Well this week sure was interesting. I think I’ve said this about every single week but as long as it remains true I will continue to say it. For this week, we took a look at some of the various traits and plausible relatives that lead to where we are right now in terms of human evolution. I think the prompt for this blog post is really engaging, and I think it is a nice way to create a discussion after looking over so many names, dates, and features. With names like Sahelanthropous and timelines spanning millions of years, I think it is quite easy to get distracted and disorganized if you aren’t paying close enough attention.
Off of that note, When looking at the large branching history of human evolution, there are two traits in particular that we looked at this week, that I believe can be quite informative when it comes to studying modern biology and the development of humans.
The first of which is walking/standing upright. By studying the fossils and determining when and where the bipedal creatures started becoming much more prominent, we can begin to see how it is we developed from such creatures. By taking away the elongated arms and legs and reducing them to the more recognizable “human length” that we’ve come to know, we can see what is arguably the first step in humanity’s evolution. You could say that it was our first step away from the trees, no pun intended. In this progressive next step ancient homos increased their flexibility, which enabled them to adapt to the various environments in which they were moving towards. As time went on they developed stronger and more suitable bone structures. These developments meant that they had freed their hands, so that the hands could create tools, gather food, and even more advanced developments further down the evolutionary road.
The second and arguably most important trait in development comes in the form of the brain. The development of more complex and larger brains meant that intellectual progress and transformation was bound to come even further down the line. As they strayed away from pure instinct and critical thinking became a prominent aspect of their development, we began to see how close we as humans really are to those creatures. These aspects of growth meant that our own ancestors, and even the humans today, would likely not have made it in the wild. Our ability to evolve mentally allowed us to compete with creatures which were evolving in a more brutal and directly deadly way. We weren’t developing sword like teeth and we weren’t growing to the sizes of SUV’s so in order to compete with other deadly creatures we developed intellectually. we created societies, we learned to make tools, we utilized the land around us to make our own food, and we learned what we needed to defend ourselves, our families, our homes, and our way of life. That is why I think it is important for us to learn as much as we can from the fossils around today. In order to truly understand how it is we came to think the way we do, and what other possible evolutionary steps are being taken.
As the old saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Hi, I want to first say what a saying to end the post with “Rome wasn’t built in a day” because it is very true, homo sapiens didn’t just evolve overnight and turn into humans but its was a slow and evolution process. I recently read a quote somewhere in which it said nature’s secret is patience, which is one of the traits, modern humans are losing and don’t practice often in these changing times. In your descriptions of hominins trait is skillfully written and has authenticity to it with the major acknowledgement of significance of walking on two feet. The introduction of bipedalism is a forward stepping of evolve of transitioning chimpanzees to humans, to demonstrate it Lucy’s forty percentage skeleton completion helps to support the idea of early humans working on two feet with the help of their wrist and knuckles. I also agree with how your comparison of growing brain of humans to modern day technology.
Hi, I want to start off by saying I completely agree how each week has been so interesting! Prior to this lecture, I did not realize how similar we are to other species like chimps. In your post you said “By taking away the elongated arms and legs and reducing them to the more recognizable “human length” that we’ve come to know, we can see what is arguably the first step in humanity’s evolution” and I think that is super important to know so im happy you mentioned it. In my post I also commented on the importance of the evolution of our brain sizes because I find it interesting how different our brain and skull sizes can be to other species. Completely agree, Rome wasn’t built in a day!
I liked that you mentioned the development of larger and more complex brains. I’m personally interested in cognition so of course brain development is interesting to me! I find it particularly interesting how we evolved to have bigger / more complex brains than our primate cousins.
Cephalopods are very different from us, but their brains are also large and complex and they are thought to be highly intelligent in the animal kingdom. It seems that they are following a similar path of large, complex brain leading to an evolution of intelligence.
And although corvids have smaller brains, their brain to body ratio is very high in relation to other birds. They are also thought to be incredibly intelligent. It’s definitely interesting to think about our closest relatives, but looking at vastly different species is fun too.