MARY KILBOURNE MATOSSIAN
From Hominids to Human Beings
Mary Kilbourne Matossian, "From Hominids to Human Beings," in Shaping
World History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997),9-14. excerpted in Kevin
Reilly's Worlds
of History
This selection is part of a chapter from a
recent world history book. How is the subject of this chapter different from the
previous article? How is this time period different?
What, according to the author, happened in
East Africa around 15 million years ago? What happened as a long-term result of
this change around 4.5 million years ago? What happened about 2.5 million years
ago? 200,000 years ago? 35,000 years ago? 27,000 years ago?
What happens if you try to place the dates in this selection
on the time line you drew for the previous article?
Draw a time line specific to this selection.
Mark the left-most notch " 5 million years ago," then add ten equally
spaced notches, ending with "today" on the far right. Label notches in
increments of 0.5 million years. Now plot the major dates referred to in the
article, indicating to what the dates refer.
If you were to extend this time line to
include 15 million years ago -using the same incremental scale -how many pages
more would you need? If you wanted to include the dates mentioned in this
chapter's first selection by Carl Sagan, how many pages more would you need?
To understand the geography of this
selection, locate the Great Rift Valley on a topographic map, which will show
the rift in relief.
The article follows:
Anthropologists have named us Homo sapiens
sapiens, the clever, clever hominid. Over a century ago certain scientists
abandoned the Western creation myth and began to seek human origins in nature
among the primates (apes and monkeys). If apes and people had many resemblances,
what kind of creatures linked the two species? When and where did this linking
happen?
The discoveries of physical anthropologists
and geneticists have indeed established that we belong to the primate family.
The line of hominids (bipedal apes, apes who walk on two legs) differentiated
from that of other apes about five million years ago. We share with chimpanzees
and bonabos (pygmy chimpanzees) between 98 percent and 99 percent of our
structural genes. Who can watch primates in a zoo without experiencing a shock
of recognition?
In December 1992 in Ethiopia, Tim White, an
anthropologist from the University of California at Berkeley, and his team
discovered the earliest hominid yet known. They announced their discovery in
September 1994. Anthropologists believe that the bones discovered are almost 4.5
million years old. These hominids walked upright, were four feet tall, and lived
in a woodland setting. Their skull capacity was about one third that of ours.
They lived very close to the time of separation between hominids and apes
estimated by geneticists -'-- five million years ago.
In August 1995 Mary Leakey and her team
discovered in Kenya similar hominids that were 4.1 million years old. These
hominids are estimated to have weighed between 101 and 121 pounds. This is the
most recent of a long sequence of discoveries. It now seems likely that hominids
differentiated from apes in northeast Africa, in or near the Great Rift Valley
of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Hominids had habitually upright posture and
walked on two legs. They lived mainly on the ground, not in trees. These
attributes appeared long before their brain expanded and they began to make
tools.
About fifteen million years ago the
environment in East Africa was changing. The earth's crust was splitting apart
in places, while highland domes of up to nine thousand feet formed in Ethiopia
and Kenya. These domes blocked the west-to-east airflow and threw the land to
the east into rain shadow. Lacking moisture, the continuous forests in the east
fragmented into patches of forest, woodland, and shrub-land. About twelve
million years ago the Great Rift Valley , running north to south, appeared in
East Africa.
This development had two major biological
consequences. First, the Great Rift Valley was an east-west barrier to the
migration of animal populations. Second, although the apes in the dense jungle
on the west side of the valley were already adapted to a humid climate and thus
were not forced to adjust to a new environment, in the east a rich mosaic of
ecological conditions emerged. Biologists believe that mosaic environments drive
evolutionary innovation, since competing successfully in such an environment
requires new adaptations. The hominids -bipedal apes -developed in such a place.
This is the first example of the influence of climatic change on prehistory.
According to Peter Rodman and Henry McHenry,
on the east side of the Great Rift Valley, where woodlands were scattered, a
bipedal ape had an advantage. It could move more easily from one grove of
food-bearing trees to a more distant grove. An ape who walked habitually on two
legs was more energy-efficient than an ape who walked on four. Upright posture
was also more efficient for cooling the body in thc daytime heat. Other
anatomical changes made it easier for hominids to stride and to run. The
beginning of brain expansion in hominids began in Africa around 2.5 million
years ago with Homo-habilis and was associated with the appearance of the
earliest stone tools. By 1.8 million years ago a more advanced hominid, Homo
erectus, was making sharp-edged tools. The process involved knocking one
rock against another, chipping off a sharp flake from the "core" stone
and using the flake as a knife. Hominids could use this knife to cut through the
hides of most animals and get to the meat quickly. Evidence shows that with this
innovation hominid meat eating soon increased.
There was probably a positive feedback loop
between the expansion of the hominid brain and meat eating. The hominid brain is
three times as big as that of an a pc of similar body size. Meat is an excellent
source of protein and, because of its fat content, is high in calories; this
helps to support the larger brain. At the same time the growth of the brain in
relation to body weight favored the improvement of human hunting skills and
higher meat consumption. In hominid females, the pelvic opening widened to
compensate for the increased brain size of the hominid infant. However, that was
not enough, and any greater widening would reduce bipedal mobility. A solution
to the problem of increased hominid brain size was the natural selection of
those hominids that produced children born "too early," with brain
size only one third that of an adult. These infants are slow to mature and so
depend on their parents for a longer period. This extends the time that parents
can transmit culture (patterns of behavior) to their offspring. In contrast,
baby apes are born with a brain one half the size of that of an adult ape. They
mature more quickly than hominids do, but have fewer years of dependency to learn
from their parents.
