Human Evolution 3: the Origins of Modern Humans

2021 ◽  
pp. 363-380
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bard
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Modern Humans

A Story of Us

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley Newson ◽  
Peter Richerson
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Evolutionary Path ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Science Book ◽  
Early Humans ◽  
Last Ice Age ◽  
New Evidence

It’s time for a new story of our origins. One reason is that there a great deal of new evidence about what humans are like and the conditions that shaped human evolution. Another is that the thinking on human evolution has shifted. Evolutionists recognize that humans are very different from other animals, and they have been working to explain the different evolutionary path that humans took. There are still many gaps in the story, but this book describes seven points in our ancestors’ tale and explains the evidence behind these descriptions. The story begins seven million years ago, with the life of our ape ancestors, which were also the ancestors of today’s chimpanzees and bonobos. The second point is three million years ago with an ape that walked upright and lived outside the forest. Then follows a description of the life of early humans who lived one and a half million years ago. At the fourth point, 100,000 years ago, humans lived in Africa who were physically very similar to modern humans. The fifth is 30,000 years ago, during the last ice age, when our ancestors had evolved more complex cultures. The sixth is the period of accelerating cultural evolution that began as the planet started to recover from this ice age. Finally, beginning in the 1700s, there is the transformational period we are in now, which we call “modern times.” The style of this book is unusual for a science book because it has narrative sections that illustrate the lives of our ancestors and the problems they faced.

scholarly journals The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1698) ◽  
pp. 20150239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis W. Marean
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Major Transitions ◽  
Rivers And Lakes ◽  
Broad Spectrum Revolution ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Empirical Record

Scientists have identified a series of milestones in the evolution of the human food quest that are anticipated to have had far-reaching impacts on biological, behavioural and cultural evolution: the inclusion of substantial portions of meat, the broad spectrum revolution and the transition to food production. The foraging shift to dense and predictable resources is another key milestone that had consequential impacts on the later part of human evolution. The theory of economic defendability predicts that this shift had an important consequence—elevated levels of intergroup territoriality and conflict. In this paper, this theory is integrated with a well-established general theory of hunter–gatherer adaptations and is used to make predictions for the sequence of appearance of several evolved traits of modern humans. The distribution of dense and predictable resources in Africa is reviewed and found to occur only in aquatic contexts (coasts, rivers and lakes). The palaeoanthropological empirical record contains recurrent evidence for a shift to the exploitation of dense and predictable resources by 110 000 years ago, and the first known occurrence is in a marine coastal context in South Africa. Some theory predicts that this elevated conflict would have provided the conditions for selection for the hyperprosocial behaviours unique to modern humans. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Major transitions in human evolution’.

scholarly journals Something old, something borrowed: Admixture and adaptation in human evolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dannemann ◽  
Fernando Racimo
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Gene Pool ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Genetic Material ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Functional Assays ◽  
Over Time

Almost a decade ago, the sequencing of ancient DNA from archaic humans - Neanderthals and Denisovans - revealed that modern and archaic humans interbred at least twice during the Pleistocene. The field of human paleogenomics has now turned its attention towards understanding the nature of this genetic legacy in the gene pool of present-day humans. What exactly did modern humans obtain from interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans? Were introgressed genetic material beneficial, neutral or maladaptive? Can differences in phenotypes among present-day human populations be explained by archaic human introgression? These questions are of prime importance for our understanding of recent human evolution, but will require careful computational modeling and extensive functional assays before they can be answered in full. Here, we review the recent literature characterizing introgressed DNA and the likely biological consequences for their modern human carriers. We focus particularly on archaic human haplotypes that were beneficial to modern humans as they expanded across the globe, and on ways to understand how populations harboring these haplotypes evolved over time.

scholarly journals Something old, something borrowed: Admixture and adaptation in human evolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dannemann ◽  
Fernando Racimo
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Gene Pool ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Genetic Material ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Functional Assays ◽  
Over Time

Almost a decade ago, the sequencing of ancient DNA from archaic humans - Neanderthals and Denisovans - revealed that modern and archaic humans interbred at least twice during the Pleistocene. The field of human paleogenomics has now turned its attention towards understanding the nature of this genetic legacy in the gene pool of present-day humans. What exactly did modern humans obtain from interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans? Were introgressed genetic material beneficial, neutral or maladaptive? Can differences in phenotypes among present-day human populations be explained by archaic human introgression? These questions are of prime importance for our understanding of recent human evolution, but will require careful computational modeling and extensive functional assays before they can be answered in full. Here, we review the recent literature characterizing introgressed DNA and the likely biological consequences for their modern human carriers. We focus particularly on archaic human haplotypes that were beneficial to modern humans as they expanded across the globe, and on ways to understand how populations harboring these haplotypes evolved over time.

scholarly journals The Most Recent Common Ancestor of Modern Humans was Born in Eurasia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
vicente cabrera
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Genome Sequencing ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Recent Common Ancestor ◽  
Whole Genome ◽  
African Origin ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Most Recent Common Ancestor ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Vision

