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21How Did Sapiens Really Come into Being in Eurasia and Where Is It Heading Right Now?
Wolfgang Sassin
Wolfgang Sassin,
Dr-Ing,
Independent researcher,
formerly Senior Scientist of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
and Lecturer of Technical University Vienna
Austria
Вольфганг Зассин,
доктор-инженеъ,
независимый иаследователь,
в прошлом главный научный сотрудник
Международного института прикладного системного анализа
и лектор Технического университета Вены
(Австрия)
* This paper of Dr Sassin has been submitted to Editors of The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions and undergone the full review process during the life of the author. Now we publish it posthumously. R.I.P.
010510254-1
Article No / Номер статьи: 010510254 Language: English
For citation (Chicago style) / Для цитировашя (стиль «Чикаго»):
Sassin, Wolfgang. 2022. "How did Sapiens really come into being in Eurasia and where is it heading right now?" Eur Crossrd 3, 010510254.
Permanent URL links to the article:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55269/eurcrossrd.3.010510254
HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/eurcrossrd.3.010510254
http://eurcrossrd.ru/pdf/Vol.%203.%20Issue%201.%20010510254%20GER.pdf
Received in the original form: 8 July 2021 Review cycles: 2
1st review cycle ready: 16 September 2021 Review outcome: 3 of 3 positive Decision: To publish with major revisions 2nd review cycle ready: 28 September 2021 Accepted: 16 December 2021 Published online: 22 February 2022
ABSTRACT
Wolfgang Sassin. How did Sapiens really come into being in Eurasia and where is it heading right now? Generations of archaeologists, ethnologists and now also genetic researchers are investigating the question: What makes Eurasia a unique evolutionary territory? We must recognise that mental evolution as a Eurasian unifying anthropological force is even more important than biological evolution. We can no longer ignore the fact that the number of people in Eurasia has increased tenfold over the past 200 years, i.e. since the French Revolution. Homo sapiens is on the way to becoming homo billionis, the creature that emotionally fits into a herd and seems to feel safer there the larger this herd is. This process proceeds on the entire planet, but in Eurasia it is the most obvious. Whether sapiens or billionis, there is no question that human must change if he wants to survive in Eurasia with resources getting scarcer and population higher, given his development in the recent past. To do so, however, at least in Eurasia human would have to control himself rationally and set hard limits to his cultural, mental and social drives and dreams, instead of relying on collective control and correction of the nature of Eurasia that he has supposedly subjugated.
Key words: Eurasia, evolution, homo sapiens, homo billionis, artificial intelligence
РЕЗЮМЕ
Вольфганг Зассин. Как человек разумный появился в Евразии и куда он движется прямо сейчас? Несколько поколений археологов, этнологов, а теперь и генетиков исследуют вопрос: что делает Евразию уникальной эволюционной территорией? Мы ясно должны признать, что ментальная эволюция как евразийская объединяющая антропологическая сила даже важнее биологической эволюции. Мы больше не можем игнорировать тот факт, что за последние 200 лет, т. е. со времен Французской революции, число людей в Евразии увеличилось в десять раз. Homo sapiens находится на пути к тому, чтобы стать homo billionis, существом, которое эмоционально вписывается в стадо и чувствует себя тем в большей безопасности, чем больше это стадо. Этот процесс идет по всей планете, но в Евразии он наиболее очевиден. Будь то человек разумный (homo sapiens) или новая стадия эволюции homo billionis, нет никаких сомнений в том, что человек должен измениться, если он хочет выжить в Евразии, где ресурсы становятся все скуднее, а население растет. Но для этого, по крайней мере, в Евразии, человек должен разумно контролировать себя и ставить жесткие ограничения своим культурным, ментальным и социальным стремлениям и порывам, вместо того чтобы полагаться на коллективный контроль и исправление якобы покоренной им природы Евразии.
Ключевые слова: Евразия, эволюция, homo sapiens, homo billionis, искусственный интеллект
HEADLINE. An unconventional look at the evolution of the human intellect and its capacity for cognition in Eurasia.
INTRODUCTION
Not only since Darwin have people been asking themselves: Where did we come from? In this paper, I ask: Where did we come from as Eurasians in anthropological sense?
Burials, ancestor cults, the memory of a distant origin seem to have moved homo sapiens since time immemorial and driven him to ever greater efforts to answer this question.
