Human?
What makes us ‘man’? Aside from gender-specific bits, I mean humanity has some distinct features to its nearest relatives, the Chimpanzees and Gorillas. We talk, make and keep things, and we have this curious need to drape artificial fur over ourselves. We make bargains, we trade and we imagine the Unseen.
But what about the ‘men’ who came before us? What separated them from the other Apes? When did they go from being ‘just an Ape’ to being ‘Super-Ape’ aka Humans?
The co-discoverer of Homo floresiensis, Peter Brown, is now reported to cast doubt on the Hobbits being Homo after all…
Hobbit species may not have been human
…but they weren’t ‘just apes’ either. They made tools, probably used fire, and somehow ‘sailed’ to Flores in the first place. Until c. 300,000 years ago no human species did more than that either – as far as we presently know. Brown’s point, which I agree with, is that Homo floresiensis shares too many characteristics with earlier hominids, like Australopithecus, to be lumped into genus Homo on the basis of tool/fire/raft use alone.
That’s an interesting point. It implies that such technology didn’t evolve just the once. We aren’t as unique as some have suggested as a solution to the Fermi Paradox…