Controlling the World with our Hands

Every “survival machine” has its own characteristic that no others have. For example birds can fly, frogs have a huge tongue while dolphins can run in very fast speeds. The special characteristic that every species have has helped for the survival of the type of animal. However many people ask me, what is the characteristic of humans that have made us survive so much time, and has made us evolve so much?

The most common answer is that he where gifted with intelligence. For some extent it is true, but we can’t ignore the fact that we only use seven percent of our brain, or something. Still, we have achieved a lot with that 7% but yet it is not the physical feature that highlights us, and being smart probably won’t get us alive from a confrontation with a lion. In addition, I want to reject that idea because I am talking about a physical feature that differentiates us from the rest of the animals, and there are a lot of tests that proof that primates can have a lot of intelligence.
You might be thinking, ‘No, we don’t have fur, a big yaw, a lot of speed or breath under water.’ Because the feature I am talking about is so small and seems so insignificant that you will probably be disappointed it.
Take one of your hands, and open it. Now get your thumb and press it with any of the other four fingers in your hand. There you go, that is our superb physical feature.
The movement you just did, is the movement only humans can do. No, primates can’t do it because the hand-shaped extremity they have is in their feet and their thumb can’t be pressed against the rest of the fingers. Thanks to that movement, human beings were able to grab and manipulate things. With this they started to make tools, started to build civilization, start agriculture, and so on until we arrive to the present. I know it is not a feature that directly helps us in a naked animal against animal fight, but it is a feature of civilization, that eventually contributes to our survival.

This thought came up, when I read about the whales and they’re “Exceedingly loud ‘song.’” (The Selfish Gene. Pg. 53) I had no idea that whales were able to sing so loud that they could be heard throughout the world. Richard Dawkins mentions “an astronaut on Mars” (pg.53) so I thought it would be very interesting to investigate the whales voice strength and be able copy it. Later on we could try to travel and the speed of their sound and arrive to any place in the universe.

In chapter 3: Immortal Coils, Dawkins states that all survival machines have the same constitution of DNA. Nevertheless, it is interesting that humans grew a feature of civilization rather than one used for survival, if we come from the same roots and live in the same world. Looking in the mirror, our body is full of mysteries and we are capable of handling a lot of work, but we never recognize that out secret key is in the palm of our hands.