• Question: What do you think makes us Human?

    Asked by sam to Freddie, Jena, Kirsten, Kon, Zarah on 11 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Konstantinos Drousiotis

      Konstantinos Drousiotis answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      Hi there,

      I think the process of being able to think and logically come to a desicion is what distinguishes as from the rest of the animals. Even though there is some decision making process in chimpagees apparently, however still not advanced enough!

      This ability is probably the outcome of thousands of years of evolution of the human brain.

    • Photo: Freddie Morrison

      Freddie Morrison answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      Literal answer: The changes in our DNA that separate us from our next closest relative (the chimpanzee)

      Subjective answer: That we can alter the world around us impossibly quickly because we can control parts of the world around us with complex tools that our clever brains have made

    • Photo: Jennifer Bates

      Jennifer Bates answered on 13 Nov 2016:

      There’s been a lot of debate about this one in the field of biological anthropology (and philosophy too!). Some things that might ‘make us human’ are the ability to walk up right, our larger brains, our ability to make complex tools and the thought processes behind that, and some of the behavioural features of modern humans like longer childhoods.

      When we see these features develop is difficult to pin-point because the evidence is patchy. Most anthropologists agree it was about 1.8-1.5 million years ago, when Homo ergaster appeared (modern humans are Homo sapiens). This ancestor was bipedal (walked upright), had larger brains, made complex ‘Acheulean type’ tools, and it has been suggested social dynamics changed (but this is debated).

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