Oral Traditions Of A Female

In the Article “Redrawing Humanity’s Family Tree” by John Noble Wilford, describes how two different skulls challenge the theories of human origins and migrations. The Central African skull, that dates back to nearly 7 million years ago, was assigned to a whole new genus and species because of its apelike and evolved hominid species. The 1.75-million-year-old Georgian skull shows evidence that the first hominids may have been intercontinental travelers who set motion the migrations that occupied the whole planet. Finally a third skull was found that is the same age and shares a resemblance but, the size of the skull suggests that the brain was smaller than expected for H. erectus.

The “wrist morphology” is more similar to that of African ape/humans than that of Neanderthals or Homo Sapiens (iv.). The reason that this is contradictory to the theory that Lb1 is simply a mutated member of Homo Erectus is that the wrist structure actually forms during the early stages of prenatal development greatly decreasing the possibility that the wrist structure could have been a modified version of modern Homo’s. This evidence would indicate that Lb1 belongs to a species of Homo that branched off before the evolution of the modern wrist structure that was prevalent in more recent

Ardipithecus and other early Australopithecines lived in a habitat much wetter than the environment of Aramis, Ethiopia today. The set for scene one could at times experience a “rain fall,” and should include a woodland habitat with patches of denser forest and an abundant amount of monkeys just as what would have been seen between five and three million years ago. In 1992, an expedition led by Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley discovered the fossil of Ardipithecus ramidus, dating back to 4.4 million years ago. The skeleton nicknamed “Ardi” ended up weighing around 112 pounds, stood almost four feet tall, (somewhat larger than a male chimpanzee but smaller than a female gorilla) and was most likely a female. Ardi’s ape sized brain has a cranial capacity of only 300 to 350 CC.

The Paleo-species of Homo neanderthalensis have been the subject of debate since their discovery in 1829. Even in the early beginnings, the scientific research concerning this early hominin species has been debated, and it was not until 1864 that the first Homo neanderthalensis was recognized as an early hominin fossil (citation). Fortunately, progress has been made into piecing back together the history of Homo neanderthalensis. However, there are still significant questions that remain unanswered; a broad example of one of those questions is what was the contributing factor to their extinction.

This new species has been named the "Homo naledi".This new class of ancestry has a combination of Ape and human like features. Scientists have stated the naledi was relatively big, standing at about about 5 feet tall, with long legs, and weighing 100 pounds or so. The Homo naledi seemed to transition from primitive to modern, the top of the limbs – the pelvis and shoulders – are primitive, the hands and feet are very human like, they're shoulders were able to rotate more than ours suggesting they engaged in climbing.

Appearance can be a major factor when determining what group of hominins or other ancestors remains belong to. When comparing remains from different time periods, comparing bones found can tell a lot. The lower limbs such as the foot of the creature were considered prehistoric and derived traits that were dissimilar from other hominins (Morwood, M.J., et al. 2009; Larson, S.G., et al. 2009). As other remains are compared, it has become evident that the creature from Flores, Indonesia has various traits that are both similar and different to many different hominin species. The foot is a lot longer in size in comparison to modern humans, however many of their size and stature are viewed as considerably smaller or similar to that of an Australopithecus

Australopithecine or Australopith, is an informal term used, primarily, to describe all species in the, related, Australopithecus and Paranthropus genera (McHenry 2017). The clade does, however, also include; Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7–6 mya), Orrorin tugenensis (6 mya), Ardipithecus kadabba and Ardipithecus ramidus (5.8–4.4 mya), Kenyanthropus platyops (3.5–3.2 mya), and other human-like primates (McHenry 2017; Szpak 2017). The distribution of Australopithecines stretches across Africa, encompassing species of varying ages and complex relationships (McHenry 2017). Paranthropus and Australopithecus are often referred to as ‘robust’ and ‘gracile’ clades of Australopithecine, respectively, as opposed to individual genera (Szpak 2017).

