We use animals in science every day to try to understand complex biochemical pathways in order that we might develop drugs or understand disease. Evolution accounts for all life but not all traits are adaptations. Prudent scepticism is required when we compare ourselves with other beasts. Or that our bodies harbour the indelible stamps of common descent in our bones (our hands contain bones almost perfectly like-for-like with the bones in the flat paddle of a dolphin’s fin, and with a horse’s front legs, and a bat’s wings). Or that similar genes have similar functions in distantly related creatures (the gene that defines an eye is virtually the same in all organisms that have any form of vision). This is comprehensively displayed in the limitless evidence of shared evolutionary histories – the fact that all living things are encoded by DNA. We know we are animals, evolved via the same mechanisms as all life. Navigating this territory can be treacherous, and riven with contradictions. Which facet singles us out, among other animals – which is distinctively human? But we do know that within the last 40,000 years, they were all in place, all over the world. Precisely when these facets of our lives today arose in our species is debated. How did we become the beings that we are today? Scientists call this state “behavioural modernity”, or sometimes “the full package”, meaning all the things that we consider as part of the human condition: speech, language, consciousness, tool use, art, music, material culture, commerce, agriculture, non‑reproductive sex and more. Only 0.1% of the 900,000,000 acts of heterosexual intercourse taking place each year in Britain results in a fertilised egg We share DNA with all the organisms that have ever existed the proteins our genes encrypt utilise a code that is indistinguishable from that in an amoeba or a zebu. What makes us special, while we remain rooted in nature? We evolved from earlier creatures, each on a unique trajectory through time. This is the central question in understanding our place in the scheme of evolution. Darwin riffed on Hamlet in 1871 in his second masterpiece, The Descent of Man, declaring that we have “god-like intellect”, yet we cannot deny that man – and woman – carries the “indelible stamp of his lowly origin”. “How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! … In action how like an angel! / In apprehension how like a god! … The paragon of animals!” Hamlet then ponders the paradox at the heart of humankind: what is this quintessence of dust? We are special, but we are also merely matter. “What a piece of work is a man!” marvels Hamlet. Shakespeare crystallised this thought a good 250 years before Charles Darwin positioned us as a creature at the end of the slightest of twigs on a single, bewildering family tree that encompasses 4bn years, a lot of twists and turns, and 1 billion species. Mostly bald, you’re an ape, descended from apes your features and actions are carved or winnowed by natural selection. The figure is fully original and the Duckworth Collection never produced such a figure.A more accurate statement should model the one of Figure 5: 3D model of a Homo sapiens specimen obtained from a computed tomography scan \(Duckworth Collection, University of Camrbidge\).) I then took pictures of this 3D model and created the figure. The specimen was CT scanned and I made the 3D model from the CT scan. I created this figure using a specimen from the Duckworth Collection.
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