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Human Evolution (Anthropology)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. The changes from Miocene ape to modern person, over several million years, make up the subject matter of human evolution. These changes involve skeletal modifications accompanying bipedalism and, later, manual dexterity and brain expansion; life-history modifications, accompanying prolonged periods of immaturity and maturity; social modifications, accompanying the development of family and kinship and the concomitant obligations of marriage and fatherhood; ecological modifications, accompanying the creation and exploitation of a niche for a technology- and language-reliant species; and genetic modifications. Some of these changes are directly recoverable paleontologically (for example, the anatomy of fossil pelves), some are directly recoverable archaeologically (for example, the development of stone tools), and some are not directly recoverable at all, and can be only inferred (for example, symbolic communication).
  4.  
  5. Syntheses
  6.  
  7. The story of human evolution begins with interpretations of anatomical and geological information and ends with discussions of cultural diffusion and artistic meaning. This reflects the development of the human condition, as a transition from biological evolution to biocultural evolution (Plummer 2004, Clark 2008). The major general textbook in human evolution is Klein 2009. Cartmill and Smith 2009 is somewhat stronger biologically and proportionately weaker archaeologically. Broader in scope, to encompass the biological place of humans within the primate order, are Martin 1990, Conroy and Pontzer 2012, and Fleagle 1999.
  8.  
  9. Cartmill, Matt, and Smith, Fred 2009. The human lineage. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
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  11. An insightful and critical overview of the human fossil record.
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  13. Clark, G. 2008. Neandertal archaeology—implications for our origins. In American Anthropologist 104:50–67.
  14. DOI: 10.1525/aa.2002.104.1.50Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. Critically examines the significance of contemporary Upper Paleolithic research.
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  17. Conroy, Glenn, and Pontzer, Herman. 2012. Reconstructing human origins. 3d ed. New York: W. W. Norton.
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  19. A broad survey of paleoanthropology, incorporating both theory and data.
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  21. Fleagle, John G. 1999. Primate adaptation and evolution. 2nd ed. Waltham, MA: Academic/Elsevier.
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  23. A classic text on primate biology, copiously illustrated. A new edition is anticipated soon.
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  25. Klein, Richard. 2009. The human career. 3d ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  27. Newest edition of a classic text on the human fossil record.
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  29. Martin, Robert. 1990. Primate origins and evolution: A phylogenetic reconstruction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  31. An original and comprehensive synthetic treatment of primate biology.
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  33. Plummer, Thomas. 2004. Flaked stones and old bones: Biological and cultural evolution at the dawn of technology. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 47:118–164.
  34. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20157Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. Reviews the earliest evidence for tool use in the human fossil record, and its implications.
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  37. History
  38.  
  39. Pre-Darwinian writers, such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Robert Chambers had freely speculated on the development of humans from the apes (Lamarck 1914 and Chambers 1844). Charles Darwin originally intended to discuss humans in his planned book, but when his abbreviated version was published as Darwin 1859, it contained only a single sentence on humans. Huxley 1863 can be credited with originating the field of human evolution.
  40.  
  41. Chambers, Robert. 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.
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  43. Pre-Darwinian bestseller, building on Lamarck’s ideas, for a British audience. It was published anonymously.
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  45. Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection. London: John Murray.
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  47. The foundational document of modern biology, and the focal point of a cultural revolution.
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  49. Huxley, Thomas H. 1863. Evidence as to man’s place in nature. New York: D. Appleton.
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  51. From the man known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” the first modern work of human evolution.
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  53. Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste. 1914. Zoological philosophy. Translated by Hugh Elliot. London: Macmillan.
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  55. Classic pre-Darwinian evolutionary vision, including the imaginative derivation of the human stock from “the highest four-handed apes.” Translated from French. Originally published in 1809.
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  57. Historiography
  58.  
  59. The classic reference for pre-Darwinian ideas is Greene 1959. Livingstone 2008 treats roughly the same time frame, focusing on the intimate relationship between the question of the origin of species and the origin of human races for the Victorians. Until quite recently, however, historians of science oddly took little note of ideas about human evolution after Darwin. The key general historical reference for human evolution is Spencer 1996. For many years, Bowler 1986 stood virtually alone as a full-length historical analysis of post-Darwinian ideas on human evolution. The influential Landau 1991 took a very original approach to the scientific epistemology of human evolution, analyzing it historically in the context of mythologies of origin and transformation. Lewin 1987 dealt with diverse contemporary topics in human evolution, but from the less critical historiographic perspective of a journalist. More recently, Gundling 2005 and DeLisle 2007 look broadly at the discovery and interpretation of the human fossil record.
