Anthropology 2226A/B Study Guide - Final Guide: Australopithecus Anamensis, Sub-Saharan Africa, Homo Ergaster

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Week 9: on the relevance of humans to understanding humans. Great apes have not always been the closest living relatives of homo sapiens. 50,000 yrs ago humans shared the planet with our smart, upright-walking relatives including big-brained neanderthals in europe and tiny hobbits on the island of flores. Suddendorf (prof at u queensland) says we are killing off our closest primate relatives. The most fundamental human adaptation is bipedalism. Ardipithecus ramidus known as ardi is ealiest hominin discovered (4. 4 mya) It"s the earliest known skeleton from the human branch of the primate family tree. The earliest known bipedal ape (i. e. hominin) was sahelanthropus tchadensis who dates 7 may. In last 50 yrs there"s been many models proposed for origin of bipedalism: Freeing the hands for tool-use (but bipedalism precedes stone tool manufacturing by. As an adaptation for ef cient locomotion between spatially scattered food and water sources.