happyone ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Makes You Think So, I'm feeling kind of philosophical right now. I've been thinking about ancestry. Like, where were my ancestors in 44 BC? Isn't it crazy to think that you had relatives living during those times? Obviously you did, or you wouldn't be sitting here reading this. It also makes you think that your ancestors must have been pretty smart/fit/strong/whatever to survive, at least long enough to produce offspring. What about your ancestors who lived 50,000 years ago? Of course, thinking about ancestry brings up the question of who were the first 2? You know, Adam and Eve or whatever you like. I took a Physical Anthropology and Archaeology class, and it was fascinating to me because we talked about human origins and stuff like that. I LOVE learning about that kind of stuff! Humans supposedly first arose in Africa and then spread out to the rest of the world. They weren't the only ones around, either; there were Neanderthals up in Europe. What I want to know is how and why did the homo sapiens beat out all of the other species? Superior weaponry, smarter, what? I mean, I'm glad they did, otherwise I wouldn't be here, but HOW? Of course, these are questions that may never have answers. I love and hate those type of questions! I love them because they make you think, but I hate them because you don't get an answer! Anyways...my Anthropology class really did make me think about things, such as the humans coming from apes theory. I struggled because I really do believe in God and that He created Adam and Eve, etc. (you know the story). I struggled because I was trying to see where Adam and Eve fit into the archaeological timeline that we discussed. One tidbit that really stuck in my mind was the finding of a 7 million year old skull in Chad, Africa. There was some kind of ape like thing running around here 7 MILLION years ago. That was a LONG time ago! I can't even imagine that long ago! What's even more amazing is that we have a SKULL of a living being from that time and it hasn't completely disintegrated into dust! What's even more amazing are dinosaur bones, which can be 150+ million years old, but that's off track. So, in the arcaeological timeline, you see all of these ape-like skeletons that change over time, getting more and more human like: becoming bipedal, making tools, discovering fire...so, unless Adam and Eve started out as some type of ape, I don't really understand where they fit, at least in the archaeological picture. Of course, there are many missing links in the human evolutionary puzzle, so who really knows what came from what really? It's all a big educated guess. Some things are certain, others are unclear. Another thing I ponder about are evolutionary dead ends. The species that didn't make it, that died out. Why? What happened? Also, what was so different about the human-like species before us, like the Australopithecines? Was it just anatomical differences that separated them from us? What were they REALLY like? They must have some kind of smarts going on, otherwise Homo habilis wouldn't have come up with stone tools 2.5 million years ago. Well, I do believe that's all the pondering I would like to do today. :D 12:04 a.m. - Saturday, Aug. 02, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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