  60.  
  61. Bowler, Peter. 1986. Theories of human evolution: A century of debate, 1844–1944. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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  63. Framed by Chambers 1844 cited in History and the synthetic theory, the first major historical work on post-Darwinian thought on human evolution.
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  65. DeLisle, Richard. 2007. Debating humankind’s place in nature, 1860–2000: The nature of paleoanthropology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
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  67. Historical survey of the study of human origins.
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  69. Greene, John. 1959. The death of Adam: Evolution and its impact on western thought. Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press.
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  71. Scholarly approaches to understanding human origins, climaxing with the Darwinian revolution.
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  73. Gundling, Tom. 2005. First in line: Tracing our ape ancestry. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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  75. The history of the study of the australopithecines.
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  77. Landau, Misia. 1991. Narratives of human evolution. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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  79. Explores the similarities between the scientific analysis of human origins and the literary structure of the hero myth.
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  81. Lewin, Roger. 1987. Bones of contention: Controversies in the search for human origins. New York: Simon and Schuster.
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  83. Episodes in the history of the study of human evolution.
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  85. Livingstone, David. 2008. Adam’s ancestors: Race, religion, and the politics of human origins. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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  87. Reviews the role of abolitionism in British society and its relationship to the emergence of evolutionary theory.
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  89. Spencer, Frank. 1996. The history of physical anthropology: An encyclopedia. New York: Garland.
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  91. Two-volume compendium of the history of biological anthropology.
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  93. Journals
  94.  
  95. The three primary journals in the field of human evolution are the Journal of Human Evolution, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and Evolutionary Anthropology. Of these, the last is particularly valuable for its explicit focus on “Issues, News, and Reviews” rather than on primary research results. Additionally, the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology is published annually as a supplement to the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and contains extensively referenced review articles. Although several “classic” papers in the field have been published in general anthropology journals, such as Current Anthropology, American Anthropologist, and Man (now the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute), these journals generally devote proportionately little space to the particular subject of human evolution. Journals in cognate fields, such as primatology, genetics, and human biology also publish primary literature relevant to human evolution. The leading general science journals (Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) regularly publish major articles, and review the latest discoveries or controversies.
  96.  
  97. American Anthropologist.
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  99. Published quarterly by the American Anthropological Association.
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  101. American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
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  103. Published by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and incorporating the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology.
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  105. Current Anthropology.
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  107. Published bimonthly, sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and now incorporating (as supplements) the proceedings of the foundation’s major international symposia.
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  109. Evolutionary Anthropology.
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  111. An excellent bimonthly source for critical and timely literature reviews and thoughtful opinion pieces.
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  113. Journal of Human Evolution.
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  115. The major journal for original research in human evolution.
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  117. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
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  119. Published quarterly by the Royal Anthropological Institute (UK). Formerly Man.
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  121. Nature.
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  123. The most prestigious general science journal in the world, published weekly from London.
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  125. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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  127. Published weekly by the National Academy of Science, incorporating almost entirely primary research articles.
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  129. Science.
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  131. The most prestigious general science journal in the United States, published weekly by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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  133. Primate Roots of the Human Species
  134.  
  135. Since the middle of the 18th century, we have classified humans zoologically along with lemurs, monkeys, and apes as primates, generally unified by their manual dexterity and visual acuity. Features of the skull and teeth unite humans specifically with Old World monkeys and apes as Catarrhini, and major features of the spine and shoulder unite us with the apes. These classic anatomical clusters are also supported by genetic data. Knowing where we fit in, and the kind of animals that we evolved from, gives us a biohistorical context in which to understand the kind of species that we have become.
  136.  
  137. Evolutionary Context
  138.  
  139. Understanding the place of humans in the natural order entails recognizing that it is constructed by a dialectic between the evolutionary uniqueness of our species (predicated on our locomotion and the ecology of our cultural niche) and our biohistorical continuity with the other primates, especially the great apes. It is not uncommon to encounter the reductive proposition that humans are “nothing but” slightly variant apes, overvaluing the primate history and undervaluing the actual divergent evolution: notably Morris 1967, Diamond 1992, and Wrangham and Peterson 1996. This view was criticized by the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century; the most thoughtful statement on the subject remains Simpson 1949. The relevance of primatology generally to human evolution is the theme of Schultz 1969. The principal text for contemporary primatology is Strier 2010. The most sophisticated invocation of primate data for understanding aspects of human social evolution is probably Hrdy 2009. Tool use in primates is now appreciated to encode some subtle questions, such as why bonobos and gorillas do not use tools in the wild as extensively as chimpanzees do, while they are seemingly just as intelligent (McGrew 2010).