Be it the pyramids in ancient Egypt, the underground necropolis of Qin Shihuangdi, be it the ideas of a creation story in God has formed Adam out of clay, blown breath into him and then, from one of his ribs, given him that Eve at his side so that he could "keep on planting" himself - they all attest to this incessant search for the difference to man's biological ancestors, the mammals (Arnason 2017; 2021; Arnason and Hallstrom 2020; D'errico et al. 2018; Manzi 2016; Roebroeks and Soressi 2016; Slimak et al. 2022).
What really distinguishes the Eurasians anthropologically from mammals that have advanced into the evolutionary gap left by the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, after
a meteorite had hit near Yucatan and huge lava flows had flooded parts of the continental surfaces in Siberia and India (Heizmann and Begun 2001)?
SPREAD OF HOMO SAPIENS ACROSS EURASIA
Generations of archaeologists, ethnologists and now also genetic researchers are investigating the question: What makes Eurasia a unique evolutionary territory? With great effort, findings have been and are being compiled on the migratory movements of homo in Siberia over the past three million years or so (Derevyanko 2015-2020).1 They essentially assume that the ancestors of homo sapiens, i.e. the ancestors of the people living today, migrated from Southern Eurasia to the north. That they encountered creatures related to homo erectus in these "northern spaces" during their later migrations is shown by the findings in Denissova Cave in the Altai Mountains.
During the last Ice Age, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon men have been living side by side for some time (Green et al. 2010; Harvati et al. 2019). About 80,000 years ago, there was a drastic cold spell and then, from 59,000 years before today, a significant rise of temperature to about the level of 12,000 years ago, the beginning of the warm period in which we are currently living (Groucutt et al. 2018; James et al. 2019; Yang and Fu 2018). The assumption that Neanderthal man disappeared about 40,000 years ago due to these changed environmental conditions and in connection with his different food basis has now been disproved. Christoph Wiping et al. (2019) conclude, based on the isotope compositions in fossil bones, that the assumption that Neanderthals died out because their dietary spectrum was restricted is not correct. Rather, the results showed that modern humans may be comprised of both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. Anyway, the survived had an advantage because they were presumably more mobile and better interconnected (Lahr and Foley 1998; MacDonald 2017; Stringer 2002).
1 Anatoly P. Derevianko is a Russian historian, archaeologist and active in science and education. He specialises in the archaeology and early history of North, Central and South Asia.
Of his many publications, I may emphasise the 5-volume work Three Global Human Migrations in Eurasia:
Volume I : Human Origins and Early Peopling of Southwestern, Southern, Eastern and Southeastern Asia and the Caucasus. (Inst. of Archeology and Ethnography SB RAS Press) 2015.
Volume II : The Original Peopling of Northern, Central and Western Central Asia. (Novosibirsk IAET SB RAS Publishing) 2017.
Volume III : The Acheulean and Bifacial Lithic Industries in Africa and Asia: The Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, India, Vietnam and the Islands of Southeastern Asia. (Novosibirsk: IAET SB RAS Publ. 2018. Volume IV : The Acheulean and Bifacial Lithic Industries in China, Korea, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and in the Caucasus. (Novosibirsk: IAET SB RAS Publ. 2019
Volume V : The Middle Paleolithic and Transition to the Upper Paleolithic in Africa and Southwestern Asia. The Origin of Modern Humans. (Novosibirsk: Izd. IAET SB RAS Publ. 2020
This raises the question of the actual causes and the emergence of those mental abilities that are supposed to justify the term SAPIENS in Eurasia anthropologically when distinguishing it from other types of HOMO. In essence, SAPIENS is about the not immediately recognisable connection between an obvious effect and its deeper and mostly unclear causes (Eller 2002; Holdaway and Cosgrove 1997; Mishmar et al. 2003). In short, SAPIENS stands for the ability to think abstractly, to act strategically and with an eye to the future, and not only to include one's own experiences, but also to learn by observing one's environment, to discover laws for oneself, the individual, and to share them with others (Watkins et al. 2001). What else do wall paintings in caves like the one at Lascaux (Fig. 1)?
The spread of stone tools, sometimes in the form of entire industries, which provide an indication of economic thinking directed towards exchange and trade, therefore form only one clue among many others as to how sapiens may have gradually evolved and spread (Osterkamp 2021).
