The steep road of Homo sapiens odyssey

ON The beginning was the Big Bang, which occurred 13.5 billion years ago.

Then the various dusts of the sky were scattered, forming clouds that filled the space.

The clouds gathered, clumped and condensed, all at once heating up. Stars form in pitch black space.

The stars attract each other, clumping together into galaxies. Every galaxy is made up of billions of stars.

Using the most advanced telescopes, Edwin Hubble a century ago concluded that galaxies are moving farther apart.

Now scientists agree, the universe continues to expand, without known limits.

One of the billions of galaxies is called the Milky Way or the Milky Way, in which there is a sun star.

The sun is surrounded by planets, one of which is called Earth. Earth is surrounded by the moon, which is the only one.

The formation of objects in space is a physical process. What happens after that is a chemical process.

On the solid surface of the Earth, about 4.5 billion years ago, the atoms that were ejected during the Big Bang formed molecules.

Oxygen and hydrogen form water (H2O), sodium and chloride form salt (NaCl). Carbon, oxygen and hydrogen form sugar (C12H22O11), and so on.

But the most important chemical process is when several atoms form certain protein compounds.

In contrast to other compounds, these protein compounds can divide, so that the longer they are more numerous and larger.

New compounds are formed by bonding with other atoms. The earliest organic substances were born, becoming the forerunner of life on earth. This biological process does not last for a moment, but billions of years.

Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014) gave a lengthy review of travel history manone of the creatures that live on earth, from his simple figure to the modern man he is today.

At 2.5 million years ago, living things like humans are now found in various parts of the earth.

They came out of east Africa, group after group, in search of more comfortable territory.

At first they became hunters of wild animals, and collectors of fruit and grain for daily food.

Up to this point, the behavior of early humans was no different from the behavior of other animals, such as their closest cousins, the chimpanzee.

According to Harari, there were several human species at that time, namely Homo neanderthals wandering in mainland Europe and western Asia, Homo denisova in Siberia, Homo erectus in eastern Asia, Homo soloensis in the Solo River valley, and Homo floresiensis on the island of Flores.

But one by one they became extinct, due to various causes, such as climate change, being defeated by wild animals, or because of being fought by other human species.

Homo floresiensis, for example, reached mainland Flores at this time when sea levels were low. As sea levels rise, they are trapped on the island.

Man the big ones went extinct first due to lack of food. What remains is a small human being, 1 meter tall and weighing 25 kg as an adult.

This pygmy man managed to subdue the elephant who is also a pygmy, with simple equipment. The bones of this dwarf human, called the Hobbit, were found in 2003 in the Liang Bua cave, Manggarai.

Meanwhile, several other human species were also born in Africa, including Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster and Homo sapiens.

Like their predecessors, they were group after group, spreading to other parts of the earth.

If today there is only one type of human, millions of years ago several human species were living at the same time.

Some species survive only tens of thousands of years, and the oldest is Homo erectus, which lived for 2 million years.

Between human species there is not only competition for hunting areas, but also mating, although this is very rare.

Research shows that 1 to 4 percent of the DNA of modern humans in Europe is Neanderthal DNA. Homo neanderthals have become extinct, but left a lasting imprint to this day.

Homo sapiens, the ancestor of modern humans today, was identified as starting out of Africa to other corners of the earth 100,000 years ago.

However, they were driven back by Homo neanderthals from the Middle East. Only 70,000 years ago Homo sapiens managed to defeat Homo neanderthals as well as other human species.

Over the next 40,000 years, Homo sapiens spread and controlled most of the habitable places on earth, as far as Australia, by land and across the seas.

They were able to make simple tools from wood, then from stone, to hunt wild animals.

With these tools, Homo sapiens was able to capture and consume more and more animal flesh, including animal marrow, mimicking the penchant for lions and other large animals.

New consumption patterns and hunting habits caused Homo sapiens’ brains to grow and so did their thinking and communication abilities.

Harari calls this change the Cognitive Revolution. Since then, Homo sapiens became the sole ruler of the earth, because it managed to outperform other living things, with the tools of stone and fire that it made.