  140.  
  141. Diamond, Jared. 1992. The third chimpanzee. New York: HarperCollins.
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  143. Popular biology work of the genre known as “nothing-butism,” that is, we are “nothing but” slightly modified apes.
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  145. Hrdy, Sarah. 2009. Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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  147. Sophisticated argument about human evolution, based on the critical use of nonhuman primate behavior.
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  149. McGrew, William C. 2010. Chimpanzee technology. Science 328:579–580.
  150. DOI: 10.1126/science.1187921Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151. Brief review of issues in understanding primate tool use.
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  153. Morris, Desmond. 1967. The naked ape. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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  155. Popular classic of “nothing-butism,” focusing on sexuality as the crucial differentiating factor in human evolution.
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  157. Schultz, Adolph H. 1969. The life of primates. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
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  159. The life work of the preeminent primate anatomist of the 20th century.
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  161. Simpson, George G. 1949. The meaning of evolution. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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  163. A classic formulation by a distinguished paleobiologist, exploring not simply the data of evolution, but also the implications of the mid-century “synthetic theory of evolution” for modern life.
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  165. Strier, Karen B. 2010. Primate behavioral ecology. 4th ed. Don Mills, Canada: Pearson Education Canada.
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  167. Authoritative modern synthesis of primatology.
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  169. Wrangham, Richard, and Dale Peterson. 1996. Demonic males: Apes and the origins of human violence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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  171. Argues that human war is continuous with chimpanzee male-bonded aggression.
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  173. Collected Essays
  174.  
  175. Several edited volumes contain interesting and thoughtful papers attempting to contextualize humans among the primates. Washburn and Dolhinow 1968 was the major such work of the 1960s; Kinzey 1987 was the major such work of the 1980s; and de Waal, et al. 2001 continued the theme in the 21st century. Smuts, et al. 1987 and Campbell, et al. 2010 are the leading multiauthored syntheses of primate behavior, separated by two decades.
  176.  
  177. Campbell, Christina J., Agustin Fuentes, Katherine C. MacKinnon, Rebecca M. Stumpf, and Simon K. Bearder. 2010. Primates in perspective. 2d ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
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  179. Authoritative contemporary multivocal volume on primate behavior.
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  181. de Waal, Frans B. M., ed. 2001. Tree of origin: What primate behavior can tell us about human social evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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  183. The issues and research of the 21st century, for understanding human evolution.
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  185. Kinzey, Warren G., ed. 1987. The evolution of human behavior: Primate models. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.
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  187. The issues and research of the 1980s, from diverse perspectives, for thinking critically about human evolution.
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  189. Smuts, Barbara, Dorothy Cheney, Robert Seyfarth, Richard Wrangham, and Thomas Struhsaker, eds. 1987. Primate Societies. Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  191. Authoritative edited volume for primate social behavior in the 1980s.
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  193. Washburn, Sherwood, and Phyllis Dolhinow, eds. 1968. Perspectives on human evolution. Vol. 1. Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
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  195. Incorporates and reviews the primary issues and research interests in the 1960s.
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  197. Ape Behavior and Intelligence
  198.  
  199. There are a number of important full-length works on the study of single primate species, relating them to the human condition. Goodall 1971 was very influential, both for humanizing the chimpanzees and for popularizing field primatology. The study of chimpanzee behavior in the wild continues to have a privileged position in human evolution (Mitani 2009). Fossey 1983 brought primate conservation to the foreground, which was made into a popular 1988 feature film starring Sigourney Weaver. Although the meaning of the cognitive studies of apes remains controversial (Povinelli 2000, Wynne 2004), the studies of Washoe (Fouts and Mills 1997), Kanzi (Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin 1996), and Koko (Patterson and Linden 1988) have stimulated interest in the ability of apes to be trained to communicate in a human mode.
  200.  
  201. Fossey, Dian. 1983. Gorillas in the mist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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  203. Classic study of wild mountain gorillas in Rwanda, calling attention to poaching and conservation.
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  205. Fouts, Roger, and Stephen Mills. 1997. Next of kin: What chimpanzees have taught me about who we are. New York: William Morrow.
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  207. Humans who have taught chimpanzees to use sign language raise questions about the nature of language and the nature of humanity.
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  209. Goodall, Jane. 1971. In the shadow of man. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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  211. Classic work summarizing the first decade of research on the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream Reserve, Tanganyika (Tanzania).
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  213. Mitani, J. 2009. Cooperation and competition in chimpanzees: Current understanding and future challenges. Evolutionary Anthropology 18:215–227.
