Geologists Probe Hominid Environments
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Homo Habilis
COMMENT SUSTAINABILITY Citizens and POLICY End the bureaucracy THEATRE Shakespeare’s ENVIRONMENT James Lovelock businesses must track that is holding back science world was steeped in on surprisingly optimistic governments’ progress p.33 in India p.36 practical discovery p.39 form p.41 The foot of the apeman that palaeo ‘handy man’, anthropologists had been Homo habilis. recovering in southern Africa since the 1920s. This, the thinking went, was replaced by the taller, larger-brained Homo erectus from Asia, which spread to Europe and evolved into Nean derthals, which evolved into Homo sapiens. But what lay between the australopiths and H. erectus, the first known human? BETTING ON AFRICA Until the 1960s, H. erectus had been found only in Asia. But when primitive stone-chop LIBRARY PICTURE EVANS MUSEUM/MARY HISTORY NATURAL ping tools were uncovered at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Leakey became convinced that this is where he would find the earliest stone- tool makers, who he assumed would belong to our genus. Maybe, like the australopiths, our human ancestors also originated in Africa. In 1931, Leakey began intensive prospect ing and excavation at Olduvai Gorge, 33 years before he announced the new human species. Now tourists travel to Olduvai on paved roads in air-conditioned buses; in the 1930s in the rainy season, the journey from Nairobi could take weeks. The ravines at Olduvai offered unparalleled access to ancient strata, but field work was no picnic in the park. Water was often scarce. Leakey and his team had to learn to share Olduvai with all of the wild animals that lived there, lions included. -
Paranthropus Boisei: Fifty Years of Evidence and Analysis Bernard A
Marshall University Marshall Digital Scholar Biological Sciences Faculty Research Biological Sciences Fall 11-28-2007 Paranthropus boisei: Fifty Years of Evidence and Analysis Bernard A. Wood George Washington University Paul J. Constantino Biological Sciences, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/bio_sciences_faculty Part of the Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Wood B and Constantino P. Paranthropus boisei: Fifty years of evidence and analysis. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 50:106-132. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Biological Sciences at Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Biological Sciences Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. YEARBOOK OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 50:106–132 (2007) Paranthropus boisei: Fifty Years of Evidence and Analysis Bernard Wood* and Paul Constantino Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052 KEY WORDS Paranthropus; boisei; aethiopicus; human evolution; Africa ABSTRACT Paranthropus boisei is a hominin taxon ers can trace the evolution of metric and nonmetric var- with a distinctive cranial and dental morphology. Its iables across hundreds of thousands of years. This pa- hypodigm has been recovered from sites with good per is a detailed1 review of half a century’s worth of fos- stratigraphic and chronological control, and for some sil evidence and analysis of P. boi se i and traces how morphological regions, such as the mandible and the both its evolutionary history and our understanding of mandibular dentition, the samples are not only rela- its evolutionary history have evolved during the past tively well dated, but they are, by paleontological 50 years. -
Identity of Newly Found, Fully Intact Hominid Skulls from Ethiopia Chris Lemke College of Dupage
ESSAI Volume 7 Article 31 4-1-2010 Identity of Newly Found, Fully Intact Hominid Skulls from Ethiopia Chris Lemke College of DuPage Follow this and additional works at: http://dc.cod.edu/essai Recommended Citation Lemke, Chris (2009) "Identity of Newly Found, Fully Intact Hominid Skulls from Ethiopia," ESSAI: Vol. 7, Article 31. Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/essai/vol7/iss1/31 This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at [email protected].. It has been accepted for inclusion in ESSAI by an authorized administrator of [email protected].. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lemke: Identity of Hominid Skulls Identity of Newly Found, Fully Intact Hominid Skulls from Ethiopia by Chris Lemke (Honors Biology 1151) ABSTRACT ecently, three fully intact hominid skulls have been found in the Afar Region of Ethiopia. Objectives were to date the skulls using Uranium-235, and to identify each of the skulls. RUranium-235 dating indicated skulls A and B to be 2.9 million years old, and skull C to be 1.7 million years old. Each skull was properly identified using existing fossil data. The two oldest skulls were found to be Australopithecus afarensis, and A. africanus. The younger skull was identified as Homo habilis. A discrepancy was found in the measured cranial capacity data against existing data. Due to condition of the newly found fossils, the most likely explanation for the discrepancy is inaccuracy of existing fossil data due to incomplete and fragmented specimens, or that the skulls in question were representative of a juvenile hominid. -
