SELF-REFLECTIVE ESSAY - OPISO
And, as seen from the previous quarters, I am still not done with my portfolio, although it is halfway through. So, yes, another reason to pause for a while and think of why and how I came up with this topic.
We have been informed of the more “popular” Homo species from Biology 1 and Social Science 3 – Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Lucy, for example – and those facts led me to my next question, “Were there others?”
Evolution is a random thing; we all know that. You don’t know when it will happen, it just does. And so given that evolution is something unpredictable, that must mean that there were several other species that evolved with us. I mean, if we normally have to make a lot of guesses and make TAE (trial-and-error) before we get the right answer in some insanely, mind-blowing Economics exam, evolution must have been like that as well. There must have been other “errors” or species that survived for a brief period of time but eventually died off because, well, let’s face it – they weren’t as cool as humans are.
And it really made me interested that there really were species like that – two of which are the “hobbits” and the Denisovans. The hobbits, who were really like the tiny beings from J.R.R. Tolkien’s book series, were said to have lived in complete isolation in the island of Flores, Indonesia. The Denisovans, however, were the “sister species” of the Neanderthals. Think of the North and South Water Tribe in Avatar: they were separated by geography yet they came from the same ancestor.
Both tribes were said to have lived around the time modern day humans and Neanderthals were killing each other off in Europe 80,000 years ago. However, both outlasted the Neanderthals. In fact, Denisovan genes were said to be present in Melanesian people! Could they have mated?
Actually, there are a lot of issues concerning both species; even calling them species is an issue. Some scientists say that they could’ve been just a subspecies of Homo sapiens since it would’ve been very impossible for them to produce a healthy offspring who can help in repopulating the earth after the Ice Age if they weren’t of the same species. Many things are yet unknown, many questions are still unanswered, but I believe that more advanced techniques will be invented and more answers will be revealed…in the future.













