Hominin evolution in settings of strong environmental variability

This guide provides basic information and references for a range of hominin species from 7 million years to present day. It is designed for undergraduate students to use as a study guide and to be printed off and put in order as a booklet. *Please note, that due to teaching demand, this has been uploaded prematurely, so watch out for the finished version with introduction and key questions and controversies in hominin evolution, plus the addition of Australopithecus deyiremeda.

Journal of Human Evolution, 1988

American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1998

The study of human evolution has long sought to explain major adaptations and trends that led to the origin of Homo sapiens. Environmental scenarios have played a pivotal role in this endeavor. They represent statements or, more commonly, assumptions concerning the adaptive context in which key hominin traits emerged. In many cases, however, these scenarios are based on very little if any data about the past settings in which early hominins lived. Several environmental hypotheses of human evolution are presented in this paper. Explicit test expectations are laid out, and a preliminary assessment of the hypotheses is made by examining the environmental records of Olduvai, Turkana, Olorgesailie, Zhoukoudian, Combe Grenal, and other hominin localities. Habitat-specific hypotheses have prevailed in almost all previous accounts of human adaptive history. The rise of African dry savanna is often cited as the critical event behind the development of terrestrial bipedality, stone toolmaking, and encephalized brains, among other traits. This savanna hypothesis has been countered recently by the woodland/forest hypothesis, which claims that Pliocene hominins had evolved in and were primarily attracted to closed habitats. The ideas that human evolution was fostered by cold habitats in higher latitudes or by seasonal variations in tropical and temperate zones also have their proponents. An alternative view, the variability selection hypothesis, states that large disparities in environmental conditions were responsible for important episodes of adaptive evolution. The resulting adaptations enhanced behavioral versatility and ultimately ecological diversity in the human lineage. Global environmental records for the late Cenozoic and specific records at hominin sites show the following: 1) early human habitats were subject to large-scale remodeling over time; 2) the evidence for environmental instability does not support habitat-specific explanations of key adaptive changes; 3) the range of environmental change over time was more extensive and the tempo far more prolonged than allowed by the seasonality hypothesis; and 4) the variability selection hypothesis is strongly supported by the persistence of hominins through long sequences of environmental remodeling and the origin of important adaptations in periods of wide habitat diversity. Early bipedality, stone transport, diversification of artifact contexts, encephalization, and enhanced cognitive and social functioning all may reflect adaptations to environmental novelty and highly varying selective contexts. Yrbk

Collegium Antropologicum, 2004

The »Open Source« Perspective deals with the spatio-temporal distribution pattern of Miocene hominids and suggests a pan-African perspective on the evolution of bipedalism. The shrinking of the rainforest from the Middle Miocene resulted in a selection pressure that was similar along its wide-stretched margin. The earliest hominids might represent co-existing geographic variants.

Prior to Charles Darwin work, little was known about the evolution of man. Charles Darwin proved that life has evolved over the years through his natural selection theory. For many years, the natural selection theory stood unchallenged, and many scholars were convinced that evolution was necessitated by survival antics. However, Darwin cannot be used to explain the why the Homo sapiens sapiens is the only alive species of the Homo genus today. This paper analysis various archeological finding with an aim to explain the existence of the modern man. It suggests that the evolution the modern is a result of the behavioral patterns and ecological conditions that existed in the Pleistocene times.

Journal of anthropological sciences = Rivista di antropologia : JASS / Istituto italiano di antropologia, 2009