IN the BEGINNING C 25 Million BC 3.6 Million BC 10,000–3000 BC
© Lonely Planet Publications 19 History Natalie Folster IN THE BEGINNING About 3.6 million years ago, a party of two or three trekked across the plain at Laetoli near Olduvai Gorge ( p226 ) in northern Tanzania, leaving their foot- prints in a blanket of volcanic ash. The prints were still there when archae- DNA lineages found in ologist Mary Leakey uncovered them in 1978. She pegged them as the steps Tanzania are among of our earliest known ancestors – hominids known as Australopithecines, the oldest anywhere on whose remains have been found only in East Africa. Earth, making the coun- About two million years ago, the human family tree split, giving rise to try a strong contender for homo habilis, a meat-eating creature with a larger brain who used crude distinction as the ‘cradle stone tools, the remains of whom have been found around Olduvai Gorge. of humanity’. By 1.8 million years ago, homo erectus had evolved, leaving bones and axes for archaeologists to find at ancient lakeside sites throughout East Africa and around the world. What is today Tanzania was peopled by waves of migration. Rock paint- ings dating back 10,000 years have been found around Kondoa ( p236 ). These are believed to have been made by clans of nomadic hunter-gatherers who The first travel guide spoke a language similar to that of southern Africa’s Khoisan. Between 3000 to the Tanzanian coast and 5000 years ago, they were joined by small bands of Cushitic-speaking was the Periplus of the farmers and cattle-herders moving down from what is today Ethiopia. -
Early Members of the Genus Homo -. EXPLORATIONS: an OPEN INVITATION to BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
EXPLORATIONS: AN OPEN INVITATION TO BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Editors: Beth Shook, Katie Nelson, Kelsie Aguilera and Lara Braff American Anthropological Association Arlington, VA 2019 Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. ISBN – 978-1-931303-63-7 www.explorations.americananthro.org 10. Early Members of the Genus Homo Bonnie Yoshida-Levine Ph.D., Grossmont College Learning Objectives • Describe how early Pleistocene climate change influenced the evolution of the genus Homo. • Identify the characteristics that define the genus Homo. • Describe the skeletal anatomy of Homo habilis and Homo erectus based on the fossil evidence. • Assess opposing points of view about how early Homo should be classified. Describe what is known about the adaptive strategies of early members of the Homo genus, including tool technologies, diet, migration patterns, and other behavioral trends.The boy was no older than 9 when he perished by the swampy shores of the lake. After death, his slender, long-limbed body sank into the mud of the lake shallows. His bones fossilized and lay undisturbed for 1.5 million years. In the 1980s, fossil hunter Kimoya Kimeu, working on the western shore of Lake Turkana, Kenya, glimpsed a dark colored piece of bone eroding in a hillside. This small skull fragment led to the discovery of what is arguably the world’s most complete early hominin fossil—a youth identified as a member of the species Homo erectus. Now known as Nariokotome Boy, after the nearby lake village, the skeleton has provided a wealth of information about the early evolution of our own genus, Homo (see Figure 10.1). -
The Correlated History of Social Organization, Morality, and Religion
Chapter 5 The Correlated History of Social Organization, Morality, and Religion David C. Lahti Abstract Morality and religion have evolutionary and cultural roots in the social behavior of our ancestors . Fundamental precursors and major features of morality and religion appear to have changed gradually in concert with social transitions in our history. These correlated changes involve trends toward increased breadth and complexity of social interaction, leading to a stepwise extension of the scope of human sympathies to more inclusive social categories, and eventually the universal- ization of moral and religious concepts, practices, and explanations. These changes can be integrated provisionally into an eight-stage model of human social history, beginning with nepotism and dominance that are characteristic of many social mam- mals, and culminating in the intellectual ability and (sometimes) social freedom of modern human individuals to examine moral and religious conventions, to modify or reject them, and even to propose new ones. 5.1 Introduction In the last 2 million years, several unique traits have evolved in the human lineage: extraordinary intelligence, an unprecedented capacity for cultural transmission of ideas, morality, and religion. These traits are unlikely to have arisen by coincidence in the same species over the same period of time. In fact, evolutionary biologists have recognized important functional relationships between these traits (Alexander 1979). If a consensus is emerging as to the evolution of these features of mod- ern humans, perhaps it can be encapsulated as follows: human intelligence evolved as a social tool, facilitating cooperation within groups in order to more effectively compete between groups; the ensuing intellectual arms race selected for rapid cul- tural innovation and transmission of ideas; cooperative norms within social groups were formalized into the institution of morality; and religion grew out of obedience D.C. -