What sort of culture did prehistoric humans
transmit? Cultural anthropologists who have studied the way of life of foragers
(hunter-gatherers) today say that the usual size of a human band is twenty-five
persons, including children and adults. A larger unit, the dialectical tribe,
includes about five hundred persons. Foragers use only temporary camps and move
about on their range. Since longevity was usually only twenty-five to thirty
years, many children were raised by relatives, their parents being dead. The
band, not the nuclear family, was the principal social unit. A band acquires
food cooperatively, by hunting and gathering, and shares it. Adults teach their
children, who are born self-centered, to become sensitive to the needs of others
and to share food.
Is such sharing, social behavior unique to humans? Frans de
Waal, a researcher at the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia,
discovered that chimpanzee groups consist of caring, sharing individuals who
form self-policing networks. He believes that the roots of morality may be far
older than we are. A chimpanzee seems to realize that social disorder is a
threat to its individual well-being. When rivals embrace, signaling an end to
their fight, the whole colony may break into loud, joyous celebration.
However, chimpanzees share food and other
treasures only when it is to their advantage. They cheat when they can get away
with it by hiding a private stock of food. When cheating, they try to deceive
other members of the group. Fortunately, they live in groups of less than a
hundred, so they can watch each other and identify the cheaters. Older
chimpanzees deny food to young cheaters by excluding them from sharing in the
next windfall.
It appears that both our moral and immoral
tendencies are part of the natural order. Both "good" and
"evil" are aspects of our adaptive and competitive strategies. We can
imagine that human goodness developed out of the need to adjust to a cooperative
group. By belonging to such a group an individual had a major advantage in the
struggle to survive and reproduce.
No more can we think of stone-tool making and
sharing behavior as unique to our species. Nor are we unique in our capacity for
tactical deception and savagery. Rather, we have a place in a natural mammalian
continuum.
The only behavior unique to humans appears to
be the ability to communicate quickly with a large number of phonemes ( discrete
sounds). We can make fifty phonemes; apes can make only twelve. Humans can speak
more quickly and articulately than any other species. The placement of our vocal
organs makes this possible. When did our ancestors acquire spoken language
involving more than twelve phonemes? Some anthropologists think it was as far
back as 2.5 million years ago (the time of Homo habilis). Most agree that
complex spoken language goes back at least thirty-five thousand years to the
time of the cave paintings in Europe. They think that language evolved as a
means of social interaction, allowing individuals to prevent fights or settle
them more easily.
Recent discoveries in the Pavlov Hills of the
Czech Republic indicate that ceramics and weaving go back twenty-seven thousand
years -to before the beginning of settled life. These skills were probably the
innovations of women, because women could make pots and weave while they took
care of children.
When did people exactly like us, anatomically
speaking, appear?
Many anthropologists think that our species (Homo
sapiens sapiens) differentiated around two hundred thousand years ago in
either south or northeast Africa. From northeast Africa people spread across the
earth. They went to the Near East, Europe, China, Southeast Asia, Australia, the
Pacific Islands, and the Americas. Lucky humans settled on lands suited to
agriculture. Only they could look forward to sustained population growth and
civilization.
They were especially lucky if the relationship
between Land and water in their region was favorable for water transportation,
as the cost of moving bulk goods by water for a given distance was one eighth to
one twentieth that of moving them by land. Waterborne commerce may have been
just as fundamental as the development of farming for the birth of civilization.
OVERALL REFLECTIONS ON THE TIMELINE EXERCISES:
The great variety of
possible time lines reminds us that history can focus on different time periods.
Any history must make some judgment about how things have changed over time, and
these changes can be measured only within an appropriate framework. Consider,
for instance, what type of time line you would use if you wanted to compare the
publication dates of each selection in this chapter. And, again, what time line
would you use to plot your life as well as your parents' and grandparents'
lives?
Thinking of time in a
linear way can be quite useful, but there are many things a time line cannot do.
It does not, for instance, establish a definitive relationship between two
events except within the context of time. Assume time relationships to be
coincidental unless there is reason to believe otherwise. The fact that one
event occurred before another cannot, by itself, establish causation.
Determining cause and effect is a complex process that begins with knowledge of
when things happened.
Recognize, too, that a
linear way of thinking about time is not the only way. Time might also be
thought of as recurring cycles, a vast continuum. Seasons, holidays, even
birthdays bring us back to familiar times: They become our touchstones.
Recurring dreams, images, feelings, and smells can make the past the present, if
only for a moment. Ecstatic experiences eliminate time entirely- time does fly
when you're having fun.
Culturally speaking,
linear time is a Western (European and American) concept. In ancient India, by
contrast, philosophers imagined time as an endless series of cycles rather than
a straight line. If you envisioned time as a cycle, how would you chart it? If
you thought of time as a never-ending cycle, would history matter?