The Missing Link

A story about the bond between man and wildlife, ancient and deep, but mostly broken, forgotten, replaced by borders.

I remember always wondering what we humans are. The most plausible answer is in our DNA: we are terrestrial animals composed of 70% of simple water, evolved in an atmosphere composed of nitrogen, oxygen and carbonic hadrine.
We are mammals, primates of the family of hominids, the great apes, which includes Gorillas, Orangutans and Chimpanzees among others, that are for 97% the same as us. We are a real family. We have a blood bond with the rest of the animals as old as life itself.

“So, do other animals have human emotions? Yes, they do.
Do humans have animal emotions? Yes; they’re largely the same. Fear, aggression, well-being, anxiety, and pleasure are the emotionsof shared brain structures and shared chemistries, originated in shared ancestry. They are the shared feelings of a shared world. The problem is imposing a distinctly human misunderstanding. Our deepest insight into the living world: all life is one. Their cells are our cells, their body is our body, their skeleton is our skeleton, their heart, lungs, blood, ours. If we impose that distinctly human understanding, we’ve taken one giant stride in seeing, truly, each species within the vast living venture. Each is a distinction on a continuum, like notes on a violin’s fingerboard. There for the finding. Fretless. No abrupt breaks. And quite a symphony.”
Beyond words,
Carl Safina, professor in nature and humanity at Stony Brook University.

How did we get to this point then?
How could we forced our evolution as much as to tear this bond pushing away ourselves so radically and so far from our families of origin?
What happened to the evolutionary link that binds us?

In 2016 I started looking for this link. Everywhere.
I found what’s left of it, or what it’s evolved into, ironically, in the border areas between civilization and wilderness, where human develope collides with wildlife and it’s natural habitats until now untouched, where there is no black and white, no pure heroes or evil villains, anything has a fair amount of right and wrong. Places where borders themselves become the last trace of that bond, whether they are created to protect or to keep away and divide.