““reason the current gap between animal and human minds seems so large and so baffling, then, may be because we have destroyed the missing links. By displacing and absorbing our hominin cousins, we might have burned the bridges across the gap, only to find ourselves on the other side of the divide, wondering how we got here. In this sense, our exceedingly mysterious and unique status on Earth may be largely our own, rather than God’s, creation.””
