I enjoyed learning this week about the diversity of hominins and how multiple, highly adaptive hominin forms arose in Africa long before the presence of modern humans. Before this week I have only ever studied the forms of hominins that lead to directly to us and I had no idea how incredibly diverse other hominins in Africa were. Two characteristics of early hominins that stood out to me were the teeth and feet of early hominins. In my opinion, these are some of the most important traits that have developed in human evolution and have given us the ability to adapt to any environment that we find ourselves in.

The earliest hominins had teeth that were much more apelike. This mainly includes having very large canines and molars for chewing tough plant material. Large canines were mainly adapted for the use of fighting in primates, as most primates would lead with the face when fighting each other and use their front limbs to push off of each other. As hominins became habitually bipedal, our hands were free to do more instead of being used to walk. Standing on two feet, fighting began to include more use of the hands to attack opponents. As was said in the lecture video, it would be a poor decision to lead with your face when your opponent now has the ability to punch you. As the teeth become less of a factor in who would win in a fight we see a decrease in the size of hominin teeth, but canines are still useful for things such as tearing into meat to support the omnivorous diet of hominins. As early hominins mainly subsisted on plant materials, their molars were much larger so as to grind plant material easier and forms such as Paranthropus had several adaptations that made it much easier for them to chew. Fossil remains of hominin teeth can teach anthropologists a lot about the diet of early hominins and thus the environments that these teeth were adapted for. Today, our teeth remain in a similar shape to those of our ancestors and because most of our teeth are generally similar in size we are able to live off of a wide variety of diets.

The feet of early hominins are another major key to understanding human evolution and our shift from an arboreal lifestyle to life on the ground. Some early hominins that are more primitive have a grasping toe that would enable them to continue a life spent both climbing trees and walking upright. As hominins spent less time in the trees and more time moving around in open areas, the structure of their feet changed to make walking upright easier. As our feet adapted to bipedalism, hominins freed up the use of their hands for things such as better use of stone tools and carrying things long distances. By studying the structure of fossil hominins’ feet, anthropologists are able to learn more about the environment early hominins lived in and how they were able to successfully traverse their environment. This change in the structure of hominin feet explains why our skeletal structure is so different from many other animals and why our species frequently face difficulties such as back pain and complicated childbirth. Although it has its drawbacks, habitual bipedality is one of the main features of human evolution that has allowed us to be as successful as we are.