Ancestors can be referred to as ancestors.
Ancestor is a term that comes from the verb antepasar , which refers to happening previously . According to the first meaning mentioned in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ), it is an adjective that qualifies a temporary period that precedes the last one that passed .
The most common use of the concept, however, is as a noun. An ancestor, in this sense, is a relative in the ascending line of an individual or a group of people. An ancestor is an ancestor .
For example: “My ancestors came to this country from Ukraine” , “The young singer has Peruvian ancestors” , “It is not logical that they criticize the deputy because one of his ancestors was a Nazi: what is his fault for what his ancestors have done when “He wasn’t even born?” .
The look at the ancestors
Generally, the idea of ancestor is used when there is a certain distance . This means that a man hardly uses the notion to refer to his parents or his grandparents: instead, he can talk about ancestors to name his great-grandparents or his great-great-grandparents , to cite two examples.
The concept of ancestor is also usually linked to a certain respect on the part of current people towards their ancestors, although this depends both on the culture and on each particular case. In Japan , for example, respect for the elderly is imprinted in the culture itself, which is why talking about ancestors is usually done with a certain degree of admiration.
In other countries, where love for one's own is not common but rather people "look outwards" , the weakness of their roots inevitably results in a poor opinion of their own history , in which their ancestors were protagonists. For example, when a person complains about the economic and social situation in his country saying "We have always done everything wrong here," he demonstrates disappointment both in his fellow human beings and in his ancestors.
Homo sapiens had other species as ancestors.
human evolution
The notion of ancestor can also be used with reference to a more or less broad social group. There are species that qualify as ancestors of humans ( Homo sapiens ). In these cases, the ancestors may be numerous and related to a very large group of people (indeed, to humanity in general).
In this context, it is interesting to highlight that while it is believed that life on Earth appeared approximately three and a half million years ago, primates only emerged about seven million years ago, and the Homo species only two million. Despite having been part of this beautiful planet for such a short time , human beings have managed to dominate it, even if only by force and leading it little by little to its destruction.
Human beings have the curious habit of praising themselves: we are superior to the rest of the species, the most evolved, the only ones capable of creating and thinking, all because we say so; We do not ask another species for their opinion, but rather we proclaim ourselves the most important and valuable beings on the planet . Our ancestors are our shame, although a necessary one to have reached this fictitious peak in which our dangerous vanity has placed us.
In the numerous research texts about the poorly understood human evolution , the ancestors of our species are always shown as primitive, basic beings, light years away from our current intellect; However, they lived and let live, on a green planet, friendly to the sun and free of pollution.
It should be noted that plants also have ancestors: species that changed their genome with evolution or through human intervention with science .