things go with Mary and her Neanderthal boyfriend!
