Bipedal poise

Situate yourself on a footbridge in a Hindu temple. The experience is a spicy blend of earthly and otherworldly mystery. I was sensually suffused, simply observing all the colors of the saris draping the contours of Hindu women, the melting colored bindi piles, the clanging of jewelry adorning various body parts filtering the sights, sounds and touch of things before they form part of the wearer’s presence. The summary smell of possibly a hundred kinds of incense pervaded the air, as did the overall rhythm of temple movement and chants from prayers and celebrations. In the river, the dead are cloaked in white and burned while not far ahead, chatty women washed dishes. Hindu temples provide the sacred shelter for a multitude of deities intricately painted, carved or sculpted. That river culture (Hindu from Sanskrit sindhu, meaning "river"), flowing through me at that moment is estimated to be 3,500 years old. When I thought it was time to walk on, a presence stopped me, in my step and thought’s trail. He was a child, about seven or eight years old and his face and body were completely covered with hair, like an ape, that I found it hard to make eye contact. Fresh from soaking in that rich cultural evidence from the footbridge, I subtly looked at the child. There at the edge of the footbridge, I scrambled to find equipoise between a host of relevant thoughts and theories: man’s ape ancestry, the overwhelming evidence of culture that human beings have created, the time it took to do so, the pace and stages in his own biological evolution, not to mention my own bipedal nature in negotiating my passage through winding alleys and crowded passages in this Hindu temple. Looking back, I now realize that those thoughts pointed to the deep bends in the human evolution turnkey: bipedalism, erect posture and this peculiar conscious quest for "equipoise."

Anthropologists estimate that it was around five to seven million years ago when we split from a common ape ancestor (or the level of "Order" in taxonomy). Humans belong to the Order of Primates, divided further into two suborders: prosimia and anthropoidae. Around 60 species belong to the prosimian suborder while around 175 belong to the anthropoids, to which humans belong together with apes and monkeys. From this Order, the split five to seven million years back gave birth to the Family Hominidae, of which fossil records reveal so far three Genuses: from the recently discovered and still being closely examined Ardipithicus ramidus (fossil remains dated at four to five million years ago), to the Genus Austalopithecus (1.6 million to 4.2 million years ago) to which belong the species anamensis, afarensis, africanus and robustus; and the Genus Homo (1.6 million years ago to present) of which we have five species: habilis, erectus, sapiens archaic, sapiens neandertalensis (disputed) and sapiens sapiens. Homo sapiens sapiens is the species with which we modern humans identify, and they have been around since 200,000 years ago.

Bipedalism freed human hands and made them evolve into the refined art-capable digits that they are. This, combined with the erect posture, gave rise to the development of spine-brain connections giving birth to "Broca’s brain," an area in the brain believed to be responsible for speech. While it took 2.5 million to four million years for the human brain to increase in size from 450 cc to 1,350 cc now, the oldest of cultural evidence dates back only as far as 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. This means according to paleontologist, S.J. Gould, that we have basically created all religion, science, political and social organizations with basically the same brain, at least in size. Thus, cultural evolution is, indeed, in an altogether different time horizon from our biological evolution. We are only two percent genetically different from chimpanzees and yet, even if a human genetic switch goes awry, a child with hair in ape proportions can clasp fragrant incense in his hairy but human-refined hands and bow to his gods in utmost reverence and gratitude. Carl Sagan prefaced one of his books, Broca’s Brain, with a story of how he felt when he had the chance to literally hold Paul Broca’s brain in his hands. Broca was a compassionate scientist – a neurosurgeon whose research blazed trails in brain studies, particularly how human speech develops. Sagan himself as a scientist, has helped us understand our human nature as part of the cosmos. Broca, Sagan and the hairy child exhibit that very same humanity, these marks of "sapience" that dust the very character of our species.

In the last one hundred years, science has stationed humans on a cultural evolutionary treadmill with the dials set, in Bill Gates’ terms, at "the speed of thought." The Human Genome Project that has just been completed also seems to cause a stir among us – illuminating our imagination as well as making many of us shirk or lash at what some view as the dimming of our common ethical future on what it means to be alive and human. But I think those fears and hopes need to be understood in a rational and enlightened dialogue if we are to live up, or simply remain true to the sapient label we assigned to ourselves. Our most modern inventions – the "newest in us" – should always remember what is "oldest in us," to realize that this brain that transforms "nature" is the same brain that also asks "what for." This is how historians can probably dialogue with scientists. I would give a good number of my sweetest moments to see what would transpire between historians like the late Will and Ariel Durant and the great scientists of today when the historian couple ask, as they did in their book, Lessons of History: Have we really just "enlarged our instrumentalities without improving our purposes?" That dialogue, I think, is worth any homo sapiens’ sweetest moment.