Have a look at the sketches above and below. The resemblance between these beings that existed 2.5 million years ago and ourselves is quite striking.
Yet it cannot be denied that we are quite different from these ancestors, too.
The key to understanding the difference is to understand abstraction : the modern human can conceptually bridge the gap between things. For instance it can see things that are completely disconnected from each other such as a child petting a kitten, a wedding couple kissing or a mom holding a child and that individual will be able to put the word “love” to all three images although they are all very distinct.
This is something that primates – who I believe have a DNA that’s something like 92% similar to ours in some cases – are unable to do.
In fact, at a greater level, primates are unable to make generalizations. Their memories and muscles can learn and stock a variety of things but they never make the connection between them and create patterns for them.
Now this was all covered in a great PBS documentary called Human Spark: Social Networks, but the interesting thing for me is to look at it from a language perspective.
All children are naturally apt to learn a mother language. Where it becomes super interesting is : children make inferences regarding the syntax rules. Take any language and watch what happens.
Say a child wants to say “The man took the dog for a walk”. It is very common to hear children say something like “The man taked the dog for a walk”. That is because they have heard the “ed” ending many times to designate the past tense, and they have now made an abstraction out of it. They now unconsciously apply the rule every time they speak.
Interesting, isn’t it?
