HOMO ERECTUS IRONY

While the Bible believers still think it was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that started humanity as we know it, reality hits us once again. A footprint of a 1.5 million year old Kenyan homo erectus has been identified. I find it ironic that a tall, erect homo sapiens, whose half origin is from Kenya, thought in the US for generations to be an inferior human by most white Americans, leaves another kind of footprint that will undoubtedly be lasting in a very different way.

It seems odd to me that so many people can deny so much we have proven today, in favor of a book written by many men over a period of time that is totally obsolete in culture, history, beliefs, and what life is all about. It amazes me that people still avoid pork fearing trichinosis when, irradiated, there is no longer a problem. Most wjho eat shellfish seem to have as long a life as those who do not.

Change may be difficult for some people, but others are just plain ridiculous about resisting change. They give up self-responsibility totally, yet put their lives in the hands of chance that some 'as yet never seen' omniscient and omnipotent being hears and rates their every action and will take care of them and make their decisions for them. These are the same people who stopped believing in Santa Claus because it sounds impossible to believe!

Yet the puzzle pictures of the evolution of man keep being discovered, put in place to work toward the total picture. It shocks me that the Scopes trial was in 1925 but there are still non-believers 84 years later, despite all that scientists have made evident during those interim years.

Recently it was proven through DNA that Neanderthals were not related to Homo Erectus. In fact, the genes differed to such an extent that it is clear they could not have interbred. Nevertheless, that they evolved in the Neander Valley so similarly to men of another species makes evolution more believable.

My conclusion is that human progress is held back for many by the small proportion who hold such power in hanging onto the past and previously held 'facts'. It is comforting that Obama, in his brief tenure as President so far, has already made stem cell research possible once again in our country.