Human Origins

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Human Origins
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Up From the Apes

• Origins in Africa
• Population of Ancestral Apes diverged
• African Apes
• Hominids
• Human divergence due to environmental change.
• Forced out of trees to search for food.

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• Bipedal more efficient way of moving on ground.
• Walking on two legs
• Arms are free for other use
• Tool use
• Hominid humanlike bipedal primate
• Complete fossil record
• Familiar with behaviors

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Paleoanthropology

• Paleoanthropology study of fossil humans
• paleo ancient
• anthropo human
• logos study of

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The Missing Link

• Raymond Dart
• East Africa, 1924
• Taung child skull-3 years old
• Australopithecine afarensis

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Taung Child Skull

• Taung is neither ape nor human,
• Ape sized brain
• Characteristics of humans
• Dental
• posture
• Head balanced on vertebral column
• Walked on two legs.

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Australopithecines

• Lucy skeleton (after Beatles song)
• East Africa, 1974
• American paleoanthroplogist Donald Johnson
• First complete skeleton
• 3.5 million years old
• Australopithecine afarensis
• Earliest hominid species

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Lucy
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Homo genus made 1st stone tools

• Louis and Mary Leakey
• Skull of Homo habilis handy human
• More human-like
• 1.5-2 m.y.a.
• Larger braincase
• Smaller teeth and jaws
• Simple stone tools were found in area
• Part scavenger part forager

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Homo erectus

• Homo habilis give rise to Homo erectus
• 1985, Most complete fossil, of 12 yr boy
• Homo erectus means upright human
• Larger brain
• Humanlike face
• Large brow ridges
• Lower jaw slopes back
• No chin

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Tools of H. erectus

• Large stone tools hand axes
• Hunted
• Charred bones and hearths
• 1st hominids to use fire
• 1st to live in caves

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Australopithecine afarensis
Australopithecine africanus
Homo erectus
Homo habilis
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H. erectus migrated out of Africa

• H. erectus 1st human species to migrate out of
  Africa, 1mya.
• Spread throughout Africa, Asia and possibly
  Europe.
• Extinct 300,000 - 500,000 years ago.
• Gave rise to archaic Homo sapiens, that looked
  like modern humans

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Archaic Homo sapiens

• 100,000-400,000 years ago archaic H. sapiens
  appeared in Europe, Africa, Middle East, and
  Asia.
• Skull shape is different
• Less prominent brow ridge
• Bulging Foreheads
• Smaller teeth
• Brain size 1000-1400cm3

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Neanderthals, 1st H. Sapiens

• 35,000-100,000 years ago
• Europe, Middle East, and Asia.
• Powerfully built group
• Thick bones
• Large faces
• Prominent noses

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Neanderthals culture

• Lived in caves during ice ages
• Large brains, (larger than modern humans)
• Primitive spears
• Burial grounds-
• evidence culture
• Religious views
• Communication through spoken language.
• They went extinct, a side branch of H. sapiens

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Cro magnon origins

• 100,000 years ago in South Africa and Middle East
  before Neanderthals.
• Fossil evidence
• Genetics
• Evolved into modern Homo sapiens

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Cro-Magnon

• 35,000-40,000 years ago
• Identical in height, weight, skull, teeth and
  brain size of modern humans.
• Talented tool makers
• Throw able spear (antler)
• Artists
• Used language
• Made music

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Modern Homo sapiens

• Spread throughout world
• Brain unchanged for last 200,000 years
• 12,000 humans reach N. America
• 8,000-10,000 cultural innovations
• Domestication
• Agriculture
• Permanent settlements by Native Americans

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