Compassion

There’s a lively debate among experts in the field of paleo-anthropology about intriguing signs of ‘compassion’ among our distant ancestors. Compassion: ‘A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.’ Based on old bones and burial sites, there seems to be some evidence not just respect for the dead, but respect for the living.
Shanidar Cave is an archaeological site in the Zagros Mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan (in northern Iraq). It was excavated between 1957-1961 by Ralph Solecki and his team from Columbia University and yielded the first adult Neanderthal skeletons in Iraq, dating between 60-80,000 years ago. The Shanidar fossils show a very high frequency of injuries, healed injuries of all different kinds. The most extreme example of this is an arm bone from Shanidar I – the designation of one of these ancestors. It’s an upper arm bone that’s withered, has a healed fracture, and a healed over amputation just above the elbow. It shows that this individual lived with an important handicap for 20 or 30 years. “And what that says is that these people were taking care of their injured kin. They were taking care of people who had serious injuries so they could survive them and continue to be functional members of the social group for many years. It was a dangerous lifestyle, but they were compassionate, they were caring, they were human,” says Erik Trinkaus.
There are now quite a number of such burial sites, with fossil remains showing different handicaps – but all showing that groups must have gone to considerable lengths to prolong the lives of less than ‘useful’ members of the clan or community.
“However, even if we can interpret their behaviour as supportive, is it compassionate?,” asks Terisa Green, who is an archaeologist and research associate with the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, a department of University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. She goes on,

Archaeologists are loath to project modern sensibilities into prehistory… Perhaps the supportive behaviour of these early people actually accrued some advantage to them in their own time, but it certainly confers some benefit to future generations that members of the species will work together for the survival of more than just the individual. In this type of interpretation, compassionate behaviour fits into an equation for continued survival and is logical. It is also, however, an explanation and analysis that strips the individuals of their own independent thoughts and motivations. Let us not forget that the actions of the group, or the individual caregivers as the case may be, very likely placed them under added survival stress, at least in the short term. We can never know for certain what emotion or thought accompanied their actions, but they constantly exercised choices in those actions.

Green concludes,

From our standpoint, looking back on stories that have long since reached their conclusion, there is no doubt that the choices made by Homo erectus, Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon furthered the survival of disadvantaged members of their societies. If we can count such supportive behaviour as compassionate, if only by virtue of its results, then there is ample evidence for the existence of compassion in our ancestors. Moreover, because of its early and persistent appearance in the archaeological record, we can begin to speculate that the presence of compassion is yet another hallmark of what makes us human in the first place.

As the Dalai Lama memorably says: “Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.” In this season of “peace and goodwill towards men,” it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that care for others isn’t just part of the teaching of the founders of all the great religions. It is an essential part of who we are, and what we are. So let’s try to be a little truer to ourselves in the New Year!