Are Homo sapiens improving as a species?
We cannot speak of improvement because in evolution everything is accidental, the result of circumstance…
Aren’t our children smarter than their parents and less than their grandchildren?
No, because there is no direction in evolution. We could say that it does not go forward or go back. It is decided at random, let’s say…
Why then do we like to believe that we are progressing as a species?
It is a mistake that was made already in the 18th century when Eugène Dubois set out to find the lost link, which was supposed to be between the orangutan, then considered the most similar to sapiens, and us. And he went to Indonesia to look for her…
Did the missing link never exist?
No.
Why did he go to Indonesia to look for her?
Because he was Dutch, and Borneo and Java, his colonies, so he got the support of his government and a string of prisoners that he dug there until he found a femur like ours and then a piece of skull. And he believed that both were from the same era and he called that supposed discovered species Pithecanthropus erectus, which later became Homo erectus…
Did this erectus believe he was “the missing link between ape and man”?
And from that false conception of our evolution, the idea that it was linear and that we were progressing from that false intermediate lost link to today was generalized…
Hasn’t it been like that?
No, but the myth persists in advertising and even in the friendly wink that the logo of the Natural History Museum of Burgos gives it.
So how was our evolution?
After finding fossils of predecessors in so many places, it is already clear that we are not the result of a linear evolution: it is that we do not even come from a tree that goes from the main trunk to the branches… In fact, the remaining branches of the hominin tree are Neanderthals, Denisovans, we…
I on situa l’ Man’s predecessor?
Well right now we don’t even know if it’s related to us; because if we go back in our evolutionary line beyond the Neanderthals, we didn’t even find his mother, so we went to the aunt. And I still don’t rule out that it’s the mother…
But do we have something Neanderthal?
We have between 1% and 4% of genes from Neanderthals, who had an archaic, bloated face. On the other hand, ours, without so much chin, which we previously thought was more modern, turned out to be more archaic. Because when the Homo antecessor appeared in Atapuerca, which predates the Neanderthal, we found that it had ours.
Did the Neanderthal face turn out to be more evolved than that of Sapiens?
Evolved towards something different… Evolution towards progress is an illusion. We are here for pure shamba. Instead of us, you know, there could be Neanderthals or any other group…
Why are we here and they are not?
Because, for whatever reason, we didn’t leave Africa before and, on the other hand, the Neanderthals, who were in Europe, were extinguished by the glaciation…
And when did we arrive in Europe?
We already have remains of Homo sapiens from 80,000 years ago in the south-eastern corner of Eurasia, and 50,000 years ago we were already colonizing the planet.
Why are only the wise left?
We were the lucky ones of the three hominid species that existed in Africa and the other three in Eurasia: anyone could have made it to this day, but only the sapiens made it… And that’s not good at all .
Don’t scare us.
We Homo sapiens are very alone. Too. And evolution presents us with challenges…
Global warming, resource depletion, earthquakes, meteorites…?
And only if there is diversity in the species is the capacity for adaptation greater. If there were several species of Homo and not only we knew about it, some would have a better chance of surviving, for example, climate change…
Won’t we invent some solution?
Technology does not solve all the challenges of evolution: think, for example, of earthquakes: the collision of tectonic plates…
Some intolerant people already have too much ethnic and cultural diversity in humans.
Well, they put us in danger, because diversity of all kinds increases the chances of survival of the species in the face of the diverse and changing challenges of the environment.
What has he learned in Atapuerca?
humility Not only that you yourself are little, but also that your species is not much more. In front of the Ossos ravine, you think that one day you will run out and the species… We’ll see! But I’ve also learned that you can make a huge sense of it so young that you are, enjoying seeking and sharing knowledge.
