Early Man Flashcards
Homo erectus, physical differences.
Smaller brain, bigger jaw
When was homo erectus around? Where?
2,000,000 years ago, Africa’s great Rift Valley
What is the rough span of human history?
About 5000 years
12,000 years ago, what was happening?
Agriculture emerging
What art was being made 20,000 years ago?
Cave Paintings
When did apes first walk upright?
6,000,000 years ago
When was Lucy around and who is she?
Brain size of a chimp, an upright hominin that roamed the plains of Africa (specifically, Ethiopia). Second oldest human fossil.
The Lucy specimen is an early australopithecine and is dated to about 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of non-hominin apes, plus evidence of a walking-gait that was bipedal and upright, akin to that of humans (and other hominins); this combination supports the view of human evolution that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size.[4][5]
Significant 1984 find?
1984
… nearly full skeleton
Turkana Boy, also called Nariokotome Boy, is the name given to fossil KNM-WT 15000, a nearly complete skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth who lived at c. 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago. This specimen is the most complete early human skeleton ever found. Wikipedia
They were aghast (er)!
Turkana Boy - skeleton is extremely similar to…?
But much…?
Extremely similar to modern human (much smaller brain)
Turkana Boy … age? Age of skeleton?
How did they know? Homo..?
8 (chimp growth pattern)
Rods of enamel in teeth have circadian rhythm growth pattern - you can count the days the teeth has been growing my counting the ‘wobbles’ using an electron microscope.
Turkana Boy, also called Nariokotome Boy
a nearly complete skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth who lived 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago.
This specimen is the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found.
What is ‘mystery of prolonged childhood?’
What evolutionary advantage is conferred by increased childhood length?
Maybe additional time for brains to grow.
What tools did homo erectus leave behind?
Stone hand axe - the birth of human technology
What does analysis of tools reveal?
Shaping. Planning ahead. Decision making. Skilled crafting.
What is cost of brain?
25% of body’s energy
Lots of calories needed for energy
What is key resource for development of homo genus? And challenge?
Meat. Hard to get.
Key skill / development / behaviour supporting hunting?
Non-verbal
Skill of endurance running / persistence hunting.
When did we lose body hair?
DNA changes to two species over time allow us to work out for how long they have diverged.
With gorilla lice (pubic) and human hair lice (head) this date is 3,000,000 MYA
So we have two species of lice, due to gorilla lice invading pubic area after initial loss of hair as humans evolved.
Helpful in midday sun for running (hairless bodies allow air to circulate and sweat to form).
Neanderthal skull
But forensic archaeology has recently shown that cannibalism was widespread in human prehistory. The evidence includes human bones that bear human teethmarks or that had been cracked and cooked like those of animals and thrown out in the kitchen trash.40 Some of the butchered bones date back 800,000 years, to the time when Homo heidelbergensis, a common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, first appears on the evolutionary stage. Traces of human blood proteins have also been found in cooking pots and in ancient human excrement. Cannibalism may have been so common in prehistory as to have affected our evolution: our genomes contain genes that appear to be defenses against the prion diseases…
Rudolph has two horns 
