This week’s lectures were fascinating to me. I feel like I learned so much about the ways that humans have evolved as a species, and I also feel like I have unlearned many unaccurate assumptions about our evolutionary traits.

I think that the thing I found most interesting from this week’s lectures was the importance of studying bipedalism. I didn’t realize how significant the ability to walk on two legs can be. I think that it’s super interesting that humans have evolved to walking normally on two legs from ancestors that did not walk on two legs. Bipedalism seems to give us a lot of information about human biology; it tells us that humans evolved from ancestors who were, biologically, more inclined to walk on two legs. This tells us that bipedalism must have served some sort of survival advantage, given the shifting environmental conditions.

Another hominin trait that I found interesting was the smaller canines. This is interesting to me because you would think that meat-eaters, such as humans, would benefit from having larger canines, but it seems that the opposite is true. Smaller canines became more beneficial from the perspective of physical fighting. Individuals who have larger teeth have a tendency to attack with their teeth, which is not beneficial because it gives your opponent an opportunity to attack your face. Because of this survival advantage, humans evolved with smaller canines.

The other hominin trait that I found significant was the large brain size. I think it’s super interesting the way that brain sized has evolved and grown throughout our ancestral history to get to where we are today. Our large brain size explains why humans are more biologically equipt to survive and reproduce as a species. If our brains sizes were as small as our chimpanzee ancestors, we would not be able to use tools, invent things, or possibly even organize our society in any meaningful way. We would be a society or people that operate heavily based in our own emotions, with no means of logically controlling them.

I think that the diversity of hominins has had a major influence on human evolution because humans have essentially been able to evolve into all of the traits that would give us the best advantage in order to survive and reproduce. We have the most ideal brain size, ideal canine size, the ideal method of moving around, the maturity required to use and invent tools; all of these traits are a gift from the major diversity in hominin traits. And because anthropologists are able to study and reconstruct fossilized remains from the past, we have a clearer idea of exactly how and why these traits are advantageous to us.

Overall, without the ability of anthropologists to study these fossilized remains, we would be much more in the dark about the other species that have made us who we are today, and we would be in the dark about the potential fate of our own species. Because we know so much about how our ancestors have lived and how or why they died, we have a much clearer idea of where humans lie in that mix.