Currently I am reading Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (2005) by David Christian and William H. McNeill. It traces the evolution of the world from the big bang to the moment in which we humans find ourselves today. One of quite a number of recent books of the same kind, and not the worst of the lot.

It made me think. A higher compliment no book can get or should get. However, seen from the authors’ point of view, it made me think about the wrong things. Perhaps that is another compliment to their work. I did not think about how we changed and why we changed and how else we might have changed and where change is taking us a d whether change is good or bad. But about all the ways in which we did not change. In other words, what it means to be human.

Homo Sapiens (skull & lower jaw) from the Human Evolution Gallery (tracks through time)
Age: 18,000 years old
Locality: Upper Cave, Zhoukoudian near Beijing, China

Before I start, a qualification. We humans are supposed to have evolved from ape-like ancestors who lived several millions of years ago. The question as to just when we became “modern” and “fully human” is very much one of definition. I cannot and will not go into all the different creatures that linked us to the ape in question. The more so because paleontologists themselves never stop quarrelling about their nature, the reasons why they appeared, the time at which they appeared, and the sequence in which they did so. That means I am going to limit myself to the last fifty thousand years or so. To my admittedly limited knowledge, no one has argued that our ancestors of that period were not “fully” human.

So here are a few of our outstanding characteristics.

1. To be human is to be a land animal (even if, in the future, we succeed in providing ourselves with artificial land-like environments under water, in the sea, and in outer space). That has some very important implications for the way we live.
2. To be human is to reproduce sexually (as opposed to some other creatures which use different means to the purpose). In other words, a division of roles between males and females, with everything that entails.
3. To be human is to be a mammalian. That has some very important implications for the way we are fed and raised during our early years.
4. To be human means that we need our rest and can only do so much within a given time. Are you listening, all you hard-driven, hard-working, Protestants and other go-getters?

So far, I have been listing the things we have in common with a great many other species. Still, they form part of our humanity. Take them away, and God only knows what we become. Fish, perhaps? Or mushrooms? Or reptiles? Or robots? But there are also quite a few things other species do not share with us, of which they share only to a very limited extent. To wit:

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1. Bipedalism. Humans are the only mammalians who walk on two legs instead of four. The outcome has been to free our hands for other kinds of activity. Including a great many such as only humans engage in.
2. To be human is to be prematurely born. Partly because bipedalism has caused the birth channel to become narrower, partly because the fetus’ head has become enlarged so as to contain the developing brain, human babies are born before their time. The outcome is that they are less independent, and need a longer period of rearing, than the young of any other mammalian species. The implications for family structure are obvious.
3. To be human is to have language. Not just a smaller or greater number of signs, as many animals also do. But a system of sounds that stand for—symbolize—objects, qualities and actions in ways others of our species who share the same language will understand.
4. To be human means to produce things. Not just using natural objects, such as sticks or stones, for this purpose or that. But actively modifying them, or even creating them ex novo, for our own purposes. Broadly speaking, the things may be divided into two kinds. Those that serve some kind of useful purpose; and those that provide us with aesthetic enjoyment. Very often the two kinds are combined in the same objects.
5. Not only do we produce things, but we also exchange them. That is true both inside societies and among them. A group of people so isolated as to be unaware of others of its kind and unable to engage in exchange with them has probably never existed. Had it existed, in all probability it would have come to a relatively rapid end.
6. Exchange implies contact, and contact implies occasional disagreements. Some disagreements lead to war, or, at any rate, some kind of socially-sanctioned violence between different groups.
7. To be human is to have self-consciousness, to recognize one’s own existence. As by looking into a mirror and identifying oneself. That is something computers do not have and, perhaps, will never have.
8. To be human is the ability to look into the future so as to link means with ends. In other words, to understand the meaning of “in order to.” That, again, is something computers do not have and, perhaps, will never have.
9. To be human means to be able to distinguish between the things we do and those we ought, or ought not, to do. It is, to use Biblical terminology, having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge.
10. To be human is to have some kind of religion. Even if it is not really a religion, as in the case of Buddhism and Confucianism, or, some would say, animism (which is probably the earliest form of religion of all). To be sure, using a few pieces of bone and some crude stone artifacts to determine this beliefs of our Stone Age ancestors is like trying to recover the text of Hamlet from the rusty remains of the hero’s sword. To the extent that it can be done, though, it would appear that religion has accompanied humanity for as long as the latter has existed. And it does so now. Even if, since many of us think God, is dead, we call it human rights; or the liberation of women; or health consciousness; or environmentalism; or whatever.
11. Finally, to be human means to be conscious of death, i.e. that our existence here on earth will one day come an end.

The reason why I am listing these points is not simply to look into the past and confirm the unity of mankind, as so many before me have done and are still doing. Rather, it is to peer into the future “far as human eye [can] see” (Lord Tennyson). And my point is that, should the various prophecies concerning “singularities” and the like come true, and we cease to be or do any of the above things, then for good or ill we will no longer be human.

Pay heed, all you gurus, lest in your eagerness for innovation you push us completely off the rails.