Hominids And The Fossil Record
With these hallmarks of hominid status in mind it is possible to detect, in various early hominoid fossils, or fossil 'populations', the presence or absence of hominid features. In this enquiry, we recognize two broad stages. The first is that of hominid origins, by which we mean the first emergence of the Hominidae. The second refers to the further evolution of established hominids. Not only do these two stages follow each other in chronological sequence, but their study also requires...
Historical and geographical note
In the last sixty-five years Africa has yielded a veritable hoard of fossil specimens that have been assigned to the Hominidae see Figure 9 for site locations . In the second quarter of the twentieth century South Africa was the scene of critical discoveries. The Buxton Limeworks at Taung 1924 , then in the northern Cape Province, and the sites of Sterkfontein 1936- and Kromdraai 1938- in the southern Transvaal, furnished the first remains of ancient hominids. Up to the outbreak of the Second...
Early Moderns And Archaic Behaviour
Though the molecular data might indicate a geographical pattern for genetic history, it would be wrong to infer that genetically modern humans were modern in their behaviour as well. This point has been most clearly demonstrated as a result of the absolute dating of a series of important fossil skulls in the Near East. It has long been recognized from excavations in Israel that anatomically modern skulls and skeletons at the cave sites of Qafzeh and Skhul were associated with standard Middle...
Philip Lieberman
science. In the late 1960s it became apparent that chimpanzees are able to understand and communicate using words transmitted by means of manual sign language Gardner and Gardner 1969 . The number of words that a chimpanzee raised in a human-like environment is able to learn is very limited compared with a human child, but the chimpanzee's words, like those of human language, represent concepts rather than specific objects or actions. Thus the word car is a symbol not for any specific car, but...
The Human Species
All people around the world belong to a single species, designated sapiens, the only extant species of the genus Homo. Indeed, many anthropologists argue that human beings of a biologically 'modern' form all belong to one subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens, which long ago replaced the more 'archaic' subspecific forms notoriously the so-called Neanderthals Homo sapiens neanderthalensis . Be that as it may, by regarding human beings as members of a species we are led to ask the kinds of questions...
The Human Revolution Continuity Or Replacement
The changes that have taken place over the last 40 kyr, compared with the previous million years of relative inertia, have led some to see this date as marking a worldwide revolution Mellars and Stringer 1989 . Dramatic changes in anatomy and behaviour have been documented Table 2 . More recently the evidence from molecular biology has added support to the picture of rapid and recent change, resulting in humans that are not only genetically but also behaviourally and anatomically modern. The...
Technology And Colonization
It is also noticeable that once again lithic technology played a secondary role in colonization. Two examples will suffice. The stone technology associated with the earliest occupation of Australia after 55 kyr BP has all the characteristics of the earlier, Middle Palaeolithic core and flake traditions of the Old World. In western New South Wales encampments dating to 30 kyr BP around the former Lake Mungo contain burials and cremations of anatomically modern humans along with thick, so-called...
Strategy one the phase of hominid emergence
Formerly, the anatomy and dating of the fossils, along with the comparative anatomy of related living forms, provided the only basis for statements about the origins and evolution of hominids. Within the last three decades, however, molecular biologists have shed new light on hominid origins. The study of molecular systematics and evolution is based on immunological distances, protein sequencing and DNA hybridization data in living organisms. This approach was founded upon the concept of the...
A Question Of Tails
In the year 1647, a Swedish naval lieutenant by the name of Nicolas Koping was serving aboard a Dutch East-Indiaman in the Bay of Bengal. One day the ship approached an island whose naked inhabitants, according to Koping's account, had tails like those of cats, and a similarly feline comportment. Coming alongside in their canoes, these natives evidently bent on trade threatened to swarm the ship and had to be frightened off with a round of cannon-shot. The ship's pilot subsequently took ashore...