Ancient DNA has given a new vision to the recent history of human evolution. However, by always relying on the information provided by whole genome sequencing, some relevant relationships between modern humans and its archaic relatives have been misinterpreted by hybridization and recombination causes. In contrast, the congruent phylogeny, obtained from non-recombinant uniparental markers, indicates that humans and Neanderthals are sister subspecies, and that the most recent common ancestor of modern humans was not of African origin but Eurasian.

scholarly journals Recensiones

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Almudena Villar Calvo ◽  
Susana Rubio Jara ◽  
Pablo J. Morales Grajera ◽  
Juan Antonio Martos Romeno ◽  
Marta Giménez la Rosa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Lithic Technology ◽  
Ecological Perspective ◽  
Human Diversity ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Anatomically Modern Humans

RESEÑA 1 de : Kuhn, Steven L.. Mousterian Lithic Technology. An Ecological Perspective. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1995.RESEÑA 2 de : Politis, Gustavo G. Nukak. Colombia : Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas (SINCHI), 1996.RESEÑA 3 de : Carbonell, Eudald; Vaquero, Manuel. The last neandertals, the first anatomically modern humans : a tale about the human diversity. Cultural change and human evolution : the crisis at 40 KA BP. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 1996.RESEÑA 4 de : Moure Romanillo, Alfonso. El hombre fósil : 80 años después. Santander : Universidad de Cantabria, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Institute For Preliistoric Investigations, 1996.RESEÑA 5 de : Lori, Hager. Women in Human Evolution. Londres y Nueva York : Routledge, 1997.RESEÑA 6 de : Mither, Steven. Arqueología de la Mente. Orígenes del arte, de la religión y de la ciencia. Barcelona : Ed. Crítica (Grijalbo Mondadori), 1998.RESEÑA 7 de : Arzuaga, J.L.; Martínez, I. La especie elegida : la larga marcha de la evolución humana. Ed. Temas de Hoy, 1998.

scholarly journals Thyroid Hormone Signalling in Human Evolution and Disease: A Novel Hypothesis

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Polyxeni Mantzouratou ◽  
Angelo Michele Lavecchia ◽  
Christodoulos Xinaris
Keyword(s):  
Thyroid Hormone ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Early Hominids ◽  
Promising Therapeutic Target ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pleiotropic Actions ◽  
Hormone Signalling

Thyroid hormone (TH) signalling is a universally conserved pathway with pleiotropic actions that is able to control the development, metabolism, and homeostasis of organisms. Using evidence from paleoecology/palaeoanthropology and data from the physiology of modern humans, we try to assess the natural history of TH signalling and its role in human evolution. Our net thesis is that TH signalling has likely played a critical role in human evolution by facilitating the adaptive responses of early hominids to unprecedently challenging and continuously changing environments. These ancient roles have been conserved in modern humans, in whom TH signalling still responds to and regulates adaptations to present-day environmental and pathophysiological stresses, thus making it a promising therapeutic target.

scholarly journals Evaluating Non-STEM Students’ understanding of Evolution: Basis for designing Pedagogical Intervention

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-505
Author(s):  
Jastine Kent Florungco ◽  
Dennis Caballes
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Learning Methods ◽  
Pedagogical Intervention ◽  
Stem Students ◽  
Evolutionary Concepts ◽  
To Come ◽  
Almost All

Teaching human evolution, for it to yield fruitful results, should be initialized by understanding the perspective of the learners. This study was conducted to aid in achieving that objective, and also to provide ways for educators to come up with strategies that can be perceived and appreciated by learners, particularly those who are not inclined with science. The majority of the respondents are believers in the theory of human evolution. Most of the respondents expressed their belief that modern humans are successors of ape-like organisms. The majority of the same set of informants mentioned their need for clarity about the stages that humans underwent during the course of history, while almost all of those respondents stated that the utilization of various graphic materials to elucidate these evolutionary concepts. It was recommended that educators engage in learning methods that call the attention and those that can be easily understood by the students

Domestication is not an ancient moment of selection for prosociality: Insights from dogs and modern humans

2021 ◽  
pp. 146960532110554
Author(s):  
Robert J. Losey
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Past Event ◽  
Multiple Generations ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Human Intention ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Material Things

Domestication is often portrayed as a long-past event, at times even in archaeological literature. The term domestication is also now applied to other processes, including human evolution. In such contexts, domestication means selection for friendliness or prosociality and the bodily results of such selective choices. Both such perspectives are misleading. Using dogs and modern humans as entry points, this paper explores why conceiving of domestication as a threshold event consisting of selection for prosociality is both incomplete and inaccurate. Domestication is an ongoing process, not a moment or an achievement. Selection in breeding, including for prosociality, is a part of many domestication histories, but it alone does not sustain this process over multiple generations. Further, much selection in domestication has little to do with human intention. Care, taming, commensalism, material things, and places are critical in carrying domestic relationships forward.

scholarly journals Human evolution: Origins of modern humans still look recent

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (17) ◽  
pp. R647-R650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd R. Disotell
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Modern Humans
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