What is \"human\"? (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 17, 2009, 20:10 (5325 days ago) @ dhw

One theory (I can't remember where I read it) is that bipedalism freed the hands, the hands began to use tools, and the brain grew larger as a result of the extra mental activities involved. -Our bigger brain requires much more energy than a smaller brain. It is just as possible, perhaps even more so, that the hands provided better energy supply and allowed the brain to enlarge.-
> but I'm not sure if we need a palaeoanthropologist, a neuroscientist, or a philosopher to sort out how it happened, and to tell us what "human" actually means.-Perhaps all of them: by definition to be human is to be us and compare everything else to us.-John McCrone in, "The Ape that Spoke", 1991, defines human speech as the dividing line between us and all other animals (pg.48). We think in words.To have speech, the palate has to have the palate to arch up and the larynx has to drop to lower levels than in the ape. As a result an epiglottis has to appear to act as a trap door to protect the larynx and the trachea from food and water, which is supposed to go down the esophagus.-So that is a major difference. The skeletons are very different, because of bipedalism, and the giant infant head reqires a very convoluted birth canal. So in brief, we are skeletally different and mentally different and I still maintain different in kind, not degree.