References 1
Aiello, L. and Dean, C. 1990 An Introduction to Human Evolutionary Anatomy, London Academic Press. Andrews, P. 1985 'Family group systematics and evolution among catarrhine primates', in E.Delson ed. Ancestors The Hard Evidence, New York Alan R.Liss. Asfaw, B. 1987 'The Belohdelie frontal new evidence of early hominid cranial morphology from the Afar of Ethiopia', journal of Human Evolution 16 612-24. Bailey, P., von Bonin, G. and McCulloch, W.C. 1950 The Isocortex of the Chimpanzee, Urbana...
lateral sylvian fissure
Figure 10 Lateral surface of the left cerebral hemisphere of the modern human brain, showing the lobes of the hemisphere, a few important fissures and the positions of the three cardinal areas concerned with spoken language. Inf. par. lob., inferior parietal lobule part of Wernicke's area SMA, supplementary motor area humans and modern apes. She finds that the frontal lobe impression of A. africanus closely resembles that of apes, whereas that of H. habilis is nearly identical to that of modern...
Selective encephalization
The surfaces of the brains or endocranial casts of hominids reveal that the 1,3001,200 -1,1001,000 900800700 600-1 400 T T T r--------1-i1-- Figure 4 Brains and teeth of hominids. In this graph, the average tooth size and the average endocranial capacity are plotted for each of a series of hominid taxa species or subspecies . The tooth size or 'tooth material' is calculated as the sum of the 'crown areas' of the cheek-teeth the two premolars and the three molars for each taxon. The earlier...
Part Ii Culture
12. Introduction to culture Tim Ingold 13. Why animals have neither culture nor history David Premack and Ann James Premack 350 14. Symbolism the foundation of culture 15. Artefacts and the meaning of things 17. Spatial organization and the built environment Brian VStreet and Niko Besnier 527 20. Magic, religion and the rationality of belief 25. The politics of culture ethnicity and nationalism 26. Introduction to social life 27. Sociality among humans and non-human animals 28. Rules and...
The hominization of teeth
The most conspicuous single dental feature is that whereas the canine teeth of apes are relatively large and have tips that protrude beyond the surfaces of adjacent tooth crowns, those of hominids are generally relatively small and have tips protruding only slightly, or not at all, beyond the level of adjacent tooth crowns. If the condition in apes represents the ancestral state of the canines, we must assume that a reduction occurred during hominid evolution. The fossil evidence indicates that...
Remodelling of the skull
Because of all the other changes at the head end of the body, it was inevitable that the skull would be remodelled to accommodate and adapt to these transformations. The cranial remodelling was in accordance with 1 the repositioning of the head upon an upright trunk, involving changes in the cranial base and the poise of the cranium see Figure 6 2 alterations in the size of the dentition and in masticatory habit and vigour 3 the enlargement, transverse expansion and refashioning of the brain...
The Contributors
BARBARA ADAM received her Ph.D. from the University of Wales, and is currently Lecturer in Social Theory at the University of Wales, Cardiff. She is the founder editor of the journal Time and Society. She has written extensively on the subject of social time, and her book, Time and Social Theory 1990 , won the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize in 1991, awarded by the British Sociological Association for the best first book. ALAN BARNARD is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of...
Further Reading 1
Bock, K.E. 1980 Human Nature and History a Response to Sociobiology, New York Columbia University Press. Clark, S.R.L. 1982 The Nature of the Beast Are Animals Moral Oxford Oxford University Press. Eisenberg, J.F. and Dillon, W.S. eds 1971 Man and Beast Comparative Social Behavior, Washington, DC Smithsonian Institution. Griffin, D.R. 1976 The Question of Animal Awareness Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience, New York Rockefeller University Press. Hirst, P. and Woolley, P. 1982 Social...
Reconstructing Supralaryngeal Vocal Tracts
The supralaryngeal vocal tract consists of soft tissue and cartilages, so it is never present in a fossil. However, it can be reconstructed using the methods of comparative anatomy. This can be done since the base bottom of the skull and mandible lower jaw support the tongue and other parts of the supralaryngeal vocal tract. Qualitative Lieberman 1968, Lieberman and Crelin 1971 and quantitative Laitman and Heimbuch 1982, Laitman et al. 1979 methods have been used to reconstruct the...