  214. DOI: 10.1002/evan.20229Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  215. Reviews new findings on chimpanzee social behaviors.
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  217. Patterson, Francine, and Eugene Linden. 1988. The education of Koko. Austin, TX: Holt Rinehart & Winston.
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  219. A language-trained gorilla.
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  221. Povinelli, Daniel. 2000. Folk physics for apes: The chimpanzee’s theory of how the world works. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. Experimental approaches to accessing chimpanzee thoughts.
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  225. Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue, and Roger Lewin. 1996. Kanzi: The ape at the brink of the human mind. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
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  227. A language-trained bonobo, now living in Iowa.
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  229. Wynne, Clive. 2004. Do animals think? Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  231. Questions popular uncritical interpretations of ape cognition.
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  233. Epistemology and Primatology
  234.  
  235. Several recent studies examine aspects of primatology to explore the scientific meaning of primates for human evolution, the issues that are taken for granted, and the actual production of scientific knowledge. Haraway 1989 studies the transformation of the field by women primatologists. Small 1993 analytically isolates the mating habits of female monkeys. Strum and Fedigan 2000 is a notable conference volume that brings together the work of people who study primates and people who study the people who study primates. Marks 2002 explores the meaning of genetic data and genetic relationships for understanding human evolution. Corbey 2005 reflects upon the relationship to the apes philosophically. Rees 2009 examines the way in which infanticide was discovered, analyzed, interpreted, and bitterly contested by field primatologists.
  236.  
  237. Corbey, Raymond. 2005. The metaphysics of apes: Negotiating the animal-human boundary. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  239. Explores the epistemic border than separates humans from other creatures.
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  241. Haraway, Donna J. 1989. Primate visions. New York: Routledge.
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  243. The history of modern primatology, through the impact of its most prominent women practitioners.
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  245. Marks, Jonathan. 2002. What it means to be 98% chimpanzee. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  247. A critical analysis of use of genetic data for understanding the place of humans in the natural order.
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  249. Rees, Amanda. 2009. The infanticide controversy: Primatology and the art of field science. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  251. A sociological study of the interpretation of primate infanticide by scientists.
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  253. Small, Meredith. 1993. Female choices: Sexual behavior of female primates. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
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  255. Examines mate choice across primates, dispelling the idea that males compete and females passively take the winners.
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  257. Strum, Shirley C., and Linda M. Fedigan, eds. 2000. Primate encounters: Models of science, gender, and society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  259. An attempt to unify different perspectives from primatology and science studies, culturally situating the study of primates.
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  261. Scientific Record
  262.  
  263. At the heart of the study of human evolution is systematics, the construction and imposition of a semblance of order upon nature. Not only do we need to decide what the species and higher taxa of modern primates are, but we need to make parallel assessments for extinct primates as well. These inferences are based on not only the three spatial dimensions of living species, but on a fourth dimension of time as well. The introduction of diachronic skeletal data, however, is accompanied by a considerable loss of direct information: physiology, sociality, and ancestry. The scientific task of human evolution is to develop rigorous inferences about primate species and their relationships, given the nature and limitations of the data at hand.
  264.  
  265. General Considerations
  266.  
  267. The taxonomic framework for discussing human evolution is particularly vexed and inconsistent (Conroy 2002, White 2003, Marks 2005), which makes navigating the literature especially confusing. Moreover, the goal of paleoanthropology is the construction of an authoritative set of origin narratives, so it is inevitably bound up in political discourses of colonialism, nationalism, and identity. Examples include China (Sautman 2001, Schmalzer 2008), post–World War II Europe and America (Proctor 2003), South Africa (Bohannon 2004), and Kenya (Butler 2001).
  268.  
  269. Bohannon, John. 2004. New South Africa puts emphasis on reclaiming humanity’s past. Science 304:377–378.
  270. DOI: 10.1126/science.304.5669.377Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. The political role being played by human evolution in postapartheid South Africa.
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  273. Butler, Declan. 2001. The battle of Tugen Hills. Nature 410:508–509.
  274. DOI: 10.1038/35069232Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  275. Two groups of paleontologists claim rights to excavate the same site in Kenya, and one of them found Orrorin.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Conroy, Glenn. C. 2002. Speciosity in the early Homo lineage: Too many, too few, or just about right? Journal of Human Evolution 43:759–766.
  278. DOI: 10.1006/jhev.2002.0596Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. Questions the recognition of species in the fossil record of human origins.
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  281. Marks, Jonathan. 2005. Phylogenetic trees and evolutionary forests. Evolutionary Anthropology 14:49–53.
