Could Any Other Animal Become as Intelligent as Humans?
And other morning musings from my hotel room in Chicago…
At this current moment, I’m participating in a 10-minute writing sprint. (They’re part of Ninja Writers and done every morning. You can check them out here.)
I had every intention of opening up my fiction work in progress and working on that. I even went as far as opening up Google so I could get to my Google Doc.
That’s when I saw it. Google’s image of the day — a celebration of the Turkana Human.
After further investigation, I was hit with a burning question:
Is there another species out there in this big wide world that has the potential of evolving into human-level intelligence?
It’s 9am here. Clearly, I’ve woken up with an overactive brain, but that’s neither here nor there.
Here’s what I’ve learned about Turkana Humans in the last 10 minutes.
Thank God for Wikipedia!
In 1984 Kenya, Kamoya Kimeu discovered what is now known as “the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found”. This fossil of what would later be determined as a boy is known as the Turkana Boy and it’s estimated that his age at his time of death was between 7 and 11 years old.
A large chunk of our history as intelligent beings comes from a 7 to 11 year old kid. A boy at that (we think. It’s hard to tell, apparently). I’m not sure why, but this discovery stuck with me, as sad as it is.
Did he live a full life at just 7 to 11 years old? This was outside of my scope of 10 minutes of research so I can’t answer it, but I would assume yes. Without modern medicine, I’m sure the life expectancy was severely depleted from what it is now.
What were scientists looking for in terms of the Turkana Boy fossil?
The difference between Chimpanzees and modern humans, apparently.
![Adrienne Grimes](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="40" height="40"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>){kind=small}