The Emergence Of The Hominids
Molecular studies agree in showing that humans, chimpanzees and gorillas, taken together, are clearly distinct, in a number of genetic features, from orangutans. This sorting of the four major living hominoids points to a relatively A.b. A.r. H sapiens H. ' ' ' erectus in the evolution of the Hominoidea, based on molecular data for the earlier three divergences, and on palaeontological and geological evidence for the latest one at 2.5 to 2.0 Myr millions of years before the present . The...
Clive Gamble
During the last million years hominids established themselves as the only globally distributed species. The period saw the dispersal and evolution of Homo erectus, which first appeared in Africa, into a number of regional populations of so-called 'archaic' Homo sapiens. Among these the European and Near Eastern Neanderthals formed a distinctive group. At a much later date, perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand years ago, both anatomical and genetic data point to Africa as the source for...
The Place Of The Hominids In Nature
We may accept that hominids are members of the animal kingdom. Not long ago this notion was considered revolutionary and outrageous. When, in his Systerna Naturae of 1735, the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus classified man as a part of the Regnum Animate, the French biologist Buffon described the Linnaean system as une verite humiliante pour Vhomme'. It was indeed a cardinal contribution of Linnaeus at the age of twenty-eight and over 250 years ago to have demoted humans from our previous celestial...
And The Brain
The evolutionary history of human language is necessarily complex since the underlying biological structures have other, non-linguistic functions. Parts of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex that make human language possible, also contribute to virtually every other aspect of 'creative' behaviour. Comparative studies show that selection for a larger prefrontal cortex has taken place throughout the order of primates Exner 1881 . The human prefrontal cortex is proportionally two to three times...
Notes
1 The relevant passages from Hoppius's Anthropomorpha are reproduced, in English translation, in Bendyshe 1865 448-58 . 2 For an excellent account of Monboddo's ideas, in relation to those of his contemporaries, see Reynolds 1981 38-42 . 3 I am grateful to the late Nancy Tanner for drawing my attention to this marvellous book. 4 In the following article, Tobias discusses Linnaeus's conception of the genus Homo at greater length, but advances a somewhat different interpretation.
The Evolution Of The Brain Mechanisms For Speech And Syntax
Though the brain mechanisms that regulate speech and syntax in modern human beings are species-specific, they appear to have evolutionary antecedents in the mechanisms that facilitate lateralized hand and paw movements. Although nonhuman primates and other mammals do not have species-wide preferences for one hand or paw, individual animals show such preferences when they perform difficult tasks Denenberg 1981, MacNeilage et al. 1987 . Broca's area may have initially evolved to facilitate...
Uprightness and bipedalism
The attainment of habitual and prolonged upright posture and habitual bipedal locomotion involves a number of skeletal adjustments see Figures 1, 2, 3 and 6 . These include 1 alterations in the base of the cranium and the head-neck cranio-vertebral alignment 2 the development of structural mechanisms for the transmission of body weight down the spinal column, through the upper part of the sacrum, and through the ilium of the hip-bone 3 substantial modification of the pelvis so as to make the...
Further Reading
Aiello, L.C. and Dean, M.C. 1990 An Introduction to Human Evolutionary Anatomy, London Academic Press. Bickerton, D. 1990 Language and Species, Chicago University of Chicago Press. Boyd, P. and Richerson, P.J. 1985 Culture and the Evolutionary Process, Chicago University of Chicago Press. Cohen, M.N. 1989 Health and the Rise of Civilization, New Haven Yale University Press. Durham, W.H. 1991 Coevolution Genes, Culture and Human Diversity, Stanford, Cal. Stanford University Press. Ellen, R.E...
References
Bendyshe, T. 1865 The history of anthropology , Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. I 1863 4 335 458. Bock, K. 1980 Human Nature and History a Response to Sociobiology, New York Columbia University Press. Buffon, Count Georges Louis Leclerc 1866 Natural history 2 vols , trans. W. Smellie, London Thomas Kelly. Burnett, J. Lord Monboddo 1773 Of the origin and progress of language, vol. I, Edinburgh Kincaid and Creech Facsimile reprint, Menston Scolar Press, 1967 . Clark, S.R.L....