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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