WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?

During my time at school in St. Paul this past week, I attended a Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History traveling exhibit hosted by Luther Seminary. It was an exhibit on human evolution called Exploring Human Origins: What does it mean to be human? The theory of evolution has been a thorn in the side of science and religion relations for over a century, beginning with Charles Darwin’s paramount work, On the Origin of Species, and continuing with the infamous Scopes Trial of 1925. And who could forget the spectacle that was the 2014 Evolution vs. Creation debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum and The Ark Encounter? Like every polarizing issue, there are individuals pitted against each other on both sides, finding it next to impossible to reach middle ground. 

Personally, I find the issue fascinating. I have long been a believer in the theory of evolution and have not found it to discredit or threaten my faith in God as the Creator of all things. If anything, I am filled with wonder at God’s intelligent design of evolution that has resulted in an insurmountably vast array of living organisms that somehow share an absurd amount of genetic material. Did you know humans share about 60% of their DNA with chickens and 50% of their DNA with bananas? For comparison, we share about 98.8% with our closest non-human relatives, the chimpanzee, and 99.9% with other Homo sapiens, or modern humans. This means that we are all truly connected at a molecular level, yet we are so very different. I personally find a God that can make this happen far more interesting and awe-inspiring than a God speaking everything into existence in the matter of a few days. 

However, this was not really the point of the Smithsonian Exhibit. The docents were not necessarily interested in debating evolution vs. creation because, to them, this debate is already settled. Many of the scholars who presented at this exhibit have devoted their entire lives to the discovery and study of paleontological evidence (including fossilized bones of over 6,000 hominin individuals) of an evolutionary family tree spanning over 6 million years. What they were more interested in was what distinguished our human ancestors from their non-human primate ancestors. In other words, what does it mean to be human?

Before I continue, I want to break down a few of the “vocabulary” words because it gets confusing. I took an entire course on biological anthropology (i.e. human evolution) in college and spent a day at this Smithsonian exhibit and still had to do my research to make sure I was using the right terminology in this newsletter! In the field of biological anthropology, human is considered any of the 15 to 20 extinct and extant species of bipedal primates that evolved over 6 million years after breaking off from its non-human primate ancestors. These humans include familiar ancestors like the Neanderthals and Homo Erectus, along with some not-so-familiar ancestors, as well as Homo sapiens, which refers to our species—modern humans. Human will be used interchangeably with hominin in this blog to refer to the multiple species in this lineage that branched off over 6 million years ago from the ancestor whose lineage resulted in modern apes. 

Ok, back to the newsletter. What does it mean to be human? Two of my favorite audience answers to this question were, “Humans are made in the image of God” and “Humans are storytellers.” To me, these two answers go hand in hand. We were made in the image of God, the great storyteller, whose Word breathed all things into existence; and when God invited us to name all things (Genesis 2:19), God invited us to be co-creators of the story. This is what it means to be human. 

The scientists’ answers to what it means to be human were a little more, well, scientific; but still they held traces of Divine image-bearing and storytelling. Dr. Rick Potts, the paleoanthropologist in charge of the exhibit told us that what it means to be human falls into three categories—sharing and caring; brain, babies, and parenting; and innovation and social networking. 

Unlike other animals and even other primates, early hominins began sharing resources across distances to other tribal groups around 2.8 million years ago. Even more striking is evidence that early hominin species took care of their ailing and injured as early as 1.85 million years ago. Our God is not an individualistic God, but exists in the social network of the Trinity—Creator, Savior, and Holy Spirit. Like the God whose image we bear, we were created to be in community with one another, sharing and caring for mutual survival. 

As evolution advanced, brain size in hominis increased. There are clear benefits to bigger brains, but also disadvantages. It takes a long time for a larger brain to develop, extending the length of a human’s childhood and adolescence, time when they would need to be cared for by a parent in order to survive. This resulted in family units that formed to care for their young into adulthood. It is around this time in the evolutionary process that hearths first appear—790,000 years ago. The hearth became the epicenter of family life. It was a place to gather for warmth, to cook, and to tell stories—engaging the developing brains of the young and old alike. Through stories, the reality of our ancestors came to life, and they began to co-create alongside the Divine Storyteller, God. Then, 320,000 years ago, early hominins developed the first pigments, allowing them to record their stories in paintings and carvings. 

This innovation arose after the innovation of practical tools—blunt rocks to arrowheads and harpoons. The emergence of art into the world brought with it an aspect of being human that is incredibly unique—the ability to use symbolic language through words, pictures, dance, and music. Art allows us to both communicate what is and to imagine something that does not yet exist—to form something meaningful from a formless void (Genesis 1:2). Art captures the complexity of who we are as humans, our emotions and varying ways we see and experience God, ourselves, others, and all of creation.  

So, what does it mean to be human? It means we are divine image-bearers of a complex, social, loving, creative, and innovative God, who tell stories as co-creators with the Divine in order to care and connect with one another and bring meaning to our lives. Whether we were formed this way from dust or formed this way from dust and a long evolutionary process, what it means to be human is not a question of how, but rather a question of who and whose. I believe it is less important to our faith to dwell on the question of how we came to be, and more important to our faith to remember who created us and whose image we bear.