Document – “Not All Hominids are Human Beings,” David Johnson and Maitland A. Edey

Document

We can picture human evolution as starting with a primitive apelike type that gradually, over a long period of time, began to be less and less apelike and more manlike. There was no abrupt crossover from ape to human, but probably a rather fizzy time of in-between types that would be difficult to classify either way. We have no fossils yet that tell us what went on during that in-between time. Therefore, the handiest way of separating the newer types from their ape ancestors is to lump together all those that stood up on their hind legs. That group of men and near-men is called “hominids”. I am a hominid. I am a human being. I belong to the genus Homo and to the species sapiens: “thinking man”. Perhaps I should say wise or knowing man--a man who is smart enough to recognize that he is a man. There have been other species of Homo who were not so smart, ancestors now extinct. Homo sapiens began to emerge a hundred thousand-perhaps two or three hundred thousand-years ago, depending on how one regards Neanderthal Man. He was another Homo. Some think he was the same species as ourselves. Others think he was an ancestor. There are a few who consider him a kind of cousin. That matter is unsettled because many of the best Neanderthal fossils were collected in Europe before anybody knew how to excavate sites properly or get good dates. Consequently, we do not have exact ages for most of the Neanderthal fossils in collections. I consider Neanderthal conspecific with sapiens, with myself. One hears talk about putting him in a business suit and turning him loose in the subway. It is true; one could do it and he would never be noticed. He was just a little heavier-boned than people of today, more primitive in a few facial features. But he was a man. His brain was as big as a modern man's, but shaped in a slightly different way. Could he make change at the subway booth and recognize a token? He certainly could. He could do many things more complicated than that. He was doing them over much of Europe, Africa and Asia as long as sixty or a hundred thousand years ago.

Neanderthal Man had ancestors, human ones. Before him in time was a less advanced type: Homo erectus. Put him on the subway and people would probably take a suspicious look at him' Before Homo erectus was a really primitive type, Homo habilis; put him on the subway and people would probably move to the other end of the car. Before Homo habilis the human line may run out entirely. The next stop in the past, back of Homo habilis, might be something like Lucy. All of the above are hominids. They are all erect walkers. Some were human, even though they were of exceedingly primitive types. Others were not human. Lucy was not. No matter what kind of clothes were put on Lucy, she would not look like a human being.

She was too far back, out of the human range entirely. That is what happens going back along an evolutionary line. If one goes back far enough, one finds oneself dealing with a different kind of creature. On the hominid line the earliest ones are too primitive to be called humans. They must be given another name. Lucy is in that category.

Review

1. 1. What does Johanson identify as the factors that make Lucy important to historians?

2. 2. Johanson states that “All human beings are hominids, but not all hominids are human beings.” Explain the difference. Which is Lucy?