Human And Physical Characteristics: What Makes Us Human?

If you were to look at what makes us human from a purely physical perspective you would be looking at everything that was empirical about a human being. This category could be divided into two sections: the first would be the actual appearance of human beings and the second would be the genetic make-up. Basically it would be made up of what you can see at first glance and what you could see at an even closer glance. The physical perspective can be summarised as the things one can see about human beings. Some appearance traits that make us human are quite obvious; nimble hands, soft skin and bipedal. Others are not quite so obvious from first glance such as a large brain (Cartmill & Brown, 2012). If we were to list every single thing that made us look human it would take quite some time. This is the most obvious thing that makes us human, the way we look.

The second thing from a physical perspective that makes us human would be our genes. Genes are the basis for any life

The fact that we are aware of the world around us and we decide what goes on is a fundamental ability of being human. It is mentioned multiple times. We decide who we are and where we stand in relation to the world around us because of this we have a certain power over nature even if it is not just because of our physical adaptations (Cartmill & Brown, 2012). We are human because we have both genes and traits and this makes us unique. It gives us the ability to see and interpret things differently. We are able to look towards the future and guess what is going to happen and in so doing we are able to plan ahead (Weiss, 2012). We are curious and want to learn, we want to know what is going to happen and we ask questions. We are human because we are aware of ourselves, our emotional state and where we plan to be, what our intentions are. This awareness of self allows us to be much more aware of others, to be empathetic. (Dunbar,