Walking Humbly with our 
Hominid Ancestors
​
four insights
​

Neanderthal: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis

​Walking Humbly

with our hominid ancestors

four insights
​

Homo erectus is among the 20-25 species of human ancestors for which we have fossil remains. Members of this species thrived on Earth for around two million years whereas we, Homo sapiens, emerged only in the last three hundred thousand years.

Scientists speak of these various human species as hominins (with an "n"). You may be more familiar with the word "hominid," which is now used to name all of our ancestors, including others in the Great Ape family. Hence my use of the word "hominid" in the title.

​Neanderthals are also hominins. They thrived throughout Europe and parts of Asia from about 400,000 until about 40,000 years ago. The image above is of a Neanderthal as depicted by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

When we consider these different species of humanity, we rightly realize it is time to get over our sense of being uniquely human and to honor our larger extended family. We best  walk humbly with our ancestors, knowing that they are together, biologically and spiritually. Think of it as deep humanism, itself enriched by a recognition that we are also kin to the whole of life. If we are religious, we rightly recognize that the divine lure toward creative survival and adaptivity was in other human species, too, and, for that matter, other forms of life.

This humble walk includes four insights. The first is that we as a unique species may not be all that adaptable. Witness our weaponry, our violence, our unsustainable practices. We may be much shorter lived than many of our hominin ancestor, becoming a memory for successor hominins who wonder how we could have been so short-sighted.

The second is a realization that God (the divine lure) works with human creatures, ourselves included, in a variety of ways, relative to their environments and potentialities within those environments. God is adaptable and omni-adaptive, adjusting to new situations, but God is not all-powerful.

The third insight stems from the second. It is a recognition and appreciation of differences within the human family (or genus, if you will.) Rather than speaking of "image" of God we might better speak of "images" of God. Let "image" refer to that aspect of an individual human being which is beautiful and rightly elicits respect and empathy. It is the subjective side of an individual's life, amid which he or she has intrinsic value. (See the article at the bottom of this page "The Secret Lives of Neanderthal Children.")

A fourth insight is to realize that species may not be meant to be everlasting. 99.9% of all the species that have existed on earth have gone extinct. The purpose of life, individually and collectively, is not to endure forever as a species, but to add something vital and beautiful to the ongoing life of the One in whose heart the universe lives and moves and has its being. We ought not make a fetish of collective survival, as if it were divine, What is divine is the ongoing history of the universe, with a Life of its own.

Walking humbly with our ancestors has, as its corollary, walking humbly with fellow Homo Sapiens. We honor different ways of being human, avoiding any single "image" of the divine image. And there's no reason to exclude other animals, too. They, too, carry God's image in their ways. Wherever there is subjectivity, there is something valuable an beautiful. Something divine.

The rest of this page offers opportunities for you to learn more about Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, and Human Evolution from gifted scholars. Enjoy!

​- Jay McDaniel, 1/31/23

Definitions
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Hominid – the group consisting of all modern and extinct Great Apes (that is, modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans plus all their immediate ancestors).
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Hominin – the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors (including members of the Australopithecines, Neanderthals and member of the Homo Erectus species) 

Human Origins 101

​National Geographic

​Homo Erectus

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of our ancestors, Homo erectus, who thrived on Earth for around two million years whereas we, Homo sapiens, emerged only in the last three hundred thousand years. Homo erectus, or Upright Man, spread from Africa to Asia and it was on the Island of Java that fossilised remains were found in 1891 in an expedition led by Dutch scientist Eugène Dubois. Homo erectus people adapted to different habitats, ate varied food, lived in groups, had stamina to outrun their prey; and discoveries have prompted many theories on the relationship between their diet and the size of their brains, on their ability as seafarers, on their creativity and on their ability to speak and otherwise communicate.
​
The image above is from a diorama at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark, depicting the Turkana Boy referred to in the programme.

With

Peter Kjærgaard
Director of the Natural History Museum of Denmark and Professor of Evolutionary History at the University of Copenhagen

José Joordens
Senior Researcher in Human Evolution at Naturalis Biodiversity Centre and Professor of Human Evolution at Maastricht University

And

Mark Maslin
Professor of Earth System Science at University College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

​The Neanderthals

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Neanderthals.In 1856, quarry workers in Germany found bones in a cave which seemed to belong to a bear or other large mammal. They were later identified as being from a previously unknown species of hominid similar to a human. The specimen was named Homo neanderthalis after the valley in which the bones were found.This was the first identified remains of a Neanderthal, a species which inhabited parts of Europe and Central Asia from around 400,000 years ago. Often depicted as little more advanced than apes, Neanderthals were in fact sophisticated, highly-evolved hunters capable of making tools and even jewellery.Scholarship has established much about how and where the Neanderthals lived - but the reasons for their disappearance from the planet around 28,000 years ago remain unclear.

With:

Simon Conway
MorrisProfessor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge

Chris Stringer
Research Leader in Human Origins at the Natural History Museum and Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London

Danielle SchreveReader in Physical Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London

​Producer: Thomas Morris.

Human Evolution
​

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of human evolution, which stretches back over six million years. It is not the story of one species but of several diverse species, some of whom walked the Earth at the same time. From the earliest hominids to the early Homo sapiens, there was nothing inevitable about the course of human evolution. But what conditions created the opportunity for diverse human species to thrive? What environmental factors led to the survival of one human species, but contributed to the extinction of so many others? What can the fossil record and the science of genetics tell us about our ancestors? How does the brain make modern man so unique in the natural world?

With
​Steve Jones,
Professor of Genetics in the Galton Laboratory at University College London;

Fred Spoor,
Professor of Evolutionary Anatomy at University College London;

Margaret Clegg, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Biological Anthropology at University College London.

Image from BBC in article titled ​The Secret Lives of Neanderthal Children By Rebecca Wragg Sykes7th July 2021

"Among the growing collection of Neanderthal remains to be discovered are fossilised bones belonging to children. Now we are gaining unprecedented insights into what being a young Neanderthal was like...more