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What makes us human?
It is the telling of tales... and the racing and bloodstock industries love a good story
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HERE IS A REGULAR FEATURE on BBC Radio 2 hosted by Jeremy Vine called “What Makes Us Human?” Science tells us that our closest relative is the chimpanzee from whom the human genome only differs by about 1.23 per cent. Apparently this amounts to about 40 million differences in our DNA, half of which likely resulted from mutations since the two species diverged. These mutations resulted in the homosapiens species and its forebears becoming “bipedal” i.e. we walk on two legs, while chimpanzees essentially walk on all fours. Interestingly, it is thought this is because humans largely developed on the plains of Africa where the early people needed to stand up to get the food they had spotted on low-hanging branches of the mid-height savannah-growing trees. The ape and chimpanzee, still residing in the forest, had no need to learn how to stand – any food available on a tree was 100ft above them, so standing up made no difference whatsoever. Charles Darwin was the first to figure it out why the simple act of standing up made all the difference in separating man from ape. “Once we became bipedal, we had hands to carry tools around. We started doing that only 1.5 million years after we became bipedal.” The eventual use of tools led those early humans to more group activity and support as we started working
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... that is what scientists argue sets us apart – it is our ability to think and plan for the future, and to remember and learn from the past – what theorists of early human cognition call “higher order consciousness”
together with axes and arrows to build shelters, get food and survive. I guess that developing inter-relationship then led to a need for communication and greater understanding of each other, our individual needs and the making of plans. And that is what scientists argue sets us apart – it is our ability to think and plan for the future, and to remember and learn from the past – what theorists of early human cognition call “higher order consciousness.” I have diverged though… the various A, B and C list categories who are invited to offer their opinion to Vine on his radio show take a less scientific stance, mentioning such concepts as our ability to love, enjoy making love, develop a culture, laugh together and care for others. I would argue that what makes us human is our capacity to tell tales and develop stories, an age-old component of the human existence. The earliest cave wall images have been found are in Indonesia and are at least 35,400 years old, drawn long before writing was invented. As language developed these images of hunts and wildlife transitioned into stories of derring-do that were first told around the camp fire in the desert after the strong men of the village returned from a hunter-gathering trip, onward to the Iron Age man explaining how he deftly avoided the bogs on the moor,
