Becoming More Human on Christmas
by G. Simon Harak

What made humans evolve? Of all the animals, what was it about our particular species that brought us to the kinds of poetry, music, art and other transcendent activities we see as uniquely human endeavors? When Robert Ardrey published The Naked Ape in 1967, he articulated what many people had long believed: That human beings evolved beyond the other animals because we were better killers than they were. In that reading of the already simplistic doctrine of the survival of the fittest, humans' killing of other animals and even more of each other compelled us into the "hunter/killer intellect," an intellect superior to that of simple herd animals.

Full story here.