Evolution or Extinction: The Ultimate Challenge to Our Species

When I was teaching physical, or biological anthropology, I was often asked, "Is our species still evolving?" Sometimes, the question was posed to me a bit more forcefully, as a challenge to the reality of evolution, itself. Some students would ask, "If evolution occurred, why aren't we humans still evolving?" (And those were some of the easier questions I fielded in my thirty something years of teaching anthropology prior to my retirement several years ago due to an autoimmune disease). What made and makes these particular queries so simple to address is, first, the overwhelming evidence that we humans are still undergoing evolutionary change. About three years ago, for example, University Chicago Professor Jonathan Pritchard and his colleagues identified a number of genes that have been undergoing changes in the last 10,000 years - among them genes related to skin color, taste, smell, and brain structure. Biological evolution involves changes in gene frequencies over time. Of course, humans evolve in other ways - we make alterations in our behavior and these, in turn, are often preceded by environmental shifts.


Although space and time constraints for this particular post preclude further explanation of the mechanisms of evolutionary change, I felt compelled in my inaugural blog on this forum to underscore the following: nothing short of major evolutionary shifts will prevent humankind’s extinction. After all, far more species who’ve inhabited this planet met the fate of extinction rather than survival and subsequent evolution. But what kinds of evolutionary changes are requisite to our long-term chances of survival? Please note that I’m not suggesting that some sort of biological characteristics will suddenly emerge that will save our species at the last minute like a cosmic hail Mary pass. Quite to the contrary, alterations in behavior typically precede biological changes and we must make fundamental behavioral changes to have even a fighting chance of reversing the doomsday scenario we’ve created. The modern environmental movement, catalyzed by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, helped to raise initial awareness about the harmful effects of human behavior on ecosystems and other species, and while we’re currently making unparalleled progress in reversing some of our most destructive behaviors and initiating new, alternative measures, the obstacles we face are staggering.


What kinds of behavioral evolution in our local, national and global communities will reverse our species’ self destructive course? I believe that at this – perhaps the most critical precipice in our evolution in thousands of years or more – we are compelled to take several fundamental actions. First, we must reconnect with nature as intimately as possible, recognizing our deep emotional needs for the natural world. This will involve re-exploring our species’ place as a part of nature, with all the vulnerability that this implies. We must also become a more caring species, not only by cultivating feelings of compassion but also by learning to care in the most proactive and educated ways possible. Finally, we must all become more scientifically literate and thus better able to participate in the social and technological changes required of us at the present time. I look forward to delving more deeply into each of these topics in the days and weeks to come.

It's Fall Again!

Though I am no longer teaching, the beginnings of the fall semester still strike me at the cellular level. Growing up with parents as college professors, I learned, long before I ever called the roll of my own classes, that the fall semester brings its own unique sense of anticipation and excitement. Still today, former students write to me, sharing their plans for the year or seeking advice on careers or graduate school. Outside, the air gets cooler, the mornings brisker, I'm hit with a flood of memories - of shivering in the bleachers at football games, practicing marching band routines, pulling all nighters to the sounds of ABBA and Cat Stevens, and washing formaldehyde out of my pores after a day in gross anatomy class.

Though I am no longer teaching, this year feels especially intense. Perhaps it is the unsettled mood of our country; over the past month we’ve witnessed anxious angry crowds and mourned a long list of individuals, from a senator to writers to actresses to rock stars to television journalists, many of whom contributed to changes that at one time were undesirable or unthinkable in our country. Most of us have suffered more personal losses, from childhood friends to relatives to a beloved pet. As our lives and society shift at breakneck speed, fall feels like the comfort food of the seasons, a warm blanket that we snuggle in as we release the fiery freedoms of summer and the losses of the year, and brace for the icy incubation of winter.

Though I am no longer teaching, I am laying out a plan for the academic year, something that was required of me every year of my career in academe. It’s an exercise that takes place in the fall as teachers start learning their students’ names and reacquainting themselves with returning colleagues. Faculty members are asked to articulate their “goals and objectives” and, later, when the spring semester winds down, they’ll be evaluated on their progress with respect to the same.

Though I am no longer teaching – at least in a university setting – I am still compelled to step forward at teachable moments, to discover new knowledge and to share my insights with a larger audience. I am still convinced that anthropology, widely shared and applied, will make and, indeed, already has made, a huge difference in the world. I am equally convinced that science - and my own specialty of biological anthropology - is absolutely essential for our continued existence as a species on this fragile blue marble.

Though I am no longer teaching, I am still convinced that each year, every year, I must search for ways to share the most important lessons that I have learned. These include the importance of passing on an academic/intellectual legacy – a set of ideas and practices that provide context and history to how I study the natural world in a manner modeled for me by my mentors and teachers. Now, as a senior scholar, I may rearrange, add on, or remodel the elements of this legacy, but the fundamental supports remain the same. This legacy molds the ways I learn about the past and present worlds and influences the paths I envision to a sustainable future.