Members of the Australopithecus family had several characteristics that were distinctively unique. Australopithecus fossils exhibited both apelike and human characteristics. This combination of traits led researchers to the assumption that Australopithecus must be an ancestor of the genus Homo, since they share many traits this led to their classification as hominids.

Our world as we know it, is full of missing puzzle pieces when it comes to completing the picture of how human kind truly came to be. For years and years talented fieldworkers have been working all over the world to try and collect all of these missing pieces. Slowly over the years an increasing amount of body and fossil records are helping us better understand when, where and how hominins came into and left existence. There have been many discoveries between the Australopithecus Afensis and more recent discoveries with very human like features like the Homo Erectus. The discovery of the Australopithecus Sediba is seen as a bench mark halfway point in our evolutionary time line their fossil discovery gives us insight on how they would have lived, what they could have looked like and how they are presumably related to humans.

Homo Erectus has been argued to be the first hominid to successfully migrate out of Africa, Home Erectus had a brain size approaching that of modern humans, averaging just under 100 cubic centimeters, his brain actually reached the lower limit of modern human brain size, Erectus was also the first human species to have a wide, fleshy nose, his face was flat and his skull had prominent ridges over the brow. his shorter arms were a departure from Homo habilis and Australopithecus, indicating that tree-climbing ability had finally been lost, His longer legs were better suited to running and walking long distances- a trait that doubtless helped him migrate into Asia, ranging from 4 foot 9 to 6 foot 1 are from 88 to 150 pounds, Homo Erectus was the first ancestor to approximate modern humans in size, in fact, except for the brow ridges and smaller brain. homo erectus was perhaps the fisrt species that we might consider to be essentially human.

The Australopithecus genus of human like apes walked the earth about 1.9 million years ago however variations of Australopithecus have been estimated to be around as early as 4.5 million years ago. The Australopithecus genus is a set of early upright walking ape species, these early ancestors generally looked more apelike than human as fur still covered most of their bodies and their slanted flat faces and forward jaws still resembled apes more than recent humans. Features more common to later genus homo have been found present on the various Australopithecus species; namely features such as its smaller teeth, longer legs, less hand like feet, adapted pelvis, stronger reliance on bipedalism and slightly increased relative brain size all distinguished

Australopithecus africanus is a species of human like and ape like animal. The Australopithecus africanus lived primarily in Southern Africa. A man by the name of Raymond dart set out to find one and he did. “It was half ape and half human, and the skull of a child in Johannesburg, South Africa” says Brain. Dart chipped and chipped away at the rock containing the skull until eventually he was able to make out the child’s face. The child had a full set of milk teeth and also its permanent molars in place.

One of the earliest hominins are grouped as pre- australopiths. We came to know about

Hominids with a brain absolutely and relatively larger than that of the australopithecines appeared about 2.3 million years ago. These hominids are classified in our own genus: Homo. The earliest species to appear was the Homo Habilis. It was the first of our ancestors to show a significant increase in brain size and also the first to be found associated with stone tools. These characteristics resulted in this species’ placement into the human genus, Homo.

The Rising Star cave was pointed out to scientists by a group of spelunkers who squeezed through the narrow opening and saw the multitude of bones around the underground chamber. The opening was so narrow that few scientists could enter. Because of this, the cave was excavated by a team of six women called the “underground astronauts”. They uncovered more than 1,500 fossils belonging to the same species (Wilford 2015). The bones were distributed across nearly the entire chamber, including side passages (Dirks et. al. 2015: 14). The remains make up at least 15 individuals of a wide span of ages; almost every bone is represented more than once in the find. This allows researchers to study a full population instead of studying individuals (Kepp 2015). Many of the hands, feet, wrists, and ankles are nearly complete, though many of the longer bones are fragmented (Dirks et. al. 2015: 21). It is the largest find of fossils in Africa to date. These fossils have been classified as part of a new species of hominin, called Homo naledi because “naledi” means “star” in the Sotho language of the region (Gibbons 2015). It also refers to the Dinaledi Chamber within the Rising Star cave (Berger et. al. 2015: 3). This makes Homo naledi the best known fossil species in the human genus (Bower 2016).