Nature of Humanity

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Nature of Humanity

• A Personal View

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Mt-DNA Primate Tree
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Our Living Sisters
Pan
Gorilla
http//www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tre
e.html
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Human PhylogenyThe Smithsonian Institution
Museum of Natural History
http//www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tre
e.html
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Australopithecus species
Genus now designated Paranthropus
http//www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tre
e.html
http//www.wsu.edu8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/t
op_longfor/timeline/afarensis/afarensis-a.html
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Homo species
http//www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tre
e.html
http//www.wsu.edu8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/t
op_longfor/timeline/timeline.html
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http//www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tre
e.html
http//www.wsu.edu8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/t
op_longfor/timeline/africanus/africanus-a.html
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Features that distinguish our species from other
apes

• Bipedal Locomotion

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Features that distinguish our species from other
apes

• Neoteny
• Nakedness
• Large Brain Size
• Reduced Dentition

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The Neotenic Ape
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Features that distinguish our species from other
apes

• Vocal Communication

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http//www.voice.northwestern.edu/VOICEBOX/Larynx.
htm
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Common Fallacies in Understanding Evolution

• Anthropocentrism
• Adaptationism
• Progressionism
• Teleology

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Humans are not proud of their ancestors and never
invite them round to dinner.Hitchhikers
Guideto the Galaxy.
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Paintings of Lascaux
http//www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/
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http//mexplaza.udg.mx/wm/paint/auth/vinci/joconde
/
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http//www.artchive.com/artchive/G/greek/venus_de_
milo.jpg.html
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• Nikos Kasantzakis
• Zorba the Greek

http//www.ffolio.com/abarchive/film/zorba.html
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Agincourt Song
http//battlefieldvacations.com/france/aginco.htm
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• God Save the QueenGod 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.h
tm
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Mozarts Le Nozze di Figaro(Premiered May 1,
1786 in Vienna)
http//w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/mozart.html
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Sgt. Pepper
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Richard Dawkins

• A meme is anything that infects itself from
  brain to brain.
• Dawkins. 1998. Unweaving the Rainbow.

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Written Language
http//www.gutenberg.de/english/erfindun.htm
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• 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 27

http//prodigi.bl.uk/gutenbg/background.asp
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Rig-Veda
http//phoenicia.org/rigveda.html
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Ovids Metamorphoses
http//larryavisbrown.homestead.com/files/xeno.ovi
d1.htm
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Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform gt7,000 years ago
http//www.upenn.edu/museum/Games/cuneiform.html
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Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

• The moving finger writes
• and having writ,
• Moves on nor all your
• Piety nor Wit
• Shall lure it back to cancel
• half a Line,
• Nor all your Tears wash
• out a Word of it.
• -LXXI

http//www.okonlife.com/pics/index.htm
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http//www.twainquotes.com/
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Stephen Jay Gould
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.
http//www.annonline.com/interviews/961009/biograp
hy.html
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What a piece of work is man.
http//www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/
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Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray
http//antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960623.html
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Footprints at Laetoli
http//www.humanevolution.f2s.com/laetolifoot.html
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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/
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E. O. Wilson

• The human species can change its own nature.
  What will it choose?
• Wilson. 1978. On Human Nature.

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H. G. Wells

• 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).

http//www.rdg.ac.uk/lhsjamse/wells/wells.htm
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Man thinks and God laughs.
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Man is a small thing, but the night is large and
full of wonders. -The Laughter
of the Gods.