An increase in brain size over time. ibid.
I really don’t think we can underestimate the value of fire to our ancestors. ibid.
Recent research suggests it was cooking, not meat, that fuelled the evolution of our big brains. It was cooking that made us human. ibid.
Our bodies are amazing machines honed over millions of years of evolution. But our basic flesh and bones aren’t that different from our closest ape relatives – chimpanzees ... The striking difference between us and any other species on Earth ... we are creatures of the mind. Dr Alice Roberts, Origins of Us 3/3: Brains
We are the last of a large and ancient family of human-like creatures. ibid.
The skulls of our ancestors clearly show an increase in brain size. ibid.
Homo habilis ... only had a brain half the size of ours. ibid.
Homo erectus ... slender and tall. ibid.
Language is central to us ... to homo sapiens. ibid.
Growing our big brains takes time. ibid.
And it was from Africa that our species spread out to colonise the world. ibid.
Why is it that today there’s just us left? ibid.
Neanderthal DNA has revealed clues about their brains. ibid.
Our amazingly clever and complex brains. ibid.
A scientific pioneer ... Global recognition for her work ... Travelling to almost the ends of the Earth for fossil evidence ... Professor Clack has remained at the forefront of tetrapod research. Beautiful Minds, Professor Jenny Clack, BBC 2012
These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve. Jerry A Coyne, Why Evolution is True
Natural selection is not a master engineer, but a tinkerer. It doesn’t produce the absolute perfection achievable by a designer starting from scratch, but merely the best it can do with what is has to work with. ibid.
Truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all. Jerry A Coyne
There’s only one reason why people have trouble with Darwin’s theory and it’s because it falsifies that we’re something speshul. And evolution tells us that that ain’t so. Jerry A Coyne, University of Chicago
What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey. Mark Twain
We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation. Lily Tomlin
Folks, it’s time to evolve. That’s why we’re troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything’s failing? It’s because, um – they’re no longer relevant. We’re supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right? Bill Hicks
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair, ‘I, Candidate for Governor’
Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase. Michael Crichton, The Lost World
At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. Stephen King
Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone. Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
As a historical science, evolution is confirmed by the fact that so many independent lines of evidence converge to its single conclusion. Independent sets of data from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, herpetology, entomology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics and population genetics, and many other sciences each point to the conclusion that life evolved. This is a convergence of evidence. Creationists can demand ‘just one fossil transitional form’ that shows evolution. But evolution is not proved through a single fossil. It is proved through a convergence of fossils, along with a convergence of genetic comparisons between species, and a convergence of anatomical and physiological comparisons between species, and many other lines of inquiry. For creationists to disprove evolution, they need to unravel all these independent lines of evidence, as well as construct a rival theory that can explain them better than the theory of evolution. Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
Evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, and by accepting – and embracing – the theory of evolution, Christians and conservatives strengthen their religion, their politics, and science itself. The conflict between science and religion is senseless. It is based on fears and misunderstandings rather than on facts and moral wisdom. ibid.
What’s at the core of all these things that only humans do? The Human Spark I: Becoming US, PBS 2010
The Neanderthals didn’t survive as a species when we arrived. ibid.
One group of descendants stayed behind in Africa, but another group headed north ... the Neanderthals. ibid.
A picture of Neanderthal life that seems strikingly similar to the life of their ancestors in Africa. ibid.
Neanderthal children by contrast seem to have grown up more quickly. ibid.
No beads have ever been found at a Neanderthal site. ibid.
Clues in pigments, in the trading for exotic materials, in sophisticated weaponry, that push the first glimmerings of the human spark back further than anyone ... has ever imagined. ibid.
The chimpanzees are our closest relatives; that they differ from us only by that 1% of DNA. The Human Spark II: So Human, So Chimp
Welcome to my brain: the product of three and a half billion years of evolution and a few decades of living. It weighs only three pounds but its arguably the most complicated thing in the known universe. The Human Spark III: Brain Matters
Grammar is what makes human language critical to igniting the human spark. ibid.
It takes perhaps ten or fifteen years for the brain to organise itself to process grammar swiftly and efficiently. ibid.
The single most notable thing about the human brain is its sheer size ... Three or four times bigger than a chimp’s brain. ibid.
Insight and imagination both seem to be right at the heart of the human spark. ibid.
Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid the size of Mount Everest smashed into the Earth at sixty times the speed of sound. It unleashed a series of events that wiped out 70% of all species including the dinosaurs. Tony Robinson, Catastrophe IV: Asteroid Strike, Channel 4 2008
Scientists have found this same layer all around the world. Below it fossils from countless species, above it 70% of them are gone including the dinosaurs. ibid.
The iridium suggested that sixty-five million years ago a massive asteroid hit the planet. At the exact same time as the death of the dinosaurs. ibid.