99FM MYD 2018 ARTICLE BY MARK DAWE The theme for the second 99FM MYD Journal is connection.
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onventional wisdom has always placed the Agricultural Revolution (10 000 BC to 2 000 BC) at the centre of humankind’s advancement from the blissful ignorance of the hunter-gatherer to ever more advanced societies of post agricultural revolution. The earliest known transition took place in the Middle East and up until that time, the dominant social structure of our species was small, roaming nomadic bands. For the first time in history, people began to raise livestock and cultivate the land with domestic grasses, later to be called wheat. This new survival method tied humans to the land, giving rise to permanent settlements in fixed locations, ranging from small villages to cities. This new form of settlement led to the development of job creation and specialisation. For the first time in history humankind was able to harness the powers of connection, or ‘networking’ as we call it in our post-modern societies. It is through this connection that humankind’s development accelerated to the frenzied pace we experience in our everyday lives today
But we are now beginning to understand that modern history actually started long before the advent of the Agricultural Revolution. About 70 000 years ago, the ‘cognitive revolution’ kickstarted our history, and the Agricultural Revolution about 12 000 years ago merely accelerated it. According to
Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the cognitive revolution was the real game-changer. He claims that a genetic mutation altered the inner wiring of homo sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate in an altogether new type of language that conveyed both information and fantasy. Humans then began forging common myths about imagined worlds, and in so doing created allegiances of people that believed in those myths. It was this newfound ability that enabled people to cooperate flexibly in large numbers, to group together against common enemies, to wipe out hostile enemies and animals, and to begin domesticating animals and growing crops. Similarly, says Harari, it was by building pyramids – in the mind, in imagined orders and hierarchies, as much as on the ground – that humanity advanced. And then came the long process of unifying humankind and colonising Earth until the Scientific Revolution began about 500 years ago, which is still in progress today. So, it seems as though storytelling was the pivotal point in creating connections that led to our advancement as a species. 99FM MYD is about storytelling. As the amazing 99FM MYD team has shown us with their first publication in 2017, you don’t need to scratch
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very deep to find hugely inspirational stories in our wonderful country. These stories renew our faith in the good of humankind. By its nature, media generally focuses on negativism. Bad news is good news. But 99FM MYD shifts that paradigm to the opposite end of the spectrum. The very first section in this year’s 99FM MYD journal is titled “The human connection”. How appropriate is that? It all started with the human connection. Whether or not we were happier as the proverbial hunter-gatherer coming