2015 MIDATLANTIC ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PANEL: HOMINID DIG FINDINGS

Australopithecus

Physical features (similar to both humans and apes)

Strong brow ridge (apes)

Small brain case (apes)

Bipedal (humans)

Beginnings of opposable thumbs

and “big toe”

Homo erectus(1.8 million-300,000 years ago)

First hominid species found outside of Africa (found in Indonesia, China, and Eastern Europe)

Survived for nearly 1.8 million years. In comparison, humans have only been around for 196,000 years!

Physical characteristics First hominid to share similar proportions to modern humans- looked

more human than ape

Long legs, shorter arms, larger brain than Australopithecus

Pelvis and hips had developed so they could walk MORE upright/taller

First species to have actively used fire

“Cooked Food Hypothesis”

With fire, homo erectus could cook their food Made food tastier and easier to digest

Made the extraction of energy from raw ingredients quicker and more efficient.

useful for powering an over-sized, energy-hungry brain

Homo erectus brain was 50% bigger than the preceding species of human, Homo habilis.

Advancement in brain size attributed to development of cooked foods

It gave extra energy, used for evolutionary success

reduced feeding time, freeing men to hunt

lowered weaning time, creating bigger families

Homo neanderthalis(lived 150,000-30,000 years ago)

Found in Belgium, Spain, Germany

Coexisted with homo sapiens in Europe and Western Asia

Huge Skeletons

Short, wide hips/legs, big chest

SUPER STRONG- could crush a modern-day wrestler

Protruding jaw, basically no chin

Effects of big muscle mass= draining for body. Required a lot of calories to maintain energy (think Michael Phelps)

Evidence suggests Neanderthals may have interbred with homo sapiens

As much as 4% of our DNA matches that of Neanderthals

Cultural elements of Neanderthals

Limited cognitive abilities Strong evidence that all tools found at

Neanderthal sites were copied from Cro-Magnon tools

Replicas of knives, spears, arrowheads

Possibly buried their dead?

Homo Sapiens(35,000-10,000 years ago)

Found in Southern Europe and Eastern Asia

First appeared about 150,000 years ago

Brain size Smaller than Neanderthals; HOWEVER,

proportionally to body size, homo sapiens have the larger brain

Anatomically identical to modern humans

Unique behavior

Hunted animals of all sizes, as well as fished Able to craft tools made of different materials and sizes so that they

could hunt many different types of animals

Basic knives/handaxes spears, harpoons, nets, needles, bow and arrows

Symbolic behavior- evidence of this did not appear until about 47,000 years ago