Science Insight – Secrets of Human Success

Our latest edition of Scientific American (August 2010) contains a special report titled “Origins” that details  “the untold story of our salvation,”  also known as ‘Secrets of Our Success.”  No, it’s not about key leadership success secrets, nor is it about succeeding in business.  It’s about how once humans almost went extinct, yet … we made it!  Lucky for us!!

Our hominid ancestors can be described as extremely diverse, and the  lineage is not linear, but rather jagged and filled with dead ends.  As modern humans we represent the youngest of this lineage.  Scientists estimate humans branched off from their common ancestor with chimpanzees about 5–7 million years ago. Several species and subspecies of Homo evolved and are now extinct.

The first humans were intelligent and thriving. Scientist believe that like the gorilla and the chimpanzee of today, they were strong, able to hold their own without tools in the jungle or savannah grasslands.

Current research suggests the first tool users were isolated bands of these able-bodied hominids. Through chance, accident and disease, tools would be developed many times and then the knowledge was lost.  At some point in the distant past, a thread of culture developed that didn’t die out, but developed and occasionally flared up into a coherent technology, but populations were probably small and scattered. Again chance, accident or disease would destroy an emerging technology, but still some thread of the emerging technology would persist.

If you are intrigued by this insight, the following list of readings and DVDs provide more in depth theory and facts for your knowledge and consumption:

What Does It Mean to Be Human? by Richard Potts and Christopher Sloan

 Designer Genes: A New Era in the Evolution of Man by Steven Potter

Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans by Brian Fagan

The Human Spark ,  a co-production of Chedd-Angier-Lewis Productions and Thirteen in association with WNET 

Too Smart For Our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind by Craig Dilworth

 ~ Leon C.

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2 responses to “Science Insight – Secrets of Human Success”

  1. David W

    Thanks for this, Leon. Even though I’m not really prone to scientific reading, I can’t help but be fascinated by what’s been going on in Paleoanthropology, and have a collection of replica hominid skulls that has to be the coolest non-book stuff I own. For those who are visually oriented, I recommend the recent title “The Last Human,” (author listed as Esteban Samiento) which features nice short vignettes about all the hominid species, intersperesed with scientific data, and lavishly illustrated with both photographic and plastic re-creations of all of the also-rans. My personal favorite is Homo Heidelbergensis, though I have a grudging respect for Homo Erectus, seeing as he hung around for far longer than we’ve been here.
    Robert Sawyer’s Hominid trilogy of SF novels is also neat, exploring what it means to be human, and H Sapiens is an advancement, or perhaps a regression.

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  2. Dave V

    This is great stuff, Leon! I am fascinated by the story of human evolution, and am putting “Cro-Magnon” on hold. One related book that I recommend is Byan Sykes “The Seven Daughters of Eve” (Norton, 2001), which doesn’t go back quite as far into our past, but does trace our human ancestors and migrations through mitochondrial genetics, the set of characteristic mutations on the mitochondrial genome. It posits that all Europeans can ultimately be traced back to a single “Mitochondrial Eve.” Mind boggling!

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