The Caveman’s Corner

I should really blog on other blogs more, because I read some things that I immediately admire a lot in some of the ones I frequent and that I think would benefit my two or three readers and the random people that find this site through a Google Images search for one of the pictures I’ve poached off somewhere else on the Internet, but get higher ranked on my site for some reason. Maybe because I label them better.

Anyway, I’ll start with this article I read on one of my favorites, John Hawks Anthropology Weblog, back on my birthday, June 18:

Don’t ask the experts if they can’t agree on the question

The post is about a conference convened as part of the World Science Festival to discuss “what it means to be human.” Predictably, most of the discussion centered around this trait or that trait, but as Dr. Hawks points out, no one trait can really include all humanity while excluding all other animals we wouldn’t call ‘human.’ What makes us human?

One thing is shared by all humans, and cannot be taken away: our evolutionary history. Each of us bears some — but none has all — of the marks of this history.

It is our history that connects us to our distant relatives, not our genes. Even with a close relative like a twentieth cousin, there is a decent likelihood that you will share no genes at all because of your shared kinship from your most recent common ancestor. By the fiftieth generation, it is a virtual certainty. You are a genetic stranger to your ancestors.

Within the span of fifty generations, a selected gene may completely transform a species, going from less than one percent to ubiquity. Indeed, a single genetic mutation may make you radically different from the rest of humanity, perhaps by restoring a thick coat of body fur, or making your tissues age at many times the average rate — both characters that some people would make part of the definition of “human.” Indeed, many such changes actually have happened in the past few thousand years.

Only history defines humanity, and will continue to define us no matter what we become in the future. We have not severed the genetic links between maize and teosinte, but they are tenuous enough to make the relationship difficult for the layman to see. We have intertwined several inbred strains, more than doubling grain production in a few decades. We regularly add genes from other organisms to our maize, subtly changing its phenotype. Yes, a good part of our corn now shares a history with Bacillus thuringiensis. But that does not deny its shared history with teosinte, or its unique history as a human domesticate. History is additive, inclusive — not subtractive.

Read the whole essay, it bears it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Human Evolution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.