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Human Origins Exhibit Entrance

What Does It Mean To Be Human?

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To answer this question

- literal answer, Earth

To be a conscious being, capable of speech and complex thought, as well as emotions and ritual tendencies.

- Katelyn, Canada

To be a human means to be able to communicate with others using words and facial expressions along with the ability to create your own ideas and understand your feelings. Each human being is unique in how they look, talk, and act and each human faces diff

- Hannah, Massachusetts

Being human means that you are like no other animal because you can communicate and express feelings to others in complex ways.

- Nick, Colorado

To be human is to mate and reproduce with other humans to continue the process of evolution

- Sanket Narayana, Emmaus, PA

Humans are separated from animals by our souls. We have the ability to think for ourselves, to make decisions, to tell right from wrong.

- Katherine, Illinois

Human means you have a duty to care for the world we live in, we have a responsibility to make the world a better place for who come after.

- Jake, New Hampshire

Being human implies that one has a conscience, an ability to make decisions, and a desire to improve every day. Human's have a conscience which implies that they have a reasonable ability to think if their actions might have consequences for others. In ad

- Rohan, CA

Human being are people who cannot be described because every human is unique and they can't be described by a single statement.

- Ebehita Ukhurebor, South Africa

What it means to be human is to be heard , to have our own freedom and rights and to just live in humanity.

- Valeria, Arlington VA

To be human is to seek. We were made for something greater. We bear the image of God. But we chose what we didn't have, and we've been chasing it ever since. Each human yearns for that which is beyond ourselves. So it came to us. And yet we seek.

- A, USA

My defintion of what it means to be human is you have a straight body structure, a bigger brain, and you are at the top of the food chain.

- Denver Jackson, Massachusetts

Featured Research

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image of Homo floresiensis; LB1, skeleton

'Hobbits' on Flores, Indonesia

New digs and geological dating in Liang Bua Cave, Indonesia, show that Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the “hobbit” for its small size, became extinct around 50,000 years ago – tens of thousands of years earlier than originally thought.

For Teachers

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AP Biology Curriculum Materials

Are you an AP Biology teacher? Click here for freely downloadable curriculum materials aligned to the AP learning objectives that use human case studies to teach core evolutionary principles and a resource to help teachers create a comfortable and supportive classroom environment for teaching evolution.

Lesson Plans

Comparison of Human and Chimp Chromosomes (Grades 9-12)

Investigating Common Descent: Formulating Explanations and Models (Grades 9-12)

Human Evolution: Religious Perspectives

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The Hall of Human Origins offers a welcoming place to explore one of the most exciting areas of science, the study of human evolution. Despite strong public interest in the science, however, many people find this topic troubling when viewed from a religious perspective. Representatives of diverse religious communities encourage a larger, more respectful understanding of both the scientific evidence and religious belief.

Featured Media

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Rock or stone tool

How To Tell a Rock from a Stone Tool

How can you tell if a rock is actually an early stone tool? Watch this video to find out.

Video Thumbnail of Rick Potts from "Designing the Exhibition"

Designing the Exhibition

This video takes you behind-the-scenes into the process of designing and building the Smithsonian's Hall of Human Origins.

Fun Facts

Humans are handy!

Fingernails help apes, monkeys, and other primates scratch things, peel fruit, pick away the outer layers of other edibles, and perform a variety of other tasks with their fingers. Does this sound familiar? That’s because humans are primates, too! We retain this feature because of our connection with our primate relatives.