About "Man"

I have a question about the following sentences from a novel.

Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history, with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its tragedies, covered barely one thousandth of this appalling span of time. Not only Man himself, but most of the animals now alive on Earth, did not even exist when this black enigma was so carefully buried here, in the most brilliant and most spectacular of all the craters of the Moon.
("A Space Odyssey 2001" by A.C.Clarke)

context (or situation): 1) On the moon, and people have a lunar base for living there.
2) Something artificial was dug out at the bottom of the biggest crater Tycho.
3) Scientists guessed firmly it must have been buried three million years earlier, from the local geological formation and other evidences.

question: about "Man."
it says that Man didn't exist at that time, or 3 million years before present. So you don't say "man" for other kinds of men who existed in that far long past. In this book, they are called "man-apes." But at least they're man-kinds. Is that right?

On 11/03/22 17:15, tonbei wrote:
> About "Man"
>
> I have a question about the following sentences from a novel.
>
> Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written
> history, with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its
> tragedies, covered barely one thousandth of this appalling span of
> time. Not only Man himself, but most of the animals now alive on
> Earth, did not even exist when this black enigma was so carefully
> buried here, in the most brilliant and most spectacular of all the
> craters of the Moon. ("A Space Odyssey 2001" by A.C.Clarke)
>
> context (or situation): 1) On the moon, and people have a lunar base
> for living there. 2) Something artificial was dug out at the bottom
> of the biggest crater Tycho. 3) Scientists guessed firmly it must
> have been buried three million years earlier, from the local
> geological formation and other evidences.
>
> question: about "Man." it says that Man didn't exist at that time, or
> 3 million years before present. So you don't say "man" for other
> kinds of men who existed in that far long past. In this book, they
> are called "man-apes." But at least they're man-kinds. Is that
> right?

It depends on who you ask. There was no single point in time when our
species came into existence, so the boundaries are completely arbitrary.
Personally, I wouldn't say that mankind existed three million years ago,
but there are other people who would so say.

My own preference is to say that humans first appeared between one
million years ago and one hundred thousand years ago. A hundred thousand
years BP the people were recognisably modern humans. A million years ago
our ancestors were a bit different from modern humans, so the transition
has to be between those two bounds. But anyone who tries to pin it down
more precisely than that is fooling themselves.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

tonbei <autosu@infoseek.jp> wrote:

> About "Man"
>
> I have a question about the following sentences from a novel.
>
> Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history,
> with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its tragedies, covered
> barely one thousandth of this appalling span of time. Not only Man
> himself, but most of the animals now alive on Earth, did not even exist
> when this black enigma was so carefully buried here, in the most brilliant
> and most spectacular of all the craters of the Moon. ("A Space Odyssey
> 2001" by A.C.Clarke)
>
> context (or situation): 1) On the moon, and people have a lunar base for
> living there. 2) Something artificial was dug out at the bottom of the
> biggest crater Tycho. 3) Scientists guessed firmly it must have been
> buried three million years earlier, from the local geological formation
> and other evidences.
>
> question: about "Man." it says that Man didn't exist at that time, or 3
> million years before present. So you don't say "man" for other kinds of
> men who existed in that far long past. In this book, they are called
> "man-apes." But at least they're man-kinds. Is that right?

'Man' in this context
is obviously intended to mean Homo sapiens sapiens,
but that doesn't really matter,
for all other 'Homo' species didn't exist either.

The 'Hominidae' family existed long before that,
but the genus 'Homo' appeared 2 million years ago,
with Homo habilis.

Arthur Clarke was no doubt well aware of all that,
being also a science populariser and a generalist,

Jan