Think back. Remember your childhood heroes? I do. I had plenty. Writers, activists, scientists, even fictional characters. Over the years I have had a few opportunities to meet some of these heroes, or at least to hear them speak. Tonight I had one such opportunity, and it was incredible.
My mother was kind enough to buy tickets for Owl and I to go to an event hosted by National Geographic. Donald Johanson*, the paleoanthropologist who discovered Lucy, came to our city, where he gave an hour-and-a-half presentation on "Becoming Human". His presentation was amazing; he is a wonderful public speaker, and an absolutely brilliant scientist. He is also incredibly funny, and the audience was laughing hard enough that a passer-by might assume Johanson to be a stand-up comedian, only his jokes were actually funny**. The highlight for me was when he explained that sapiens "supposedly means sentient, but I read the same newspapers you do." He then went on to suggest that any species that might let Scott Walker run for President was not, perhaps, as wise as the species name suggested. (At another dig to Scott Walker later on, he also marveled at how Kentucky funneled $25,000 into building the Creation Museum, while certain states were taking money away from education.)
As an undergraduate I studied anthropology with a focus on archaeology, and since childhood I have also cultivated a fascination with geology and paleontology. Basically, if I can dig for it and then poke it in a lab, I'm interested. As a child I was in awe of people like Donald Johanson, people who help to piece together the puzzle of human origin and our common ancestry.
Tonight's talk was part an explanation of Johanson's research, part an explanation of broader paleoanthropological principals, and part a call to global consciousness. In other words, while the science was important, what Johanson was ultimately stressing was that in studying early hominids like Lucy, we should be made aware a) that all of humankind is very closely related and we should treat each other accordingly, and that b) we are as much a part of nature as any other animal and it is our duty as well as our imperative to preserve the world.
Johanson also mentioned something that has kept me on the edge of my seat with excitement (even while walking back to the car, which was impressive, since I had no seat!): Tomorrow, March 4th, a major discovery will be revealed. Johanson would not say much about it, only that it would affect some of what he was talking about tonight. He gave a few more small hints, but I don't want to spoil the surprise for you any, dear readers. He urged us to check the news tomorrow night, and I will urge you to do the same. In light of this announcement, I will wait until my post on Thursday to talk in any detail about Lucy herself and what her discovery means for the scientific community. Though I went to the lecture primarily to hear Johanson speak about his discovery and the science behind it, his social messages also left a deep impression, and that is what I wanted to talk about tonight.
"We are united by our past...we share more than many of us are willing to expect."
We all share common ancestry. This is scientific fact. And if you (along with Johanson and the majority of the anthropological community) ascribe to the "Out of Africa" (OOA) theory, that anatomically modern humans evolved as a whole species in what is now Africa, and later began to migrate outwards, then not only do we all have a common ancestry, but a common origin as well.
For homo sapiens, alienation is unnatural. We evolved as a cooperative species; this is part of what differentiates us from other animals. No other species has the same level of codependency and familiarity that the modern human has. We are designed to live in social units, develop tight bonds with one another, and protect our kin. While competition for land and resources might drive homo sapiens to violence against one another as it would any other animal, there is nothing natural about the way modern human society isolates and ostracizes members of the species, how social groups are segregated to the point of baseless violence, or how we have developed cultures of hate based around artificial or superficial dichotomies. Johanson urged us to remember our shared past, the uniting factor that, quite simply, makes us all human.
"We are a part of the natural world."
Johanson also urged us to remember that we are a part of nature. Homo sapiens might be the most universally successful, the most creative, the most dominant species on Earth, but we are also the most destructive. No other species has single-handedly done as much damage to the Earth as we have, and in the towers of glass and steel we have built it is easy to distance ourselves from the natural world. We are very much dependent on it, however, and no matter how much we try to bend nature to our will we will never truly be outside of its control. Nor should we be. Lucy is a reminder that having opposable thumbs, bipedalism, and larger cranial cavities does not mean that we get a "Get Out of Extinction Free Card". If we like living on this wonderful little sphere quietly orbiting the sun, we had better stop ruining it, was his ultimate message, though I may be paraphrasing slightly.
*That's right, linking to Wikipedia! Ahh, the beauty of non-academic writing.
**Sorry, Owl! I swear, I don't dislike all stand-up comedy. Just most of the parts where there's talking.
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