In several of my classes we have touched on the different stages of hominoids and the evolution of the human race. Before this week I was very curious as to the relation between sub-species of humans, and how closely they lived to one another, chronologically. I had not thought deeply about their interactions or about two distinct levels of intelligence interacting with one another.
In this class, discoveries in archaeology, we learned that two sub-species, neanderthals and “biologically modern humans” lived side by side, interacting within a single society, and even procreated; physically furthering human evolution. In my ISS class, change in human sociology, we learned that the extremely minute details such as length of thumb bones, or parental investment; how much effort goes into raising young, are what delineates entire species. I found this very interesting and decided to look further into how we currently categorize animals, as well as people.
Today, our system of categorization for primates includes many biological distinctions between prosimians or primitive monkeys, and anthropoidea, “man-like” primates, but very few between the sub-categories, such as the different human-like apes and humans themselves. While there are undoubtedly intelligence and biological differences, we rely predominately on cultural differences to make the distinctions scientifically. This is represented well by the fact that both modern humans, and orangutans as well as many other large apes fall into the group Hominidae, and are grouped together by some biological traits, but also social hierarchy, organization, tool use, and cutural traditions such as semi-permanent settlement. These similarities and differences that are used to define species spurred me to think about how we classify people today.
The lines that define species seem thinner to me than those which divide races today. People try to raise one race above another or simply separate them with biological differences that they impose themselves, rather than anything authentic. The reality is that all modern humans are nearly biologically identical, from an evolutionary perspective. The term race suggests physical differences between us, but groups are more accurately defined by cultural differences, geographic separation, and evolution of their traditions.
I am now more interested in how closely different sub-species interacted with one another within a single society, and how cultural traditions and traits were spread between different species.
It was really cool that you were able to relate this topic to other things that you have learned in different classes. I always enjoy connecting to prior knowledge. I find it really interesting when you talked about the different ways that things were categorized sub-species. I thought it was really interesting when you brought up the fact that we categorize different people of our own species because of the color of their skin or the area on the globe that they are from, and yet we do not do that for primates. I think that if we relied on profiling the differences in humans not by cultural differences but biological differences I think that people would have their eyes opened to the fact that we are all so extremely similar, we are all of the same species and that it does not matter the color of our skin because we are all the same on the inside.
It would be really interesting to do a thought study about this. What do you think would happen if we first used an example of how we categorized primates, such as the one in your post, and then showed them the difference between categorizing people by biological standards and then again by cultural standards. How do you think they would react seeing that we are all the same, just in different colors?
I think that looking at the neanderthals in this context would also be really interesting, because we have 4% neanderthal DNA, because even though they were a different sub-species to the anatomically correct humans, there was still reproduction across the two species. Do you think that the reason that neanderthals did not last but the atomically correct humans did was because the atomically correct humans saw that they were superior and so decided that they should be the ones who survive? Was this the first known genocide?