In recent years a number of research projects concerning the evolutionary history of South African Plio-Pleistocene Hominins have been devoted to the reconstruction of specifi c aspects of the biology of these species. Th e increased number of fossil remains recovered and the use of new methods and new technological analyses have made it possible to extract a relevant amount of new information which until recently was completely unknown. One example of this, for instance, regards the lifestyle, the diet and the ecology of these fossil species. My research interest in the life histories of fossil hominins was sparked by the study of the fossil hominins from the Drimolen site. Th is rich and diverse sample off ers tremendous potential for the study of many aspects of the biology of the early South African hominins. Th e analysis of the most complete skull, DNH 7, which led us to infer some details of the biology of Paranthropus, is an example of this kind of research. Similarly, another aspect of the biology of a fossil species which has become possible to investigate is the analysis of the patterns and the rate of somatic development. Th e study of the dental development of infant and subadult specimens (where the developing dentition can be examined directly or through CT scans to assess stages of development of permanent teeth still in the jaws) can provide information concerning their growth processes. Th is cover story is also a tribute to Charles Lockwood, a colleague and friend who died tragically, at 38, in July 2008, and whose inspired work formed the basis for this research. JASs cover story and Member 1 of this site is among the most definitive examples of a predator-accumulated assemblage of hominins. In dimorphic primates, non-dominant males spend more time alone, on the periphery of a social group, or in small all-male bands. For a species that was clearly under threat of predation, solitary or peripheral behaviour would put males at high risk. The picture that seems to emerge for the species Paranthropus robustus is of a strongly dimorphic species with an accompanying shift in size and robusticity between young adult and fully adult males. These two pieces of evidence support the conclusion that sex ratios within groups were relatively high. We also inferred that male transfer occurred between groups, and that there was a relatively short period of male dominance, as indicated by the apparently high risk of predation for young adult and fully mature males. Analysis of sexual dimorphism, demography, and taphonomy of P. robustus, combined with a relatively large sample size, show a striking example of what could be possibly inferred about social structure in an extinct hominin species.

Re-Genesis Encyclopedia: Synthesis of the Spiritual Dark Motherline, Integral Research, Labyrinth Learning, and Eco-Thealogy. Part I. Revised Edition II, 2018. CIIS Library Database. (RGS.), 2018

ReGenesis is the re-telling of “Genesis” by merging and integrating: New Archaeology; the Spiritual Dark-Motherline; Eco-Thealogy; and Labyrinth Learning; plus, academic diversity and marginalized populations including the Human Planet. This ontology envisions a coherent whole that reaches beyond dualistic theo-logies, colonial religions, and other corporate ideologies. The pedagogy of the ReGenesis Database includes 12 years of photographic fieldwork in East Asia, North Africa, and Europe. Timeline is 3,000,000 BCE (earliest genus of African hominin), to year 1 CE: first and only encyclopedia to Re-Member and celebrate female archives. Method and craft was launched at the British Museum Library in conjunction with London University, and currently California Institute of Integral Studies. ReGenesis speaks to a paradigm of holistic interdependence and Eco-Thealogy embedded in the life affirming principles and Gaian values in which the whole of nature is divine and immanent. The publication of these archives, freely available to all, is rooted in 82n years of perennial research, ancient history, and gender equity.

Many species co-existed with Homo sapiens in the Late Pleistocene. Through morphological and palaeo-genomic analysis, four archaic hominins have been proven to have interbred with modern humans. Findings show that modern humans of Eurasian origin share DNA with Neanderthals. Additionally, Melanesians, share archaic haplotypes with Neanderthals but also Denisovans and an unknown group, “Species X”, whilst African populations share many with an archaic group of H. sapiens. Introgressed haplotypes of archaic origin are located within many coding sections of DNA, some at curiously high frequencies within certain populations. This can be explained through positive selective pressure, indicating that interbreeding was often adaptive. However, interbreeding also had some detrimental impacts on modern humans (e.g. infertility), which is likely a reason why there is not a greater number of archaic lineages present in modern DNA. Genetic data allows mapping of the date, location and frequency of admixture events. This contextualisation indicates that - to some extent - an assimilation model is the best fit for the “extinction” of Late Pleistocene hominin species. Therefore, it could be argued that these species are not truly extinct, and instead they live on within modern humans, as nearly 10% of some modern genomes being made up of introgressed sequences. Evidence of introgression suggests it is highly probable that admixture has been a critical dynamic in the process hominin evolution, ever since the origin of our lineage. This has numerous implications on the dynamics of interactions between hominin groups, but also on the designation of many hominin populations as species in their own right.

This Festschrift is dedicated to our mentor, teacher and highly regarded colleague and friend Peter Breunig on the occasion of his 65th birthday. It is published in the monograph series Frankfurter Archäologische Schriften and includes personal appreciations and 33 contributions from his former students, colleagues, long-time companions and friends. The title Winds of Change follows a journey through his career, reflecting both the diversity of his research and the periods in West African prehistory that have for a long time been the central focus of his research. Profound transitions in economic systems, subsistence and technologies and their effects on prehistoric societies and the environment have been Peter Breunig's main interests, with which he has entered new archaeological and challenging territories more than once in both West Africa and Namibia.