scholarly journals АНТРОПОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКА ЭКСТРАОРДИНАРНОГО ЧЕРЕПА ИЗ с. ТХИНА (АБХАЗИЯ)*

2020 ◽  
pp. 224-231
Author(s):  
Елизавета Валентиновна Веселовская ◽  
Ольга Михайловна Григорьева ◽  
Игорь Дмитриевич Бурцев
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Species ◽  
External Appearance ◽  
Lower Jaw ◽  
The Village ◽  
Metric Traits ◽  
Unusual Appearance

Настоящая работа посвящена изучению необычного черепа из раскопок кладбища у с. Тхина Очамчирского района, Абхазия. Череп с нижней челюстью, очень крупных размеров с ярко выраженным рельефом. Исследовали краниологические особенности черепа и черты внешнего облика индивида по выполненным на его основе графической и скульптурной реконструкциям. Принадлежность данного индивида к виду современного человека Homo sapiens не вызывает сомнений; возможно, присутствуют черты экваториального антропологического типа. Выраженное своеобразие, связанное с укрупнением общих размеров черепа и значительным развитием рельефа, может быть результатом гетерозиса при метисации далеко отстоящих антропологических типов, к которым принадлежали его родители. This work is devoted to the study of a very unusual skull from the village of Thina, Abkhazia. The skull has the lower jaw, is very large and rather robust with pronounced relief. The metric traits of this skull and its external appearance were studied based on graphic and sculptural reconstructions made from it. It is concluded that this individual belongs to the modern human species Homo sapiens, one of its Equatorial variants. The unusual appearance of the skull might be explained by heterosis caused by possible miscegenation in this individual’s ancestors.

Language and life history: A new perspective on the development and evolution of human language

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Locke ◽  
Barry Bogin
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Adult Development ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Juvenile Period ◽  
Development Of Language ◽  
New Perspective

It has long been claimed that Homo sapiens is the only species that has language, but only recently has it been recognized that humans also have an unusual pattern of growth and development. Social mammals have two stages of pre-adult development: infancy and juvenility. Humans have two additional prolonged and pronounced life history stages: childhood, an interval of four years extending between infancy and the juvenile period that follows, and adolescence, a stage of about eight years that stretches from juvenility to adulthood. We begin by reviewing the primary biological and linguistic changes occurring in each of the four pre-adult ontogenetic stages in human life history. Then we attempt to trace the evolution of childhood and juvenility in our hominin ancestors. We propose that several different forms of selection applied in infancy and childhood; and that, in adolescence, elaborated vocal behaviors played a role in courtship and intrasexual competition, enhancing fitness and ultimately integrating performative and pragmatic skills with linguistic knowledge in a broad faculty of language. A theoretical consequence of our proposal is that fossil evidence of the uniquely human stages may be used, with other findings, to date the emergence of language. If important aspects of language cannot appear until sexual maturity, as we propose, then a second consequence is that the development of language requires the whole of modern human ontogeny. Our life history model thus offers new ways of investigating, and thinking about, the evolution, development, and ultimately the nature of human language.

scholarly journals Recent origin of low trabecular bone density in modern humans

2014 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 366-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Habiba Chirchir ◽  
Tracy L. Kivell ◽  
Christopher B. Ruff ◽  
Jean-Jacques Hublin ◽  
Kristian J. Carlson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Trabecular Bone ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Lower Limbs ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Human Skeleton ◽  
Trabecular Density ◽  
Fossil Hominins

Humans are unique, compared with our closest living relatives (chimpanzees) and early fossil hominins, in having an enlarged body size and lower limb joint surfaces in combination with a relatively gracile skeleton (i.e., lower bone mass for our body size). Some analyses have observed that in at least a few anatomical regions modern humans today appear to have relatively low trabecular density, but little is known about how that density varies throughout the human skeleton and across species or how and when the present trabecular patterns emerged over the course of human evolution. Here, we test the hypotheses that (i) recent modern humans have low trabecular density throughout the upper and lower limbs compared with other primate taxa and (ii) the reduction in trabecular density first occurred in early Homo erectus, consistent with the shift toward a modern human locomotor anatomy, or more recently in concert with diaphyseal gracilization in Holocene humans. We used peripheral quantitative CT and microtomography to measure trabecular bone of limb epiphyses (long bone articular ends) in modern humans and chimpanzees and in fossil hominins attributed to Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus/early Homo from Swartkrans, Homo neanderthalensis, and early Homo sapiens. Results show that only recent modern humans have low trabecular density throughout the limb joints. Extinct hominins, including pre-Holocene Homo sapiens, retain the high levels seen in nonhuman primates. Thus, the low trabecular density of the recent modern human skeleton evolved late in our evolutionary history, potentially resulting from increased sedentism and reliance on technological and cultural innovations.

