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Science Forum Index » Anthropology - Paleo Forum » the American Museum of Natural History in New York
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| Roger Lee Bagula |
 Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:50 am |
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http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/2/11/lifefocus/16826809&sec=lifefocus
Sunday February 11, 2007
Exploring the origins and future of humanity
By FOO YEE PING
THE story began 3.5 billion years ago and it is still evolving.
That's human evolution and now one of the world's most renowned museums
is documenting the sweeping saga of the origins and future of humanity.
Who are we? What makes us human? What is the future of our species?
These are the fundamental questions being addressed by the American
Museum of Natural History in New York through a new exhibition hall,
which opened on Feb 10.
“While people have long pondered the nature of what it means to be
human, never before have we been so well equipped to explore this
profound and timeless questions,” said its president Ellen V. Futter
during a press briefing.
The 3,000sq m Spitzer Hall of Human Origins depicts the tracks of
ancient human footprints at a site in Tanzania, capturing “forever a
moment of human history”.
Among the amazing exhibits is a vial of extremely rare 40,000-year-old
Neanderthal DNA, which is being displayed for the first time.
According to the museum, the DNA was donated by a German institute,
which claimed to be the first in the world to have extracted the elusive
genetic material.
Also featured is Lucy, the most famous of all hominids who lived in
eastern Africa some three million years ago.
The name came about as the Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
was being played while the scientists were celebrating their discovery.
Peking Man makes an appearance, of course. Here, the exhibits show that
hominids first moved to Asia when they set out of Africa two million
years ago.
Much of our knowledge of Homo erectus in China comes from fragmentary
remains found not far from Beijing, known as the Peking Man fossils, the
museum notes say.
According to Futter, human beings were genetically 99.9% the same
despite the different skin colour and facial features.
The exhibits provide lessons in simple English about DNA such as whether
race is in our DNA and a comparison of the DNA between humans and chimps.
The Spitzer Hall of Human Origins features, among others, skeletons of a
chimpanzee and a cast of a historic Neanderthal skullcap discovered in
1856 in Germany.
“It combines, for the first time in a major exhibition of its kind, a
wealth of mutually reinforcing evidence from two seemingly disparate
fields of science – the fossil record and genomic data – to present a
sweeping and comprehensive story of humanity's origins and progress,”
according to museum notes.
Founded in 1869, the museum has about 200 scientists whose work is to
explore human cultures. |
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