The next rapid development took place 12,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens began to be able to grow wheat and rice on a patch of land to ensure food availability, rather than collecting grain that was not always found and rotted if stored for long periods of time.

Homo sapiens also began to domesticate wild animals, such as cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens. This rapid development is called Harari as the Agricultural Revolution.

Over the next few thousand years permanent human settlements began to emerge.

Hamlets became villages, villages became small towns, and small towns became bigger cities.

Various institutions in society are formed to regulate relations between people in order to realize a harmonious society.

Kingdoms existed, with many armies employed to attack or defend against the invasion of other kingdoms.

Some kingdoms expand their territory to other continents. Formed empires such as England, Spain, France, the Netherlands.

Significant changes occurred about 500 years ago. At that time a new awareness emerged among the kingdom’s rulers who were already wealthy to develop new creations from what already existed.

They gave support to priests, philosophers and poets to create something that could perpetuate their power and maintain the existing social order.

Scientists are also encouraged to understand natural phenomena by making observations and creating new tools such as binoculars and microscopes.

Mathematics was developed to relate the results of observations so as to produce a new theory with minimal error.

Some of the leading scientists in the 16-18 centuries were: Isaac Newton (theory of gravity), Galileo Galilei (solar system), Charles Darwin (evolutionary biology), Anton van Leeuwenhoek (inventor of the microscope), Adam Smith (capitalism), Karl Marx (socialism) , Columbus (discoverer of the Americas).

The number of scientists and new theories created made Hariri conclude that there had been a Scientific Revolution in the long history of Homo sapiens.

In the last 200 years, there has been another major change, known as the Industrial Revolution.

The invention of the steam engine to pump water that flooded the bottom of coal mining wells in England in the early 1700s led to the expansion of its use to drive railroad locomotives, cotton mills, agricultural machinery, etc.

In this era, new chemicals such as aluminum, potassium nitrate, silicon, and artificial materials such as plastics, fertilizers, insecticides, medicines, and various forms of energy were also discovered.

The economy, which was driven by the progress of the manufacturing industry, grew rapidly, exceeding the previous periods.

The Industrial Revolution has made humans more prosperous than before, but on the other hand the natural environment is experiencing increasingly severe damage.

The number of wild animals is now only a fraction of the number of animals that are farmed. Giraffes, foxes and chimpanzees are often featured on television shows for children, but their numbers worldwide have been greatly reduced.

Global warming, sea level rise, and environmental pollution have caused the earth today to be inhospitable to some humans and other living things.

In this 21st century, scientists are trying to change the laws of natural selection that have been the basis for the evolution of every living thing, including humans.

Science and technology are mobilized to design new living things according to the imagination and desires of scientists.

There are three ways to do this, namely biological engineering (organic), cyborg engineering (a combination of organic and inorganic), and inorganic engineering.

Some biological engineering efforts have succeeded, such as making white rabbits turn bright green, implanting soft bones in mice as an experiment to replace the ears of a deaf person, and using E. Coli bacteria and fungi to produce the insulin needed to treat diabetes.

Perhaps very soon, Homo sapiens geneticists will be able to create a new Homo neanderthal that was exterminated by the ancestors of Homo sapiens.

If this project is successful, then there is no technical reason not to create a new, more superhuman Homo sapiens.

Complications will occur if this artificial human grows into a human-like figure who is smarter than normal humans, namely us. We can be their toys or errands.

Cyborg engineering has succeeded in replacing people’s broken arms with mind-controlled artificial arms.

In the not too distant future, scientists may be able to implant chips, detectors and processors in an insect which is then flown in to record and transmit secret conversations of groups of people far away.

What will happen to the various new inventions may not be thought of at this time. But who would have thought that the internet would be so widely used as it was now a few decades ago?

Yuval Noah Harari is somewhat pessimistic about the future of Homo sapiens. He wanted to get people to think about “what do we want to be?”, not “what do we want to be?”

If the question is not answered properly, it is feared that humans will become “irresponsible creator gods, because they do not know what they really want”.

We do not want such gods and their creations. So we need to think about our future, Homo sapiens, intelligently, wisely and responsibly. I hope so.-

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