Yash's Weekly: Status, humans and more.

Hii friends 👋 Yash Here.

Hope you're having an amazing day. Here are the few things I learnt last week.

TL;DR

• Lioness look for lions who are more hairier than others. They have a high success rate on mating because the lion can afford to show "wastage of calories (food)" - maintaining high body temperature due to more hair.
• Humans long preferred to view itself as set apart from animals, an orphan who has no family, no cousins, and – no parents. But that’s just not the case. Like it or not, we are members of a large and particularly noisy family called the great apes.
• Jewelleries are just a status symbol.
• Wealth is not a marathon.

Wastage is a status signal

In african Savannah, lions with more hair, have a higher body temperature. To maintain the body temperature, the animal have to take food. Usually, the more the hair - the more higher the body temperature - the more food the lion needs to maintain that.

So, if a female lion is out there, searching for someone to mate with, she is more likely to mate with lions that are more hairier than others. Because it signals to them - the lion can afford to have resources to have so much of hair. Therefore it's a superior mate to go after. So they have a significantly higher success rate on mating because the lion can afford to show "wastage of calories (food) - maintaining the body temperature".

We see a same case in humans. If you see someone having 3 expensive cars, but uses just one - you're more likely to respect that person because he wastes money.

The Human Family : A lesson from Sapiens

We humans - me and you - called Homo sapiens , too belongs to a family. This banal fact used to be one of history’s most closely guarded secrets. Homo sapiens long preferred to view itself as set apart from animals, an orphan who has no family, no cousins, and – most importantly – no parents. But that’s just not the case.

Like it or not, we are members of a large and particularly noisy family called the great apes. Our nearest living relatives include chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans. The chimpanzees are the closest. Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother.

Homo sapiens has kept hidden an even more disturbing secret. Not only do we possess an abundance of uncivilised cousins, once upon a time we had quite a few brothers and sisters as well. We are used to thinking about ourselves as the only humans, because for the last 10,000 years, our species has indeed been the only human species around. Yet the real meaning of the word human is ‘an animal belonging to the genus Homo ’, and there used to be many other species of this genus besides Homo sapiens.

Btw, I highly recommend reading Sapiens! This book will change how you see the world.

Jewelleries are just a status symbol

If you go back to history and study anthropology, you'll find out jewellery has no purpose except to signal status. Both genders wore jewellery equally. It them to signal to people that:

"I have these exclusive things, that you do not have, and therefore you're supposed to respect me and worship me".

And that thing still exists today in larger forms. We can also see this in forms other than jewellery - like having earpods or the latest model of iPhone.

Quote of the week

Unlike olympics, wealth is an interesting spectrum. If you land in the middle, you'll be quite rich.

That's all! I’m glad you’re here. You look beautiful 💫, has anyone told you that today?