Study Guide Assignment 4-Human Origins
A N T H R O P O L O G Y 3 4 – 1 ASSIGNMENT 4 Human Origins e begin our journey through human prehistory with a glance at the Great Ice Age, at the complicated climatic fluctuations of the past 2.5 million years. These changes have W been particularly dramatic over the past 700,000 years, and assume great importance in later prehistory. The second part of Assignment 4 examines the scientific evidence for the origins of humankind, focusing on recent discoveries in tropical Africa. How did humans evolve and why? What behavioral changes are associated with human origins, and what is the archaeological record for human origins? IMPORTANT: Please note that the Olduvai exercise is a two-week assignment in order to give you sufficient time to complete it with your group. You will present and discuss it during Week 5. WHAT LIES AHEAD? Assignment Objectives 1. Outline and describe the basic chronology and major climatic fluctuations of the Ice Age, with special reference to the past 128,000 years. 2. Describe the salient features of Oldowan technology and its implications for study- ing early human behavior. 3. Be able to evaluate the archaeological evidence for the earliest human behavior with special reference to the archaeological record at Olduvai Gorge. Work required 1. Readings: World Prehistory. Read Chapter 2, plus Anthology. 2. Web Exercises: 4-1: The Ice Age, 4-2: Introducing the skeletons in your closet, 4-3: Principles of Lithic Technology, 4-4: The Formation of Olduvai Gorge, and 4-5: The Archaeology of Olduvai Gorge. -
Paranthropus Through the Looking Glass COMMENTARY Bernard A
COMMENTARY Paranthropus through the looking glass COMMENTARY Bernard A. Wooda,1 and David B. Pattersona,b Most research and public interest in human origins upper jaw fragment from Malema in Malawi is the focuses on taxa that are likely to be our ancestors. southernmost evidence. However, most of what we There must have been genetic continuity between know about P. boisei comes from fossils from Koobi modern humans and the common ancestor we share Fora on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana (4) and from with chimpanzees and bonobos, and we want to know sites in the Nachukui Formation on the western side of what each link in this chain looked like and how it be- the lake (Fig. 1A). haved. However, the clear evidence for taxic diversity The cranial and dental morphology of P.boisei is so in the human (aka hominin) clade means that we also distinctive its remains are relatively easy to identify (5). have close relatives who are not our ancestors (1). Two Unique features include its flat, wide, and deep face, papers in PNAS focus on the behavior and paleoenvi- flexed cranial base, large and thick lower jaw, and ronmental context of Paranthropus boisei, a distinctive small incisors and canines combined with massive and long-extinct nonancestral relative that lived along- chewing teeth. The surface area available for process- side our early Homo ancestors in eastern Africa between ing food is extended both forward—by having premo- just less than 3 Ma and just over 1 Ma. Both papers use lar teeth that look like molars—and backward—by the stable isotopes to track diet during a largely unknown, unusually large third molar tooth crowns, all of which but likely crucial, period in our evolutionary history. -
Tanzania.Pdf
FEATURE Tanzania field school Shaping Students and Communities in Tanzania ummer 2007: 13 students and And, of high importance to students, it costs going way back to when I was an undergrad.” two professors from UC Denver much less than most other field schools. Musiba also reached out to universities are awakened in the middle of All of those benefits and partnerships are around the globe, including the University S the night by noises normally only the result of Musiba’s relationships with locals, of Kyoto in Japan and the Bugando University heard in a zoo. Although many lie awake in his passion for the country and his drive to College of Health Sciences in Mwanza, Tanzania. their tents, one among them sleeps peacefully. create global citizens of his students. “When I talk to people at anthropology Charles Musiba, assistant professor of meetings and tell them that our field school only anthropology, was born in Tanzania, Africa, In the Beginning costs about $4,500, I tell them that it’s because and now directs UCD’s Tanzania Field School. “I was myself a graduate student and saw that we do a lot of cost sharing with these partners.” He’s been taking I could become a bridge to Tanzania and help students to his my fellow graduate students gain access to new country for 11 years. areas for their research,” says Musiba. “But The field most existing field schools in Africa are very school is located expensive. Those run at schools like Rutgers, in the Ngorongoro Harvard and Yale cost between $6,000 to Conservation Area $7,000 just for tuition, not counting airfare.” in northern Tanzania Musiba began collaborating with people he and, according to all knew in Tanzania, and they smoothed out a accounts, it offers normally difficult process. -
