During our last blogging session, I posed a question of whether scientists were sure that all humans that existed on the planet today were on, singular species. Yes, species are a human construct so we are able to label beings as whatever we want and say whatever we want about where they begin and where they end. With the amount of interaction, interbreeding, that occurs in our globalized world, all human beings are of one species, “Homo sapiens”. I was a little unsatisfied with this answer because I felt a lot of categorization of living things from millions of years before was based on physical traits. Lucy’s skull was much smaller than other hominids of her time. This may be much less advanced than the decision of speciation scientists can do with modern technology, but I was left unsettled by not knowing, regardless. In class today, we learned that humans are 99.9% similar throughout all races. Alright, this disproves the theory behind my question. But for the purpose of speculation and this blog post, I will continue and refer to humans simply as “beings”. This is a reflection of my own ambiguity. My question dealing with this ambiguity is more prevalent to scientist conducting experiments millions of years from now deciding or re-deciding our species boundaries, rather than being very prevalent to the scientists of our day.
While clicking around on the Internet post-blogging, I found a link that sparked my interest: Uncontacted Tribes. These pictures and mostly the videos, fascinated me. First, the beings and their cultures were beautiful, some completely untouched by our time. It was almost poetic. Also, the destruction of the environment around them leading to the unfair and brutal treatment of these beings frustrated me. The website exists to raise the world’s awareness and concern for this matter as a social justice issue. But most pertinent to this class is their relevance to my question of whether all “humans” of this planet are the same species. Though the members of these tribes are few in number, they are uncontacted and do not and have not interact or interbreed with any other race, as is my understanding. And if this has been true for long enough, then wouldn’t this make each tribe their own separate species?
It may depend on how long they have been and remained uncontacted, I am unsure. Here, my lack of anything past 11th grade science classes hinders me. But I find it hard to believe that tribes, even races left to themselves are the same species as us. I still feel empathy for them and want to stop the loggers that are hurting their home and culture and ridding the world of them for the benefits of their trade. The members of these tribes die from the common cold due to their lack of exposure and their bodies’ inabilities to fight it off. Is this only because they have lived so long without contact with the rest of the world and does this make them a different species? This question may easily be answered with a science of which I lack knowledge, but I still think it is worth bring up, if only for provoking philosophical discussion.
Daisy :)
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ReplyDeleteI really like your post, Daisy, because it brings up an interesting question about the two very different conceptions that we have of humanity. The first, of course, is the idea that people are human because they form part of the same species, as evidenced by our 99.9% similarity. I like that you used the word “beings” instead of “humans” because it indicates a second definition of humanity. In art and literature, people have always been exploring what it means to be human and generally come up with something along the lines of our ability to empathize with one another, the fact that we have desires and some sort of inexplicable longing to be fulfilled (whatever that means), our ability to experience love and joy, and on the other hand to suffer and experience deep emotional pain, etc. The list could go on forever, but I think you get the point. I think we all agree that the people of these uncontacted tribes are certainly very human in that sense of the word, as evidenced by the fact that we feel so much empathy for them. But this brings up an interesting question: what is the relationship between these two conceptions of humanity? Are they mutually dependent, or can they exist independently of each other? This second definition could indicate the existence of a soul. If this is the case, then what is the soul? Could it have evolved, and if not, where did it come from? Or is it nonexistent, merely a product of chemical reactions? If this is the case, then when did those particular chemical reactions evolve and when, in the evolutionary process, did the characteristics that we associate with humanity (the second definition) come into being? Or is it a perversion of science to even be asking these questions?
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