Taking a summer hiatus of sorts and as with TV shows, I'm offering some reruns.
From July 2015, a visit to the Smithsonian. This is timely with recent news about our ancestors. See this article.
I recently read "The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack" by Ian Tattersall, a wonderful description of how the study of our origins as human beings developed as discoveries of ancient remains were made. With the scientific advances of carbon dating and DNA testing we know so much more about how we evolved.
A visit to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and the Human Origins exhibit was necessary for me to see for myself what Tattersall was describing.
As you walk into the exhibit through a tunnel you are met with these depictions of our ancestor species and a timeline of when they lived and what skills they developed: walking upright, tool making, social groups, use of fire, etc.
There are displays like this one that allow you to compare your footprints to earliest known footprints.
There are skeletons.
There are sculptures.
There's a booth that takes your photo and transforms it to your choice of an early human.
Then there are the heads in glass cases at the height they would be. You can face them one by one and wonder what life was like for them.
No need to have our species represented as a head because we are all around at this exhibit.
We lived on Earth initially with three other species: Erectus, Neanderthal, and Flora all of which are now extinct.
I've only shared a bit of the exhibit. It's worth the trip if you are visiting Washington, DC.
