ANTHRCUL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Oldowan, Natural Selection, Homo Habilis

• School: U of M
• Department: Anthropology, Cultural
• Course: ANTHRCUL 101
• Professor: Dumes

Document Summary

Taxonomy: how we interacted with others, hominoids: includes gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimps, and humans, hominids: family that includes humans+african apes and their immediate ancestors, hominins: all human species that have ever lived, excluding chimps and gorillas. Member of human lineage after its split from ancestral chimps includes extinct ancestors. Throwing: big brain size: increasing brain to body ratio, brains are evolutionarily costly, need larger birth canals for bigger brains, but bipedalism means you need to grow pelvis opening to have stronger pelvis, natural selection solution=longer childhood. Immature babies whose brains and skulls grow after birth, must raise them longer: early hominins compared to today had much smaller brains. Tool use: hominins and apes use some tools(shared trait)-homology: bipedalism let us free up our hands to eat, ght, use tools, etc. Teeth patterns: dietary changes re ected in tooth evolution. Large back teeth and thick enamel allowed hominids to eat tough vegetation, have sharp teeth for defence.