The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History celebrates its 100-year anniversary with the recent opening of the What Does it Mean to be Human? exhibit, the result of decades of research led by Richard Potts, curator of anthropology and head of the Human Origins program.
What does it mean to be human?
Answers to that question can be based on everyday experience, religion, philosophy, the arts and sciences. Our new exhibition invites the public to explore the milestones of evolution that help define what is unique about our species. … Part of what it means is that we have become human over millions of years in response to a changing world.
You first proposed in 1996 that climate change was the driving force for human evolution.
In 1990, I had been working in the Rift Valley of East Africa, digging in a place where archaeological finds occurred over 1 million years. Every place I looked, I saw evidence of environmental change, large lakes coming and going, times of stable landscape and times of great change. It made me wonder whether our early ancestors were adapted to the open grassland, which was the prevalent idea of the time, or whether our lineage might have had to adapt to change itself.
How has climate change helped us evolve?
Recognizing that climate fluctuated a lot meant that at every turn our ancestors faced uncertainties of survival. The adaptations that emerged — from the ability to make tools to the enlargement of our brains — enabled those ancient ancestors of ours to expand their diet, their mental capacity and their resilience. Climate change may have caused extinction, yet it also created challenges that helped new ways of life to evolve.
– Scott McCabe
