Who are we and where do we come from?

Humans naturally ask big questions, especially about our origins.
Before science, people used stories and folk tales to explain our origins.
The Chumash nation's origin story:
- A female deity named Hutash planted seeds on Santa Cruz Island, which grew into the first people.
- Hutash created a rainbow bridge for people to cross to mainland California.
- Those who fell into the ocean became dolphins.
This origin story lacks empirical proof, but it provides certainty through faith.

Humans seek answers to big and small questions to avoid feeling lost or scared.
Metaphor: A child frightened by thunder and lightning needs an explanation to calm down.
- Example: Telling the child it's their grandfather bowling with the angels.
Good answers ground us and transform fear into curiosity.

Scientists seek answers about our world and origins through a long tradition.
Auguste Comte's positivism: An evolutionary schema of humanity's quest for truth.
- Three phases: theological, metaphysical, and positive.

Using reason and observation to understand the world.
Aristotle's model:
- Earthly matter (seen and felt).
- Celestial matter (seen but not felt).
- Spirit matter (neither seen nor felt).
- His ideas placed the Earth at the center of the universe, aligning with religious explanations.

Testing and correcting ideas through the scientific method.
The invention of the printing press (Gutenberg) in the mid-1500s enabled the mass production of books and spread of knowledge.
Led to scientific pioneers like Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, and Crick.

Science tells the story of evolution to explain our origin.
Early view: Essentialism (stasis): all living things have always existed as they are today.
Galileo challenged the geocentric model, advocating for continuous refinement of knowledge through observation.
Charles Darwin proposed that we are related to every living organism.
Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin's Grandfather):
- Wrote "Zunomia" about all living organisms sharing a common ancestor.
- Relied on comparative anatomy, paleontology, and embryology.
- Expressed this idea in his poem, "The Temple of Nature."
Carl Linnaeus:
- Published "Systema Naturae," classifying all living things.
- Giving us our very first comprehensive family tree of all living organisms.

Charles Darwin explained evolution through natural selection.
Organisms change gradually over time, resulting in new species or extinction.
Four components of natural selection:
- Variation in traits
  - Example: Starfish of different colors (red and pink) in the Caribbean.
- Differential reproduction
  - Some starfish reproduce more successfully than others.
  - Example: Red starfish are more visible to predators and get eaten more often.
- Heredity
  - Starfish transmit their color to their offspring.
- Advantageous trait
  - The pink color is advantageous because it camouflages the starfish and reduces predation.
Over time, the pink starfish become more common.
If there is a variable trait, and which is heredity, and it leads to differential reproduction, then that's evolution by natural selection.
Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" (1859) revolutionized our understanding of our origins.
Darwin's answers are contingent truths, meant to be tested and corrected.

Gregor Mendel revised Darwin's ideas about heredity.
Darwin theorized heredity operates through blending (like mixing paint).
Mendel discovered dominant and recessive genes through experiments with pea plants.
- Parents contribute M&M candies, and you don't produce new candies in the middle, instead, the children inherit the colors from their parents in a mixed assortment.

Hugo DeVries: Introduced ideas about mutations.
Francis Crick and James Watson: Revealed the structure of DNA and mapped the human genome.

Applying evolution outside the biological world.
Herbert Spencer and William H. McGee ushered in social Darwinism.
- Social systems evolve from simple to complex societies.
Used to justify inequalities: poverty seen as a result of being less evolved.
Early anthropology emerged to study human diversity but was influenced by social Darwinism.
Frederick Ward Putnam introduced anthropology to the public at the Chicago World's Fair (1893).

Celebrated technology and the scientific age.
The "White City" showcased modern machines and inventions.
Marble statues represented the ideal man and woman, based on measurements from Harvard and Radcliffe students.
Putnam imposed the biological model of evolution upon culture, exhibiting ethnocentrism.
Categorized people on a continuum from savage to barbarian to civilized, even enlightened.
Satellite exhibit: The Midway
- Represented the world, allowing the average visitor to compare it to the "White City."
- Organized as a living museum of "primitive people."
- Included villages of Javanese, Dahomey, Irish, Pacific Islanders, and a replica of a street in Cairo.
Visitors flocked to see exotic peoples and lives from around the world.
Differences between the White City and the Midway suggested that much of the world was less civilized.
Used to justify colonization and manifest destiny.

A Congolese man exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair (1904) and the Bronx Zoo (1906).
Reflected prevailing views on evolution and biological determinism.

In 1896, the Supreme Court consulted science, including anthropology, and upheld racial segregation as constitutional.
Justice Henry Brown wrote that the Constitution is powerless to put races on the same plane if one is inferior.
Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented, viewing segregation as planting seeds of race hate.
Most justices used science and ideas about evolution to defend racial inequalities as natural.

The revisable nature of science provides a way to correct mistakes.
Twentieth-century anthropologists continued to test theories about racial difference and human diversity.
In 1954, ideas about human evolution and diversity influenced the Supreme Court to reverse its 1896 decision in Brown versus Board of Education.

We will return to primate evolution in the next class