  282. DOI: 10.1002/evan.20049Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283. Raises issues in the taxonomy of the apes.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Proctor, Robert N. 2003. Three roots of human recency: Molecular anthropology, the refigured Acheulean, and the UNESCO response to Auschwitz. Current Anthropology 44:213–239.
  286. DOI: 10.1086/346029Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. Examines the relationships of politics to human origins research.
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  289. Sautman, Barry. 2001. Peking man and the politics of paleoanthropological nationalism in China. Journal of Asian Studies 60:95–124.
  290. DOI: 10.2307/2659506Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. Examines the intersection of paleontology and nationhood.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Schmalzer, Sigrid. 2008. The people’s Peking Man: Popular science and human identity in twentieth-century China. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  294. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  295. The use of Peking Man in contemporary nationalist discourse in China.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. White, Tim D. 2003. Early hominids: Diversity or distortion? Science 299:1994–1997.
  298. DOI: 10.1126/science.1078294Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. Questions the splitting of hominid fossils into many species.
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  301. Grand Theories
  302.  
  303. Overarching theories to explain human evolution are generally unpopular, for they are inevitably simplistic, although some are more competently argued than others, and may well contain elements of truth. Some of the better known “big theories” incorporate a crucial role in human evolution for aggression (Ardrey 1966), the missionary position (Morris 1967), eating seeds (Jolly 1970), wading (Morgan 1972), gendered food procurement (Zihlman 1978), infantilization (Montagu 1981), monogamy (Lovejoy 1981), and cooking (Wrangham 2009).
  304.  
  305. Ardrey, Robert. 1966. The territorial imperative. New York: Atheneum.
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  307. Popular work on the innateness of violence, and its centrality to the human condition.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Jolly, Clifford. 1970. The seed-eaters: A new model of hominid differentiation based on a baboon analogy. Man 5:5–26.
  310. DOI: 10.2307/2798801Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311. In certain ways the gelada baboon may be convergent on early human adaptations.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Lovejoy, C. 1981. The origin of man. Science 211:341–350.
  314. DOI: 10.1126/science.211.4480.341Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  315. Social arrangements driven by monogamous sociosexual relations lie at the core of human origins.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Montagu, Ashley. 1981. Growing young. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  318. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. Focuses on the prolongation of immaturity, both in body and behavior, as a crucial element of human evolution.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Morgan, Elaine. 1972. The descent of woman. New York: Stein and Day.
  322. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  323. The “aquatic ape hypothesis”: Humans are dextrous dolphins.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Morris, Desmond. 1967. The naked ape. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  326. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. Sexuality is the key to human origins.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Wrangham, Richard. 2009. Catching fire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
  330. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. The control of fire, and its value for food preparation, was crucial to the development of human biology and society.
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  333. Zihlman, Adrienne. 1978. Women in evolution, Part II: Subsistence and social organization among early hominids. Signs 4:4–20.
  334. DOI: 10.1086/493566Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. Gathering and scavenging, as female activities, may have been more important than hunting as a male activity for early humans.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Modeling Human Divergence
  338.  
  339. Although the chimpanzee is our best-known living relative, it is probably a poor model for the ancestral condition of human locomotion and behavior (Thorpe, et al. 2007; Sayers and Lovejoy 2008). The complex genetic patterns encountered among human, chimp, and gorilla indeed suggest a metaphor to describe our ancestry less like an evolutionary tree, and more like a trellis or rhizome (Arnold 2009). Food is a perennial favorite topic in scientific narratives of human evolution (Teaford and Ungar 2000). Cartmill 1993 examines the role of carnivory in the story of human evolution; Hart and Sussman 2005 queries the position of early humans on the Pleistocene food chain; Richards and Trinkaus 2009 suggests that adding seafood to the meaty diet of Neandertals was a differentiating behavioral factor for early modern humans.
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  341. Arnold, Michael. 2009. Reticulate evolution and humans: Origins and ecology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  342. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. A dendritic pattern may not be the best description of human phylogeny.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Cartmill, Matt. 1993. A view to a death in the morning: Hunting and nature through history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
  346. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347. Looks critically at the role hunting and carnivory are thought to have played in human evolution.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Hart, Donna, and Robert Sussman. 2005. Man the hunted. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
  350. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. Argues that early humans were more likely prey species than top-level predators in the Pleistocene.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Richards, Michael, and Erik Trinkaus. 2009. Isotopic evidence for the diets of European Neanderthals and early modern humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106:16034–16039.
  354. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0903821106Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355. Human diets may have differed from those of Neandertals by having a larger component of seafood.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Sayers, Ken, and C. Owen Lovejoy. 2008. The chimpanzee has no clothes. Current Anthropology 49:87–114.
