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    From Monkey to Homo Sapiens A Journey Through the Stages that Led to Humankind
    From Monkey to Homo Sapiens A Journey Through the Stages that Led to Humankind
    From Monkey to Homo Sapiens A Journey Through the Stages that Led to Humankind
    Ebook153 pages2 hours

    From Monkey to Homo Sapiens A Journey Through the Stages that Led to Humankind

    By Elias Jefferson

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    About this ebook

    The origin of modern humans has probably been the most debated issue in evolutionary biology over the last few decades.

    Modern humans (Homo sapiens), the species we are, means 'wise man' in Latin. Our species is the only surviving species of the genusHomobut where we came from, has been a topic of much debate. Modern humans originated in Africa within the past 200,000 years. They evolved from their most likely ancestor, Homo erectus, which means 'upright man' in Latin. Homo Erectus is an extinct species of human that lived between 1.9 million and 135,000 years ago.

    At some point in its evolutionary history, our species Homo sapiens ceased to be a nonlinguistic, non-symbolic organism, living in the world as presented by Nature. Instead, they began to exist in a world that it reconstructs in its mind. Most scientists since Darwin have been content to explain this extraordinary transformation in human consciousness by the operation of natural selection. However, the human fossil and archaeological records indicate that modern human symbolic consciousness is not the culmination of the long trend that natural selection would predict. Instead, it shows that significant change in the human past has been episodic and rare. As can be determined from the archaeological record, the passage from non-symbolic to symbolic cognition is a recent and unprecedented event. So contemporary, indeed, that it significantly postdates the acquisition of modern human anatomy as expressed in skeletal structure. The biological (neural) capacity underwriting the radically new behavioral model arose as an incidental exaptation in the same process that produced the new skeletal structure of Homo sapiens. But that it lay unexpressed until it was "discovered" using a cultural innovation, plausibly the invention of language.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publishervincenzo nappi
    Release dateSep 8, 2021
    ISBN9798201120696
    From Monkey to Homo Sapiens A Journey Through the Stages that Led to Humankind

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      From Monkey to Homo Sapiens A Journey Through the Stages that Led to Humankind - Elias Jefferson

      CHAPTER 1

      The Human Family Trees

      In biological taxonomy , humans belong to the greater apes, which in turn are one of the groups of primates. The other species of greater apes are chimpanzee, bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), gorilla, and orang-utan. Our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobo.

      Orang-utans are tree dwellers, while the others mainly live on the ground. The apes are predominantly vegetarians, but the chimpanzees also eat some meat and insects. Al except the orang-utans lives in hierarchical troops dominated by one or several males. One interesting difference between apes and monkeys is that among the former (including Homo), the females move out of the troop in which they were born to join a new troop; among the monkeys and many other social animals, it is the males who change troops.

      The branch of the evolutionary tree that was to develop into the modern human being diverged from the branch that was to become chimpanzees at least six million years ago. About biological development, we know quite a lot about how human anatomy has changed since then. We have been able to use various skeletal finds to reconstruct the broad contours of the evolution of the brain and the rest of the body.

      The human forebears on the branch of development that diverged from other apes are called hominids. Assumptions about the various hominids are based on archaeological finds that mainly consist of fossilized pieces of skeletons and stone tools.

      One general apprehension is that a new type of ape emerged on the savannahs. That evolution has been thought to take place in East Africa. Between approximately eight and five million years ago, the climate in this region became much drier, and many areas that had been raining forest turned into the savannah.

      Life on the savannah requires good mobility on the ground, so the apes living on the savannah increasingly walked on two legs (instead of using their knuckles like the chimpanzees). One explanation for this is that walking on two legs requires less energy when moving about on the open ground. The lower 'hands' develop into 'feet' that are miserable for grasping but better for maintaining balance when moving rapidly on two legs. Another possible explanation is that our ancestors began walking on two legs to reduce the amount of body surface exposed to the sun. Out on the savannah, in contrast to life in the forest, the first hominids were exposed to much more direct sunlight. Today we speculate that we have become less hairy and better at perspiring thanks to the need to regulate body temperature in that climate.

