Human origins - humble beginnings

In order to dominate you must first be humbled. Have you ever wondered why humans are the dominant species on this planet? It wasn't always so. Nature, God, whoever or whatever did not choose us as the lucky recepients of superior genes, destined for greatness from the very beginning. No, it wasn't that simple. Throughout history, species that we recognize as being part of our direct lineage, struggled, barely avoiding extinction. Humans now dominate because we didn't before.

Our priviledged species descended from pauper ancestors. No matter how far back one looks, it's true. Some 63 million years ago dinosaurs dominated the planet, while our nearest ancestor was a tiny little shrew-like mammal, whose daily routine consisted of dodging the teeth of small dinos, and the feet of stomping big ones. Then, the asteroid hit and dinosaurs went extinct. Our turn, right? Nope. Next to dominate were species of giant flightless birds, and eventually other mammals got bigger and stronger, so they took over...but still not us, not our type of mammal, the hominids. And so it would be up until about 2 million years ago, when one of our pauper ancestors Homo Habilis (below) finally decided it was enough, and began to turn the tide.

By 2 million years ago, hominids were finally climbing the ladder of status in the animal kingdom. There were 3 recognized species. The first, A. Boisei, was a large herbivore that lounged all day, eating a specialized diet of bamboo-type plants which were everywhere, who's main concern was which female from his harem he should mount next. The second was A. Robustus, and as the name suggests, it was another strong hominid, that had it pretty good back then. The third species was H. Habilis. They were smaller, scrawnier, chronic bad-hair-day sufferers, who could never find enough food because they could not survive on Boisei's bamboo diet, and would often lose the best fruits and plants to the bigger A. Robustus. Yup, total losers, and wouldn't you know it, they were our direct link, and not the other two.

In desperation, H. Habilis had to supplement its vegiterian diet with other sources, including insects and meat. Meat was hard to come by since H. Habilis was too small to actually bring down an animal of any considereble size, and too slow to capture the little critters, which meant scavanging was the way to go. But, after a carcass was picked clean by the large land predators, then the vultures, all that was left for H. Habilis were the bones. He would hopelessly gnaw at the bone he couldn't possibly puncture with his pathetic humanesque teeth, and when finally frustrated, like any one of us would, he'd slam the bone up against the floor or a rock...again and again. Then, seeing the bone crack, he'd realize that a rock breaks bone, so he'd pick up a bigger rock (his first tool) and keep smashing, exposing the marrow...a souce of protein and other nutrients not as abundant in a vegetarian diet. Over time, the large amounts of protein H. Habilis gets from an omnivore diet leads to the development of increasingly larger brains, and this pathetic lineage finally turns the table on evolution, and begins its final leg of the journey towards dominance.

Today we Homo Sapiens dominate, but that in itself is dangerous because we've become too cozy and soft, a luxury not available to our direct evolutionary ancestor H. Habilis that got us here. We've lost respect for the earth and other species, and history seems to suggest that we are due for a humbling, whether it be cosmic impact, earthly disasters or plagues…or, perhaps we'll wise up and become humble voluntarily, change our ways and spare ourselves from calamity, as we did before.