  358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. Questions the naive view that living chimpanzees are particularly good, specific models for human ancestry.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Teaford, Mark F., and Peter S. Ungar. 2000. Diet and the evolution of the earliest human ancestors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 97:13506–13511.
  362. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.260368897Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. Dietary shifts early in human evolution.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Thorpe, S., R. Holder, and R. Crompton. 2007. Origin of human bipedalism as an adaptation for locomotion on flexible branches. Science 316:1328.
  366. DOI: 10.1126/science.1140799Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. The best ancestral model of human bipedalism is not the knuckle-walking of chimpanzees, but the shambling of orangutans.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Fossil History
  370.  
  371. Good historical reviews of the human fossil record are given in Ward 2003 and White 2009. The human condition is anatomically identified principally by a large brain, small canine teeth, and bipedal posture. We focus on the earliest emergence of bipedality as indicating the divergence of our ancestry from that of the chimpanzee and gorilla. The human lineage diverged from that of the other African hominoid apes in the latest Miocene, about six to seven million years ago. For hominoids of the Miocene, see Harrison 2010. Orrorin tugenensis is currently considered the earliest known biped at 6 million years of age (Galik, et al. 2004; Richmond and Jungers 2008). The mode of locomotion is more ambiguous for Sahelanthropus (Brunet, et al. 2002; Wolpoff, et al. 2002). The five-million-year-old Ardipithecus had a divergent big toe, and it is regarded as a facultative, rather than an obligate, biped (White, et al. 2009).
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  373. Brunet, Michael, Frank Guy, David Pilbeam, et al. 2002. A new hominid from the upper Miocene of Chad, central Africa. Nature 418:145–151.
  374. DOI: 10.1038/nature00879Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. Describes Sahelanthropus, cranial remains from Chad.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Galik, K., B. Senut, M. Pickford, et al. 2004. External and internal morphology of the BAR 1002’00 Orrorin tugenensis femur. Science 305:1450–1453.
  378. DOI: 10.1126/science.1098807Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. Shows that the fine anatomy of Orrorin is consistent with bipedalism.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Harrison, Terry. 2010. Apes among the tangled branches of human origins. Science 327:532.
  382. DOI: 10.1126/science.1184703Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. Brief review of Miocene apes.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Richmond, Brian, and William Jungers. 2008. Orrorin tugenensis femoral morphology and the evolution of hominin bipedalism. Science 319:1662.
  386. DOI: 10.1126/science.1154197Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. Additional support for Orrorin as a biped.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Ward, Carol. 2003. The evolution of human origins. American Anthropologist 105:77–88.
  390. DOI: 10.1525/aa.2003.105.1.77Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391. Historical review of the fossil literature.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. White, Tim D. 2009. Human origins and evolution: Cold Spring Harbor, déjà vu. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 74:1–10.
  394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. A critical look at contemporary taxonomic practice in paleoanthropology.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. White, Tim D., Berhane Asfaw, Yonas Beyene, et al. 2009. Ardipithecus ramidus and the paleobiology of early hominids. Science 326:64, 75–86.
  398. DOI: 10.1126/science.1175802Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. The position of the fossil skeleton of Ardipithecus in human evolution.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Wolpoff, Milford, Brigitte Senut, Martin Pickford, and John Hawks. 2002. Sahelanthropus or “Sahelpithecus”? Nature 419:581–582.
  402. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403. The skull of Sahelanthropus seems like that of an ape, not something specifically in the human lineage.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Three Genera
  406.  
  407. Australopithecus was anatomically adapted for bipedality, and lived about 2–4.5 million years ago. The generally accepted species are A. africanus (Dart 1925), A. afarensis (Johanson and White 1979), A. anamensis (Leakey, et al. 1998), A. garhi (Asfaw, et al. 1999) and A. sediba (Berger, et al. 2010). One descendant—the “dental” lineage—was Paranthropus, with craniofacial adaptations indicating very heavy use of the back teeth, living from about 1.4 to about 2.5 million years ago (Wood and Constantino 2007). The other descendant—the “mental” lineage—was Homo, characterized by expansion of the brain, beginning about 1.9 million years ago (Wood and Collard 1999, McHenry and Coffing 2000). The two lineages may have begun their divergence via a fairly simple genetic switch (Stedman, et al. 2004).
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  409. Asfaw, Berhane, Tim White, C. Owen Lovejoy, Bruce Latimer, Scott Simpson, and Gen Suwa. 1999. Australopithecus garhi: A new species of early hominid from Ethiopia. Science 284:629.
