BECOMING HUMAN

Dr. Donald Johanson is one of the best known paleoanthropologist and he shows us this interesting documentary about our origins and the human evolution. His discovery in 1974 of Lucy at Hadar, in Etiopía, an ancient fossil dating back some three million years, is a controversial change in our view of human origins. Lucy is, obviously, the most significant fossil in the world.

Fossils are the remains or imprimints of dead organisms, are the only physical evidence that we posses of ancient life and our planet. Fossils can tell us a lot about the past but are rare and difficult to find.

Fossilization is a chemical process in wich minerals replace the life form’s original cell and it can only take under the most specific circumtances. Although major fossils sites are often uncovered accidentally by miners and amateurs cave explorers, researches also use remote sensing and satellite images to get an overview of the terrain.

It’s interesting to know that a paleontological excavation is a very careful process because the location of an object is as important as the object itself… archaelogists need to know objects and their origin, the place where it was found and its association (everything found nearly is very important indeed)

Humans are members of the biological order primates. It’s a diverse group that includes prosimians, monkeys, apes and humans. Although they are very different from each other, all primates share many important similarities that make us, as a group, different from other animals. For example: big brains. Primates and particularly humans have extremely large brains compared to their body size. Humans, like many primates, have to learn complex survival and social skills (that means complex social rules and language) and of course, our brains are organized in a different way than brains of other animals, our brains are, definitely highly developed.

Another difficult question for me is the next: Can animals use language? In fact, can animals have language? A few species demonstrate parts of language capability and many experiments show that monkeys can count and understand some concepts like “more” and “less” and even apes can combine symbols with coherent meaning and express thoughts and emotions (of course, they can’t speak as humans do!) In this documentary we can also meet Koko, a nice female gorilla that has a vocabulary of over 1,000 words of American sign language. It’s incredible....

Another interesting point is the difference between religion and science. Science does not invoke supernatural forces to explain natural phenomena. But it doesn’t mean that science and religion are independent, many scientists are religious too... But scientists want to ask how we humans got here and what is our relationship to other animals. And people who have a religious creed ask why are here and what meaning our liffe have and, maybe what is the right kind of life to lead... I think, that in fact, it doesn’t matter what religion or science will to know... because finally we all want to know the same and find answers to this kind of questions.... independently than who is asking, don't we?

See you!