ANT101H5 Chapter 4: Paleoanthropology/Fossil Hominins
Document Summary
Most distinctive behavioural features of humans: dependence on, and elaboration of, culture. Human culture involves much more than toolmaking capacity. It is a fundamental adaptive strategy involving cognitive, political, social, and economic components, as well as technology . All we have of early hominins is material culture (tools for example) Richard potts (1993): critiqued simplistic perspectives on elements of culture across species. 5-7 million years ago: hominins were bipedal. Protohominins: the earliest members of the hominin lineage, as yet only poorly represented in the fossil record; thus, the reconstruction of their structure and behaviour is largely hypothetical. Estimate they had tool-using behaviour similar to chimps and bonobos. It is multidisciplinary: pertaining to research that involves the cooperation of experts from several scienti c elds. Early humans study has incorporated many scientists including geologists, archaeologists, physical anthropologists, paleoecologists. Geologists: do initial surveys to locate potential early hominin sites (including aerial and satellite imagery) Palaeontologists usually do this work as well.
