Jaeseung Jeong's Human Exploration Report 7: Homo Sapiens

Description

Since hominins appeared on Earth a long time ago
How we evolved and survived through the study of biological anthropology.
It is introduced in a way that is both neuroscience and archaeological.

The previous series, “Human Exploration Report,” shows why humans, as animals, perceive, think, and act the way they do through the observations of Aure’s expedition team living with Earthlings. Through this, we are giving you a little taste of the essence of brain science. This newly planned “Human Exploration Report” would like to introduce to you a discipline called ‘biological anthropology’, or to be more precise, ‘archaeological neurobiological anthropology’.
In other words, we are trying to unravel what kind of brains not only humans of today, but also hominins of hundreds, tens, or tens of thousands of years ago had, how they evolved, and how they came to survive on Earth through neuroscience and archaeological methods. And I would like to introduce you to the study of imagining humanity's past using biological principles. The name may seem very difficult, complicated, and scary, but through it, we are actually finding interesting answers about how humans lived tens of thousands of years ago.
If “Human Exploration Report” is a “brain science project for children,” “Human Exploration Report” is a project that introduces you to the “brain science of Homo sapiens” for the first time.

History is a very scientific subject.
I hope even children who love history can enjoy it!

If 《Human Exploration Report》 was a book that children who like brain science and science could read with immersion, I would like to introduce that 《Human Exploration Report》 is a book that even children who enjoy history can enjoy as it adds history.
History is a humanities field and may seem quite distant from science, but in fact, history is a very scientific discipline. In order to know how our ancestors lived, we have to imagine and draw it in our heads through small sources or clues, so a scientific approach is necessary for it to be plausible. Therefore, biological anthropology can be said to be the essence of science more than any other discipline. We created this series with the hope that you would experience the essence of science.
The human ancestors that appear and are depicted here are not the absolute truth, the truth. Just as we speculate that “humanity must have lived like this” based on small clues such as the remaining bone fragments, the shape of the skull, and the ruins and relics they left behind, this book also shows how today's forensic science teams can identify the criminal based only on clues from the crime scene. I used a configuration that was similar to tracking. In that respect, I wish you all could become anthropological detectives and picture your ancestors in the past like this.

How we humans achieved today's great civilized society,
To understand what makes us different from other apes,
An approach to biological anthropology is needed.

Why should we introduce not only brain science to children, but also a discipline called biological anthropology, which seems difficult just by hearing about it? If we study what scientists have recently discovered that differentiates us from other apes, we will discover something surprising about humans.
Very young great apes, such as orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, are not much different from humans aged around two or three. Scientists have discovered that they are highly developed intellectually and engage in many intelligent behaviors just as much as we do. But how can we form such a huge intellectual civilization and live in a complex modern society, and why do they still remain in a primitive state? Also, why did beings like Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, and Homo habilis not survive until now and have all gone extinct?
In order to find such clues, we had to find out what was different about the brains of Homo sapiens from the great apes of the past and from other extinct hominins. So I looked into it and found that the size of the brain was not important. It wasn't about bigger skulls or brain capacity that mattered. It turns out that cooperating by helping each other, learning socially, teaching what I know to my friends, and learning from my friends what I don't know, was very important in helping weak humans create this great civilization.
What would it be like to see these things through the eyes of an alien? How would it feel to see with the eyes of an alien how our ancestors developed this ability little by little to create the society we have today? To find answers to these questions together, let's take a trip to Earth's past in a time machine that can transcend time. I came here with a new story and the study of biological anthropology in the hope that the wariness and conflict between aliens and human ancestors would serve as an opportunity for children to understand our ancestors.