Uploaded November 2014 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, Virginia M. Ullman Chair in Human Origins at Arizona State University and founding director of the Institute of Human Origins, delivered the second annual Patrusky Lecture on October 19, 2014 during New Horizons in Science, a program of research briefings presented annually by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
Hosted by The Ohio State University, the briefings were part of ScienceWriters2014, organized jointly with the National Association of Science Writers.
After tracing the rapidly shifting understanding of human evolution that has come about with fossil discoveries and paleogenetic analysis since his discovery of Lucy 40 years ago, Johanson asserted that understanding the evolutionary journey that produced Homo sapiens has the potential to help our species be more responsive to the natural world that created us.
"There is an interesting imbalance between our glacially slow genetic change and our accelerating technological evolution," he said.
"We view the world with minds of hunter-gatherers who were intimately tied to Mother Nature," Johanson concluded, "and this has, I think, brought about an imbalance between who we are and where we come from. I think it's time for the species—the most powerful, the most destructive, at the same time the most creative species on planet earth, Homo sapiens—to stop acting like there was some other place for us to move to."
Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, Virginia M. Ullman Chair in Human Origins at Arizona State University and founding director of the Institute of Human Origins, delivered the second annual Patrusky Lecture on October 19, 2014 during New Horizons in Science, a program of research briefings presented annually by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
Hosted by The Ohio State University, the briefings were part of ScienceWriters2014, organized jointly with the National Association of Science Writers.
After tracing the rapidly shifting understanding of human evolution that has come about with fossil discoveries and paleogenetic analysis since his discovery of Lucy 40 years ago, Johanson asserted that understanding the evolutionary journey that produced Homo sapiens has the potential to help our species be more responsive to the natural world that created us.
"There is an interesting imbalance between our glacially slow genetic change and our accelerating technological evolution," he said.
"We view the world with minds of hunter-gatherers who were intimately tied to Mother Nature," Johanson concluded, "and this has, I think, brought about an imbalance between who we are and where we come from. I think it's time for the species—the most powerful, the most destructive, at the same time the most creative species on planet earth, Homo sapiens—to stop acting like there was some other place for us to move to."
