In this week’s lectures and videos, it focuses on the concepts of paleoanthropology. Paleoanthropology is the study of fossil hominids. It mainly focuses on the early development of humans, and how it contributes to human evolution.
One hominin trait that is interesting to me is bipedalism. We learn of this idea in many different classes. However, this week’s lectures presented specific information on bipedalism that I did not know about. Bipedalism refers to an organism walking upright on two feet. It was interesting to know that it first started with our “primitive” hominins, where they were bipedal but still had primate like nature. Anthropologists use early hominins such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Chad), Orrorin tugenensis, and Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi) to understand the origins of this distinctive trait and how hominin diversity has affected human evolution. Once different fossils were discovered they started to notice features of primates start to disappear as time went on, and human like features started to become more present. It seems these changes are caused by climate change. Eventually, when you are put in a stressful conditions when the environment is rapidly changing to one that does not favor in the ways of that time we start to adapt physically to the environment. Bipedalism separates the first hominids to the four legged primates, and this helps us distinguish our modern day humans.
Another hominin trait I found interesting was the size of the brains. It was mentioned in past lectures about how the size of our brain has contributed to human evolution. Many people say that the size of our brain distinguishes us from our early ancestors. Our early ancestors had smaller brains compared to what modern day humans have. As time went on and we started to develop new traits, we begin to see the size of the brain grow larger. The growth in size was because of the different adaptations our early ancestors had faced. Once they started to stand up upright, they were able to do more things such as build simple tools and migrate to different areas. As the size of our brain increased, the body size begin to increase as well. I said in my earlier paragraph, where features began to change based on the stressful conditions our early ancestors were under. Under these stressful conditions, the brain size was able to increase in size. This was based on the fact that the increase in size helped our ancestors be able to survive and adapt in different environments. I believe that the challenges that our early ancestors has faced contributed to how complex the modern day human brain is.
Fossilized skeletal remains of early human ancestors can help anthropologists reconstruct and learn from the past. For example, once anthropologists determine the age of a fossil, it can help place evolutionary changes within the context of specific environmental conditions by using relative dating or chronometric dating. Anthropologists also used things like taponomy or paleoecology to reconstruct what happened after plants/animals died and to reconstruct the prehistoric environment. In conclusion, anthropologists study fossils carefully to help us answer questions about the development of the modern day human.
Additional information I used to help me for blog post: http://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/brains
The size of the brain was also a trait that drew my attention! It is fascinating how quickly the brain has changed too. If you look at a chart of the growth, it grows exponentially over the last 2 million years. The parts of the brain have changed as well, different parts for various purposes have expanded based on what is a priority for the evolving brain. For example, the development of language had a huge impact on the shape of the brain because of the part of the brain responsible for processing language wasn’t used prior to this.
This was an interesting article I read about it: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-has-human-brain-evolved/
It’s cool how we respond and adapt to stressful situations. The challenges our ancestors faced made our brain the way it is today, as you mentioned. This will continue with the challenges we face now and how the brain develops in the future.
Hi Sophia!
I really enjoyed reading your detailed and informative post. I loved how you went even further with the material and used outside resources. I definitely agree with you (and many others) in that many evolutionary changes are caused, or at least influenced, by climate change. If an organism doesn’t adapt to the environment, they will not survive. You mentioned an interesting concept in that you believe the challenges our early ancestors faced contributed to the complexity of the modern human brain. When I was reading the material, I didn’t think of this idea but it would make complete sense if it were the case! It would only enhance and confirm all of the evolutionary standpoints revolving around the commonalities between our ancestors and modern human biology.
Hi Sophia! I love that you mentioned the way that climate change had a major impact on evolutionary history and the prominence of bipedalism. This makes me wonder what kinds of evolutionary changes that all species on earth will be experiencing due to the current climate change issues. Because the planet is projected to go through major changes in the near future, I wonder how this will affect the evolution of all species on earth, primarily humans. What types of traits could prove to be beneficial for survival in the near future? If all of these traits (such as bipedalism, brain size, etc) have come from environmental changes such as the ones we are currently experiencing, how could history repeat itself? I think the fact that we are able to take what we have learned from the past and use it in our advantage when it comes to the future is amazing.
I agree that determining the age of fossilized skeletal remains of early human ancestors can help anthropologists reconstruct and learn from the past. This reminded me of the last video we watched for this week. The anthropologist in that video was able to determine the age of how old the fossil was and the age of the hominid when it died. I found that very interesting that anthropologists are able to do this. The same anthropologist in the video was able to figure out that there were caves around that area. He determined they died by falling into the cave. Fossilized skeletal remains can help you find out more than what you expected. I agree that taponomy are important too. We can find a lot of information about the past while looking at plant fossils too.