I think it is amazing that we can study certain things left behind like footprints, fossils, and even bones or other remains when we find them to put together the mystery of human ancestry and evolution. To dig even deeper, it is incredibly remarkable that we have the tools, the knowledge, and the ability to find these sorts of things in the first place. This to me proves our complexity yet significance as the dominant species on our planet. To be able to say, “hey, we have similarities most with this living creature,” then be able to trace those similarities back through time to see how our lineages overlap and create us as we know it now is something that is mind-blowing and so inspiring.
Some of the things that stuck out to me the most from this week’s lesson included the discussion on the idea of bipedalism. It seems sort of silly, but I had not really given this much thought. Obviously, humans are bipedal. The thing about it is considering that we might not have always been, but that this trait became advantageous for us so we kept doing it years and years over until it became habitual and one of the things that make us, us. It is also a similarity shared with our ape friends. I liked how our lecture lesson described this bipedalism as our “primary form of locomotion,” and also how it was used to show how other animals might be able to do it, but it is not their preferred transportation. It is cool to think that we gradually grew into this becoming our preferred transportation. I am sure there are specific things that made this advantageous for us/our ancestors, and I would be interested in reading about that. I understand, though, that the main concept here with walking on two feet is that it was more efficient for traveling and over time we traveled a lot more and a lot further. Hence our great odyssey where we inhabited every corner of Earth!
Going off of this, I think it is also interesting how our legs became longer, and our arms became shorter, and how this benefited us for the same ideas as I discussed previously. Another piece of the lesson from this week’s material and lecture was the idea of smaller teeth as being a hominin trait, and how the changes in our dental structure have changed over time. Shortening our canines was again, advantageous for us, and I am familiar with some of the ideas of forensic anthropology where age can be determined from tooth remains. Because of this, it was interesting to learn about the evolution of our teeth from our ancestors and how they changed over time because we did not need them for fighting with our mouths since our hands were now free from my first main point in this blog post of bipedalism. Overall, fossilized skeletal remains help align the pieces of our human story. This is important because even though we have a decent idea of where we came from, a lot of links are still incomplete, or even just missing altogether.
I really enjoyed reading your post! I agree that a lot of the concepts we have been learning are very interesting or as you call it “mind-blowing”. Your first point on bipedalism is very well done. You mention that bipedalism was advantageous for our ancestors. I think bipedalism was so advantageous because it allowed our ancestors to travel more efficiently. This allowed us to increase our area of land that that one can hunt on and also run away from predators more easily. The other trait that you mention that is also advantageous is our ancestor’s teeth. I find it really interesting how bipedalism might have had a hand in the evolution of our teeth, seeing as we didn’t need large canines since we could fight with our hands. It is surprising how it all links together.
Devonshire,
Going off of your response to my blog post, I really appreciated how you were able to respectfully explain some of your own thoughts in that response. I agree that bipedalism was probably so advantageous for our ancestors because of being able to travel more efficiently, but I had not thought about how it would have been able to help our ancestors hunt or escape from predators. Obviously, it would, but I could not imagine how we must have looked then learning to do these things. It took a very long time for us to become comfortable with standing on our own two feet, and even now sometimes I think in certain situations it would be easier to crawl! I also liked how you talked about how this led to our evolution of teeth. Without one advancement, we would not have the next.
Hi alivia! So we all have learned that bipedalism is one of out most defining characteristics as humans, and i loved your comment about how that means at one point we were not on two feet. The statement seems obvious but is very interesting to think about, like we can see that other primates can walk on two feet but choose not to for a majority of the time, its so strange to picture our ancestors not walking on two feet. In a class i took a few years ago, IBIO 365 (biology of mammals), we talked about the evolution of a lot of different species. For example, dolphins are an entirely aquatic mammal, but they are quite closely related to the hippo. So strange to think about the species adapting from land to sea, so at one point they entered the water and never left.
Alivia,
Loved the detailing on your post. Your blog posts this week was like my own. This week’s lesson was very informative, and I learned a lot. A lot of what I learned was very shocking, you are mentioning bipedalism as an interesting part of the lesson. I found that stimulating and I mentioned that in my post, as well as the hominins teeth structure. Very thought provoking to discover that our canines changed over time for the better. The fact that our teeth structure was a certain way to indicated that we used our teeth as a defense mechanism. You also mentioned our arms getting shorter and our legs becoming longer, this probably happened when our canines got smaller essentially this helped us to defend ourselves a little better.
Great post Aliiva!