ARCL 140 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Java Man, Body Plan, Technological Evolution
4 Feb 2017
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Environmental shift - sea levels dropping, glacier formation, changing the connectedness of the continents. Increased encephalization - increase in brain size relative to body size. Adaptive shift in body plan of h. erectus. H. erectus: elongated torso, narrower - long and lean body plan. Committed to terrestrial habitat - losing the arboreal shape. Used more sophisticated stone tools - correlated trajectory, but correlation does not equal causation. May have eaten significant quantities of meat. Body size - avg. size 168 cm. Brain size avg. increases from h. habilis 500cc to h. erectus 900cc. Oldest fossils date ~1. 8 mya, east turkana, kenya, older female. Olduvai gorge, tanzania, 1. 47 mya very robust, largest known brow ridges, walls of cranial bones are thin, 1067 cc brain capacity. Large body size variation - sexual dimorphism but that is not the only reason, possibly climatic adaptations, regional variation, nutritional variation, etc.
