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Provide more funding for human evolution studies

Human evolution is an incredibly important subject to be studying, as it helps modern humans understand why their body is shaped in the way that it is and what purpose the many morphological changes serve. The study can also help to humble modern humans and help them remember their place in the world. Although humans dominate and shape the world currently, it has not always been that way and we are lucky to have evolved in the ways that we have. Not only will the knowledge of human evolution educate us about the reasons why our bodies work the way they do, but it will also satisfy the curiosity that people inherently have. People wonder where they come from and how they have gotten to where we are in societal and biological spheres today. 

Although there has been lots of research done on the concept of human evolution and this research has produced fascinating results, there is still much work left to be done in the field. For example, there have been so many finds in Africa, but central and west Africa are severely underrepresented in the fossil record. We know that these regions were inhabited during the later middle Pleistocene because there have been artifacts found, but we have yet to find significant fossil evidence of early hominins. This means that the fossil record we have from Africa is more than likely very biased and unrepresentative of the region as a unit. If biological anthropologists and archaeologists in the field of human evolution had more funding, we would be able to excavate more regions and excavate them more frequently than we are currently able to. This may provide us with the necessary fossil evidence needed to fill in the gaps in the fossil records for Africa and provide a more complete picture of human evolution on the continent. 

There are also many debates about the fossils that we do have and whether or not they should actually be classified under certain genus or species names. There is not enough fossil evidence to be certain that they have been given the same name and the fossils that have been obtained have been severely affected by taxonomic factors or do not provide us with enough morphological data.  

Gaps in the record and the biases aforementioned are more common than people would like to think, as professionals do not have enough money and resources to further their studies. Many anthropologists have to beg for funding from state and federal institutions in order to excavate regions and buy the proper equipment needed to study the findings from the sites. If there was more access to funding and other resources, perhaps anthropologists could work on filling in the gaps in the timeline of human evolution and provide us with a more complete picture of where we come from and why we have evolved in the ways that we have. 

Comments

  1. Marc KisselJune 25, 2020 at 8:34 AM

    i like how you set this up as a question of basic science: We can only know these things if we do research and that takes money. Much like with Homo luzonensis, we wont find things if we only look in the same spots. so thats a great point to make. I wonder if we also need to be clear about the 'value add' of this work. For example, what does learning more about our origins say about modern humans? you allude to this but maybe it is best to be super specific about these things? I'm not sure but i do like how you structured this piece. nice job!

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