A Quote by Donald Johanson

You don't just magically flip some evolutionary switch somewhere and transmute a quadruped into an upright-walking bipedal human. — © Donald Johanson
You don't just magically flip some evolutionary switch somewhere and transmute a quadruped into an upright-walking bipedal human.
Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything---evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing---it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.
I wish there was a switch that I could flip, where no one knows me. And then, when I'm ready to make a splash, I'd flip the switch and say, 'Hey, I'm ready now.' Unfortunately, that doesn't happen.
What makes us human depends on what place on our evolutionary path we're talking about. If you go back six million years ago, what makes us human is that we were walking upright. That's all. If you go to 2.6 million years ago, it's the fact that we're designing and making stone tools.
What's changed is we now have good anatomical, geological, archaeological evidence that Neanderthals are not our ancestors. When I wrote 'Lucy,' I considered Neanderthals ancestors of modern humans. We have gone back twice the age of Lucy, six million years. And we see that upright bipedal walking goes back that far in time.
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH,' the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, and a sign on it saying, "End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE TO NOT TOUCH," the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.
If I'm having relentless thoughts, I just won't shut up in my head. I know that if I put myself on the mat and just focus on a flow that I will transmute or I will transform, transfer the energy into some other act or put my attention somewhere else, I'll be back. I'll feel stronger not only in my body but most certainly in my brain.
But the writing life, it turned out, was difficult. It wasn't like you could sit down and flip a switch and crank on the ventilation system. Sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes you couldn't even find the switch.
I remembered this one time that I never told anybody about. The time we were walking. Just the three of us. I was in the middle. I don't remember where we were walking to or where we were walking from. I just remember the season. I just remember walking between them and feeling for the first time that I belonged somewhere
You flip the switch. Flip the switch and go into work mode. You're a professional, so be a professional. You can take care of your problems later, but you still have to go to work. You still have to make things happen. One bad day could turn into a bad year if you're not careful. Or, a bad rest of your life if you're not careful. Because of one day!
At once I feel that comedy is this amazing sort of transcendent thing, and I'm also open to the fact that maybe it's just an evolutionary hiccup, something that upright apes do in their free time.
If the guidance failed or started to stray or went somewhere we didn't like or the ground didn't like, I could flip a switch, and I could control seven, over seven and a half million pounds of thrust with this handle and fly the thing to the Moon myself.
You have to have a switch that you can flip when you get on the field.
What the president announced yesterday, is that somehow magically, if we just continue to prime the pump of taxpayer dollars, we're going to see magically an economic recovery.
It's great to just disappear, grab a suitcase, switch the answering machine on and just go somewhere else.
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