HUMAN UNIQUENESS FROM A BIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW |
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| Authors: | David Reich |
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| Affiliation: | 1. David Reich is a Professor at Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics and Harvard University's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology and an Investigator at 2. the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston and Cambridge, MA, USA;3. e-mail: reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu. |
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| Abstract: | This article seeks to provide some genetic perspectives on the question “Just How Special Are Humans—Really?” It begins with an introduction to how genetic variation can provide information about the past. It continues by discussing two ways in which genetic analyses has, on multiple occasions, shown that humans are less unique than we thought we are. We have a cognitive bias to toward thinking we are special. Our species has colonized an ecological niche not exploited by any other species on our earth, but how much of our adaptation to that niche is cultural rather than genetic? |
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| Keywords: | biology cultural evolution genetic evolution human uniqueness |
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