I just finished an Anthropology paper, and I'm actually feeling fairly good about how I did. I'm wondering the Playground's opinions. Please, don't put any commentary that says "put this in", or it won't be my own work if I do, but suggestions (as to something being unclear or overexplained) and commentary are what I'm looking for. It's not finished yet, due to leaving my notes at school, but I want to see if what I feel is very good is actually very good.
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The question of what defines humanity is one pondered by anthropologists and science fiction authors alike. Definitions are varied, but tend to focus mostly on a combination of sapience, sentience, and body structure (though sci-fi authors may leave out body structure and say they’re defining “person” instead). I feel that humanness is best defined by the combination of two things: limbs capable of fine manipulation of objects and a brain capable of realizing just how much one can do with that ability.* In other words, I feel that the border between “sub-human hominid” and “human” was crossed at the point when those hominids realized that they could do something to the world.
The first part of this prerequisite developed long before the second. Hands with dexterous fingers developed far back in our evolutionary line, far enough that most apes have them as well, and those apes often also have feet with toes of equivalent function. Even if one restricts the qualification to only those with opposable thumbs (for the pincer-grip is undeniably and important part of much fine dexterity), the ability existed prior to Homo sapiens, in the species <SPECIES NAME>, all the way back in around <YEAR> BCE.
Thus, the more critical qualifier is the requirement that the species have sufficient mental capacity to realize that changing things that were not themselves or food was possible. Though mental epiphanies are not well-preserved in any fossil record, there are several things that, at the very least, may be taken as indicators. Firstly, any species which makes tools must intrinsically understand this. Note that this is not simply using tools – a chimp using a twig to dig for bugs in a rotting log would not count. To qualify, a species must make tools – if the aforementioned chimp had chipped a branch with a rock until it was something distinctly not a random branch picked off of the ground, they would qualify, though similar behaviors would have to be widespread through a species to qualify chimps for this. Secondly, if a species which would be physically and environmentally capable of making tools has a brain equal to or greater than the minimum brain size of any species known to make tools, it would not be too unreasonable to posit that they may have made tools which were not preserved for some reason – whether because the tools were wooden, because they were used until they were no longer usable (at which point most primitive tools would look the same as any other heavily worn but non-carved rock), or for some other reason.
*Of course, this applies to the species as a whole, and thus does not exclude disabled individuals as long as those individuals retain the concept of acting on the world instead of merely using what is found.
Originally Posted by Qwertystop
Hello!
Re: Mynxae's Maliciously Magnificent Random Banter #183
Holy wall of text Batman! More line breaks, man!