Though I am no longer teaching, I want to provide an overview of what to expect to see on my blog this year as if we were sitting together on the first day of class. Expect me to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by focusing on the relationships that we humans have with other species and the environment. These relationships are essential for understanding humankind’s place in and responsibilities to the natural world and they are inextricably tied to our ability to heal, change and create a better world. Expect me to talk about our need for love and beauty, a drive to form positive, emotional connections with other species, nature and our fellow human beings, and the vital importance of working toward something that is bigger than ourselves. I promise to live, write and photograph in keeping with my mentor, Dr. Brues’ adage that “Everything is relevant if you’re smart enough to see it.” I’m very likely to talk in the next few blogs about the relevance of anthropology to analyzing complex issues of health care and environment , for I believe we humans we’ll either grow together by confronting these challenges directly and honestly or we’ll surely drown, much more quickly than any of us expect, in a swill of greed, fear, ignorance, and arrogance.

Though I am no longer teaching, I am still propelled out of bed in the morning by the love to share what I’ve learned and the drive to discover and experience new things each day. Whether I express it in words or pixels, this love is why I do what I do. And despite the rancor and vitriol and raw fear of the debates we’ve heard of late, I genuinely believe that we’ve yet to experience our greatest goodness, and the opportunities for this present themselves every day.

And so, though I am no longer teaching, I wrap myself in my blanket and prepare for the days ahead, and share a line from one of my favorite movies, The Lion in Winter, spoken by Katherine Hepburn, in her Academy Award winning performance of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
We have such possibilities my children, we can change the world.

IT's Fall Again!

Requiem for a Lion

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009)

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. Soon after Walter Cronkite announced the news to the nation, my third grade teacher tearfully passed the information along to us; classes were dismissed and we went home to our parents where most of us continued to watch the tragedy unfold on our black and white television sets. For almost three days, bleak, heartbreaking images became imbedded in our memories – a young widow kneeling to kiss her husband’s casket, a tiny son saluting his father, a saddled horse with no rider and two men in morning coats following behind the casket of their slain brother, the President of the United States. Sitting beside my sisters and me on the couch, my mother and father put aside their own grief to help us understand the pivotal events that were taking place before our eyes. They pointed to the television set and attached names to the two men who accompanied Mrs. Kennedy. One was attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; the other the youngest brother of the Kennedy family, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who was only thirty years old at the time of his brother’s death.

As a devoted follower of politics and current events, I would see and hear Senator Edward Kennedy many more times in my lifetime. I watched him as he eulogized his brother, Bobby (who, like Jack, was felled by an assassin). I listened to him deliver keynote speeches at political conventions, question Supreme Court nominees on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and debate issues on the Senate floor. I followed him as he ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1980 and then continued on as an active, outspoken and productive Senator.
Senator Kennedy is being heralded today as one of the greatest senators of modern America and of that I have no doubts. During his forty seven years in the Senate he played a key role in over 2500 pieces of legislation – and many of those were pivotal. Many of those impacted my life directly. As a child of the segregated south, I appreciated Kennedy as a champion of civil rights and human equality. He spoke out passionately for the passage of the Civil Rights Act and an end to segregation. As a girl and young woman, I was unable to participate in school sports or to have access to scholarships to college sports. But, Ted Kennedy’s enthusiastic participation in the passage of Title IX helped to provide those opportunities for future generations of girls and women. As one who grew up in one of the poorest states in this country (Arkansas), I saw people with inadequate nutrition and healthcare. Ted Kennedy was an early and strong advocate of the WIC program (providing food and support for women and children), as well as Medicare and Medicaid. Indeed, Senator Kennedy is one of our country’s most vocal spokesmen for the position that health care is a basic right. Speaking as a person who is disabled, I owe Senator Kennedy a great deal of gratitude for his passionate sponsorship of the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA. He helped to de-stigmatize mental illness by supporting inclusion of mental illness in the ADA. As one who has lost friends to AIDS, and served as a volunteer in AIDS service organizations, I remember that Ted Kennedy was a force behind the passage of the Ryan White Act, which provided emergency funding for many of those affected by HIV/AIDS, at a time in this country when anti-viral drugs like AZT were often unavailable due to high cost. There simply isn’t the space here to enumerate his many acts on behalf of our country, but you can read about his remarkable record here http://kennedy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Kennedy%20Accomplishments.pdf.

In short, it’s quite likely that your life was made better now, or in the future, because of the hard work of Senator Kennedy. The Kennedy legacy - the dream of human equality and freedom – will never die. When he “passed the torch to a new generation” by endorsing Barack Obama for President, he called us all to join the fight to fulfill this great dream. It is incumbent on all of who would like to see that legacy brought to fruition to do everything we can at the present to bring about health care for all Americans. There could be no greater tribute to the “lion” of the Senate and no greater contribution to our fellow Americans.