Do Homo sapiens improve as a species?
We cannot talk about improvement because in evolution everything is coincidental, the result of circumstance...
Aren't our children smarter than their parents and less smart than their grandchildren?
No, because in evolution there is no direction. We could say that it neither advances nor retreats. It is decided by blows of let's call it chance...
Why do we like to believe then that we progress as a species?
It is an error that arose in the 18th century when Eugene Dubois was determined to find the missing link, which was supposed to be between the orangutan, then considered the closest thing to sapiens, and us. And he went to Indonesia to look for it...
Did the missing link never exist?
No.
Why did you go to Indonesia to look for him?
Because he was Dutch, and Borneo and Java were his colonies, so he got the support of his government and a group of prisoners who he put to dig there until he found a femur similar to ours and then a piece of skull. And he believed that they were both from the same time and he called that supposedly discovered species Pithecanthropus erectus, which later became Homo erectus...
Was that erectus believed to be “the missing link between ape and man”?
And from that false conception of our evolution, the idea that it was linear and that we were progressing from that false intermediate missing link to today became widespread...
Hasn't it been like that?
No, but the myth persists in advertising and even in the friendly nod that the logo of the Museum of Natural History of Burgos makes to it.
So how was our evolution?
After finding fossils of ancestors in so many places, it is clear that we are not the result of a linear evolution: we do not even come from a tree that goes from the main trunk to the branches... In fact, the branches that remain of the tree of the hominids are Neanderthals, Denisovans, us...
And where do you place Homo antecessor?
Well right now we don't even know if it would be related to us; because if we go back in our evolutionary line beyond the Neanderthals, we haven't even found his mother, so we have gone to his aunt. And I still don't rule out that she is the mother...
But do we have some Neanderthals?
We have between 1% and 4% of genes from Neanderthals, who had an archaic, swollen face. On the other hand, ours, without so much chin, which we previously thought was more modern, turned out to be more archaic. Because when Homo antecessor appeared in Atapuerca, which we date as prior to the Neanderthal, we verified that it had ours.
Did the Neanderthal face turn out to be more evolved than that of sapiens?
Evolved towards something different... Evolution towards progress is an illusion. We are here by pure fluke. Instead of us sapiens, there could be the Neanderthals or any other group...
Why are we there and they aren't?
Because, for whatever reason, we did not leave Africa before and, on the other hand, the Neanderthals, who were in Europe, were extinct by glaciation...
And when do we arrive in Europe?
We already have remains of Homo sapiens from 80,000 years ago in the southeastern tip of Eurasia, and 50,000 years ago we were already colonizing the planet.
Why are only sapiens left?
We were the lucky ones of the three species of hominids that existed in Africa and the other three in Eurasia: any of them could have reached today, but only sapiens did it... And that is not good at all.
Don't scare us.
We Homo sapiens are very alone. Too much. And evolution poses challenges to us...
Global warming, resource depletion, earthquakes, meteorites...?
And only if there is diversity in the species is the capacity for adaptation greater. If there were several species of Homo and not just sapiens, some would have a better chance of surviving, for example, climate change...
Won't we invent some solution?
Technology does not solve all the challenges of evolution; think, for example, of earthquakes: the collision of tectonic plates...
Some intolerant people already have plenty of ethnic and cultural diversity in humans.
Well, they put us in danger, because diversity of all kinds increases the species' chances of survival in the face of the diverse and changing challenges of the environment.
What have you learned in Atapuerca?
Modesty. Not only that you yourself are little, but also that your entire species is not much more. Before the Sima de los Huesos you think that one day you will end and your species... We'll see! But I have also learned that you can give enormous meaning to that little bit that you enjoy by seeking and sharing knowledge.