  410. DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5414.629Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. Describes a species of East African gracile Australopithecus associated with evidence for butchering.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Berger, Lee R., Darryl J. de Ruiter, Steven E. Churchill, et al. 2010. Australopithecus sediba: A new species of Homo-like australopith from South Africa. Science 328:195–204.
  414. DOI: 10.1126/science.1184944Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415. Describes a late South African species of Australopithecus near the origin of the genus Homo.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Dart, Raymond. 1925. Australopithecus africanus: The man-ape of southern Africa. Nature 115:195–199.
  418. DOI: 10.1038/115195a0Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. The initial description of the Taung child, the first australopithecine discovered.
  420. Find this resource:
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  422. DOI: 10.1126/science.104384Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  423. The discovery and implications of Australopithecus afarensis.
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  425. Leakey, M. G., C. S. Feibel, I. McDougall, C. Ward, and A. Walker. 1998. New specimens and confirmation of an early age for Australopithecus anamensis. Nature 393:62–66.
  426. DOI: 10.1038/29972Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  427. The earliest East African species of Australopithecus.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. McHenry, Henry M., and Katherine Coffing. 2000. Australopithecus to Homo: Transformations in body and mind. Annual Review of Anthropology 29:125–146.
  430. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. Reviews the origin of early Homo from Australopithecus, prior to the discovery of Australopithecus sediba.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Stedman, Hansell H., Benjamin W. Kozyak, Anthony Nelson, et al. 2004. Myosin gene mutation correlates with anatomical changes in the human lineage. Nature 428:415–418.
  434. DOI: 10.1038/nature02358Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. A single gene mutation affects the cranium and chewing apparatus of the human skull.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Wood, Bernard, and Mark Collard. 1999. The human genus. Science 284:65–71.
  438. DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5411.65Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. Reviews Homo.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Wood, Bernard, and Paul Constantino. 2007. Paranthropus boisei: Fifty years of evidence and analysis. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 50:106.
  442. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20732Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. Reviews Paranthropus.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. The Genus Homo (early)
  446.  
  447. The 1.5-million-year-old skeleton from Nariokotome, usually called Homo ergaster, shows human limb proportions and postcrania very similar to modern people (Walker and Leakey 1993, Walker and Shipman 1996). Such early representatives of Homo expanded northeastward into temperate Eurasian climates and evolved into Homo erectus (Vekua, et al. 2002; Anton 2003; Schwartz and Tattersall 2003), and slightly later, into Western Europe (Carbonell, et al. 2008). This geographic expansion is correlated with an increasing reliance upon technology as an adaptive mechanism, and with changes in life-history variables, such as a longer phase of immaturity and the development of a postreproductive phase in middle-aged women (O’Connell, et al. 1999).
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  449. Antón, Susan. 2003. Natural history of Homo erectus. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 122:126–170.
  450. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.10399Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. Reviews the fossil evidence of Middle Pleistocene hominids.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Carbonell, Eudald, José de Castro, Josep Parés, et al. 2008. The first hominin of Europe. Nature 452:465–469.
  454. DOI: 10.1038/nature06815Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. The site of Gran Dolina in Spain is yielding evidence of early hominid occupation in Western Europe.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. O’Connell, J., K. Hawkes, and N. Blurton Jones. 1999. Grandmothering and the evolution of Homo erectus. Journal of Human Evolution 36:461–485.
  458. DOI: 10.1006/jhev.1998.0285Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. Life-history traits that evolved in the human lineage may have originated in Homo erectus.
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  461. Schwartz, Jeffrey, and Ian Tattersall. 2003. The human fossil record. Vol. 2, Craniodental morphology of genus Homo (Africa and Asia). New York: Wiley-Liss.
  462. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  463. Authoritative atlas of human fossil remains.
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  465. Vekua, Abesalom, David Lordkipanidze, G. Philip Rightmire, et al. 2002. A new skull of early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia. Science 297:85–89.
  466. DOI: 10.1126/science.1072953Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  467. The site of Dmanisi is yielding evidence of the earliest hominid occupation outside of Africa.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Walker, Alan, and Richard Leakey, eds. 1993. The Nariokotome Homo erectus skeleton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
  470. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. Analysis of the 1.5-million-year-old hominid skeleton.
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  473. Walker, Alan, and Pat Shipman. 1996. The wisdom of the bones: In search of human origins. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  474. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. Popular science book discussing the Nariokotome skeleton.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. The Genus Homo (late)
  478.  
