Search for Our Ancestors

THE SEARCH FOR OUR ANCESTORS Adapted from Irwin Cohn, In Search of the Origins of Humanness , 2005. pathologist of the day pronounced the bones to be those of an idiot. Many other views were presented, but since it was impossible to accur- ately date the age of the Neanderthal find, the individuals who maintained that the fossils might be an extinct form of humanity, perhaps a Have you ever wondered what it is to be "human?" What sets us different species, won little support. Later, these fossils were to become apart from other animals? If you go back far enough in our ancestry, there known as Neanderthal Man who lived in Europe between 300,000 and was a time when we were not quite human. So when did we cross that 40,000 years ago. "line" that separates the human from the non-human? Scientists did not It wasn't until 1859, the year that Charles Darwin published his begin posing this question from an evolutionary perspective until relatively famous book The Origin of Species , when a number of thoughtful recently. For much of the 19th century, Western scientists believed humans people began to suspect that the experts might be wrong about fossils had always been around, in our present form, and that the earth itself, and the idea of a mechanism that could explain evolutionary change judging from the Bible, was only about 4,000 years old. Evidence to the slowly developed. Darwin wrote that animal species had not always contrary, such as ancient fossils, were viewed as curious oddities or simply been physically the same as they are today--that present-day animals ignored. were the result of many thousands, perhaps millions, of years of In 1856, in the selective change. And he pointed to fossils as evidence of this change. Neander Valley in What a furor arose! Germany, a group of All over the world, anyone who could read a newspaper argued quarrymen discovered with his neighbor about who was right--the supporters of evolutionary what, at first, they thought change (the gradual, continuous transformations in the forms and were the remains of a cave behavior of living organisms resulting from adaptations made to changes bear. They had blasted in their environment) or the people who maintained the traditional view. open a small cave on the Darwin's "crime" was not that he believed man evolved from apes side of a mountain and (another scientist, Thomas Huxley, had already proposed that), but that were digging in the floor he was opposing the idea of progress as being inherent in evolutionary of the cave with pickaxes change. Darwin's natural selection (The process describing the inter- when they found a strange action between members of a species and their environment by which skull and set of bones. those individuals possessing advantageous characteristics are more likely These bones came to survive than individuals who do not possess them) was a mechanical quickly to the attention of process that did not need divine intervention and did not, by definition, scientists, immediately creating a controversy. Some scientists said they lead to progressively superior forms of life. were the bones of an ancient man, much more ancient than modern humans, Facts in favor of an evolutionary interpretation of human origins while others insisted that the individual was merely a deformed person of already existed. As geology developed, the gaps between one geological modern type. Rudolph Virchow, a respected German anatomist, declared era and the next were becoming smaller, indicating the idea of a con- that the heavy brow ridges of the skull had developed from constant winc- tinuous transformation of the earth's surface. It was also evident by ing, caused by the life-long pain of rickets, and of a broken elbow and the Darwin's time that some living animals had useless, unexplainable rem- slightly bowed thigh bones of the creature had developed through years of nants of organs, such as the presence of undeveloped limbs in certain riding a horse. snakes and insects with small, functionless wings incapable of flight. He concluded that the bones were those of a Russian Mongolian All vertebrate limbs show an underlying identity of basic structure in Cossack who had died fighting Napoleon in 1814! Another well known creatures so diverse as the leg of a horse, the front limb of a mole, the wing of a bat and the arm of a human: there is also the resemblance shelter called Cro-Magnon in southwestern France, made a remarkable between human embryos and other embryos. Nineteenth century embry- discovery. ologists also understood, in a simplified form, the idea of recapitulation, They found five fairly intact skeletons in the floor of the shelter, that an organism passes through a series of embryonic stages resembling its accompanied by an assortment of stone tools and the bones of animals biological predecessors from which it was descended. known to have been extinct for thousands of years. This time there was no question that humans and extinct animals had lived at the same time and that the Cro-Magnon people had made and used the stone tools that were found with them. Unlike the earlier fossil finds, these were human beings like ourselves. Cro- Magnon (Homo Sapiens) is a term often used not only to refer to these early modern representatives of humans in Europe, but to modem humans in other parts of the world as well. Particularly in Africa from where they are thought to have evolved about 120,000 BP (Before Presnt) before spreading out into the rest of the world. In the next two decades more fossil human bones, all of them like Cro-Magnon, were found. By this time, the study of archaeology had become more systematic. Archaeologists began peicing together the Darwin did not discuss the subject of human origins in Origins of past using the idea of site stratigraphy (the gradual layering of deposits the Species . He may have wanted to avoid entering into conflict with the and artifacts on top of each other, over time—the lowest layers proponents of Special Creation (God created the universe and everything in representing the oldest deposits). It gradually became possible to sort it exactly as it now appears) . They now had cleverly shifted their reliance the prehistory of France into consecutive segments of time represented on biblical faith, in their battle against the evolutionists, to enlisting the by different kinds of tools found in various regions and strata of earth, findings of science, itself. Such things as fins, feathers, hearts, lungs and but there were too few human bones. While tools were found that were eyes were too well adapted to the functions they served to have developed very much earlier than those found with the Cro-Magnon bones, there solely by chance. Wasn't this a "rational" explanation in the favor of was no way of telling just what the people who made them looked liked. Special Creation, demonstrating the existence of a Divine Intelligence? The situation continued until 1886, when two more skeletons Darwin did enter the fray, however, in his next book, The Descent of Man , like that of Neanderthal were found in the mouth of a Belgian cave. published in 1871. Near them were stone tools, which were very different from those found In The Descent of Man , Darwin concluded that man was descended with the Cro-Magnon skeletons that proved they were definitely very from an ancient "lower" and extinct form. Because Darwin wrote about the much older than Cro-Magnon tools. similarities between man and the great apes, many people misunderstood This new evidence made it difficult for people to go on arguing him and thought he meant that modern apes are human ancestors. It was that earlier kinds of prehistoric men were just like us. Of course, some primarily the influence of Darwin's book that made fossils, especially scientists declared that these Neanderthals were not really human ances- human fossils, really worth looking for. Even though most scientists were tors but primitive "offshoot cousins" who had become extinct long ago. very cautious about their interpretation of Neanderthal bones, people had By then, discoveries of fossil bones were occurring more begun to pay attention. Old bones were no longer thought of as something frequently, primarily because more people were interested in looking for to be thrown away. them. The people who considered Neanderthals ancient were in for a Before long, a new discovery was made, one that scientists could surprise. In 1887, a young Dutch doctor named Eugene Dubois, who really get excited about. In 1868 a group of workmen digging in a rock believed that man might have originated in tropical Asia, obtained a job as a health officer in Indonesia in order to look for the remains of earliest them under his dining room floor where they remained for nearly twenty humans. He finally reached Java, where he succeeded in convincing his years. It wasn't until the 1920s that the bones reappeared along with government employers that he could do more good by digging up fossil and other skulls and bones that Dubois had not mentioned earlier. Dubois geological specimens than by looking after the health of the Javanese had by then completely changed his mind about Pithecanthropus (Homo natives. In 1891, Dubois found a very important piece of skull on the erectus). It was indeed a giant ape, he said. He banks of the Solo River in central Java. did not change his mind again, even though, Later, he found several teeth and a thigh bone in the same by the time of his death in 1940, the rest of area.

Load more