All people on Earth from the point of view of social, so to speak, universal human concepts, are the same. We are all capable of thinking, feeling, experiencing. Despite many ethnic, cultural and social differences, humanity is a single organism.
However, it would be cunning to say that all people are absolutely the same and differences at the biological level do not play any role at all. After all, if it is not about any discrimination based on biological principles, then our diversity from the point of view of biology is a real wealth. And who knows, perhaps in the future it will be able to significantly expand our capabilities due to various unique abilities that are still sleeping in the genes of our species …
Each ethnic group on our planet is unique in its own way. Sometimes the observed slight deviations in the structure of the body or some organs, which have appeared as a result of evolution, lead scientists to a state of stupor. For example, East Asians distinguish about three times more colors than Europeans, and most Peruvians only feel normal when the air pressure is about 600 mm Hg - corresponding to the pressure in the mountains where they live. The most amazing thing is that these signs have already taken root in these peoples and are inherited.
Such facts could be explained by evolution, but the first people in the same Peruvian Andes appeared about 10-15 thousand years ago; that's about 300-400 generations. Was it possible that in such a short period of time the dominant gene was able not only to pass natural selection, but also to clearly gain a foothold? Scientists just shrug their shoulders: well, so it happened …
A large number of such cases have been described in ethnography. And how can one find an explanation for them, to one degree or another. In the end, adaptability to certain environmental conditions is the driving force behind evolution. However, there are some very interesting facts, which are difficult to describe by adaptability alone. They relate to such interesting, sometimes even mysterious aspects of human nature that at times it even becomes creepy, thinking about where such phenomena could come from.
Ancient Greece, more precisely the "father of history" Herodotus, introduced us to the first facts of the presence of supernatural abilities in individual peoples. He describes the inhabitants of one country in the north, who could turn into wolves at will, as well as inhabitants of a country located east of Persia, who can hear voices on the other side of the earth.
One can relate to the writings of Herodotus in different ways, however, much of what he described (from a historical point of view) was confirmed as a result of archaeological excavations. His works on ethnography, with some assumptions, can also be called, at least, not fiction. Perhaps, words simply did not exist to describe some of the concepts of that time, and the authors went out of their way as they could?
Try, for example, pronouncing expressions such as "airbus" or "stock market" in ancient Greek. But to pronounce it is not so bad: sometimes it is difficult even to explain their meanings. But what can we say about the ancient Greeks, when at present there are European peoples whose languages lack their equivalent of the word "book"?
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During the two and a half thousand years after Herodotus and his werewolves, many similar facts were described. Of course, most of them were inventions of the authors and they do not deserve special attention. Well, some, and in general, are outright superstitions and are of interest, except for lovers of folklore. About the gypsies who lead to spoilage and the Tibetans, who are able to travel in spirit through other Universes, have not heard unless the one who did not read or watch anything at all.
But with the development of science, such cases began to be recorded and studied. At the same time, an amazing fact was that similar properties were found, in the overwhelming majority, among peoples very far from civilization. And, of course, the discoverers of such phenomena were various travelers, pioneers and conquerors.
For example, the cartographer Semyon Remezov, who was sent on an expedition to Altai, describes a small settlement of Khakass nomads who can see in pitch darkness. Or David Livingston, reports on the representatives of one tribe of the Herero people who could predict the weather with fantastic accuracy for the coming weeks, or even months.
Gradually, as the number of such studies increased, it turned out that there are about a hundred separate ethnic groups that have some kind of their own special "flavor". The ability to feel water underground, the ability without any parting, just by looking at an object to determine its temperature, the ability with closed eyes to feel living creatures around you - the list is endless. Basically, these abilities related to something important, one might say, key in the life of such peoples, but sometimes frankly incomprehensible phenomena were encountered.
So, for example, the inhabitants of the Pirahan tribe living in the Amazon jungle, only by their appearance can tell which organs are susceptible to diseases. This is especially surprising when you consider that Pirahans do not even have such a concept as "number" or "quantity" in their language. But this is not so bad. There is not even such a thing as the future in terms of the Pirahana. They can only talk about what is here and now.
Or another example: the representatives of the Australian Yimithir tribe can freely navigate in space and even in the dark they accurately determine the cardinal points. This is all the more surprising that such a skill is not something that is innate. In this tribe, they train to determine the cardinal points according to various methods. At the same time, when one day the tribe picked up two babies and began to raise them as their children, they could not master such a skill. That is, the representatives of the Yimithirs have some kind of innate "device" capable of reacting to the Earth's magnetic field and determining the cardinal directions from it.
How can you explain such abilities and why are they manifested mainly in peoples living very far from civilization or very small groups, no more than a thousand people?
Science, of course, reduces everything to simple and understandable things - like fixing the special sensitivity of various organs in the gene code or the existence of an additional number of certain receptors, and so on. And the fact that such phenomena are observed only in frank "cesspools" of our world says that it is in such closed places, without communication with the outside world, that the gene code of carriers of such abilities practically does not change, because sooner or later, everything is in one or another the tribe will all move on to very closely related mating.
However, in the world of scientists there is another point of view, the essence of which boils down to the fact that these abilities are not at all the result of the isolated life of their carriers, but, rather, on the contrary, their separate life is a consequence of their having these abilities. That at one time some "not like everyone else" were expelled, and the reason for the exile was their peculiarities. Indeed, who wants to live next to, for example, with someone who instinctively feels a lie? The example, of course, is exaggerated, but the general meaning is something like this, especially since humanity has always been inclined to fear the incomprehensible …
Interest in such phenomena will never wane. At present, humanity is on the verge of great discoveries. The appearance of genetic engineering is not far off, and who knows, perhaps the "developments" of these wild peoples will be useful to us in order to modify ourselves to improve our lives.