Re: Dating Adam

Terry M. Gray (grayt@calvin.edu)
Fri, 31 May 1996 10:24:47 -0400

>Glenn Morton wrote:
>
>>As to stretching things, the making of naked female statues seems to me to
>>be a uniquely human activity. Men from 6 to 106 have been known to admire
>>the female form. No ape does this. Does the making of the naked statue
>>imply lust?
>
Then Bill Hamilton wrote:
>I certainly agree that it's a uniquely human activity. And it certainly
>could imply lust, as well as the ability to interpret abstractions.
>However, I'm not convinced that it implies religion.
>

How about if we say that it's a unique hominid activity? Since we're the
only lineage left among the hominids, it's impossible to tell whether a
given activity is uniquely human or shared by all hominids.

This is not an uncommon situation in evolution--where some ancestral shared
character is presently extant in a single surviving species. We can use
the character now to identify the species, but not necessarily so before
other sibling species had gone extinct.

TG

_____________________________________________________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Calvin College 3201 Burton SE Grand Rapids, MI 40546
Office: (616) 957-7187 FAX: (616) 957-6501
Email: grayt@calvin.edu http://www.calvin.edu/~grayt

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