  479. Classic Homo erectus from Java and China (Von Koenigswald and Weidenreich 1939) is anatomically continuous with material from East Africa (Asfaw, et al. 2002) and Europe (Manzi, et al. 2001; Carbonell, et al. 2005). Its larger-brained descendants are generally grouped into three categories, distinguished by fairly subtle cranial features: first, an archaic, non-Neandertal stem group (Hublin 2009); second, classic Neandertals (Harvati and Harrison 2006, Weaver 2009); and third, modern humans (Trinkaus 2005), with chins and foreheads. By about 32,000 years ago, only the modern humans, with anatomies first found in Africa over 150,000 years ago (White, et al. 2003), remained.
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  483. East African Homo erectus.
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  485. Carbonell, E., J. Bermúdez de Castro, J. Arsuaga, et al. 2005. An early Pleistocene hominin mandible from Atapuerca-TD6, Spain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102:5674–5678.
  486. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0501841102Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. Western Europe’s prolific site yields remains possibly of early Homo sapiens.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Harvati, Katarina, and Terry Harrison, eds. 2006. Neanderthals revisited: New approaches and perspectives. New York: Springer.
  490. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  491. Extensive review of the fossils and sites bearing on modern human origins.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Hublin, Jean-Jacques. 2009. The origin of Neandertals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106:16022–16027.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. Review of the evidence for the stem group that produced Neandertals and modern humans a few hundred thousand years ago.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Manzi, G., F. Mallegni, and A. Ascenzi. 2001. A cranium for the earliest Europeans: Phylogenetic position of the hominid from Ceprano, Italy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 98:10011–10016.
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  499. Analysis of an archaic skull from Italy with affinities to Homo sapiens and to Homo erectus.
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  501. Trinkaus, Erik. 2005. Early modern humans. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:207–230.
  502. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.34.030905.154913Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  503. The latest evidence bearing on the evidence for the emergence of modern humans.
  504. Find this resource:
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  506. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  507. Two paleontologists collaborate and conclude that “Peking Man” and “Java Man” represent the same species.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Weaver, Timothy. 2009. The meaning of Neandertal skeletal morphology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106:16028–16033.
  510. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  511. Review and contemporary interpretation of Neandertal anatomy.
  512. Find this resource:
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  515. Earliest fossil of a modern human.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Microevolutionary Issues
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  519. The most persistent, if somewhat prurient, question in human evolution is the extent to which humans and Neandertals might have interbred (Aiello 1993, Zilhão 2006). The esoteric statistical analysis of ancient Neandertal DNA has suggested some gene flow between Neandertals and some Eurasians (Green, et al. 2010), which makes biogeographic sense. The subsequent demographic history of our species is generally considered separately from human evolution. It was considered until the 1960s to be equivalent to the study of race but is now more generally regarded as the study of human adaptation, human diversity, human variation, or human microevolution (e.g., Dobzhansky 1962; Marks 1995; Crawford 2007; Koenig, et al. 2008; Muehlenbein, 2010).
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  521. Aiello, L. C. 1993. The fossil evidence for modern human origins in Africa: A revised view. American Anthropologist 95:73–96.
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  523. A paleoanthropological approach to harmonizing diverse theoretical positions on the relationships of early modern humans.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Crawford, Michael H., ed. 2007. Anthropological genetics: Theory, methods and applications. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  526. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  527. Multiauthored work summarizing diverse applications of population genetics to the human species.
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Dobzhansky, Theodosius 1962. Mankind evolving: The evolution of the human species. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
  530. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. Classic synthesis by the leading evolutionary geneticist of the 20th century.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Green, Richard E., Johannes Krause, Adrian W. Briggs, Tomislav Maricic, Udo Stenzel, Martin Kircher, 2010. A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome. Science 328:710–722.
  534. DOI: 10.1126/science.1188021Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  535. Neandertal nuclear DNA analysis, and the inference of small amounts of interbreeding specifically into Eurasian modern humans.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Koenig, Barbara A., Sandra S.‐J. Lee, and Sarah Richardson, eds. 2008. Revisiting race in a genomic age. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.
  538. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  539. Multidisciplinary synthesis of contemporary research on the meaning of genomic studies for human variation.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Marks, Jonathan. 1995. Human biodiversity: Genes, race, and history. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
  542. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  543. The biology of human variation presented in historical and cultural context.
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Muehlenbein, Michael, ed. 2010. Human evolutionary biology. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  546. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511781193Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. Diverse contemporary approaches to understanding human microevolutionary biology.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Zilhão, João 2006. Neandertals and moderns mixed, and it matters. Evolutionary anthropology 15:183–195.
  550. DOI: 10.1002/evan.20110Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. Evidence summarized for Neandertal-human admixture.
  552. Find this resource:
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