Chapter 6 Additional Resources

How Did Homo Sapiens Evolve?

Websites

Videos

Natural History Museum. 2014. “How Neanderthal Are You? Tracing Our Genetic Ancestry.” YouTube video, 8:46. Posted Feb 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl-hI2IsCo0.

This short video explores the concept of Neanderthal/human interbreeding through interviews with leading anthropologists (such as Chris Stringer) as well as members of the general public. The goal of this film is to understand the various perceptions and positionalities surrounding human evolution and to explore our fascination with human origins.

NOVA “Homo Sapiens vs Neanderthals: The Evolution of Language” (YouTube 17:52)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9KnOjsc0g4

This short discussion on the key technological and evolutionary differences between modern humans and Neanderthals underscores the importance of language and symbolic expression. Interviews with noted physical anthropologists and linguistic experts provides a colorful view of the path of human evolution.

“Blade Core Basics” (YouTube 14:58) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TclZkQA0G8

“Blade Core Hammerstone Preform” (15:00) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HSMGLmolL4

Created by a flintknapper who specializes in re-creating Upper Paleolithic blade core tools; this video provides a breakdown of the key terms for stone tools that will explain the key components. The second video shows the process of making the flakes.

Books and Articles

Clark, Andy. 2011. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Language serves as scaffolding in three ways:

  1. Labeling allow for pattern recognition in nature
  2. Recalling structured sentences supports complex expertise
  3. Allows us to reflect on our own thoughts, control and guide our thinking

Language helps us link space and memory, and share that information more effectively between us, allowing us to construct cognitive niches as we make sense of the world around us. We connect old experiences to new ones and make sense of the external world, allowing us to parse out useful information and discard what is not helpful. It is through language that humans were able to rapidly develop their technological and cultural innovations and share them.

Dalton, Red. 2004. “Little Lady of Flores Forces Rethink of Human Evolution.” Nature 431(7012): 1029–1029.

———. 2006. “Neanderthal DNA Yields to Genome Foray.” Nature 441(7091): 260–261.

———. 2006. “Decoding Our Cousins.” Nature 442(7100): 238–240.

———. 2010. “Ancient DNA Set to Rewrite Human History. Nature 446: 148–149.

Dalton discusses the implications of the publication of the draft genome of the Neanderthal. This draft genome indicated that modern humans and Neanderthals did interbreed before the latter became extinct. Some modern humans contain between one to four per cent of a genetic sequence inherited from Neanderthals.

de Beaune, Sophie A. 2004. The Invention of Technology: Prehistory and Cognition. Current Anthropology 45 (2):139-162.

De Beaune looks at the simple forms of tool percussion, such as cracking nuts and shells, which falls in the skill set of chimpanzees, and traces the progression and significance of moving to more complicated motions, such as flint knapping and then grinding food and tools. In taking a cognitive approach to the evolutionary model then, de Beaune argues that these developments follow on earlier breakthroughs (pounding nuts to pounding stones) and that it makes sense—consider how children apply old lessons when learning new things, materials, or situations. Human ability to remember and to calculate striking angles is a large reason for consistent technological advance over chimpanzees.

Dissanayake, Ellen. 1982. Aesthetic Experience and Human Evolution. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 41 (2):145-155.

Looking at art has much to do with our Western philosophy—Immanuel Kant would see nature as adapted to our human powers of understanding, while bioevolutionary view claims our powers of understanding are shaped by nature—so we share an evolutionarily developed appreciation for art, with a propensity for “making special” items, such as fine-tipped arrowheads. The adaptive features of dexterity, curiosity, pattern-making, ordering, and imitating is well reflected in the art and artifacts of early humans.

Fagundes, Nelson, Nicholas Ray, Mark Beaumont, Samuel Neuenschwander, Franciso Salzano, Sandro Bonatto, and Laurent Excoffier. 2007. “Statistical Evaluation of Alternative Models of Human Evolution.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 17614–17619.

The authors discuss why it is important to have a strong model of recent human evolution, in part to understand the effects of demography and selection on genetic diversity. Evidence points strongly to modern humans originating in Africa, but whether they replaced or interbred with earlier members of the genus Homo remains unclear. The authors statistically evaluate different models of recent human evolution that have been suggested based on molecular and fossil data.

Gowlett, John, Clive Gamble, and Robin Dunbar. 2012. Human Evolution and the Archaeology of the Social Brain. Current Anthropology 53 (6):683-722.

