Nature of Humanity

A Personal View

Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.

Michael Shermer (2006)

Mt-DNA Primate Tree

Our Living Sisters

Pan

Gorilla

http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html

http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/afarensis/afarensis-a.html

Australopithecus species

Genus now designated

Paranthropushttp://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html

Homo species

http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/timeline.html

http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html

http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/africanus/africanus-a.htmlhttp://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html

Features that distinguish our species from other apes

• Bipedal Locomotion

Figure 1 from Richmond, B. G., D. R. Begun, and D. S. Strait. 2001. Origin of human bipedalism: The knuckle-walking hypothesis revisited. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. 44:70-105.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html

Features that distinguish our species from other apes

• Neoteny– Nakedness– Large Brain Size– Reduced Dentition

The Neotenic Ape

Features that distinguish our species from other apes

• Vocal Communication

http://www.voice.northwestern.edu/VOICEBOX/Larynx.htm

Humans are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them ‘round to dinner.Hitchhiker’s Guideto the Galaxy.

42

Paintings of Lascaux

http://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/

http://mexplaza.udg.mx/wm/paint/auth/vinci/joconde/

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/greek/venus_de_milo.jpg.html

Nikos Kasantzakis

Zorba the

Greek

http://www.ffolio.com/abarchive/film/zorba.html

Agincourt Song

http://battlefieldvacations.com/france/aginco.htm

God Save the Queen

God save our gracious Queen,Long live our noble Queen,

God save the Queen!Send her victorious,Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us,God save the Queen!

http://www.emulateme.com/anthems/unitedkingtexte.htm

Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro(Premiered May 1, 1786 in Vienna)

http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/mozart.html

Sgt. Pepper

Richard Dawkins

A meme is … anything that infects itself from brain to brain.

Dawkins. 1998. Unweaving the Rainbow.

Written Language

http://www.gutenberg.de/english/erfindun.htm

Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

-Genesis 2:7

http://prodigi.bl.uk/gutenbg/background.asp

Rig-Veda

http://phoenicia.org/rigveda.html

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/files/xeno.ovid1.htm

Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform >7,000 years ago

http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Games/cuneiform.html

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

http://www.okonlife.com/pics/index.htm

The moving finger writes;and having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancelhalf a Line,

Nor all your Tears washout a Word of it.

-LXXI

http://www.twainquotes.com/

Stephen Jay Gould

http://www.annonline.com/interviews/961009/biography.html

Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again.

What a

piece of

work is

man.

http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/

Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960623.html

Footprints at Laetoli

http://www.humanevolution.f2s.com/laetolifoot.html

Loren Eiseley

If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there. — Loren Eiseley

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4189/

E. O. Wilson

The human species can change its own nature. What will it choose?

Wilson. 1978. On Human Nature.

H. G. Wells

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~lhsjamse/wells/wells.htm

A day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars.Wells. 1902. The Discovery of the

Future. Nature 65 (326).

Man is a small thing, but the night is large and full of wonders. -The Laughter of the Gods.

Man thinks and God laughs.