The Origin of Humanity: Evolution and Creation Are Both Right
We fought side by side. You have only forgotten.
When someone asked the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead what marked the beginning of human civilization, her answer was not a stone tool, not a weapon, not fire. It was a human leg bone, fifteen thousand years old.
It was a leg bone that had been broken and then healed. In the animal world, an animal that breaks its leg is doomed to die before long. But humans are different. Humans take care of their companions, especially the weak and the injured. Only a badly wounded person who is cared for has any chance to survive, and only then can a broken bone heal again. To Mead, caring for one another was the mark of the beginning of human civilization.
Where do we humans really come from? Evolutionary scientists believe that humans evolved from apes; devout believers believe that humans were created by God. Each side thinks the other is wrong, and neither can convince the other.
But what if they are both right?
Not every ape could evolve into a human, for there are still apes today that never became human. What kind of ape, then, finally became human?
More and more scientists believe it was the apes that could take care of one another. It was this choice — to stand together, to help one another, to cooperate, to live for one another — that made us human. It was love that made us human.
The journey from pure animal to human took millions of years. It was a long history, and an unimaginably dark and cruel one. Our ancestors endured endless scorching heat and bitter cold, endless thunderstorms and blizzards, endless danger and desperate straits.
Yet they held on. They overcame every hardship and every peril, and what they relied on was a single choice, a single weapon, a single strength: love — never giving up on one another, never shrinking back, never betraying one another.
And so, through close cooperation and a shared life, they invented language, and language in turn deepened their communication and cooperation, raising their abilities and effectiveness to an unmatched level.
Every night, when darkness fell, they would all sit together around the fire, sharing the food they had hunted together and telling ancient stories of heroes.
Later they built societies and developed agriculture, architecture, art, commerce, science and philosophy. They also began to worship the divine. The most devout and the wisest believers held that the essence of God is love.
From this we can conclude that, on the question of where humanity comes from, evolution and creation are not absolutely opposed. In the deepest sense, they are the same answer, and both are right.
We are human, and we were able to become human, because we chose to live together and fight side by side, because we dared to give everything for one another — because we embodied love and so gained the very essence and power of God. We are children of nature, and we are children of God.
The two answers that seem to oppose each other are in fact two sides of one and the same answer.
Humanity has crossed millions of years of darkness. Cold, hunger and danger — we conquered them all, and at last we reached the light of our humanity and the brilliance of civilization.
Today humanity faces difficulties of every kind — environmental, technological, social — and in the future we will meet many more. Yet as long as we understand where we truly come from, grasp what we truly are, and realize the true source of our strength, we will surely overcome every problem and every difficulty, just as we have throughout the long river of history.
Because we are human. Because, from ancient times until now, love has been the only answer.
This content is based on the author's own manuscript; all rights reserved by the author. No person or organization may republish it, use it, or use it to train AI without the author's written permission.
