From Olduvai Gorge to the Sea of Tranquility

 

This is an essay I wrote eight years ago to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and was originally posted on the National Space Society's blog site on  August 10, 2009.

By far the two most remarkable photographs of the twentieth century are the ones shown above. For they encapsulate the whole evolutionary and cultural history of humanity and its possible destiny.

In 1978, paleoanthropologist Mary Leaky and her team discovered the earliest hominid footprints (dated to be three and a half million years old) preserved in the volcanic ash at Laetoli, forty-five kilometres south of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. They belong to one of our proto-human ancestors - Australopithecus afarensis. The picture above shows one of these fossil footprints next to the boot print left by Neil Armstrong in the volcanic soil of Mare Tranquilitatis (the Sea of Tranquillity).

It is very symbolic of the giant evolutionary leap forward we have taken as a species. From Olduvai Gorge to the Sea of Tranquillity, we humans have travelled very far.

The Boldest Hoax

Group portrait of the Piltdown skull being examined. Back row (from left): F. O. Barlow, G. Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward. Front row: A S Underwood, Arthur Keith, W. P. Pycraft, and Ray Lankester. Note the portrait of Charles Darwin on the wall. Painting by John Cooke, 1915

Today on Far Future Horizons we present another exciting episode of the PBS documentary series NOVA. This instalment of NOVA concerns the infamous Piltdown hoax.

For decades, a fossil skull discovered in Piltdown, England, was hailed as the missing link between apes and humans. Entire careers were built on its authenticity. Then in 1953, the awful truth came out: "Piltdown Man" was a fake! But who done it? In "The Boldest Hoax," NOVA gets to the bottom of the greatest scientific hoodwinking of all time.

Big History ~ Rise of the Carnivores

A scene from the Motion Picture "2001: A Space Odyssey" ©1968MGM  

Today on Far Future History we present another exciting episode of the History Channel’s documentary series Big History.

This instalment of Big History explores a critical evolutionary step that shaped the human species when our Hominid ancestors added meat to their diet.

Are Robots The Future of Human Evolution?

Homo Cyberneticus

Will the human species take the course of its future evolution into its own hands by merging the human mind with advances in artificial intelligence and the body with advances in robotics and bionics?

Are Homo sapiens evolving into Homo Cyberneticus?

Today on Far Future Horizons we join veteran actor Morgan Freeman in another outstanding episode of the acclaimed Science Channel documentary series Through the Wormhole which explores the question - Are Robots The Future of Human Evolution?

Watching Desmond Morris

Today on Far Future Horizons it gives me great pleasure to present the documentary “Watching Desmond Morris” hosted by Sir David Attenborough.

Desmond Morris has been watching us for nearly fifty years, applying his skills as a zoologist to human beings as if they were just another animal.

Books such as "The Naked Ape" and "Manwatching" made him a household name. Now it is time to turn the tables and ask him a few questions.

With contributions from experts such as Richard Dawkins and Oliver James, and from Morris's old friend Sir David Attenborough, we ask how credible Morris's observations, and the conclusions, really were, and whether there is still anything to learn from studying humans in the way the he did.

Stone Age Apocalypse

Human evolution is believed to have begun some six million years ago. Yet, despite the passage of so much time, the diversity of the DNA genetic code of all humans is minute.

Some Seventy-five thousand years ago, something apocalyptic occurred that left relative few humans alive to carry on the species.

The cause of this bottleneck is now believed to have been a massive volcanic eruption on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

A super-eruption from the site of Lake Toba in Sumatra blasted out more than two hundred cubic miles of ash over an area of over a million square miles.

Today on Far Future Horizons we present two documentary features concerning this prehistoric mega disaster: Naked Science - Stone Age Apocalypse and PBS NOVA’s Mystery of the Megavolcano.

Is It Real? - Russian Bigfoot

Is it possible that prehistoric humans predating modern Homo sapiens still survive today? In Mongolia and Russia, rumours about hairy, ape-like creatures are the staple of gossip in the remote mountain communities of these relatively isolated countries . They are known as the "Almas" and Cryptozoologists claim they could be relic Neanderthals, that did not become extinct as once thought some thirty-five thousand years ago. Do relict hominids still walk the Earth? 

