What Is Humanity Really?

Your brain differs from your neighbor's brain more than a wolf's brain differs from a fox's brain.

This is not a metaphor. This is autopsy data. I want to share with you a big study that has been going on for a while in Russia. In Moscow, at the Institute of Human Morphology, professor Sergey Savelyev, doctor of biological sciences, has spent thirty years doing something almost nobody else does. He takes real human brains, cuts them into the thinnest slices, stains them, and studies them under a microscope. Old school anatomy with insane precision.

His conclusion is blunt. The very idea of humanity as one species is a scientific fiction. And the brain, he says, is an organ for survival, not for thinking.

Look at the numbers. Among Europeans, brain weight ranges from about 800 to 2200 grams. Almost a threefold difference, and all of these people walk the streets, work, talk, pay taxes.

But weight is the crude measure. The real shock is inside. The human brain has around 300 separate structures. Savelyev's measurements show some of them differ between people by up to 40 times. Read that again. Forty times. Some people walk around with entire functional zones that other people simply do not have. Not smaller. Missing completely.

Even children differ sharply from their own parents. Your child does not inherit a copy of your brain. He gets a unique construction, and nobody can predict which one.

This is not new speculation. In 1928, after Lenin's death, (the Russian leader of communist party) Moscow founded an entire Brain Institute with one task - find the material basis of genius inside the leader's brain. For decades they collected the brains of remarkable people: Mayakovsky, Pavlov, Sakharov... Each brain cut into thousands of slices, each slice studied under a microscope. One of the largest collections in the world. And the data says the same thing. The field for musical hearing can differ 35 times between two people. Mathematical thinking, up to 40 times.

Picture two people at a chessboard. One has five square centimeters of planning structures. The other has 150. The first will study openings for years and play like an amateur. The second will glance at the board and beat a master in six months. Not smarter. Not harder working. Just more neurons in the right place.

Now here is where it turns terrifying. A Soviet historian Boris Porshnev proposed something dark. At the dawn of humanity, some ancient hominids began hunting not animals, but their own kind. Cannibalism as a survival strategy. The survivors of that hell split. Some became predators. Others became prey.

Viktor Didenko took it further and named four types.

- Superanimals - predators without internal brakes.

- Suggestors - imitators who copy predators but lack their strength.

- Diffuse - the main mass, followers who submit to whoever leads.

- Neoanthropes - those with critical thinking, conscience, and self restraint.

A striking scheme. But the question stayed what exactly in the body makes one a predator and another a victim?

Savelyev's brain slices answered it.

- A superanimal has a powerful limbic system and an underdeveloped neocortex. His brain is wired for domination. He feels another's weakness the way a predator feels wounded prey. Not evil. Not badly raised. Built that way. Conscience and compassion are functions of specific cortex zones. If those zones are tiny or missing, the functions do not exist. Like color vision in a dog. The dog is not evil. It lacks the receptors.

- The suggestor. If the superanimal is all limbic system, the suggestor is a different recipe. His limbic system is strong enough to smell power and hunger for it. That is why he always circles the predators, attaches to them, serves them. But he lacks their raw machinery of aggression. He cannot seize by force, so his brain routes the same hunger through a different path. His cortex is developed enough for cunning, for reading people, for imitation, but the zones of conscience are small. So you get a person who understands power games perfectly and feels zero restraint about playing them. He does not need his own teeth. He borrows the predator's. And because he mimics so well, people often mistake him for the real thing, until the moment real force is required, and he disappears behind someone stronger.

- The diffuse. The most common brain, and the simplest to understand. Nothing extreme in any direction. The limbic system is average, enough for fear, for belonging, for obeying the pack leader, but no hypertrophied zones of aggression or domination. The cortex is average too, enough to learn rules and routines, but no greatly enlarged zones for independent judgment or critical thought. This is a brain built for following. In herd animals, survival means staying with the herd and submitting to the strongest, and the diffuse brain runs the same program. He submits not from conviction but because the machinery for resistance was never built large. Put him under a superanimal and he will obey the predator. Put him under a neoanthrope and he will live a peaceful decent life. Same brain. Different shepherd.

- The neoanthrope. The exact mirror of the superanimal. Where the predator has a giant limbic system and a thin cortex, the neoanthrope has a powerful developed neocortex that holds the limbic system on a leash. The zones for empathy, reflection, and self restraint are fully built, so conscience is not a decision for him. It is wiring, the same way aggression is wiring in the superanimal. Self restraint is literally the cortex inhibiting the impulses from below, the hardware of saying no to yourself. That is why this type could resist the predators when the others could not. It is also the rarest, because growing that much cortex is insanely expensive. The brain eats a huge share of the body's energy, and a big cortex eats the most.

All our lives we explain cruelty through morality. He could have acted differently. He chose evil. Savelyev says no. He could not. He had no instrument for a different choice. He did not choose cruelty. He was born inside it.

This does not justify evil. It explains it. And the explanation is more frightening than any condemnation, because condemnation assumes a person can change. Biology says no. The structure forms in the womb and the first years. After that it does not change. Put a suit on him, give him a diploma, seat him in a director's chair. The brain stays the same.

There is an old medical joke. A patient says, doctor, I want to become kinder. The doctor answers, show me your cortex, and I will tell you if you have a chance. Savelyev tells it without a smile. For him it is a diagnosis.

We say, it was not given to him, as a figure of speech. Savelyev says it is not a figure of speech. It is anatomy.

Tell a superanimal about a little bug with a family, about how the family suffers too. He will look at you with empty eyes. Not because he is cruel. Because the structures for that feeling are not in his brain. It was not given. Literally.

Or take the born thinker. Languages, math, music, everything comes easy. People call him gifted, as if he earned it. He earned nothing. His brain arrived with the right zones enlarged. It was given.

And the ten thousand hours? Savelyev shakes his head. Practice squeezes the maximum out of what you were given. It will not grow a single new neuron. You can train a small muscle to work better. You cannot turn it into a big one.

So the four types, with the biology behind them.

- The superanimal. Limbic system in charge. Aggression, domination, seizure of resources.

- The suggestor. No predator strength, but a genius of imitation. Attaches to superanimals, copies their aggression, pulls strings from the shadows.

- The diffuse. The majority. No strong structures anywhere. Follows whoever shouts loudest. Survives by obedience.

- The neoanthrope. Developed cortex. Critical thinking, conscience, self restraint. The rarest.

Savelyev believes the day will come when a deep brain scan reads a person like a book. What is given, what is not. No diplomas. No interviews. No pretending. He admits the instruments do not exist yet. The principle, he says, is proven.

Mainstream science fights him fiercely, calling it biological determinism in a lab coat. Make of that what you will. But you already know the ending.

You explain something painfully basic to a person, and they stare at you blankly. You think, how is this possible, a child would get it. It is not stubbornness. It is not stupidity. You are playing Bach on a comb while your listener hears it on an organ, and both of you are sure the instrument is the same.

If the difference between two human brains is bigger than between a wolf and a fox, what exactly have we been calling humanity?