Finding Ulysses

One of the things that I love about living in Trumansburg is the way that I’ll often find my attention pulled back here even as I am looking for information on what seem to be completely unrelated matters. I had that experience yesterday, as I was scanning through information on human evolution and came upon the Becoming Human web site.

Becoming Human provides an online documentary about human evolution by the Institute of Human Origins, run by Donald Johansen, famous for his team’s discovery of the australopithecine fossil commonly known as Lucy. A part of the documentary that focuses on the anatomical structures of human ancestors features John Gurche, talking about the importance of working on fine details of soft-tissue reconstructions based on fossilized structures, in order to allow people who see the reconstructions to gain a holistic sense of the creature being represented.

John Gurche is living in Trumansburg now, working at the Paleontological Research Institution. John has good reason to be proud of his career, and we can be proud to be the sort of community that attracts many people of his caliber.

All that aside, I encourage you, especially if you’ve got kids of a sufficient age, to sit down and take a look at the Becoming Human online documentary. At a time when many fundamentalist religious groups, and even some presidential candidates, are trying to undermine education in the concepts of biological evolution, it’s good to have resources like these to provide a more reasoned cultural counterweight.