A completely new approach to correctly classify our ancestors in evolution and spread across Eurasia and to understand the emergence of the SAPIENS in Eurasia as a qualitative and quantitative separation from the cognitive and intellectual abilities of our distant ancestors has been taken by Marcia S. Ponce de León et al. (2021).
With the help of the latest high-resolution examination techniques, the inner surfaces of skull covers of different ages were measured and compared with each other. This "reflects" the furrows and structures of the cerebral cortices that were once inside. Ponce de León and colleagues (2021) conclude:
The cranial-cerebral topography shows that the earliest members of the genus Homo had a primitive frontal lobe organisation, with an ape-like anterior location of the inferior precentral sulcus (note: furrow between brain convolutions) relative to the coronal suture (note: junction between frontal bone and parietal bones). Our data suggest that the inferred frontal lobe organisation appeared relatively late during the evolution of Homo, between 1.7 and 1.5 Ma - not during the transition from Australopithecus to Homo, but significantly later than the first dispersals of Homo from Africa.
Fig. 1. A scene from the Lascaux cave in south-west France.
SPREAD OF HOMO SAPIENS ACROSS EURASIA
If we do not start from Darwin's idea that individuals, by whatever means, have gained a physical or informational advantage through a mutation of their genetic material and then, through a process of "survival of the fittest", have prevailed over those who were not given this "advantage" in the cradle (Darwin 1872), then we arrive at a completely different possible anthropological perspective in Eurasia.
To put it simply, it is not about a flight reflex with which one tries to save oneself from a threat from other living competitors (predators) or from unexpected environmental hazards (Wilson 1959; 1961; 1980; 1984). Rather, in the position of "weakness and inferiority", it is a matter of setting a trap for the challenger, be it a stronger living being or a physical-chemical challenge, or of countering the latter with other new means.
This applies to being eaten, as well as to the anticipatory fight against hunger through early hunting, and finally even to the handling of fire and the competition with other members or collateral lines of the species homo sapiens, such as the Neanderthal or even earlier variants that evolved from homo erectus.
Examples of this development from the position of weakness rather than physical or informational superiority can easily be found:
• In addition to the immediate melee, the throwing of an object.
• The development of the lance, bow and arrow as a means of keeping distance and gaining time against attackers (Siberian archaeological findings).
• The strategic mobile encirclement of superior prey.
• The ability to handle and guard fire.
• Finally, the domestication of "deputy sheriffs", such as sheepdogs, to keep a flock of sheep together.
An observation of my own from the 1960s perhaps makes this view of evolution, diametrically opposed to Darwinian ideas, understandable. My daily commute to my workplace in a research centre, about 4 km away from home, was done by car, like most of my colleagues did. One colleague, however, who came from Scotland, always used his bicycle even in bad weather and when it was cold. He had massive hair all over his upper body. You could say he "had fur". This was also true of his legs, as he usually wore shorts. Only in heavy rain did he wear some kind of rain jacket. I and also others asked him if he was not cold. The answer was: "It's good for me". If we take this example as a starting point, then he, like albinos, was a rare form of re-emerging archaic physical peculiarities.
And this leads to the question of why modern human, however one may classify him archaeologically, unlike all other mammals, is not born with a protective coat.
It is this "deficit" that apparently forced him to invent something to protect himself against nature with artificial "aids" during his "expeditions" from warmer regions of Eurasia northwards towards the Arctic, were they driven by bold curiosity or because of too
dangerous competitors. What a step it was to use the fur of a hunting prey. And even more so, finally, to use sheep's wool or certain plant fibres to make fabrics that not only replace one's own missing fur, but even provide better protection for the bare skin (compare Figs. 2 and 3). A mere look at the difference between a polar bear and an Inuit is enough to recognise immediately the resulting advantage. This then goes on to the construction of artificial "caves", transportable tents or igloos to be erected on a case-by-case basis.
Fig. 3. Two young polar bears with their natural fur that prevents them from freezing to death at temperatures far below -20°C due to their unfavourable surface to body volume ratio.
Fig. 2. An Inuit child in two skins and double gloves.
Taken together, these and other examples suggest that mental evolution of new Eurasian inhabitants, not evolution based on physical characteristics, obviously takes place from a position of being under pressure, precisely not from the comfortable position of a supposedly "fitter" being.
