PSY 375 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Tabula Rasa, Arapesh Languages, Animal Cognition
Document Summary
We do know much about human evolutionary history. Our current occurrence in large nation states, with extraordinary technology, represents a small fraction of human evolutionary history: mammals (200 mya) Monotreme = platypus: primates (~85 mya) Overlapping area of vision between left and right eye. Differences in detention: hominids (~4. 4 mya) The lineage leading to humans split off from the one leading to chimpanzees about 4-8 mya. One of the earliest, critical adaptations of the lineage leading to humans was bipedalism (4. 4 mya). Increased brain size has been suggested to cause (or be caused by) changes in tool making, tool use, cooperative hunting, complex social interaction, and complex communication. ~ 1. 2 mya some homo population began to show large increases in brain size soon reached our modern levels about 1350cc. The reasons for the increase are unclear but more sophisticated toolmaking, communication, cooperative hunting and other factors are believed relevant.
