The Human Story

The main objective of the Hall of Human Biology and Evolution at the American Museum of Natural History is to “Look at what we share with other living things, and at how we acquired our unique attributes, in order to discover our own place in nature.” To do this the exhibit must answer some key questions about our origins, for example: When did humans first appear? What guided our development? What were key events to their discovery? How does our biology parallel that of our relatives, the primates? And how does our past affect our present and influence our future? The exhibit answers these questions by creating a cleverly laid out space that includes displays of several different types and styles.

Upon entering and moving through the hall it becomes apparent that the different galleries are arranged in ascending chronological order and deal with a specific topic as per our (Human) development throughout history. As a result, the hall could easily be compared to a 3-D/virtual reality-timeline that takes the viewer into the world of our distant ancestors while educating the viewer. For example, on hand are plaster copies of renowned fossil discoveries, including “Lucy” and the “Turkana Boy”, there are also displays depicting our earliest human relatives in their natural landscape and habitat, including the Neanderthals and Australopithecus Africanus.

The exhibit commences with the assertion that, “We belong to the great branching system of living things which has arisen from an ancestor that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago.” With this statement the museum establishes’ a definite commonality between all living things and directs it’s focus to the biological definition of humans.

The first gallery is titled Humans Are Vertebrates and through a combination of text and backlit sections of each system we are able to understand how each one works and what purpose it serves. The following systems define the human as a vertebrate and accordingly are the ones presented to the viewer: Circulatory, Digestive, Endocrine, Respiratory, Skeletory and Urinary systems. The next gallery is titled Humans Are Mammals, in this small gallery we are introduced to our Reproductive system, which defines our classifications as mammals. It is important to note however, that the organizers of the exhibit have chosen to introduce the reproductive system with the image of a primate holding it’s offspring. This is a very explicit and powerful statement because directly above this image is the, already mentioned, title which employs the word human. To the uneducated majority this would seem to be a complete error, nevertheless humans are, in fact, primates and as the exhibit begins to isolate and specialize on what being human means, we find that the focus is strictly biological. With that said the next gallery is aptly titled, Humans Are Primates. The focus of this gallery is on opposable thumbs and the big toe, increased reliance on visual sensation and a reduced number of teeth. These characteristics help to distinguish us from the other mammalian groups and further classify us as a family. Narrowing the field even more, we arrive at the next gallery of the exhibit that is titled Humans Are Hominoids. Here the main focus is on the larger complex brain, distinctive molar teeth, flexible arm and shoulder joints and the absence of a tail. From this point on the exhibit begins to concentrate on the evolutional theory of man and as a result tries to answer the question, “What does it mean to be Human?

To be human does not only mean to have high intelligence, language and aesthetic sensibilities, these are merely the outcomes of a long process. Being human also entails understanding where we came from and how we evolved. Clues to where we came from and how we evolved were on display, specifically “Lucy” and the “Turkana Boy”. Lucy was discovered in 1974 in the Afar Desert of Northern Ethiopia. She is a 40% complete skeleton of an adult female only 3.5-4 feet tall with a slender body. She lived 3 -3.2 million years ago and was classified as an Australopithecus afarensis. The Turkana Boy was discovered in 1984 near the African Lake Turkana and is a nearly complete Homo erectus skeleton of a 12-year-old boy dating to 1.6 million years ago. The most important aspect of these two fossils is the realization that they possessed bipedality or in layman’s terms, walked using two legs. Also on display was a mock up scene of “The Laetoli Footsteps” which also demonstrates that early humans were bipedal. All three of these displays share a common purpose that is to demonstrate that bipedalism is in fact one of the key transitions in our evolution.

The next gallery is titled Toward Modern Humans and fittingly discusses H. habilis, also known as “Handy Man”, H. erectus and H. neaderthalenis. H. habilis was found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in the 1960s and is approximately 1.9 million to 1.6 million years old. It was named H. habilis because it is believed to be the earliest tool user, hence the name “Handy Man”. Following H. habilis is the intermediate human known as H. erectus, which was discovered in Trinil, Indonesia in 1891 and is believed to have been the first hominid to use fire and migrate out of Africa. H. erectus is approximately 1.7 million to 250,000 years old. Last of this gallery is H. neaderthalenis. The Neanderthal man, as he is popularly known, is approximately 200,000 to 30,000 years old, found in the Neander valley in Germany in 1864. Some scientists believe that the Neanderthal man may have overlapped with H. sapiens and coexisted for a short amount of time. Scientists also believe the H. neaderthalenis had a 4 percent larger brain than their contemporaries, H. sapiens. This takes us to the next gallery titled The First Modern Humans.

In this gallery the exhibit discusses Cro-Magnon man, which is the earliest known example of H. sapiens sapiens. The Cro-Magnon man was first discovered in 1868 in Dordogne, France. The most important common denominator between these fossils of Dordogne and modern day man is the skull shape which shows the same high forehead with little or no brow ridges, a protruding chin, a high rounded braincase and a small face and teeth. Cro-Magnon man also left artifacts that offer clues into the abstract thought that they possessed, including architecture in the form of huts, paintings and carvings. Some of the remains of tools they used suggest that they also knew how to make woven clothing.

In conclusion we can see in the Cro-Magnon man the culmination of the four major characteristics that make up modern day human: a reduced face with canine teeth, many features throughout the body that are related to upright walking, a hand capable of unmatched flexibility and most importantly, a large reorganized brain. These four characteristics used in conjunction are what have made modern man superior to all the predecessors in its family. With this combination man has been able to create language, communication, society, art, economy, architecture, science, philosophy, etc. The possibilities are endless and to this day we are still growing in leaps and bounds however, the most interesting thing for me is that we have not been able to transcend our human nature. In other words, we have not been able to satisfy our greed or end our waste and are still waging war destroying one another. In the displays at the Hall of Biology and Human Evolution I saw what we still are today. Like the first Homo habilis, we (modern day man) at our most elemental level are simply trying to survive day by day, we are looking for shelter, we are trying to feed ourselves and our families and we are still afraid of what we cannot explain – The rest is history.

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