Do we not observe this very process of mental evolution out of deep "inadequacy" in newborns and adolescents? How important it is for a two- or three-year-old child to observe how other children try to solve what seems to be a simple task for adults and fail several times, usually accompanied by screaming, sometimes by injuries. This continues later in the adult maturation process, unless individuals become more and more pampered by an exaggerated "humanistic system" that ultimately reduces them to members of a herd controlled and led by a few "leaders" who are only concerned with increasing their herd and its potential output.
New thoughts and insights arise in single individuals and they spread through communication within closely related groups, similar to modified DNA via sexual contact. What different types of SAPIENS could and should therefore be distinguished from each other?
Cultures, however, are only a narrow and by no means sufficiently clearly defined aspect of SAPIENS for this. They differ from each other at least as clearly as those different distant hominins that preceded the homo sapiens of today who is considered as being equal.
SPREAD OF HOMO SAPIENS ACROSS EURASIA
Looking at the current globally spread COVID-19 pandemic, it seems to be those few people who can best stand up to this differently seen evolutionary challenge, who break away from the thinking and behaviour of masses and dare to set out mentally into unknown "territories". What is needed is a new and unbiased view of such phenomena as globalisation, as an indirect and foreign-driven perception of reality that cannot be deduced from the addition of specific bottlenecks and conflicts, such as between the material needs of eight billion people, their difficult satisfaction and the accompanying changes in the ecology or the climate system of the planet.
It is probably necessary to think of apparently less beneficial biotopes, to colonise them mentally and to demarcate them from one another, instead of networking the biotopes of urban mass man that have arisen in the meantime even more closely with one another, standardising their inhabitants to a large extent and thus creating a global "monoculture" that becomes easy prey for parasites, e.g. as the current SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
As always in evolution viewed here from a different perspective, it would therefore be important to gain distance, spatially and temporally. In times of digitalisation, globalisation and highly condensed urban mass humanity in climatically "cozy" regions of Eurasia (east shore of China, India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, etc.) (Sen 2017; Sen et al. 2016) this means above all gaining distance from emerging collective opinions. They resemble the attempt to imagine a certain form of creation in which the vast majority then believe to exist in reality.
Every herd panics under informational stress and can no longer be controlled because its members can no longer get an accurate picture of the social, geographical and mental territory in which they are actually travelling. It is precisely the many "neighbours" that obscure the view of reality. That is why they become the real threat, not the terrain through which the herd is moving.
This raises the question of the WE in a way that amounts to differentiation, to a completely different understanding of development and "progress", ultimately to a splitting up of the SAPIENS that is probably already underway. At some point homo sapiens, transformed into a herd in Eurasian space, is likely to question itself and engage in infantile struggles for increasingly scarce resources - because it did not realise in time that it is not a limited nature but too much of "itself" that is the cause of its demise. Many speculations about renewable sources of energy that are currently held in the EU are primarily about that.
EDIFICES OF BELIEFS IN FORMER AND MODERN EURASIA
What edifices of belief prevent us today from accepting the harsh reality of a world with an exponentially growing population and the clearly recognisable overloads of particular ecosystems?
If we look at the recent history of the last 500 years or so of the European "Enlightenment", we see that those "weak" who prepared themselves in the sense of resilience, not at all in the sense of sustainability, to defend themselves against a material superiority, produced precisely those techniques with the help of which they were able, more or less successfully, to initially rely on deterrence without daring the actual warlike test.
After the political disaster of the Versailles' and other enacted peace treaties around Paris, in addition to the attempt to reduce Germany to an agrarian state (Morgenthau Plan), it was not only German national pride that was promoted thereby in a way that had never existed before. People like Einstein, Heisenberg, Konrad Zuse, Wernher von Braun and others opened up the foundations for access to the technical use of nuclear forces. Without these new insights, which undoubtedly also arose from a psychological defensive, and which were "hijacked" both to the East and to the West after 1945, there would possibly have been no Sputnik, no race to the moon and no nuclear arms race, no Cold War.
Where this hardly imaginable development of digital communication networks, once built for defence and international exchange, the ARPA Net and later Tim Berners Lee's World Wide Web, is now leading, is shown by a recent report on increasingly hostile interventions in the now more and more digitally interconnected economically and politically competing blocs USA, Russia and China (Fig. 4) through the spread of digital viruses and bots. These three actors complain about mutual interference in public opinion, elections and the theft of trade secrets from their economic and security institutions. In the meantime, there is even talk of unbundling international electronic payments, which have already been partially shut down for the purpose of sanctions (Bruggmann and Heide 2021).
