Hominids Quotes

• It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

  Jane Goodall

  War, Winning, Brain

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• To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.

  Richard Leakey

  Men, Important, Fossils

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• What set us apart from most or all of the other hominid species was our ultrasociality, our ability to be highly cooperative, even with strangers, people who are not at all related to us.

  Jonathan Haidt

  People, Stranger, Ability

  Interview with Tamler Sommers, www.believermag.com. August 2005.

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• Hominid and human evolution took place over millions and not billions of years, but with the emergence of language there was a further acceleration of time and the rate of change.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Change, Years, Language

  William Irwin Thompson (2015). “Self and Society: Studies in the Evolution of Cutlture, Second Enlarged Edition”, p.95, Andrews UK Limited

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• Hominids typically haven't so much adapted to change, as they have accommodated to it.

  Ian Tattersall

  Adapted, Havens

  Ian Tattersall (2012). “Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins”, p.137, Macmillan

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• More poignant for us, at Laetoli in Tanzania are the companionable footprints of three real hominids, probably Australopithecus afarensis, walking together 3.6 million years ago in what was then fresh volcanic ash. Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn?

  Richard Dawkins

  Real, Hands, Years

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• I think we're going to move from a Homo sapiens into a Homo evolutis: ... a hominid that takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of his species, her species and other species.

  Juan Enriquez

  Motivation, Moving, Inspiration

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• Like other organisms, humans have a certain genetic endowment (apparently varying little in the species, not a surprise considering its recent separation from other hominids). That determines what we call their nature.

  Noam Chomsky

  Littles, Separation, Surprise

  Source: libcom.org

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• part of the humor of living on this backward planet is listening to the hominids rationalize their predations.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Listening, Planets, Living On

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• In a sense, I never got over Robert Lowell's History. A flawed, infinitely brilliant project I never tire of going back to. It's a modern Inferno, where Lowell plays both Dante and Virgil, guiding us through dozens of illuminating, bitter episodes from human history, all the while managing to hold a mirror to our confused hominid face as it squints at eternity and fails to grasp any of it.

  Andre Naffis-Sahely

  Confused, Mirrors, Play

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• To me it begins and ends with these psychedelic substances. The synergy of the psilocybin in the hominid diet brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.

  Terence McKenna

  Animal, Imagination, Mind

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• The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. ...but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man.

  John Reader

  Men, Convincing Evidence, Missing

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• The fact that all our ape cousins - chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans - can acquire signs - is powerful evidence that our hominid ancestors' first language was gestural and that the vocal version of language was a relatively recent development. My own guess is that vocal language began emerging about 200,000 years ago.

  Roger Fouts

  Cousin, Powerful, Years

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• Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it.

  Michael Shermer

  Writing, Grandmother, Thinking

  Michael Shermer (2002). “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time”, p.251, Holt Paperbacks

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