Lucy

 The human evolutionary paradigm is one that has forever been debated by past and current anthropologists. Evolution is a multilevel process and the scarcity of intricate evidence of certain species opens the topic for even more debate. However, when the “Lucy” skeleton was uncovered by paleoanthropologist Donald Johnson in 1974, the subsequently missing gap in our family tree was brought to light. With this discovery, a new species called Australopithecus afarensis was named and the skull undoubtedly remains one of anthropology’s most significant discoveries today. Lucy sparked a new wave of research in the field of anthropology which led to the findings of other new species such as the Ardipithecus and A. sediba. I would choose to witness this discovery because it was the key to the modern understanding of human morphology and evolutionary bone structure. Our environments are constantly changing which inevitably means that we as a society are too. Was Johnson aware of these potential consequences of dynamic change on our lifestyle? At what point will our current physical state become the future’s “Lucy”? Evolution and ethics also go hand in hand which is accredited in anthropology’s ongoing battle against racism. Anthropologists have centralized on race since the emergence of anthropology and used it to destroy notions of biological racial classifications rooted in American’s structured society. This brings me to ponder, what did Johnson think when finding this fossil in Ethiopia? In previous years, anthropologists during this time refused to detail excavations in Africa by denying that any sort of major human subspecies presided there. Lucy not only destroyed this atrocious belief but became the oldest known ancestor directly connected to the human race. The eugenics movement that surged in the early 1900s did not help to convert this blatantly racist perspective either. Disguised as a moral philosophy of improving society, eugenics was a disgustingly racist and ableist notion in which only healthy individuals of the Aryan race were encouraged to reproduce. If we had not wholly discarded this way of thinking in the late 20th century, how drastically would it have changed humanity? What would fossils of people of color be considered as? Would they just be regarded as an extinct type of subspecies? Or would they be the weak links that were thankfully outcast and bred out of existence in this supposed society? This horrid concept of stereotyping and population control is nothing new throughout history. The idea that humans should reproduce less to preserve the earth’s dwindling resources is still favored today. China’s one-child policy, the Holocaust, and India’s compulsory sterilization movement are all embedded in this notion. Today, a resurgence of individuals attempt to make an impact on climate change by choosing to have fewer children, but we must remember not to lose light and return to the darkly obscured motives of population control. The study of evolutionary anthropology and excavations like Lucy has a purpose, but what exactly is it? Is it to understand the past for the sake of the past? Or is it to understand the past for the greater good of our future?