      Beasts of prey constitute a greater hazard on the savannah than in the rain forest, and gradually the hominids gathered in bigger groups for better protection and to acquire food more effectively. Over time the brain grew in size to cope with the harsher way of life and the increased social complexity. Natural selection saw to it that walking upright (and later, running) became more natural by reshaping the bones of the pelvis, resulting in a smaller and narrower pelvic girdle. For the head of a newborn to pass through the pelvis, hominid children were born increasingly underdeveloped. (The brain of a newborn chimpanzee is about 60% of its adult weight, while that of a newborn human child is about 24%.) This in turn meant that the mothers had to be committed to their young for a longer period before they became sufficiently developed to take care of themselves. Also, human babies are the only ones among the primates that cannot cling to their mothers by themselves. Their mothers, consequently, became more dependent on other members of the group for food. And increasingly, the father of the child assumed this responsibility.

      The earliest known hominids were the australopithecines (the name means 'southern apes'), who lived between ca. four and two million years ago. Different fossil finds over large parts of Africa indicate that there were several different species. The most famous find from this period is the nearly complete skeleton known as 'Lucy'. She was about one meter tall. One can tell from Lucy's feet and pelvis that the australopithecines walked upright. We conjecture that they had a form of family structure in which food was shared and a division of labor in which the males were more involved in gathering food and hunting than were the females.

      The Homo Generation

      The first species traditionally asserted under the Homo family is Homo habilis , 'the handy one: who existed between 2.5 and 1 .7 million years ago. It is in association with skeletal remains from this species that we have found the earliest, roughly fashioned stone tools. There are certain interesting differences between the australopithecines and the species that belong to the Homo family. The australopithecines have a comparatively small brain and large molars, whereas Homo has a larger brain and smaller molars. The chests of the australopithecines are conical, but Homo chests are barrel-shaped. This is attributed to Homo's having developed the breathing technique required when running, while the australopithecines probably could not run for long distances.

      The first human species, Homo erectus, 'the upright one: existed between 1.7 million and 300.000 years ago. The designation is not strictly correct because even the australopithecines walked upright. Homo erectus had an appreciably larger brain than the earlier hominids. This species was also taller than its predecessors, measuring about 150 centimeters. It emigrated from Africa and colonized substantial parts of the Old World. The so-called Peking man as well as the Java man belong to Homo erectus.

      Homo erectus also had seasonal dwelling places, which indicates a more highly developed way of life. Their diet was distinctly more based on meat than that of the earlier species. We assume that they could use fire, at least during the later period of their existence (the first traces are about years old).

      Homo sapiens, 'the knowing one', emerged about 200.000 years ago. Its brain was another 20% larger than that of Homo erectus. Another anatomical difference, important for theories about the origins of speech, is that Homo sapiens' larynx lies low in the throat but high up in the throats of the other hominids and apes. This has been taken as a sign that spoken language developed in connection with the genesis of this species. Culture developed-rites and myths were probably born at a rapid pace. We know that at least 40.000 years ago cultural art forms like cave paintings and engravings appeared.

      The Neanderthal man, Homo neanderthalensis, who presumably disappeared about 40.000 years ago, has been regarded as a subspecies of Homo sapiens. However, more recent genetic studies suggest that this species derived from Homo erectus about 500.000 years ago. The Neanderthals were larger and stronger than Homo sapiens, but probably less intelligent, and in time they were driven out of the competition by the modern human being. The brain has grown constantly from australopithecines up to Homo sapiens. Above all, the cerebral cortex has grown, and especially the frontal lobe. But itis only with Homo erectus that we find a brain substantially larger than that of the apes. The increase accelerated additionally with the appearance of Homosapiens. The brain is an energy-consuming organ and requires a nutritious diet.

      The hominids satisfied the brain's energy requirements by becoming more carnivorous. To acquire enough meat, they developed an organized hunt. The early hominids probably also fed on carrion and, like the hyenas, made use of the game that other predators had killed. From an anatomical point of view, the human being is just one more ape. About 98% of our genes are the same as those of gorillas and chimpanzees. But when considering the mental aptitude made possible by a larger brain, we are essentially new in evolution. The question is what the evolutionary powers were that drove the gradual growth of the brain. The size of the brain was naturally significant for the development of the thinking capacity of the hominids. But we cannot know anything directly about their world of ideas; we must conclude what is known about how our ancestors lived.

      Therefore, to understand how humans think we will largely have to consider

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