Human exceptionalism

It seems to be something of  a fad to claim that humans aren ' t actually exceptional. Other animals can think and learn and plan and communicate with each other, there ' s nothing special about us, at least no more than the extent to which every species is unique, yadda yadda. I think this is an utterly vapid argument. Sure, every species is unique, but our impact on the planet is vastly greater than that of any other organism. Yes of course, photosynthetic organisms created and sustain our oxygen-rich atmosphere, but that ' s been the case for more than 2 billion years. That ' s the stable background of life on earth. We ' ve created a radical transformation of the planet in just a couple of centuries, and that was possible because of an attribute of our that is absolutely unique. The oldest known fossils of people like us, Homo sapiens, are about 300,000 years old. Or rather, I should say that those fossilized bones look like our bones, but we don ’t know for sure if their brains were quite like ours. Scientists who study human pre-history disagree about that. The most important differences between us and other apes – or for that matter all other creatures -- are behavioral, and scientists disagree about whether the behavioral repertoire of Homo sapiens developed gradually starting with those 300,000 year old people, or depended on genetic changes that happened later.For our purposes, it doesn ’t matter. By 80,000 years ago or so, archaeological sites in so...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs