CGSC 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Bipedalism, Social Cognition, Australopithecine

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Cognitive Science
• Course: CGSC 1001
• Professor: Jim Davies

Document Summary

Cognitive science social cognition and the evolution of. That"s (cid:271)o(cid:374)es, (cid:374)ot skeleto(cid:374)s: a(cid:374)d that"s (cid:374)ot e(cid:448)e(cid:374) to say they"d e(cid:448)e(cid:396) (cid:271)e fou(cid:374)d. hu(cid:373)a(cid:374) fossils a(cid:396)e i(cid:374)(cid:272)(cid:396)edi(cid:271)ly (cid:396)a(cid:396)e. How long have humans been around: the oldest fossils of fully-formed humans are only 50k-100k years old. If language is an instinct, like chomsky says it is, then it probably had to have been evolving for longer than humans have been around: aust(cid:396)alopithe(cid:272)i(cid:374)es had ha(cid:374)ds e(cid:448)ol(cid:448)ed fo(cid:396) (cid:373)a(cid:374)ipulatio(cid:374). We do(cid:374)"t k(cid:374)o(cid:449) that they did(cid:374)"t use tools: however, only stone & metal tools last, most modern hunter-gatherer societies of today have more biodegradable tools than stone ones. Standard timetable for human evolution: we differentiated from something100k-200k years ago, we differentiated from chimps much longer ago. Evidence of human evolution: the oldest human fossils were found in africa, from about 100,000 years ago, however, some stuff found in zaire has modernish-looking tools, but they were dated.