The Mystery of the Neanderthal

Once upon a time in the history of our planet two distinct species of human walked the Earth together. Then some thirty five thousand years ago, in the ultimate contest of survival one species alone would survive to inherit the Earth – Homo sapiens. We are the descendants of the winners of that evolutionary contest.

Eventually we would spread out from the Old Worlds of Europe and Asia into the New Worlds of the Americas and Australia and became a planetary species. We discovered agriculture, built the first cities, developed culture and writing and became the pioneers of a totally new domain of evolution which is distinctly non-biological - Cultural Evolution. It is this new realm of evolution that has made us the most dominant life form on this planet and has set us on a trajectory that will one day take us out amongst the stars.

Homo Futurus

Today on Far Future Horizons we present a somewhat controversial documentary concerning the future course of human evolution.

Secrets of the Stone Age 3 – The Human Story

In the final episode of the Secrets of the Stone Age - The Human Story, Richard Rudgley takes a look at the Middle Palaeolithic, from 200,000 to 38,000 years ago, and a close examination of the Neanderthal, a highly intelligent creature which existed alongside our ancestors just 30,000 years ago, give or take. 

Neanderthal has been hugely misrepresented as a dumb creature, but they made sophisticated tools - sometimes better than our own - buried their dead, made necklaces and other ornaments and even interbred with human beings.

Mermaids - The New Evidence



"Prehistoric Cave Art" Depicting Mermaids 



The seas and oceans of our planet have since time immemorial been a familiar yet mysterious and alien realm for much of human history. Many myths and legends have appeared in every epoch to explain many strange and inexplicable phenomena.



Seafarers across the ages and from all cultures also reported sightings of many strange and fabulous creatures.  

In Search of Mermaids

Today on Far Future Horizons we present an alternate history of hominid evolution. What if early humans branched off into two major subdivisions? One branch adapting to an entirely terrestrial existence, the pedigree that gave rise to Homo sapiens, the other settling to an entirely aquatic existence, the lineage that eventually gave rise to aquatic humanoids (or Aquanoids), the mermaids of myth and legend. This was the main thrust of the mock documentary “Mermaids: The Body Found” which first aired in the United States on May 27^th, 2012.

As mock documentaries (or mockumentaries) go I rather liked “Mermaids: The Body Found” because the scenes depicting the early evolution of Mermaids from Aquatic Apes is very reminiscent of Elaine Morgan’s work in connection to the Aquatic Ape hypothesis. This mockumentary does an excellent job of presenting a plausible, even if doubtful, scientific hypothesis of how Aquatic humanoids could have evolved. No fossil evidence has yet come to light that supports the Aquatic Ape hypothesis . Nor has any evidence of aquatic humanoids ever been found.

The Aquatic Ape

In Reverend Charles Kingsley’s satirical novel “The Water Babies” his central protagonist Tom, a young chimney sweep, dies and is transformed into a "water baby". 

The novel is both a critique of Victorian England’s treatment of the poor and the closed-minded approaches of many scientists of the day in their response to Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution.

The Water Babies was also a portent of things to come in the field of human evolution.  A century after Kinsley’s novel many paleoanthropologists were to greet another theory concerning the distinctly aquatic origins of modern humans with equal vitriolic scorn.

Humans v2.0:Human Evolution at the Cross Roads

Will the human species take the course of its own future evolution into its hands as a result of advances in genetic engineering and the merging of the human mind with advanced computer technologies?

We are approaching a very uncertain future beyond which we can barely glimpse. On our immediate horizon lies Vernor Vinge's "Singularity", the point at which computers reach and surpass human intelligence. Will humans become extinct or will we merge with our machines in a symbiosis that will create a new player in the future evolutionary story of planet Earth. We are at the cross roads of evolution and what really lies ahead is anybody’s guess.

In the following BBC Horizon documentary meet the scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human - a human v2.0.