Savanna Quotes

• I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  Christmas, Cities, Civil War

  William Tecumseh Sherman (1990). “Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman”, p.711, Library of America

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• We are beasts, you know, beasts risen from the savannas and jungles and forests. We have come down from the trees and up out of the water, but you can never, ever fully remove the feral nature from our psyches.

  Yasmine Galenorn

  Psych, Water, Tree

  Yasmine Galenorn (2011). “Totem Magic: Dance of the Shapeshifter”, p.183, Crossing Press

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• I think that were beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, "Ahhh." That was the first poem.

  Lucille Clifton

  Thinking, Sky, Poetry

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• That is certainly the point: when the human species was born, on the African savanna, life was pretty good; we could live in harmony with the rest of nature, and that's what I've been calling Eden. The only technologies that humans devised for some 2 million years were fire and the hand ax. That's all. Eden didn't need anything more

  Kirkpatrick Sale

  Technology, Fire, Hands

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Physiologically adult humans are not meant to spend an additional 10 years in a school system; their brains map that onto "I have been assigned low tribal status". And so, of course, they plot rebellion - accuse the existing tribal overlords of corruption plot, perhaps to split off their own little tribe in the savanna, not realizing that this is impossible in the Modern World.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  School, Years, Brain

  "Rebelling Within Nature". lesswrong.com. July 13, 2008.

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• I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Mountain, Gorillas, Grew Up

  Robert M. Sapolsky (2007). “A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• Humans became easy prey when they moved from the forest to the savanna, which deprived them of the option of climbing trees to flee predators. This shift made it necessary for the men to actively protect the women and their babies. Only as a result of this protection were women able to give birth in shorter intervals, perhaps once every two or three years. This meant that they could produce offspring about twice as frequently as apes. I would be willing to bet that this rapid reproduction is one of the reasons why we dominate the world today, and not the apes.

  Frans de Waal

  Baby, Men, Climbing

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• Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Inspirational, Dream, Thinking

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of P.J. O'Rourke”, p.126, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I take seriously the idea that we are African Apes who (at least for the moment) dominate the planet, but our psychology is pretty much what it was when we were living in small groups on the savanna.

  Dale Jamieson

  Ideas, Psychology, Groups

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Since Serengeti-scale savanna scenes are only one or two million years old, our earliest after-the-apes ancestors didn't move into this scene so much as they evolved with it, as the slower climate changes and uplift produced more grass and less forest.

  William H. Calvin

  Uplifting, Moving, Two

  William H. Calvin (2010). “A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change”, p.90, William H. Calvin

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• The Internet is part of this ongoing, species-long project we've been working on since we climbed down out of the trees in the savanna. We've been working on it without really knowing it.

  William Gibson

  Knowing, Long, Tree

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• I'm convinced that the catastrophes of the next two decades will be so vast as to bring about a world where life, if it survives, will be far simpler - and the technologies, too. Then we will have come full circle to something like life on the savanna.

  Kirkpatrick Sale

  Technology, Circles, Two

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• I do think that procrastination evolved in humans for good reasons. If you're trying to stay alive as a human being on the savanna 20,000 years ago, worrying about what's right behind that bush is a lot more important than worrying about what might happen three weeks from now.

  James Surowiecki

  Procrastination, Thinking, Years

  "Ask the Author Live: James Surowiecki on Procrastination". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. October 1, 2010.

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