Lecture 7 Flashcards
(26 cards)
La “Grande Coupure”
○ 33.9 mya
○ Large- scale extinction and floral and fuanal turnover
○ most of affected organisms were marine/aquatic in nature
○ Extinction of all european primates
○ Lead to better survival chances of survival mammals
Genus Homo
○ Larger, more rounded brain case
○ less projecting face
○ Smaller teeth
○ More efficient bipedalism
Humans are humans because
○ Use tools ○ Have largest brain on earth ○ Learn behaviour ○ Recognize themselves in a mirror ○ Use fire ○ Complex language
Emergence of Genus Homo
○ Bipedalism
■ Vertical insertion of spine into cranium
■ Foramen magnum directly below skull
■ S-shaped spine
■ Barrel-shaped rib cage
■ Shallow and wide pelvis
■ Low limbs proportionally longer than the upper limbs
■ Angled inward femur
■ Big toe not opposable and form arch
○ Increase brain size relative to body size
■ Cranial capacity in cubic centimetres (400-1700 cc)
Earliest Genus Homo
○ Between 2.5-3 million years ago
○ Features like mandibular symphysis are primitive and similar to A. afarensis
■ Early changes in homo lineage are the teeth/jaws
■ Cannot judge brain size
Homo Habilis
○ 2.5-1.5 mya ○ Mainly East Africa/South africa ○ Holotype, or type fossil ○ Features ■ Reduced facial size ■ Parabolic palate ■ Small supraorbital torus ■ Round value ■ Slight prognathism ■ Noc canine fossa ○ Louis/Mary Leakey discovered 2 million year old juvenile partial skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania ■ Suggested homo was sole maker of stone tools ○ Larger brain than Australopithecines ○ “The skilled human”
Homo Rudolfensis
○ KNMR-ER 1470 dated 1.9 million years old
■ Thought to be more intact skull of H. habilis
○ Species included both large/small individuals
○ Researchers continue to argue that largest/smallest homo fossils are male and female of same species
Three Traits distinguish homo habilis/rudolfensis from australopithecines
○ 1. Increased cranial capacity
○ 2. Smaller teeth overall
○ 3.More advanced precision grip
Intermembral Index
Arm length/leg length X 100
Lithic Technology
■ Very hard
■ Very fine grained
■ Homogenous
■ Or vitreous
The oldowan subsistence
■ Hunting-Gathering
■ Scavenging
■ Butchering Sites
■ Homo base???
Oldowan industry
● Earliest stone tools
● Cores/Flakes
● Hammerstones
● Carried around
Homo base
central place where hominins would have slept and ate
Oldowan Tools
○ Simple flake tools struck from a core using hammerstone or anvil technique
The Flakes
○ Often removed from only one side of the core, and are useful for cutting through hides, muscle, and plant material
Hunting
● “Man the hunter”
○ Hunting as selection for intelligence
○ Focus on male activities rather than female ones
Confrontational/Active Scavenging
● Murdering predatory animals
● Chasing away predatory animals, e.g. lions, and get meat before the animal realize they’ve been tricked
Passive Scavenging
● Taken from carcasses
Hominins cut marks on top of carnivore tooth marks
● Sometimes, hominins were scavengers not hunters
● Reliance on finding kills from other animals
● Potential for aggressive carcass piracy
Biocultural Evolution
○ When we study human evolution, we study cultural evolution as well
○ Cult= learned behaviour
■ Not genetically transmitted
○ Uniqueness of human behaviour
■ Capability to recognize others as “beings like themselves who have intentional and mental worlds like their own”
● Humans learn by identifying with one another rather than simply by observing
■ Complex language
■ Use of fire
○ Interplay of cultural and biological evolution= coevolution
○ Definition: Combination and interaction of human biological evolution and the evolution of our technology
Dual Inheritance Theory
■ Most organisms just inherit genetically determined characteristics
■ Humans inherit important adaptive traits through genes and social learning
Cooking Hypothesis
■ Eating of cooked food explains adaptive significance of reduced jaws, teeth, and guts that distinguish H. erectus from H. habilis
● Began cooked about 2mya
● Freed metabolic energy from digestion process
● Allowed larger and more energy-demanding brain
■ Humans are adapted to eating cooked food in the same essential way as cows are adapted to eating grass/mosquitoes to sucking blood/ any animal to its signature diet”- Richard Wrangham
Great Apes and Fire
■ Chimpanzee ● Wild ○ Control the spread of wild fires ● Semi-Captive ○ Curiosity ● Captive ○ Perform routine ○ Light cigarettes ■ Apes do not panic in presence of fire, they are observant and experiment
Evidence of fire associated with Early Hominins
■ Australopithecus: NA
■ Homo habilis: NA/ maybe wonderwerk cave
■ Homo ergaster/erectus: association with burnt items, ephemeral use, cooking
■ Homo heidelbergensis: controlled fire in Middle east, little evidence of cooking, used fire to colonize europe
■ Homo neanderthalensis: used fire extensively, cooked food in some capacity
■ Homo sapiens: extensive use, first stone circle hearths, 500 years fire in arctic with fat
