Remember that? As kids, the burning question was what the missing link was between apes and man, the half man/half beast. That was the way to question whether evolution was real or not. If man descended from monkeys, where is the missing link? How come there isn’t anything in-between?
In the relentless archaeological search since, I think that link has been illuminated many times. Of course, humans didn’t descend from apes or monkeys, but humans and apes do have an ancestor in common. Since humans split from the ancestors of apes, there isn’t a single linear progression, but a chronical of steps and missteps. Our knowledge of early man is now expanded to at least twenty species! Our family tree is a bush. Branches go all directions. Many terminate without any direct connection to ourselves, homo sapiens, the single remaining species of early man.
This didn’t all happen in linear time either. I find it fascinating that multiple species coexisted at times; each one likely better suited for specific conditions, and as conditions changed some species won out, some withered, some evolved further. I wonder what the next 50 years of archaeology will reveal.
I also find it fascinating that we need scientific study to reveal what, at a particular point in time, everybody already knew! We don’t have a linear accumulation of knowledge either. We gain it in fits and starts. Some endures. Some is lost. Bits are recovered.
