Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Human Journey


Those who liked the subject of our last post, will be interested to hear about a new website which tracks the development of human beings over the last 100,000 years.

The Human Journey is a longstanding web project of the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK) - an organization which has been working for decades to increase public awareness about human nature and human capacities and potential.

Drawing upon the latest discoveries in genetics, evolutionary biology, anthropology and linguistics, The Human Journey website traces the development and evolution of human beings with a view towards our future.

To quote from the website:

The future depends on how we understand who we are, and how that past has made us so: what is unchanging about Human Nature and what we CAN and MUST change to face a world that is far different from our ancestors... If we don't know our history, social and biological, we can't adapt fully to a world that we made.

The website will also be relevant to people interested in the Middle East, not just in terms of its portrayal of early human development in that part of the world, but more importantly, in terms how the past has shaped us into who we are today. This knowledge might provide us with a better understanding of - and could help us to mitigate - the conflicts in the region.

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