Do you know what a "person" is?
This is a very troublesome, very profound, philosophical question
Some people have asked: Chicken or egg first? It is not known that raising this question is inherently problematic. The biggest problem is that the questioner sees the evolution of living things as static fragments rather than processes of motion.
Archaeopteryx gradually evolved into various birds, one of which gradually evolved into a chicken, and this process has been in a continuous evolutionary process, which fragment do you say it became a chicken? Which fragment of a bird's egg becomes an egg?
The concept of man also involves a big problem, I want to say that man is not only a noun, man is also a "verb", under the concept of man implies a continuous, dynamic process from non-human to human, please do not simply dismember it to see.
Remember that our purpose is to know ourselves and the world, not to make the world unrecognizable, such as the white horse, such as Heraclitus said that people can not step into the same river twice - so that if you think about it, people will go crazy.
Until the 1960s, the paleoanthropology community used the ability to make tools as a criterion for distinguishing people from apes, but because chimpanzees can also make grass stems to catch termites, the anthropological community began to use the ability to habitually walk upright on their legs as the dividing line between humans and apes.
Query Baidu, the biological definition of man is: human (scientific name: Homo sapiens, meaning "intelligent person"), is a primate genus of human species.
I think that many times, definitions are for the sake of distinction, for the convenience of expression and research, so it is good to achieve the goal. After all, from ape evolution to man, this is a coherent evolutionary process between species, we are difficult to find an absolutely suitable dividing point, perhaps one day, the anthropological community will redefine the concept of "man"?
The inexorable universe, the sentient world: the most fundamental source of human beings
At present, there are creationism, cosmogenesis (alien life), chemical origin, deep-sea hot springs and so on. Creationism is not mentioned, but many scientists accept the theory of chemical origin and deep-sea hot springs, and many scientists agree with the statement of foreign life:
Winchercombe meteorite
On the night of February 28 this year (2021), a meteorite that had broken into earth's atmosphere at a speed of 14 kilometers per second fell in the small town of Winchcomb, England.
A few months later, scientists discovered that the meteorite, which originated early in the solar system and has existed for more than 4.5 billion years, is a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite. The meteorite is rich in water and organic matter, but also contains amino acids, which means that these life-related components were already present as early as the formation of the solar system.
At present, there are about 65,000 known meteorites on Earth, containing 51 of the same meteorites, and the existence of these meteorites reveals a possibility of the birth of life on Earth.
Having read all of the above, I would like to say that we should never think of ourselves as the spirits of all things, and ignore everything in the universe, even the most insignificant, there are infinite possibilities.
As far as the source of human beings is concerned, human beings come from the most humble but also the greatest life in the ocean, not even life, but only a piece of DNA, amino acids, or even dust from the universe.
So, we were once dust, once single-celled, once fish in the sea, once reptiles on land, once mammals in underground caves, once primitive primates, once apes and ape-men. We have experienced countless coincidences of providence, genetic mutations, and countless existential crises to evolve into human beings and become what we are today.
Heaven and earth are not kind, with all things as dogs, nature is like this, in the ruthless birth of sentient beings, in the lifeless gave birth to life, gave birth to us.
So, we are just a drop of water in the whole torrent of life, a water molecule, an atom, an electron, or a gene fragment, based on everything inanimate in this universe... The so-called meaning of life is actually rooted in this, which is nothing more than survival and inheritance.
Therefore, whether it is for ourselves, for others, for the world, for nature, we should have a reverence and love from the heart, and the fundamental reason is that we all originate from this world, and we are all conceived and carved by this great nature.
Human Evolution: Luck and Strength, Chance and Necessity
A lot of people will think, who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going?
There is no absolutely accurate answer to this question, but if you change the question, although there is still no accurate answer, it will be much better in the end, that is: Who are human beings? Where did humanity come from and where are we going?
Writing this, I remembered a passage from Russell, and for a moment my heart was full of pity and sorrow:
"Whenever you take your kids to the zoo, if you look closely into the eyes of the apes, you find a strange nervousness and sadness when they don't perform gymnastic stunts or smash nuts. One can almost imagine that they feel like they should be human, but they have not been able to find the secrets in it, so they do not know what to do. On the path of evolution, their cousins and cousins moved all the way forward, while they themselves lost their way and were left far behind. ”
I am afraid that not only the great apes, as far as we know, in the history of mankind, there have been dozens of humanoid creatures, they have experienced countless dangers and efforts, to the time of infinite approach to us, fell on the road of evolution. Are they not trying hard enough? There is no reason, that is the result.
Why are we able to thrive and savage in this world today? If there is a reason, this is the result, and if we must find a reason, then luck is also part of strength, and chance and necessity cannot be separated.
Traceability: The source of the long river of human history
Darwin
Darwin proposed the theory of evolution, and the whole world was shocked by it, and it was he who for the first time lifted the fog of religion to let us know that we were not created by God, and that apes may be our ancestors. This allows us to slowly unravel the question of who I am, where we are coming from, and where we are going.
In terms of biological classification, apes include gibbons, orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas and humans, and are a general term for 13 large, highly intelligent primates. Because apes are so similar to humans, they are also called "apes", and the Latin word for apes means "the same as man".
As far as is known, the most primitive apes in the world are the proto-apes found in Faron, Egypt, and they lived in an era 33 million years ago. In addition, according to current anthropological research, millions of years ago, the evolutionary core of both apes and humans was located in East Africa, and the core area was the Great Rift Valley of East Africa.
The Great Rift Valley of East Africa
Everything has a cause and effect, and everything stems from a geological movement that causes the ape to go down the tree and open a new era of upright walking, which directly leads to the final appearance of humans:
About 12 million years ago, crustal movements led to the emergence of the Great Rift Valley in East Africa and caused climate changes at both ends of the Rift Valley. The western side of the Great Rift Valley is still densely forested, while the eastern side has reduced rainfall, making the forest gradually become grassland. The apes on the west side easily adapted to the new environment, while the apes on the east side were different, and they had to slowly get used to moving from the trees down to the open grasslands, and gradually adapted to walking upright, from which australopithecus evolved.
At present, it is still uncertain which ape is the ancestor of our human beings, and everything depends on future archaeological discoveries, but in general, about 5 million to 7 million years ago, humans came out of some kind of ape.
For example, the Chadian Shah lived 7 million years ago, the Tugan natives lived 7 million years ago, and the Archaeopteryx lived 4.4 million years ago, and there is still debate in the academic community about whether they are the ancestors of humans.
More famous is Lucy: In 1974, scientists discovered the skull of the first Australopithecus alpha in Ethiopia after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," which was named "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,", which was played live.
It is speculated that Lucy lived 3.2 million years ago as a 110-centimeter-tall woman who died of a fall from height and was about 20 years old. She has given birth to children and is considered the mother of humanity.
In 2019, anthropologists have made new archaeological discoveries that are said to subvert the idea that Lucy is the mother of humanity, but everything has yet to be explored and argued.
According to current archaeological findings and modern genetic research, whether it is Caucasians, blacks, and yellows, they all originated in Africa and only left 100,000 years ago to flourish on all continents.
This is the original origin of our human beings.