Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

I think we were colonized by aliens 250,000 years ago, and they genetically altered our DNA to be primates into homo erectus and humans. I'm very interested in how we evolved so suddenly, which obviously ties in with the alien thing.

Just as your own existence is unlikely and far from inevitable, the evolution of modern humans as a species depended on a whole string of chance events - some happening in the environments our ancestors inhabited, and some inside their own bodies, including random mutations in their DNA.

The origin of Homo sapiens, as a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree, lies well below the boundary.

But what really excited me was the idea that humans had a tremendous pre-history that went back millions of years. I wanted to go to Africa to find some of these creatures.

I find a tremendous receptivity among the public for the subject matter of, 'Where did we come from and how did we get here?' People are thirsty and hungry for information on our origins. I feel a responsibility as a major figure in the area... to convey to the public the knowledge of human origins in a way that is understandable to them.

We all evolved out of the same three or four groups in Africa, as black Africans.

Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man.

I don't think we interbred with the Neanderthals at all. There are some people who think that there was some level of interbreeding. I think that we look so biologically different, that we looked and we acted so different, and we culturally were so different that we would not have had interbreeding between two species.

When we look for the origins of all humanity today, let's not just look at Europe, because I think Africa was the cradle, the crucible that created us as Homo sapiens.

We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes.

I, too, am convinced that our ancestors came from Africa.

In the two million years during which we climbed from stone-tool-wielding Homo erectus with sloping brows to high-foreheaded Homo urbanis - man, the inventor of the city - we underwent 60 glaciations, 60 ice ages.

The mystery is what prompted men to leave caves, to come out of the womb of nature.

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.

When I went to high school in Australia, I was exposed to textbooks that outlined evolutionary ideas - such as ape-like creatures turning into people. I recognized the conflict between evolutionary ideas and a literal reading of the book of Genesis.

Ever since Darwin, we've been familiar with the stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past. But most people still somehow think we humans are necessarily the culmination of the evolutionary tree. No astronomer could believe this.

The evidence points to central Asia as man's original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward.

The prehistorical and primitive period represents the true infancy of the mind.

I'm a paleoanthropologist, and my job is to define man's place in nature and explore what makes us human.

I would hazard a guess that we have found fossilized human remains of at least a thousand different specimens in South and East Africa, more or less complete at that. I think this is where the prelude to human history was primarily played out.

Our evolution could have gone in different directions a lot of times. We could have gone extinct at some points. We might not have gotten our big brains, or Neanderthals might have made it while we did not.

What if I told you every single person in America - every single person on Earth - is African? With a small scrape of cells from the inside of anyone's cheek, the science of genetics can even prove it.

The history of Africa goes back into the dim recesses of time and antiquity. There are even scientists in our time who are beginning to claim that Africa was the very cradle of mankind

If there were no Adam and Eve and we’re all evolved from apelike ancestors and there’s homosexuality in the animal world and if Genesis is mythology, then you can justify any behavior you want.

Homo Sapiens