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    Hom

    o sapiens, Neanderthal is an obsolete scrap on the garbage pile of

    history.

    In human terms, that means suffering and mass death. Each

    individual product of the mini-factory system is built with a vast array

    of sensory devices designed to protect it from damage. It's regrettable

    that those sensory mechanisms happen to be quick and efficient,

    because they produce what we humans call pain.  But, then, no

    product is perfect. The Neanderthal woman who lost her children and

    mate probably went into unconscionable agony.46  She may well have

    lost her family to rampaging Homo sapiens tribes, glorying in their

    victories, gloating over their superiority, and reveling in their

    conquests.47

    The ability to give speeches on glory, conquest, superiority and

    nobility may well have been one of the features built into the latest

    model--our "heroic" ancestor Homo sapient man.  The new Homo

    sapiens concepts of nobility and heroism would have been great leaps

    forward.  Why?  They suited the hunger of genes.

    Dawkins' The Selfish Gene rearranged the way many of those who

    deal with animal and human behavior see the world around them.

    One reason: Dawkins said that we tend to see ourselves and the

    creatures around us as the masters of our genetic endowment.  But in

    reality, said Dawkins, we are merely  servants.  We are not using genes

    to achieve our own ends.  Our genes are using us.

    The idea had been anticipated by the English poet and satirist

    Samuel Butler in the 17th century.  Butler  had quipped that, "A hen is

    just an egg's way of making more eggs."

    If Dawkins is right, humans and their social groups originated as

    mere puppets, complex tools of tiny molecules.  You and I were

    fashioned as if we were cranes, dump trucks and tanks, designed to be

    driven by a set of replicators.  We are gatherers of raw materials

    operating at the behest of  microscopic mini-factories seated at the

    center of our cells.  For genes are infected with an overweening

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