What Does it Mean to Be "Human" and When Did We Get Here?

A Wood Wose

There is no one agreed-on scientific definition of the word "Human". As a recent book I have been reading points out, there is no one agreed-on theological definition of "human" either. And those two definitions don't necessarily have to be the same. 

Some have used that vacuum to expand the definition so that almost any large-brained tool-making hominid is called "a type of human". I think this expansive definition misses the mark. As I point out in Early Genesis, the Revealed Cosmology, when we say that someone is "inhuman" we don't mean that they can't make a flint scraper! To be like us is to think and speak with recursive language, possess true empathy, and have complex art, and a desire to connect socially which goes beyond instinct and self-interest even into religion. We don't just operate within the natural realm, but wonder about, and in most cases yearn to connect with, something beyond it. 

So my scientific definition of a human would dovetail with the theological definition of a human (which I will get to later). A human is: a member of that species which thinks and speaks with recursive language, has an ability to possesses true empathy, is imaginative and makes and/or enjoys complex art, and has a desire to connect socially which goes beyond instinct and self-interest even into religion. We don't just operate within the natural realm, but wonder about, and in most cases yearn to connect with, something beyond it. 

I submit to you that if one group of hominids had all that, and others did not, then there will be significant barriers to reproduction between those groups, even if there are no genetic or physical barriers. The barriers will be social, intellectual, and spiritual, but they will still be real and would discourage hybridization between groups. Even if the Others had the power of speech, we wouldn't have much to say to each other, especially not talk of the sort that makes one human decide they want to take the other as a life-long partner. They would be looked at in the way Medieval Europeans looked at the fantastical "Woodwoses". 

Under this definition, even some of the fossils now classified as "Archaic Homo Sapiens" show no evidence of being "human", never mind Neanderthals, Denisovans and the rest. Those older fossils have none of the artifacts indicative of those above-mentioned traits. Perhaps those things weren't like us, and even some groups that seem closer to us than they do were still different enough to be Others. 

The claims that Neanderthals made true art are based on ridiculously faulty evidence. Dr. William Amos of Cambridge has put together an astounding amount of evidence which indicates that contrary to what "everyone knows" Eurasians didn't inherit about 1.5% of their genes from Neanderthals. There is another, and better, explanation for the same evidence. And his conclusion is just one possibility. Perhaps the Neanderthal-like DNA in Eurasians wasn't from Neanderthals, but through convergent evolution due to exposure to the same environmental stresses. Or maybe it was a group of "other" Homo Sapiens which had more Neanderthal-like genes who were responsible for the introgression.

Biologically the "Others" Homo Sapiens may have been capable of hybridization with us humans, but all those things I mentioned made us so different that there were social and intellectual barriers to reproduction between us. We went our way and they went theirs- to extinction. So the structural differences between us and them could have been extremely minor, but they would have lacked whatever inner light that makes us what we are. We can descend to their level if we became base and coarse, but they could not ascend to ours. Under this scenario not only was it "Homo Sapiens" who survived out of a whole "zoo" of various hominids over the past 500,000 years, but not even all of H. Sapiens were a part of the group that became us. There was a special group created out of all those.

Some of you might be thinking that this scenario can't be true because our DNA points to a much older origin for humanity. This is a misunderstanding which does not apply to a species which begins as a population rather than a single couple. In the Christ-centered model for early Genesis, there are people outside the garden and Adam and Eve inside it. Humanity starts as a "host" (Gen. 2:1). In that scenario, our species could be much younger than the "Most-Recent-Common-Ancestor" MRCA of our Y-chromosomes or mtDNA. The term becomes misleading for new types which begin as a population. This (MCRA of Y or mtDNA older than species) can be so under either creationist or evolutionary thinking. All that is necessary is for 1) humans to have begun as a population and 2) a long period of expansion after our beginning (no population bottlenecks for a long time). More detail here. 

It turns out that very important changes in our brain structure did not occur until relatively recently. See the original paper here. The ability to use recursive speech and thought is also recent (and takes such a threading of the needle to even occur that I doubt there is any reasonable naturalistic explanation for it, the one suggested in the link being implausible to me). Notice that the link says that it occurred "70,000 years ago" but all the evidence they give that it existed is from 42,000 years ago or less. The one exception being "we spread across the whole globe" which must have occurred after 74,000 years ago. In addition to being the vaguest evidence they gave for recursive thought and speech, other hominids also appear to have spread over large areas of the earth without such an ability. Examples which purport to be "art" from 70,000 years ago are either of doubtful veracity, or crude, and perhaps even functional rather than imaginative, compared to that found from 42,000 years ago and more recently. 

In short, I think there is a case to be made that we haven't been around that long. Perhaps there were some "others" who were already on the way out when we got here, but we haven't been around for 150,000 years or even 100,00 years and I doubt it's even been 70,000 years. Maybe beings physically like us were hanging around for a time, but if one really thinks about what makes us "human" and what we consider "human" in each other, then these poor creatures didn't have it. 

The truth is that even populations that are doubtlessly human turn over on a regular basis. Europe has been well studied. The population which inhabited it 40,000 years ago subsequently was replaced. It happened again 14,500 years ago. There was another major turnover in population seven to nine thousand years ago. Most of the genetic load of western Europeans comes from populations which were not in Western Europe eight thousand years ago! And of course five hundred years ago the population of North America looked utterly different than it does now. If these kinds of things are regular occurrences in our history how reasonable is it to believe that our line bumbled along at the edge of extinction for 150,000 years until expanding in the last 40K, and expanding greatly only in the last 12K? It seems more reasonable to believe that the signs of a narrow bottleneck in our genes are not because we hung on so long at minimal population levels, but that we are a special species which originated in the more recent past. The very traits which made us different from the Others allowed us to pass them by and assume our role over the earth.

My definition of theological human?: A member of that species which has the capacity to bear the image of God. This also is different than what you may have thought, but that is another story. One that is in the book. 

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