Evolution of intentional teaching

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gärdenfors ◽  
Anders Högberg
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Teaching By Demonstration

Only among humans is teaching intentional, socially structured, and symbolically mediated. In this chapter, evidence regarding the evolution of the mindreading and communicative capacities underlying intentional teaching is reviewed. Play, rehearsal, and apprenticeship are discussed as central to the analyses of teaching. We present a series of levels of teaching. First of all, we separate non-intentional from intentional teaching. For non-intentional teaching, we discuss facilitation and approval/disapproval and analyze examples from non-human species. We then distinguish between six levels of intentional teaching: (1) intentional approval/disapproval, (2) drawing attention, (3) demonstrating, (4) communicating concepts, (5) explaining concept relations, and (6) narrating. We hypothesize that level after level has been added during the evolution of teaching. We analyze communicative requirements for the levels, concluding that displaced communication is required for level 4 and symbolic language only for levels 5 to 6. We focus on the role of demonstration and pantomime and argue that pantomime has been instrumental in the evolution of language. We present archaeological evidence for when the different levels of teaching emerge. We argue that learning Oldowan technology requires teaching by demonstration, and that learning Acheulean hand-axe technology requires communicating concepts. It follows that several levels of intentional teaching predate homo sapiens.

Aterian

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena A.A. Garcea
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Plasticity ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
North African ◽  
Behavioral Experiments ◽  
Wide Range

The Aterian is a North African late Middle Stone Age techno-complex. It is spread from the Atlantic coast in Morocco to the Middle Nile Valley in Sudan and from the Mediterranean hinterland to the Southern Sahara. Chronologically, it covers the period between c. 145,000 years bp and 29,000 bp, spanning across discontinuous, alternating dry (end of MIS 6 and MIS 4) and humid (MIS 5 and MIS 3) climatic phases. Few, but significant human remains indicate that the makers of the Aterian complex belong to early Homo sapiens. Their osteological features show affinities with the early anatomically modern human record in the Levant (Skhul and Qafzeh), suggesting that Aterian groups may have taken part in the initial dispersals out of Africa by Homo sapiens. Toolkits consist of a variety of implements not only made of stone but also of bone (points, spatulas, knives, and retouchers). They include tools that were lacking in earlier or other North African contemporary contexts, namely bifacial foliates, blades, perforators, burins, endscrapers, and particularly tanged pieces. Overemphasis on tanged tools often obscured the complexity of the Aterian, which instead displays a wide range of cultural and behavioral innovations. New mobility patterns and intra-site organization, as well as early symbolism with the use of Nassariidae shells and ochre, corroborate early fully complex behavior by these populations. Given the broad geographic and chronological extension of the Aterian, differences are evident at both local and regional scales. They suggest the development of a flexible and variable techno-complex mirroring considerable adaptive cognitive and behavioral plasticity derived from nonlinear processes. Such diversified behavioral experiments result from multiple and noncumulative trajectories due to different internal and external stimuli but are still part of a single cultural entity.

Seven Steps in the Evolution of the Human Imagination

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEVEN MITHEN
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
African Apes ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

The modern human is a product of six million years of evolution wherein it is assumed that the ancestor of man resembles that of a chimpanzee. This assumption is based on the similarities of the ape-like brain size and post-cranial characteristics of the earliest hominid species to chimpanzees. Whilst it is unclear whether chimpanzees share the same foresight and contemplation of alternatives as with humans, it is nevertheless clear that chimpanzees lack creative imagination — an aspect of modern human imagination that sets humanity apart from its hominid ancestors. Creative imagination pertains to the ability to combine different forms of knowledge and ways of thinking to form creative and novel ideas. This chapter discusses seven critical steps in the evolution of the human imagination. These steps provide a clear picture of the gradual emergence of creative imagination in humans from their primitive origins as Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ago. This chronological evolution of the imaginative mind of humans involves both biological and cultural change that began soon after the divergence of the two lineages that led to modern humans and African apes.

