Introduction
Human Ontophylogenesis

"The highest philosophical initiation is therefore not only a knowledge of models (Ideas), but a mode of being that makes the philosopher coincide with the absolute source of forms and existences; it is indeed the intuition of anticipation in its purest state [...]. It's not the movement, but the intuition of any projection into existence and multiplicity."

Gilbert Simondon, Imagination et invention, Puf, Paris, p. 59.

"Then thus: 'In the Beginning was the Thought.' This first line let me weigh completely, let my impatient pen proceed too fleetly. Is it the Thought which works, created, indeed? 'In the Beginning was the Power,' I read. Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested, that I the sense may not have fairly tested.

The Spirit aids me: now I see the light! 'In the Beginning was the Act,' I write."

Goethe, Faust, I, 3.

"In order to understand what happened in the past, we must interpret the empirical facts without our socio-political ideas interfering. [...] Any paradigm can be misused for ideological purposes, because models, whatever they may be - cognitive, hermeneutic or evolutionary - lead too easily to to positions that have little to do with the reality of the facts and sometimes even deny the existence of some."

Marylène Patou-Mathis, Préhistoire de la violence et de la guerre, Odile Jacob, Paris, p. 163.

We shall set out a narrative of the emergence of the human, or humans, for the widest possible audience, maintaining the scientific and philosophical perspective necessary to prevent this narrative from becoming fiction. We have enough scientific and technical knowledge, to date, to consider reconstructing, step by step, the path leading from a distant population of higher primates, about eight million years ago, to humans. To do so, we must make use of the last two centuries of research in the biological and geological sciences, anthropology, paleontology, ethnology, neurology, cognitive sciences and philosophy1.

This is therefore a heuristic narrative (useful for research) that sets out a number of hypotheses. The aim is to advance understanding rather than to oppose the working hypotheses or conclusions of scientists. These hypotheses are consistent both with the facts gathered and with an evolutionary approach, which itself is capable of integrating them. Lamarckian-type adaptationist approaches will be carefully corrected. Because often, talking about adaptation and not selection is reasoning according to the Lamarckian approach. The fundamental hypothesis defended here remains Darwinian, because it is not a question of acquired traits being hereditary but of learning abilities being selected. We could assess our position as more Wallacean (after Wallace, co-inventor of selection theory) than Darwinian because of the integration of multilevel selections, but these are subtleties of specialists (Gayon and Petit 2019, p. 127-143).

There is no reason to present the emergence of the human as a mystery within the world of living things. There are many surprising living beings and the enigma of the source of life is far from being solved. It is a difficult problem, but its solution requires multidisciplinary research. The origin of humans can be seen as a given; they are part of primates, among which are the great apes. Their lineage separated from that of the genus Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos) about seven million years ago, according to both paleontology and molecular biology. From the moment that the genealogy that leads to humans is thus recognized, whose order of changes can be identified, we can make well-founded, useful and even suggestive hypotheses to help us know ourselves2.

An estimation of what is innate to humans cannot be a comparison to other animals without distinction nor evolutionary analysis. For example, there is no reason to compare man to the penguin, the meerkat or to some ancient reptiles that would have been vertical, given that verticality does not come from the same process, or to dolphins with very large brains, since they do not use their intelligence in the same way and do not live in the same environment. The evolution of their living conditions over the last seven million years has been different. The architecture of the brain and its connection to the body is as important as the size. Furthermore, in the analysis of human populations, there is great variability in the size of the brain, without it being possible to draw any conclusions about intelligence. Focusing on the brain is no more relevant than focusing on verticality or socialization. What is most relevant is to have an evolutionary approach to understanding the process of separation from other great apes and to make relevant comparisons where useful and possible.

Speaking of emotions, Darwin was a pioneer in showing that the expression of emotions is visible in most mammals. Many other characteristics, generously attributed to humans alone, are present in primates and often in other mammalian lines: for example, attention span, memory of events, anticipation, laughter, and so on. Infanticide, lack of maternal instinct, fighting to the death/murder, or even "wars" between groups within the species, homosexuality, masturbation, etc. have been perceived as human perversions. They are found to exist in primates and even in other mammals. It is out of ignorance that we have judged our "exception", whether in terms of values or cognitive abilities, when the most relevant differences may lie elsewhere. We are living beings whose general modes of functioning we share, and the closer species are to each other, that is separated from us for a "shorter" time, the greater and more numerous the similarities.

Descriptions of what makes or would make up the originality of the human being as it appears today, in relation to living things, are not our immediate purpose. The main thesis defended here is the result of the search for what has allowed this originality to exist and to show itself. It describes the conceivable process of its genesis over a very long period of time, in millions of years, that is to say its phylogenesis, and not how an individual is constructed from conception to maturity, or its ontogenesis. In doing so, human originality reappears, but in a different way. What is human will not appear as the unum necessarium sought after by philosophers and metaphysicians; it may appear to be a combination of characteristics that have co-evolved, sometimes in convergence, sometimes in juxtaposition, under a selection pressure that is quite stable enough that it becomes possible to conceive. The problem becomes one of researching and defining the nature of this selection pressure.

The human being, considered in its many facets, can be described as the greatest predator that ever existed, the first living species seeking to organize the living world rather than to fit into it and the first also to undertake a permanent evolutionary process of transforming its own way of life, and this in spatial and temporal heterogeneity, even if it means disrupting all ecosystems and living beings. Many of its members believe that they are descendants of an original created couple and are therefore radically different from other living beings, even the closest ones, and sometimes even from other human groups. For the human being also seems to be the only living being that invents worlds in order to fit into them and bring other living beings into them.

It is the only large species that are both unsuitable and present almost everywhere, thanks to technique. Creating, inventing, innovating: it all started a few million years ago, alternating apparent "stasis" with periods of more rapid transformation modifying pre-human and then human conditions of existence. Change accelerated during this process. We see the planetary consequences of this incessant expansion. An invasive species, if ever there was one; extra-terrestrials landing on earth would identify it immediately as it occupies space in many ways, different in each place. This inventiveness is constantly increasing; now it is engaged in understanding what has allowed it to appear and in modifying the rules of the game by which it entered the world of the living.

Our analysis attempts to unravel the enigma of this specific process concerning groups of great apes that have gradually, over hundreds of thousands of generations, departed from their initial conditions of existence: a more or less peaceful life in the African rainforest or tropical rainforest. Step by step, they left this environment or biotope until they reached the scale of a global phenomenon. Jared Diamond (2001) considers humans to be "the third chimpanzee" because we are so close to chimpanzees and bonobos. Based on the qualities of the "other two chimpanzees", can we understand how this divergence which would lead to humans occurred, which has become so spectacular on a global scale?

We will use the term human in different senses. There's the name given to the species. Here, we speak of humans and not of man, because in French (but also in English) "homme" is gendered, and it now seems preferable to speak of a human (here neutral) who can be a man or a woman. In French, "humain" is also an adjective that has a double meaning, because it is opposed to "inhuman", although the latter is...