Article August 16, 1999 Issue

Man's original state

Survival of the fittest or the offspring of Spirit?

By Mark Swinney

Amino acids in primordial soup. Simple plants in Precambrian sediments. Crinoids swaying in ocean currents along the continental shelves of the megacontinent, Pangea. Pterodactyls soaring over steaming jungles. Toolmaking, hairy men and women around fires in rock shelters.

And here we are today. It's you and I, living together with billions of neighbors, in constantly changing societies on the same comparatively small planet. As paleontologists, archaeologists, and others uncover more and more of the past, the question of man's origin becomes even more challenging for many people.

It can seem almost impossible to understand who we are and the ways we behave unless we know of that origin. Actually, a better way to state this is: it can seem almost impossible to understand who we are and the ways we should behave unless we know our origin.