The exhibit hall "offers visitors an immersive, interactive journey through 6 million years of scientific evidence for human origins and the stories of survival and extinction in our family tree during times of dramatic climate instability," the Smithsonian says. I had the fortune to visit the exhibit this weekend; if you're in D.C.1 in the future, I strongly recommend you check it out.
Traveling through time
You enter the exhibit through the Time Tunnel, which displays animations of distant human relatives throughout the past 6 million years and examples of different environments in which early humans lived.
Next, the Orientation and Evolutionary Milestones sections orient you to milestones in our history - when some of the major human traits emerged over the past 6 million years, from walking upright to domesticating plants and
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A Smithsonian Research Station shows what Human Origins scientists are doing out in the field - the Rift Valley of East Africa and northern China - and allows viewers a glimpse into how the objects they see in front of them are first discovered and examined.
One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was the Meet Your Ancestors section, where you could explore the similarities and differences of humans across the ages. There were 76 fossil skulls
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A really popular feature of the section was the chance to transform yourself into an early human. We crowded around with everyone else and watched as a photograph (taken by a machine in
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island in what is now Southeast Asia. You are very small [I knew that already] with a brain only about a third the size of modern humans [which would explain why I'm always losing my keys]. But you make tools, control fire, hunt a variety of animals, and your small size helps you survive on an island with limited resources."
SimCity and Second Life fans will enjoy Changing the World, where computer games teach you "how Homo sapiens became the sole surviving human species, how modern humans changed the world, and how our human traits help us imagine our future." One game lets you predict what humans will look like in a million years as we and the Earth continue to evolve; another reminded
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A 5-minute video in One Species, Living Worldwide brings the viewer up to the "beginning" of modern humans, about 200,000 years ago in Africa, and how we've spread around the world. Finally, before you leave the exhibit features videos and skulls to review what you've learned.
Throughout the exhibit are bronze statues of five different early human species that lived between 2.3 million and 17,000 years ago, as well as photos from John Gurche's 3-D reconstructions of early humans.2
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The Web site for the exhibit is fantastic - check it out here. There are sections for what's hot in human origins news, coming events (like the Scientist is In program, in which visitors can chat with Human Origins scientists), religious perspectives on human evolution, fun facts, a section where you can say what you think it means to be human and read what others have written, and a forum for teachers and students (and even lesson plans). Plus there are links to human evolution evidence and research, fact sheets on human origins and traits, and more.
I still don't have an answer to the question of what it means to be human, but I understand better how I got here, and possibly where we humans are going.
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1 There is an exhibit by the same name in NYC's American Museum of Natural History, apparently. I haven't visited there yet.
2 See Mike's blog on Gurche's photos.
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