What is Homo Sapiens?
Homo sapiens is a type of bipedal ape. The species evolved on the savanna and possibly the wetlands of Africa only 200,000 years ago, making Homo sapiens one of the newest terrestrial species. Homo sapiens is one species among about a dozen in the genus Homo, including Homo erectus, which colonized Eurasia 2 million years ago, and Homo neanderthalensis, which only went extinct 30,000 years ago. All species but Homo sapiens in the genus Homo are currently extinct. The genus Homo diverged from chimpanzees about 7 million years ago, and gorillas 8 million years ago. Homo sapiens was not the first socially adept ape, or the first bipedal ape, or the first ape to spread across a major portion of the world, or the first tool-using ape, or probably even the first language-using ape, but it is the first ape to develop advanced technology and cities. Although Homo sapiens is 200,000 years old, it was not until about 40,000 years ago that the species developed the qualities traditionally associa
WHAT is being observed? Consider the following: would you have still classified me as human had I been transformed to pure (though structured) energy, devoid of any physical aspect, attribute, or dimension? I doubt it. We feel so ill at ease with non-body manifestations of existence that we try to anthropomorphesize God Himself and to materialize ghosts. God is “angry” or “vengeful” or (more rarely) “forgiving”. Thus He is made human. Moreover, He is made corporeal. Anger or vengeance are meaningless bereft of their physical aspect and physiological association. But what about the mind? Surely, if there were a way to “preserve” the mind in an appropriate container (which would also allow for interactions) – that mind would have been considered human. Not entirely, it seems. IT would have been considered to have human attributes or characteristics (intelligence, sense of humour) – but it would NOT have been considered to be an HUMAN. It would have been impossible to fall in love with IT
