The story of humankind is one of an incredible journey, so dramatically told in this passage by Eiseley. Today, perhaps more than anything, it is our technological achievements that define us as a species, that make us unique. In modern society technological innovation continues our evolution with seemingly unstoppable momentum...
The following extract is taken from one of my favourite essays, The cosmic orphan by Loren Eiseley (Published in Propaedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edn. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica; 1981):
Orion as seen from Brandberg, Namibia, Dec 2002
The Orphan cried out in protest, as the cold of naked space entered his bones, "Who am I?" And once more science answered. "You are a changeling." "You are linked by a genetic chain to all the vertebrates. The thing that is you bears the still aching wounds of evolution in body and in brain. Your hands are made-over fins, your lungs come from a creature gasping in a swamp, your femur has been twisted upright. Your foot is a reworked climbing pad. You are a rag doll resewn from the skins of extinct animals. Long ago, 2,000,000 years perhaps, you were smaller, your brain was not so large. We are not confident that you could speak. Seventy million years before that you were an even smaller climbing creature known as a tupaiid. You were the size of a rat. You ate insects. Now you fly to the Moon."
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