Isolation and Insulation, 22000 BC–3000 BC

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Species ◽  
American School ◽  
Wild Pigs ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Two Populations

Carved out millions of years before mankind reached its coasts, the Mediterranean Sea became a ‘sea between the lands’ linking opposite shores once human beings traversed its surface in search of habitation, food or other vital resources. Early types of humans inhabited the lands bordering the Mediterranean 435,000 years before the present, to judge from evidence for a hunters’ camp set up near modern Rome; others built a simple hut out of branches at Terra Amata near Nice, and created a hearth in the middle of their dwelling – their diet included rhinoceros and elephant meat as well as deer, rabbits and wild pigs. When early man first ventured out across the sea’s waters is uncertain. In 2010, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens announced the discovery in Crete of quartz hand-axes dated to before 130,000 BC, indicating that early types of humans found some means to cross the sea, though these people may have been swept there unintentionally on storm debris. Discoveries in caves on Gibraltar prove that 24,000 years ago another species of human looked across the sea towards the mountain of Jebel Musa, clearly visible on the facing shore of Africa: the first Neanderthal bones ever discovered, in 1848, were those of a woman who lived in a cave on the side of the Rock of Gibraltar. Since the original finds were not immediately identified as the remains of a different human species, it was only when, eight years later, similar bones were unearthed in the Neander Valley in Germany that this species gained a name: Neanderthal Man should carry the name Gibraltar Woman. The Gibraltar Neanderthals made use of the sea that lapped the shores of their territory, for their diet included shellfish and crustaceans, even turtles and seals, though at this time a flat plain separated their rock caves from the sea. But there is no evidence for a Neanderthal population in Morocco, which was colonized by homo sapiens sapiens, our own branch of humanity. The Straits apparently kept the two populations apart.

scholarly journals Generic Homo sapiens and Unique Mus musculus: Establishing the Typicality of the Modeled and the Model Species

2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 122-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara L. Finlay
Keyword(s):  
Neural Development ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Laboratory Mouse ◽  
Mouse Strains ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Model Species ◽  
Brain Mass ◽  
Multiple Strategies ◽  
Neural Architecture

The question of how complex human abilities evolved, such as language or face recognition, has been pursued by means of multiple strategies. Highly specialized non-human species have been examined analytically for formal similarities, close phylogenetic relatives have been examined for continuity, and simpler species have been analyzed for the broadest view of functional organization. All these strategies require empirical evidence of what is variable and predictable in both the modeled and the model species. Turning to humans, allometric analyses of the evolution of brain mass and brain components often return the interesting, but disappointing answer that volumetric organization of the human brain is highly predictable seen in its phylogenetic context. Reconciling this insight with unique human behavior, or any species-typical behavior, represents a serious challenge. Allometric analyses of the order and duration of mammalian neural development show that, while basic neural development in humans is allometrically predictable, conforming to adult neural architecture, some life history features deviate, notably that weaning is unusually early. Finally, unusual deviations in the retina and central auditory system in the laboratory mouse, which is widely assumed to be “generic,” as well as severe deviations from expected brain allometry in some mouse strains, underline the need for a deeper understanding of phylogenetic variability even in those systems believed to be best understood.

scholarly journals The Retromolar Space and Wisdom Teeth in Humans: Reasons for Surgical Tooth Extraction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abed El Kaseh ◽  
Maher Al Shayeb ◽  
Syed Kuduruthullah ◽  
Nadeem Gulrez
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Third Molar ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Morphometric Study ◽  
Third Molars ◽  
Facial Skeleton ◽  
Lower Jaw ◽  
Wisdom Teeth ◽  
Retromolar Region

Abstract Objective This article explores the problem of developing pathologies in the retromolar region. Findings can serve a framework for disease prevention and for the improvement of the quality of life of patients. The present study aims to justify the possibility of utilizing morphometric methods to foresee problems in the eruption of third molars. Materials and Methods A comprehensive morphometric study of the lower jaw and facial skeleton involves 100 skulls of Homo sapiens to identify the anatomical causes of problems with wisdom teeth eruption. All said skulls are divided in two groups: I: skulls with intact dentition; II: skulls with impacted third molars. Results This work allows detecting abnormalities in the eruption of the third molar with high probability of success. The abnormalities in point are considered not only those associated with the generally accepted parameters but also those that occur in the leptoprosopic face cases. Conclusions Face type and the structural features of the facial skeleton play a significant role in the abnormal eruption of the lower third molar.

Human Perfection and Contemporary Enhancement Technologies

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-40
Author(s):  
Jesús Parra-Sáez
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

Human perfection has been one of the main objectives of the human species since the appearance of Homo sapiens, but contemporary biomedical technologies represent a promise to achieve it in the near future. In view of the new possibilities offered by new technologies, a scientific-philosophical theoretical debate has emerged between those who are in favor of its use on humanity for non-therapeutic purposes (posthumanists) and those who reject it (bioconservatives). In this chapter, the so-called “enhancement technologies,” the problems derived from their use with the aim of radically altering human abilities, and some of the most recent practical cases that have transcended the theoretical debate about their legitimacy are analyzed.

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