Superhuman: People at the Extremes of Mental Physical Ability

279 Pages·2018·2.12 MB·English

by  Rowan Hooper

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CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I THINKING
1 Intelligence
2 Memory
3 Language
4 Focus
PART II DOING
5 Bravery
6 Singing
7 Running
PART III BEING
8 Longevity
9 Resilience
10 Sleeping
11 Happiness
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
About the Author
References
Index
Credits
To Laura
INTRODUCTION
A few years ago, I found myself at a conference of primatologists. At the drinks
reception I enthused—I thought to a sympathetic scientist—about how like us
chimps were, and how the differences between us were just a matter of degree. I was
very pro-chimp; perhaps I was trying to ingratiate myself among the primatologists.
But my stance also reflected the stories I’d been writing, about animals with traits
once thought to be uniquely human. There were wild chimps seen using sticks as
dolls,1 chimps using spears to hunt other vertebrates,2 chimps using their own sign
language,3 chimps waging a war,4 and even what appeared to be chimps practicing a
proto-religion.5 My view on these findings, as an evolutionary biologist, was that it is
self-evident that we share traits and even behaviors with other animals: we’re all
related; we share many genes; genes influence behavior. There’s no surprise there.
Everything, even what we call “good” and “evil,” has a basis in evolution, so it’s only
to be expected that we would find echoes of ourselves in other animals.6 As a
journalist I liked the fact that there was, as I saw it, a lack of uniqueness in humans, as
I felt it brought out the similarity between us and other animals, and could even
increase empathy between us and them.
Wineglass in hand, I blithely asserted that there was nothing unique about us
humans. And look at the genetics, too, I said. We’re practically identical. The
primatologist I’d been chatting with smiled an assassin’s smile, and said: “Can chimps
build their own LHC, then?”
That single remark brought down years of my thinking that we and chimps were
so alike. It was just after the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland had
been used to discover the Higgs boson. The scales fell from my eyes. It’s not that I
had been overstating what animals were capable of: I had been underestimating
humans. It seems ridiculous now, absurd even. The primatologist might as well have
asked when a chimp last walked on the moon, or painted Guernica. Sure, chimps are
wonderful, intelligent animals, but the remarkable thing is not how smart they are,
but how utterly amazing we are. As a biologist, I studied animal behavior in the field.
I marveled at the solutions that natural selection finds to the problems of making a
living and finding a mate. I still do. What I sometimes forgot to appreciate were the
marvels of human behavior and ability.
In some ways this book is an attempt to put myself right on that point. I’ve set out
to meet people at the top end of human potential, across a range of traits. People who
are the best in the world at the things we revere, such as intelligence, musical ability,
bravery, and endurance. We’ll also encounter the people who are at the extremes of
the things that matter most to us, such as happiness and longevity. It’s a celebration
of the very best we can be. In meeting them, we’ll marvel at the diversity and potential
of the human species, we’ll try to understand how they personally got to where they
are—and we’ll deconstruct them. Such people might be superhuman, but they’re not
supernatural. I want to understand how these superpeople do what they do in order
to bring them closer to the rest of us. Some of the stardust might rub off on us, and it
might give us a glimpse of humans in the future. Understanding what lies beneath
extreme ability in no way destroys the magic; if anything, it deepens our appreciation
and teaches us about our everyday lives. Moreover, we might not be superhuman
ourselves, but we do have a greater capacity than we realize. We have hidden depths.
These traits are the things that humans yearn to be better at and strive to improve.
For most of the characteristics we’ll look at, it’s fairly easy to decide who is the best
in the world, even if my technique is nonscientific. I’m defining the best singers in the
world as the ones who can earn a living from their trade; the people with the greatest
endurance as those who can run the farthest; the longest-lived people in the world—
well, they are self-defined. For other traits, such as bravery and intelligence, it’s more
subjective, but I hope to convince you that I’ve chosen worthy candidates.
The book is in three parts. Part One, “Thinking,” looks at traits driven by
cognitive ability. It takes case studies representing intelligence, memory, language
ability, and focus—the ability to concentrate the mind. In Part Two, “Doing,” I’ve
picked out bravery, singing, and endurance as abilities that humans have taken
further than any other animal. Finally, in Part Three, “Being,” I’ve selected longevity,
resilience, sleeping, and happiness as traits that at first glance just seem to be part of
us, but which some people manage to do at a much higher level. For each
characteristic I look at the scientific understanding of how people get to the peak of
potential, and the relative importance of nature and nurture—genetics and
environment—in each case. There are many clues as to how my superhumans became
so good, and lots to learn for the rest of us. The eleven traits and abilities certainly
don’t capture everything that makes us human, but I think they cast a wide net. The
haul has reminded me of the sheer richness of the human species and filled me with
fire for our extraordinary potential.
Part I
THINKING
1
INTELLIGENCE
Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a
place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it,
humming chambers like beehives.
—Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
You know it when you see it. I saw it in an orangutan once, a young male in
Malaysian Borneo who had been orphaned by deforestation. I was hiking around a
protected area of rain forest with a primatologist friend when we came across him.
Because he had been raised in a rehab center, he was well disposed to humans, and,
it turned out, especially fond of men. He came bounding over. I was nervous as this
juvenile but powerful ape tugged at my clothes and tried to climb up me as if I was a
tree. I pushed him away a few times, and he finally sat on his haunches, looked up,
and held out his hand. I remember taking the hand and feeling it clasp gently and
warmly and softly around mine. I caught his eye. In it there was a complex look, a
mixture of exasperation, cajoling, and hope; he was fed up with me pushing him
away, but hoped I would understand that he just wanted to play.
You know intelligence when you see it, and I saw it in him. After that handshake
and the look that passed between us, we played for a good hour, which mostly
consisted of him climbing up me and me swinging him around. He was basically a
monstrously strong, hairy, orange toddler. He was six years old then and sometimes I
wonder what happened to him, and whether he’s safe in that protected fragment of
rain forest.