The Making of Mankind:
One Small Step

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Terms / Concepts

• bipedalism / bipedality
  
  
• hominid (human family) = biped with smaller canines
  
  
  • Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis)
    
    
• pongid (ape family)
  
  
• mandible = lower jaw bone
  
  
• "provisioning hypothesis" (Lovejoy)
  
  
• K-selected
  
  
  • "K reproductuve strategy" emphasizes the production of few offspring, in whom parents invest increased care
    
    
• r-selected
  
  
  • "r reproductive strategy" emphasizes the production of a large number of offspring with reducted partental care
    
    
• tool making
  
  
• "weapons" vs. "tools"
  
  
  • aggression
    
    
    • "warfare," "gang attacks," "killing and cannibalism"
      
      
    • "aggression" is against conspecifics
      
      
      • conspecifics — members of the same species
        
    
    
• meat eating / hunting
  
  
• scavaging (as hayenas, jackels. . . .)
  
  
• diet types
  
  
  • insectivorous (insects)
  • frugiverous (fruit)
  • herbiverous (plants)
  • gramnivorous (grasses)
  • carnivorous (meat)
  • omnivorous (all of the above)
    
    
• opposability / prehensility
  
  
• microwear analysis
  
  
  • striations
    
    
• histology = the study of tissues, esp. of their microscopic structure

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Notes

• "very primitive" = "very ape-like" in terms of anatomy
  
  
• Ardipithecus ramidus and Australopithecus anamensis had not been discovered yet when this video was made
  
  
• In the 19th century and early 20th centuries "people expected to find a large brain on a more primitive [sic.] ape-like body," and almost wanted to find this. But the large brain came later
  
  
• Note use of chimps as a model to explain prehistoric primate behavior

  Bipedalism

  • Oldest footprints in the world are those found by Mary Leakey at Laetoli, and date to 3.5 - 3 .7 mya. The Vértesszöllös footprints are from ca. 400,000 ybp. What are thought to be the oldest human footprints in other parts of Europe are the 25,000 to 27,000 ybp footprints from Chauvet Cave in France.
    
    
    • Mary Leakey in the video says "oldest human prints," but it should be "oldest hominid footprints"
      
      
    • short 4 - 5 ft. people (2 adults and a child)
      
      
    • freestriding walk, keeping in step with one another, left foot for left foot and right foot for right foot, with the child stepping in the footprints of one of the adults
      
      
    • "These footprints are more evocative than any [bone fragment] fossil."
      
      
      • but footprints are actually also "fossils"
        
        
    • but they did find other fossils (mandibles)
      
      
    • no stone tools in the deposit, therefore "man" 3.5 mya had not reached toolmaking
      
      
    • Between 8 and 4 mya in Africa there was a change from ape (pongid) to hominid
      
      
    • "The change from a quadrupedal animal to a bipedal animal requires major anatomical change."
      
      
      • free hands, tool making
        
        
      • note the change in pelvis from quadrapedial to bipedal locomotion
        
        

  Toolmaking

  Teeth / Diet

  • did teeth analysis looking at striations
    
    
  • in 1976 did a postmortem on a 1.5+ mya Lake Turkana (northern Kenyan) on an adult Homo erectus from one of Richard Leakey's expeditions. They assumed similar effects may have had similar causes. The most complete Homo erectus skeleton ever found, but it was diseased (with vitamin A poisioning, perhaps do to eating to too much raw liver?)
    
    
  • The tooth analysis shows that Ramapithecus ate the same kind of food, and that for at least 7 mya or so, maybe longer, creatures in "the family of man," or close to it, were eating the same kind of things. The food is the same as the chimpanzees now eat, i.e., they were frugivores, they ate mainly fruit.
    
    
  • the earliest evidence that shows any basic change from fruit eaters is with the 1.8 mya Homo erectus populations, a species directly ancestral to our own. Here, for thefirst time in history, you have a MAJOR change in diet. They probably ate "a little of everything," including meat, bones, and marrrow.
    
    
  • They looked at the teeth of Australopithecus robustus
    
    
  • One problem in Prehistoric Cultures is to find a behavioral pattern in our past that is powerful enough to make changes useful and necessary
    
    
    • "We would expect bipedalism to be a forest adaptation, not an adaptation to the savanah."
      
      
    • ". . . We have to look at a population's method of reproduction methods of survival."
      
