I also liked your proposition that the Spanish culture of the 15th and 16th centuries was one of religion, and thus opposed to scientific the traits of Mayan civilization. The point in the context of posthumanism is really well made, because what you crucially highlight here is that culture defines a particular sense of what being human is, and this has been (and is) different historically and culturally. For some being ‘human’ could mean being subject to an omnipotent higher power, for others perhaps being rational and autonomous, for some being the product of continuing biological evolution.

Your point is relevant because it is the *cultural* understandings and assumptions of being ‘human’ that posthumanism often attempts to destabilise (particularly critical posthumanism). Posthumanism in this sense is a deconstruction; its an attempt to reveal the assumptions inherent in a particular cultural understanding of what being human is for the purposes of critique. Perhaps it reveals that being ‘human’ is always a cultural construction, and never a fact…?

Yet another interesting blog. I came to the same conclusion as you and Austin that we humans haven’t changed a great deal, we’re just using more sophisticated tools.