Evolution is a ever changing factor of human lives that is usually brought on over vast amounts of time and pushed by environmental changes. Modern humans have come a long way from where we started with our full development of bipedalism and larger brains but, also with our ability to make tools, and art and to problem solve unlike many of our fore ancestors. for instance, the Homo floresiensis. Homo floresiensis is a regional archaic that comes from a small island of Flores in Indonesia and are from about 100,000 to 50,000 years ago. They were isolated on this island which lead scientists to believe they must have had to walk across continents, or they must have traveled by water if there was still land mass. These species stands about 3 feet tall, which is very similar to the australopithecines for example Lucy. There were many similarity between these two species, both having incredibly small brains for starters. What is interesting about this is that the Homo floresiensis has a smaller brain than from what it evolved from. I find this very interesting because with a less complicated brain survival in this isolated region must of been a challenge. However, they thrived enough to gain skills to be self-sufficient is very impressive.

This specie still share similarities with primitive features like long arms and un-arched feet. There was a key difference between australopithecines like Lucy and Homo floresiensis was that the latter had developed the use of stone tools. Which was surprising because with the brain the size of a chimp you’d think these early archaic hadn’t developed the skill. Along with that the Homo floresiensis had gone a step above and became hunters. It wasn’t too surprising that they had the ability to use stone tools because even some chimps can do that but the hunting was very surprising. Especially after the people on this island started to experience dwarfism du to being isolated on this island.Finding species like these show that one simple evolutionary trait can be the key to one species being more successful or having a better survival rate than others.

As I’ve said before evolution’s biggest push is climate and it’s ever changing nature. As the climate grew harsher and colder, the species of the land had to evolution and adapt and from that evolution came the Neanderthals. From the lecture what surprised me most about them was that they actually had larger brains than humans around 1502cc while humans range fro 1350cc-1400cc. That fact was shocking to find out because from past classes I knew that Neanderthals weren’t more advanced than us but with larger brains they should of been. After doing analysis, it was realized that due to their large brain they developed faster leaving less time to learn things as children. I think that the large brain is the most important trait that comes from evolution that makes us the modern beings we are today. Without our large brains we would still be able to survive but we wouldn’t be everything we could be, for instance with the cavemen starting to participate in things like art, and forming a sense of community.