Homo Sapiens: An Illustrated Field Guide

 Nepal

Like many other animal species, Homo sapiens are said to be sexually dimorphic. Not only are male sapiens on average somewhat larger than females, but since very early in their evolutionary history, the sapiens sexes have had very distinct cultural and behavioral patterns as well. Typically, in the context of the ancient hunter-gatherer cultures from which all modern sapiens arose, the females were relegated to gathering wild plant material, maintaining the hearth, and of course, nurturing the young. In these circumstances the characteristic attributes of female sapiens - their behavioral bias to utilize social mechanisms rather than direct action, and their heightened empathy compared to males, for example - must have emerged through natural selection.

 Spain

This arrangement left sapiens males in charge of hunting other animals and providing dietary protein in the form of meat. This of course involved the development of weapons, skills and cooperative strategy. In the process, the typical male sapiens aggressiveness and tendency toward risk-taking must have been selected for as well.

Homo Sapiens: An Illustrated Field Guide

 Inner Mongolia

Early in their evolutionary history, Homo sapiens began expressing a unique urge to understand and influence their environment, seeking to explain phenomena and manipulate materials. This instinct led to the development of technology.  Beginning with the mastery of fire and the fashioning of stone tools in the Paleolithic, sapiens slowly and incrementally accumulated a vast array of tools and skills, eventually allowing them to invade virtually every habitat on the planet.

 Afghanistan

Technological development was excruciatingly slow for tens of thousands of years, until, beginning in the era we call the Enlightenment, advances in the natural sciences laid the foundation for an explosion of technical expansion.  Since then, sapiens technology has become so refined that some members of the species are even capable of making replacement body parts.

Homo Sapiens: An Illustrated Field Guide

 India

Homo sapiens are uniquely adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression. In addition to the exchange of ideas and information through language communication, each cultural tradition has evolved a complex set of non-verbal signals capable of conveying at a glance detailed ideas about identity and ideology.

 El Salvador

Some of these culturally evolved signals are almost universally recognizable by all sapiens.  They are a sort of communication short cut, rich in information, that function to quickly define the relationship between the recipient and the signaler, making reciprocal behavioral expectations clear to both parties.

Homo Sapiens: An Illustrated Field Guide

Sri Lanka

Beginning roughly ten thousand years ago, having wiped out most of the world's megafauna, fully anatomically modern Homo sapiens began to domesticate some of the various plant and animal species with which they found themselves sharing the environment.

Spain

The transition to the so-called Neolithic and the dawn of agriculture laid the social and economic foundations for the emergence of civilization and led to highly complex and varied relationships between sapiens and all the other animal species globally.


To be continued...

Homo Sapiens: An Illustrated Field Guide

Iran

The tendency toward a relatively long survival after menopause in the life cycle of the sapiens female is thought by anthropologists to be an evolutionary adaptation allowing more resources to be allocated to the nurture and protection of the young, who are born helpless and take many years to reach maturity.

Nicaragua

The acquisition of language early in its evolutionary history, also an evolutionary adaptation, allows Homo sapiens to pass both practical skills and cultural information across time and to accumulate such skills and information down the generations.

To be continued..

Homo Sapiens: An Illustrated Field Guide

Japan

The sapiens' powerful brain perceives the external world through a variety of senses tuned to the spectrum of vibrations and chemical signals coming from the environment. Each individual is influenced by their own unique experiences, leading to subjective views of existence and the passage of time.

Homo sapiens are said to possess consciousness, self-awareness, and a mind, which correspond roughly to the mental processes of thought.

Spain

Although the sapiens brain is the most complex in the animal kingdom in terms of both structure and cognitive ability, most of these abilities are known in a more primitive form among other species. Modern anthropology has tended to support Darwin's idea that differences in mind between sapiens and the other great apes, for example, great as they are, are differences in degree and not of kind.

To be continued...

Homo Sapiens: An Illustrated Field Guide

Starting at the top of the world, with this individual from Tibet, a natural history in photographs, captured in its natural habitats, of the species at the top of the food chain all over the Earth.

Homo Sapiens, (Latin for "wise man" or "knowing man") are more commonly known as humans. They are the only living species in the genus Homo. They originated in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago, becoming fully anatomically and behaviorally modern about 50,000 years ago.

The study of Homo sapiens is the scientific discipline of anthropology.

Homo sapiens have the most highly developed brain of all living creatures and are capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the hands for manipulating objects, has allowed them to make far greater use of tools than any other living species on Earth. This tool-using individual was photographed in Afghanistan.

To be continued...