TOPICS: SCIENCE,SOCIETY & HUMAN ORIGINS in Spring 2027 (HI2910)

All of the available evidence indicates that our species, Homo sapiens, emerged in Africa, and then migrated across the planet. We occasionally intermingled our DNA with that of other human species, but as a species the DNA of any two people anywhere on the planet is astonishingly similar, more similar than, say, any sparrow in Paris and any sparrow in London. When those other human species then disappeared, Homo sapiens became the only human species, the only human race, on the planet. Why then do we talk about “race” as if something fundamental distinguished, for instance, an individual of one skin color from an individual of a different skin color? After starting with an overview of what science can and can’t say about human origins, we’ll look at some aspects of the emergence of thinking about human difference. As you become more aware of your own connection to the very distant past, you’ll learn how the more recent past has been impacted by how people have told that story, sometimes making honest mistakes influenced by their own cultural paradigms and sometimes to achieve political objectives. Then you’ll look at how “science” has been manipulated to create distinctions and hierarchies among different groups of people in order to dehumanize and isolate them, and you’ll look into the faces of witnesses to the ultimate dehumanization by classification, genocide.

This is primarily a history course, but you’ll come in contact with a whole range of ways of approaching these questions, including paleontology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.