Asuncion, Rachel Anthro 10 THV

2014-23955 1st Sem AY 2016-2017

Reflection Paper

The Journey of Mankind: The First Humans Out of Africa

Dmanisi Discoveries

H.P. Lovecraft once remarked that the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the

oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. In a world that has been dated to be existing

for more than 4 billion years old, the existence of humans, and in consequence, our ancestors, seem

diminutively short but pivotal. Modern humans have only been posited to have been existing for

250,000 years prior and yet weve succeeded to effect change in our environment, may it be positive or

negative; gather and make sense out of the planets complex system; establish interactive and illusory

borders, be it physical, hypothetical and/or socio-cultural; and ultimately, pave the path in which we

have been existing upon. Mankind, as early the Classical Ages and into the Middle Ages, have been

extending efforts to comprehend who we are as a species. From Herodotus, Tacitus, to Marco Polo and

Richard Harvey stemmed a budding field of questioning that saw to the need to fill in gaps in the

rationale behind human development. Anthropological efforts have been playing a crucial part in

uncovering so much of both what is yet to be known and what is already known; it is a thrust towards

understanding how we came to be, how we have been evolving and how we, as a people, have been

ushered into developing societies and creating cultures.

A notable anthropological and archaeological endeavor set in 2007 proved to be one of these

aforementioned efforts. The Dmanisi discoveries served to contribute to the widely-accepted

hypothesis of the ancestral migration of species out of Africa and recreate new foundational

information regarding the assumptions of when the aforementioned species set out for the African

exodus. In addition to that how these humans should have or must have looked or developed;

otherwise they would not have been able to survive the migration. Nonetheless, the discoveries of

fossils in Dmanisi proved to serve as a contradiction to these tacit assumptions: they were physically

small, and had small brains. Also, these pioneers were armed with primitive stone tools, and thus did

not possess the well-developed tool-making techniques researchers had expected (Georgia National

Museum, 2013, n.p.).

Having formally opened its UP Diliman leg of its tour around universities in the Philippines last

August 8 at the UP Diliman Albert Hall, the Dmanisi traveling exhibit entitled The Journey of

Mankind: The First Humans Out of Africa featured casts/models of 3 homo erectus skulls [estimatedly

dated to be around 1.8 million years old] found in the site located in Dmanisi, Georgia. Also featured

are a set of 5 stone tools, skulls of a sabre-toothed cat and the wolf Canis etruscus, and an elephant

molar that date back to the time of the Dmanisi hominids (Encarnacion, 2016, n.p.).

I had the pleasure to visit the exhibit located in the Albert Hall lobby last August 23. Although

considerably small in size, the exhibit packed a punch in terms of delivering pertinent and valued

information. Spending give-or-take a few minutes to an hour to acquaint myself to the answers to the

posited questions (i.e. Why are the Dmanisi hominids important? How do this specie differ from

other Hominins? What is the relevance of these discoveries to the assumed system of hominin

dispersal?), I learned much with relation to the genus Homo, the African exodus, varied challenged

long-standing assumptions, and even the effects of the geography of a place (in this case, Dmanisi,

Georgia) to the preservation of petrified remains. It was truly an experience, albeit something whose

impetus was to serve as a fulfillment of a requirement; I will be ever grateful.

 Visiting the exhibit not only exposed me to the delight of gathering new information; it also

served as a potent reminder for me to always be open to educational pursuits, to be critical of my

assumptions, and to always be accepting of facts and corrections. I would not dramatize the exposure

further than how I actually immersed myself in it. The exhibit reminded me of both the simplicity and

the complexity of human life and that, for me, is enough. The experience was humbling, as it normally

is when faced with the clear-cut facts of age and evolution. The narrative is unmistakable, the timeline

of human evolution still remains incomplete, leaving room for speculation. Regardless, the uncertainty

of life and its entirety remains one of its defining aspects and we, as humans, cannot stay afraid of not

knowing, rather we must strive to understand what we can and work from there. As Donald Johnson

remarked, Where we are going as a species is a big question. Human evolution certainly hasn't

stopped. Every time individuals produce a new zygote, there's a reshuffling and recombination of

genes. And we don't know where all of that is going to take us [but that is to be expected and that is at

such a point, fair].

 References:

Encarnacion, A. D. (2016, August 17). The Journey of Mankind comes to UP Diliman [web article].

University of the Philippines: Shaping minds that shape the nation. University of the Philippines:

Quezon City, Philippines. Retrieved from http://www.up.edu.ph/the-journey-of-mankind-comes-

to-up-diliman/

Georgia National Museum. (2013). Importance of Dmanisi [web article]. About Dmanisi. Retrieved

from http://www.dmanisi.ge/page?id=2&lang=en