It doesn't take much imagination to envisage the risks posed by the construction of basic infrastructures that can only be controlled digitally, such as electrical supply networks, whose construction and operating plans increasingly seem to be traceable by the artificial intelligence only.
Is homo sapiens just handing over control to something that Goethe described in his Sorcerer's Apprentice as early as 1797? Is this new sapiens based on silicon and some rare earths evolving as a successor to that life based on hydrocarbons?2
2 Julia Merlot: Artificial intelligence Autonomous Weapons out of Control. Der Spiegel, 24.2.2019: "This is not some crazy, unrealistic Terminator fantasy."
Al researcher Toby Walsh of Australia's University of New South Wales told the AAAS science conference in Washington a few days ago. "The weapons will be around for the foreseeable future. We should think carefully about whether we want to let them make the difference between life and death. Unlike remote-controlled drones, which are already in use in war zones, autonomous weapons operate entirely without human control. Simple variants already exist - for example, self-firing systems that trigger automatically when a person enters
keep the option open
Fig. 4. An extremely simplified schematics of communication of USA with the Eurasian space.
Do we no longer notice that the adaptation to harsh and potentially existentially threatening living conditions forced our ancestors not to regard emotions and the VALUES based on them as the actual glue of a community, but to rely on cool reason and to really use it practically?
What logical contradictions, what distorted view of the evolution of homo sapiens as an absolutely set VALUE entails shows a look at the way early cultures dealt with the phenomenon of life. Not only wars and the right to kill proactively for the purpose of defence, death sentences for traitors and criminals, also the treatment of children sacrificed to gods or abandoned or killed for various reasons, they make it clear that the demand The dignity of life is inviolable! elevated to the status of an ideal makes an unemotional discussion about the basic problem of the current proliferation of human beings difficult, if not impossible.
The scientist Dr. Conny Martens from the Institute for Medical Anthropology and Bioethics (IMABE) in Vienna has published a historical overview of the topic of infanticide in Eurasian cultures from over 60 scientific studies (Martens 2002). It deals with infanticide, including the
forbidden territory. In future, however, autonomous weapons could also decide who to attack and in what form in much more complex war situations. Experts speak of the third great revolution in warfare - after the invention of gunpowder and nuclear weapons."
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/autonome-waffen-ausser-kontrolle- a-1253320.html
handling of severely damaged newborns, and ranges from Ancient Egypt to the Roman Empire, the various Chinese dynasties, the Inuit in the Arctic Circle and the Siberian aborigines. In the recent past, first Europe, then the "West", i.e. the "developed societies", have risen from the position of being oppressed to the position of being fitter. The "West" (especially the EU structures) seems to miss the fact that its inflated values distance it further and further from the reality of life. It fails to see the real cause of the critical change in the planet's ecological and climate systems lying in the unlimited growth of the global population. Instead, the First World relies on new technologies, while on the other hand, the increasingly hard-pressed Third World strives for participation and economic growth. Sudden and profound changes in global or even regional environmental conditions are declared "avoidable".
Relying on the sometimes painful experiences of those who have preceded us and limited one's own needs and desires in such a way that one has sufficient reserves for the shortages that are always to be expected, even collapses in the foundations of life in certain forms of civilisation, is a principle that the mentally dominant "West" rejects as wrong and morally reprehensible. Rooted in the tradition of the ancient Egyptians and the Israelites, it relies rather on the help of others - in essence on migration, on humanity, on vague hopes, ultimately on precisely what underlies the idea of any empire.
CONCLUSION
We can no longer ignore the fact that the number of Eurasian inhabitants has increased tenfold over the past 200 years, i.e. since the French Revolution. Is homo sapiens on the way to becoming homo biilionis (Sassin 2013), the creature that emotionally fits into a herd and seems to feel safer there the larger it is?
So where is mental evolution really heading? In order to recognise this, one must undoubtedly make a clear distinction between biological and mental evolution.
For Darwin, evolution was still indicated by the slightly differently coloured wings of some bird species on the Galapagos Islands. Both the survival of the fittest, who are best able to control coolly and rationally the emotions and drives of others, are the result of two highly different "selection processes". In the first case, it is a matter of competition between equals competing against each other for scarce resources; in the second case, it is a matter of different ones whose temporal, spatial and cognitive horizons differ sufficiently and clearly from each other.
