New Scientist asks
Island of wild children: Would they learn to be human?
…
The sound comes again across the tops of the trees. Hooting, and then distant replies. High-pitched and repetitive, the sounds are not words. But they mean something anyway: the hunters are coming home.
They emerge one by one from the foliage, stepping out cautiously into a wide and sandy bay. There are five of them, all males.
The basic concept was done fifty years ago by William Golding in Lord of the Flies (1954).
The difference is, in these times, the line between fact and fiction is increasingly blurry. What Golding meant as a parable of universal (and contemporary) human nature told as fiction, dollars to donuts, New Scientist sees as a chance to air speculations about how man evolved. Taking their speculations seriously. That’s the only way they would be interested in the idea or know how to understand it.
But O’Leary for News isn’t paying to find out. Maybe a reader will. Instead,
See also: What do we know about human evolution?
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