Human Evolution
Terms
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- Punctuated equilibration
- rapid macro-evolutionary change can also follow relatively long periods of stasis, e.g. transition btwn H. habilis and H. erectus, including KMN-ER 1470. Supplements gradualism
- Molecular and paleontological (including taphonomy, e.g. early Australopithecine finds in S. African limestone caves) information
- re: human evolution, plus tool manufacture.
- Ecological principle of competitive exclusion
- (H. erectus and A. bosei; AMH and Neanderthals?)
- Anatomical and evolutionary
- development of the species, implications of morphological features for the kind of subsistence, social life, and imagination they permit
- Subsistence practices
- watershed move from being a species closely adapted to a specific environment, to a species that can move between radically different environments
- Capacity for social complexity
- numbers of people in face-to-face contact, links between social groups
- Language, the imagination, cosmology, and meaning
- – hallmarks of human adaptation
- Bipedalism
- marks the appearance of the hominid line – from 6 mya (1st footprints: 3.6 mya A. afarensis)
- Distinctive dentition
- emergence of large cheek teeth (molars) and much smaller front teeth, characteristic of Australopithecines; shift from parallel to parabolic dental arcade
- Expanding brain size
- chimp 440cc, Australopithecines 450, H. habilis 600-700, H. erectus 1000+, AMH 1350
- Culture
- greater reliance on learned patterns of behavior and thought, tools, language. Associated with Homo
- Mosaic evolution
- not all features of organisms change at the same rate, e.g. bipedalism, dentition, and expanded brain size are not inherited as a single suite of characteristics
- Gradualism
- micro-evolutionary trends accumulate over long periods of time, leading to macro-evolutionary, or species level change (= modern evolutionary synthesis).