      
    • Bipedalism is not an adaptation to hunting -- Owen Lovejoy (re the "provisioning hypothesis"
      
      
  • The earliest fossil that shows any change from the eating habits of the ancestors is Homo erectus. had a radically different diet. About 1.5+ mya, for the first time in human [pre]history there is a major change in diet, from frugiverous / herbiverous to meat eating.
    
    
  • Teeth provide a clue to the diet of prehistoric animals.

  Brain

  • Sequence (from The First Family): bipedalism (3.7 mya) --> tool manufacture (2.4 [2.6] mya) --> brain expansion (1.8 mya)
    
    
  • Now: bigger brains --> better tools --> bigger brains -->, etc.

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Cultures / People

• Piltdown (1908): "One of the greatest scientific frauds perpetrated this century." (orangutan jaw on human cranium)
  
  
• Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis)
  
  
  • 3 1/2 - 4 ft. tall, mature adult hominid (her teeth were fully erupted)
    
    
• "The First Family"
  
  
  • "The First Family" (close to 100 individuals, at Locality 333)
    
    
  • Are these the same or different from Mary Leakey"s finds at Laetoli, more than 1000 miles away, but from a similar date?
    
    
  • There are three species of hominids. Each occupied a different niche and were not competing with one another: (1) Robust Australopithecus, aka Paranthropus robustus (ca. 5 ft), (2) Australopithecus africanus (ca. 4 ft.), and Homo habilis (ca. 5 ft., with a larger brain).
    
    
• The earliest probable hominids now include
  
  
• "Eurydice" (1.5-million to 2-million-year-old skull of a female Paranthropus robustus [Australopithecus robustus]) is more complete (27 April 2000).
  
  
• "Little Foot, " the world's first-ever find of an entire "ape-man" skull and its skeleton (3.5 mya), was found at Sterkfontein,Transvaal, South Africa in 1998.
  
  
• The earliest collection of hominids yet discovered comes from Aramis (4.4 mya).
  
  
• Lothagam in northern Kenya (5.8 - 5.6 mya?)
  
  
• "Millennium Man" [sic.] -- 04 December 2000
  
  
• Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba -- 11 July 2001
  
  
• Ramapithecus (frugiverous), Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus robustus (aka Paranthropus robustus), Homo habilis (large brain and stone tool making), Homo erectus.

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Sites

• Hadar (Ethiopia) (1972 - )
  
  
  • "Locality 333"
    
    
  • "Lucy"
    
    
• Lake Turkana (fka Lake Rudolf)
  
  Homo erectus postmortem: The most complete Homo erectus skeleton ever found, but it was diseased (with vitamin A poisioning, perhaps do to eating to too much raw liver?)
  
  
  • pelvis change -- quadruped to biped
    
    
• Laetoli (Tanzania) (oldest hominid footprints in the world: 3.5 - 3.7 mya)

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Individuals

• Yves Coppens (Hadar: 2 Species -- Australopithecus afarensis and Homo habilis)
• Don Johanson
• Mary Leakey
• Richard Leakey, the narrator suggests there are at least 3 species: Australopithecus robustus (aka Paranthropus robustus), Australopithecus afarensis, and Homo habilis, with each living in a slightly different habitat from one another. So they were not competitors with one another, according to Leakey's view.
  • Homo was able to take advantage of a new source of food: meat
  • Australopithecus robustus had larger teeth, larger chewing muscles, and a specialized diet
  • Homo habilis was about 5 ft. tall
• Owen Lovejoy ("provisioning hypothesis")
• Alan Walker (teeth analysis and Homo erectus portmortem)

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Bibliography

• Johanson, D. C., & Edey, M. A. 1981. Lucy: The beginnings of humankind. New York: Simon and Schuster. (See also summary from Science 81, No. 2, pp. 44-45, and No. 3, pp. 44-49).
• Johanson, D. C., & White T.D. 1979 "Asystematic assessment of early African hominids." Science, 203: 321-330.
• Leakey, M. D. 1978. "Pliocene footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania." Antiquity, 52:133.
• Leakey, M. D. 1979. "Footprints in the ashes of time." National Geographic, April 1979.
• Leakey, R. E., & Lewin, R. 1978. People of the lake: Mankind and its beginnings. New York: Avon Books.
• Leakey, R. E., et al. 1976. "Fossil hominids from the Laetoli beds." Nature, 262:460-466.
• Tuttle, Russell H. 1984. Review of The making of mankind. American Anthropologist, 86:3:796-799.