Australopithecus Afarensis: Lucy and Her Relatives Her Relatives Were Very Early Forms of Humans
Australopithecus Afarensis: Lucy and her Relatives her relatives were very early forms of humans. One discovery about Lucy was In 1974, an American paleoanthropologist (studies ancient peoples) named Donald Johanson discovered a partial skeleton while searching especially exciting. By studying her for artifacts under a hot African sun. skeleton, scientists found out that she After careful study, Johanson determined that the bones had come was a biped, which means she had the from a female hominid who had lived more than 3 million years ago. ability to walk on two feet. This gave She is one of the earliest hominids ever discovered. Johanson Lucy and her relatives many advantages nicknamed her “Lucy.” compared with animals such as gorillas An anthropologist in Africa called the earliest known group of and chimpanzees. With their hands free, hominids Australopithecus (aws-tray-loh-PIH-thuh-kuhs), a Latin word the hominids could gather and carry meaning “southern ape.” Donald Johanson called Lucy's group food more easily. They could also use Australopithecus Afarensis. The second part of this name refers to the their hands to defend themselves and Afar Triangle, the part of Africa where Lucy was found. their children. Through their studies of Lucy, Scientists have learned a lot about This biped trait was one key way in early hominids. By assembling her bones, they know something about which Lucy resembled us. But in other what she looked like. Lucy was short compared with humans today – ways, hominids like Lucy were quite between 3 and 4 feet tall. She had a mix of ape and human features. -
The Brain in Hominid Evolution
v\useum o/ ,\. %,'*/ * \ 1869 THE LIBRARY j? THE BRAIN IN HOMINID P EVOLUTION PHILLIP V. TOBIAS The brain in hominid evolution g COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Q NEW YORK & LONDON i 9 yi Phillip V. Tobias is Professor of Anatomy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. This book is based on the author's James Arthur Lecture, delivered at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, April 30, 1969; it was the thirty-eighth in this series of lectures. Copyright © 1971 Columbia University Press International Standard Book Number: 0-231-03518-7 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-158458 Printed in the United States of America LIBRARY OFTHE AMERICAN MUSEUM JAMES ARTHUR LECTURES ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN BRAIN March 15, 1932 Frederick Tilney, The Brain in Relation to Behavior April 6, 1933 C. Judson Herrick, Brains as Instruments of Biological Values April 24, 1934 D. M. S. Watson, The Story of Fossil Brains from Fish to Man April 25, 1935 C. U. Ariens Kappers, Structural Principles in the Nervous System; The Development of the Forebrain in Animals and Prehistoric Human Races May 15, 1936 Samuel T. Orton, The Language Area of the Human Brain and Some of Its Disorders Apnl 15 R. W. Gerard, Dynamic Neural Patterns Franz Weidenreich, The Phylogenetic Development of the Hominid Brain and Its Connection with the Transformation of the Skull G. Kingsley Noble, The Neural Basis of Social Behavior of Vertebrates John F. Fulton, A Functional Approach to the Evolution of the Primate Brain Frank A. Beach, Central Nervous Mechanisms Involved in the Reproductive Behavior of Vertebrates George Pinkley, A History of the Human Brain James W. -
Creation and the Theory of Evolution
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Boardman Lectureship in Christian Ethics Department of Religious Studies 4-24-1997 Creation and the Theory of Evolution Francisco J. Ayala University of California, Irvine Wolfhart Pannenberg University of Munich Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/boardman Part of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons Recommended Citation Ayala, Francisco J. and Pannenberg, Wolfhart, "Creation and the Theory of Evolution" (1997). Boardman Lectureship in Christian Ethics. 6. https://repository.upenn.edu/boardman/6 Boardman Lecture XXXV. Edited and Foreword by Susan Marks. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/boardman/6 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Creation and the Theory of Evolution Abstract The Boardman Lecture, in cooperation with the Center For Theology and The Natural Sciences and The John Templeton Foundation, funded a conference on Creation and Theory of Evolution. The conference explored religion and science by offering two different approaches to the question of human origins. Geneticist Francisco Ayala explains the present state of our understanding of evolution and argues that such human phenomena as morality and religion are by-products of the evolutionary process that cannot be explained by natural selection. His lecture appears as "The Evolutionary Transcendence of Humankind." Dr. Pannenberg stressed that the God of religious faith must be the Creator of the same nature that is studied by scientists. He explores aspects of the Genesis creation story that are compatible with the theory of evolution. His lecture is "Human Life: Creation Versus Evolution?" Disciplines Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Comments Boardman Lecture XXXV.