ride the wave

This image shows the sensory homunculus, which represents the relative sensitivity in various parts of our body.

Nina Jablanski, professor of anthropology and author of the book, Skin, A Natural History, explains how a huge part of our brain is devoted to perceiving the world around us through our sense of touch. Touch, she explains, is known as the mother of all senses–primates use it to patch things up after a dispute, and our levels of stress decline tremendously when we touch one another. Though we may sometimes consider ourselves more advanced than the grooming apes–we still pay plenty of money for facials, massages, and other forms of physical contact.
We gather enormous amounts of information through our skin, a great amount of this is through our hands. The nerve endings on our hands send information back to our brains, and are enormously sensitive compared to the rest of the body.

In our skin, we have our humanity, and Jablanski reminds us that through the millenia, we have been in physical (not electronic) contact—with our lovers, elderly, and children. Next time we think to take a picture of someone and send it to flickr, Jablanski reminds us to take a moment to connect to one another and to make physical contact with one another. The depth of understanding experienced through touch tunes us in to the ancient elements of our human evolution.