The document is a letter from Professor Aidan LaFeber responding to a question about whether the first human was singular or plural. LaFeber argues that the origins of humanity were both singular and plural. On one hand, humanity's genesis is an individual, intimate event of one being contemplating their own mortality. However, for this realization to be epistemologically objective requires another to witness the certainty of death in one's eyes. The conclusions drawn indicate that the date of humanity's origin was not related to brain size or bipedalism, but was rather a psychological or spiritual process requiring the moment when one sees in another's eyes and can say "I know." The first human was the first dead

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