SCIENCE, SOCIETY AND HUMAN ORIGINS in Fall 2021 (HI1099FB11)

The available evidence indicates that our species, Homo sapiens, emerged in Africa, and then migrated across the planet, where its DNA occasionally intermingled with that of other human species that then disappeared, leaving Homo sapiens as 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, people of one skin color from people of a different skin color? After starting with a brief overview of what science can say about human origins, we will look at some aspects of the emergence of thinking about human difference. As we become more aware of our own connection to the very distant past, we will 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 constraints and sometimes to achieve political objectives. Then we will look at how “science” has been manipulated to create distinctions and hierarchies among different groups of people, to dehumanize and isolate them, and we will look into the faces of witnesses to the ultimate dehumanization by classification, genocide. This is primarily a history course, but we will come in contact with a whole range of ways of approaching these questions, including paleontology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.