What Makes Us Human?

The TED research article I read was titled "What Makes Us Human". First of all,

the speaker takes the position that he does not like to make a simple distinction

between people and animals. From an evolutionary perspective, he prefers to look for

commonalities between humans and non-humans.

Human evolution is extremely continuous, and it is similar to that of primates in

general. However, the evolutionary outcome of humans is distinct from that of

primates. In contrast, humans have more unique and novel features. For example,

ancient humans produced language and civilization to highlight the differences

between humans and primates.

Paleoanthropology ,which studies human origins through the fossil record, and

molecular anthropology ,which studies human origins through genetic analysis, also

yield some surprising insights about our hominin relatives. In this article, the authors

give an example of scholars studying ancient human behavior through the

fossilization of a young child. Zeresenay Alemsegad's painstaking field work and

analysis of Selam, a 3.3 million-year old fossil of a 3-year-old australopithecine infant

from Ethiopia, Even though the fossil resembled an ape in every way, no one would

have thought the child was an ape at the time, but would have thought it was a human.

Citation:

Introductory essay. (n.d.). Retrieved May 08, 2021, from

https://www.ted.com/read/ted-studies/evolution/introductory-essay