This article is a call for paleoanthropology to have a bigger role in addressing the big story behind archaeological facts that interpret the culture of human evolution. First step is looking at the social brain hypothesis, where bigger brains were needed in part to facilitate social group cohesion and language to resolve difference and to maintain trade networks. With group life there’s more sharing and learning, but also greater need for food and supporting group wants over individual wants. Material changes, such as better tool technologies, fire and ornamentation are reflections of greater cognitive and physical ability but also the growing social need to connect and to trade. All of this points to a need to use the record to get at the deeper story of human development.

Ingold, Tim. 1995. 'People like Us': The concept of the anatomically modern human. Cultural Dynamics 7 (2):187-214.

Ingold argues that the difference between Cro-Magnon humans and modern humans is culture and technology, even though we construct it as a great difference (consider how no one says “anatomically modern chimpanzees”). The reality is that we are continuing to evolve and change; our constructions just serve as another form of representing our past selves as ‘other’.

Klein, Richard G. 2008. “Out of Africa and the Evolution of Human Behavior.” Evolutionary Anthropology 17: 267–281.

Over two decades ago, an examination of diversity in mitochondrial DNA suggested a recent African origin for modern humans, likely circa 200,000 years ago. Based on this finding, the “Out of Africa” model was developed, suggesting that these African hominins left that continent, spreading throughout the world and replacing all other hominins. Genetic analyses, fossil remains, and archaeological data all support the basic tenets of this model.

Lewis-Williams, David J., and Jean Clottes. 1998. The Mind in the Cave - the Cave in the Mind: Altered Consciousness in the Upper Paleolithic. Anthropology of Consciousness 9 (1):13-21.

Discusses the presence of different forms of cave art between the “public” and “private” spaces that may indicate different access to ritual forms and practices.

Marciniak, Stephanie, Jennifer Klunk, Alison Devault, Jacob Enk, and Hendrik N. Poinar. 2015. “Ancient Human Genomics: The Methodology Behind Reconstructing Evolutionary Pathways.” Journal of Human Evolution 79: 21–34.

Marciniak et al., working out of the Anicent DNA Centre at McMaster University, discuss new advances in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and how this technology has changed the ways scholars approach the study of ancient hominin DNA.

Mirazon Lahr, Marta, and Robert Foley. 2004. “Human Evolution Writ Small.” Nature 431(7012): 1043–1044.

This article describes the small-brained hominin fossils found on the island of Flores.

Mithen, Steven. 1996. The Prehistory of the Mind. London: Thames and Hudson.

A very approachable book about how the mind of humans developed over time. Mithen works his way through the major phases of hominid development, showing how chimpanzees and early australopiths would have episodic memory, while Homo erectus would have greater recall and ability to construct more advanced tools and social organization. By the Upper Paleolithic language would permit cognitive fluidity to allow modern humans to bring different intelligences together and radically increase their speed of cultural and technological innovation.

Pettitt, P.B. 2000. Neanderthal lifecycles: developmental and social phases in the lives of the last archaics. World Archaeology 31 (3):351-366.

There is a lot of information available for Neanderthals—and we see that they were taking care of elderly people, like La Ferrassie I who was male with bad teeth, or Shanidar I who was a badly traumatized male yet was taken care of for years after he could have hunted for himself. We know that there was a lot of trauma in the Neanderthal lives, including extreme tooth wear and more bone damage from in-close hunting with spears. Infants are not that much different from modern humans but with childhood we see the higher stress from weaning to adolescence with tooth formation that shows dietary deficiencies, greater bone injuries through the 20s and old age by 30/40s. Taking all of this evidence together, Pettitt infers that mobility and physical ability were critical for these hunters who depended on youth to be able to join the hunt by their early teens, and that those who could not keep up would soon die. In conclusion, Neanderthal’s lives were ‘nasty, brutish, short’ and conditioned largely by biological imperatives and few social ones.

Tocheri, Matthew W. 2007. “Joining in Fellowship with the Hobbits.” AnthroNotes 28 (2): 1–5.

http://anthropology.si.edu/outreach/anthnote/fall2007.pdf.

Tocheri discussed the so-called “hobbit,” a hominin discovered in 2004 that was designated as Homo floresiensis. In addition to having a short stature, this hominin had an unusually small brain. Also unusual is the hominin’s recent age—dating to less than 20,000 years ago. The author focuses on the significance of this hominin finding, including addressing some critiques that the fossils represent a new species rather than a deformed modern human.

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