Whether sapiens or biilionis, there is no question that man must change if he wants to survive, given his development in the recent past. To do so, however, he would have to control himself rationally and set hard limits to his drives and dreams, instead of relying on collective control and correction of the nature of Eurasia that he has only supposedly subjugated.
At the latest, some of our grandchildren will probably look back on "us", the supposed
Homo SAPIENS, in a similar way as most people today look back on the Homo ERECTUS who once prepared to leave the treetops and enter and subdue the savannahs.
Funding. This work did not receive any specific financing from any governmental, public, commercial, non-profit, community-based organisations or any other source.
Conflicts of interest. None declared.
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EXTENDED SUMMARY
Sassin, Wolfgang. How Did Sapiens Really Come into Being in Eurasia and Where Is It Heading Right Now?
Generations of archaeologists, ethnologists and now also genetic researchers are investigating the question: What makes Eurasia a unique evolutionary territory? With great effort, findings have been and are being compiled on the migratory movements of homo in Siberia over the past three million years or so. They essentially assume that the ancestors of homo sapiens, i.e. the ancestors of the people living today, migrated from Southern Eurasia to the north. That they encountered creatures related to homo erectus in these "northern spaces" during their later migrations is shown by the findings in Denissova Cave in the Altai Mountains.
If we do not start from Darwin's idea that individuals, by whatever means, have gained a physical or informational advantage through a mutation of their genetic material and then, through a process of "survival of the fittest", have prevailed over those who were not given this "advantage" in the cradle, then we arrive at a completely different possible anthropological perspective in Eurasia.
To put it simply, it is not about a flight reflex with which one tries to save oneself from a threat from other living competitors (predators) or from unexpected
environmental hazards. Rather, in the position of "weakness and inferiority", it is a matter of setting a trap for the challenger, be it a stronger living being or a physical-chemical challenge, or of countering the latter with other new means.
This applies to being eaten, as well as to the anticipatory fight against hunger through early hunting, and finally even to the handling of fire and the competition with other members or collateral lines of the species homo sapiens, such as the Neanderthal or even earlier variants that evolved from homo erectus. Examples of this development from the position of weakness rather than physical or informational superiority can easily be found:
1) In addition to the immediate melee, the throwing of an object.
2) The development of the lance, bow and arrow as a means of keeping distance and gaining time against attackers (Siberian archaeological findings).
3) The strategic mobile encirclement of superior prey.
4) The ability to handle and guard fire.
5) Finally, the domestication of "deputy sheriffs", such as sheepdogs, to keep a flock of sheep together.
Taken together, these and other examples suggest that mental evolution of new Eurasian inhabitants, not evolution based on physical characteristics, obviously takes place from a position of being under pressure, precisely not from the comfortable position of a supposedly "fitter" being.
This raises the question of the WE in a way that amounts to differentiation, to a completely different understanding of development and "progress", ultimately to a splitting up of the SAPIENS that is probably already underway. At some point homo sapiens, transformed into a herd in Eurasian space, is likely to question itself and engage in infantile struggles for increasingly scarce resources - because it did not realise in time that it is not a limited nature but too much of "itself" that is the cause of its demise. Many speculations about renewable sources of energy that are currently held in the EU are primarily about that.
However, representatives of homo biilionis, the new stage of human evolution, who feel comfortable only in herds, are eager to delegate a number of administrative powers to artificial intelligence. This is especially clear in overcrowded Eurasian space. It doesn't take much imagination to envisage the risks posed by the construction of basic Eurasian infrastructures that can only be controlled digitally, such as electrical supply networks, whose construction and operating plans increasingly seem to be traceable by the artificial intelligence only. This poses a question whether homo sapiens hand over control to something that Goethe described in his Sorcerer's Apprentice as early as 1797, with Eurasia being a pioneer territory of such handing.
Author / ABTopt
Dr-Ing Wolfgang Sassin's teaching, research, advisory activities and affiliations included the
Technical University of Vienna (Austria), the Research Centre Jülich (Germany), IIASA (Austria), the International Panel on Climate Change IPCC, the UN Program Habitat, the Directorate General on Research and Innovation of the European Commission (Belgium), and OEMs in the German automobile industry on man-machine interfaces.
Wolfgang Sassin,
Independent researcher, Jochberg 5 6335 Thiersee Austria
© Wolfgang Sassin Licensee Eurasian Crossroads
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