scholarly journals Different Stages of Evolution of Humankind

2017 ◽  
pp. 46-77
Author(s):  
Slaven Jozic
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Distinct Species ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Late Cretaceous Period ◽  
Anatomically Modern Humans ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of

Human evolution is the evolutionary process that led to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, beginning with the evolutionary history of primates—in particular genus Homo—and leading to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism and language, as well as interbreeding with other hominines, which indicate that human evolution was not linear but a web. The study of human evolution involves several scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, primatology, archaeology, paleontology, neurobiology, ethology, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, embryology and genetics. Genetic studies show that primates diverged from other mammals about 85 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period, and the earliest fossils appear in the Paleocene, around 55 million years ago. Within the Hominoidea (apes) superfamily, the Hominidae family diverged from the Hylobatidae (gibbon) family some 15–20 million years ago; African great apes (subfamily Homininae) diverged from orangutans (Ponginae) about 14 million years ago; the Hominini tribe (humans, Australopithecines and other extinct biped genera, and chimpanzee) parted from the Gorillini tribe (gorillas) between 8–9 million years ago; and, in turn, the subtribes Hominina (humans and biped ancestors) and Panina (chimps) separated 4–7.5 million years ago.

Human Evolution

1984 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 182-198
Author(s):  
Catherine Badgley
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Pan Paniscus ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Sister Group ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Living Species ◽  
Single Living

The evolutionary history of humans is well understood in outline, compared to that of many other groups of mammals. But human evolution remains enigmatic in its details, and these are compelling both scientifically and personally because they relate to the biological uniqueness of humans. Humans are placed in the primate family Hominidae, which, in traditional classifications, contains a single living species, Homo sapiens. The closest living relatives of humans are great apes: the chimpanzees Pan paniscus and Pan troglodytes, the gorilla Gorilla gorilla, and the orangutan Pongo pygmaeus. These apes have traditionally been placed in the family Pongidae as the sister group of Hominidae. Living Hominidae and Pongidae, together with Hylobatidae (gibbons) comprise the modern representatives of the primate suborder Hominoidea.

Getting Beyond the Apemen

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lesley Newson ◽  
Peter J. Richerson
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Adult Males ◽  
Evolutionary Processes ◽  
Complex Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

This introductory chapter explains why a new story of human evolution is needed, and also lays the foundations of the story told in this book. One of the reasons we need a new story is that previous stories have concentrated on what our male ancestors were doing. Since survival is most at risk in the first years of life, it makes much more sense to concentrate on children and their mothers than on adult males. A brief account of the history of ideas in evolution by natural selection and human evolution provides readers with a background in evolutionary processes. Humans are a product of evolution, but we are not like other animals, because we are connected and readily share complex information. We are unique and our evolution was the result of a unique evolutionary process. To understand ourselves in evolutionary terms, it’s necessary to consider two intertwined evolutionary processes—genes and culture.

Species

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Sterelny
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Biological Species Concept ◽  
Temporal Perspective ◽  
As Species ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diversity Of Life ◽  
Species Taxon ◽  
Species Definitions

The diversity of life is not seamless but comes in relatively discrete packages, species. Is that packaging real, or an artefact of our limited temporal perspective on the history of life? If all living forms are descended from one or a few ancestors, there may be no real distinction between living and ancestral forms, or between closely related living animals. Received wisdom holds that species are the ’units of evolution’, for it is they that evolve. They are the upshot of evolutionary processes, but, if species and not just their component organisms compete with one another, they are also important agents in the evolutionary process. If so, species are real units in nature, not arbitrary segmentations of seamless variation. The ’species problem’ has been approached from two angles. One focus has been on specific taxa of the tree of life. What would settle whether some arbitrarily chosen organism is a member of homo sapiens or canis familiaris? This is sometimes known as the ’species taxon’ problem. An alternate way of approaching diversity has been to ask what all species have in common. What do all the populations we think of as species share? This is the ’species category’ problem. One idea is to group organisms into species by appealing to the overall similarity. This ’phenetic’ conception is in retreat. Most contemporary species definitions are relational, the animals that compose pan troglodytes are a species, not because they are all very similar (they are very like the pygmy chimps as well) but because of their relations amongst themselves and with their ancestors. The most famous relational definition is the ’biological species concept’, according to which conspecific organisms are organisms that can interbreed, however different they look. Relational species definitions aim to define a category of theoretical and explanatory interest to evolutionary and ecological theory. Given that there are many explanatory interests, one problem in evaluating these accounts is to determine whether they are genuinely rivals.

Hierarchic Interactions: The Evolutionary Process

1986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niles Eldredge
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Unique Problem ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Present Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Multicellular Organisms

Organisms—biology begins with organisms, and indeed a great deal of the history of biology is a trek through progressively finer subdivisions of organisms. When “forefronts” of biology are listed these days, nearly all concern the molecular biology of intracellular (and intraorganelle) physicochemical processes—and quite rightly so. But the ontology of units larger than organisms, while not wholly neglected, is at least as difficult a problem. Organisms are by far the easiest of biological units for us to see, to probe, to conceptualize as “individuals.” But, in the present context, organisms pose a unique problem all their own: they constitute the only class of individuals to be found in both the genealogical and ecological hierarchies. Consider the confusion that permeates even the recent explicitly hierarchical literature: ecology and evolution (as in the quote from Valentine that stands at this chapter’s head) are generally seen as separate areas of inquiry, but the choice of the higher-level individuals to be incorporated into one’s hierarchy very much depends upon one’s point of view. Below the organism level, of course, the distinction between the somatic and germ lines (i.e., in multicellular organisms) once again ensures a clean separation of the elements of the two hierarchies. Hence the conclusion (Eldredge and Salthe 1984) that there must in fact be two independent, yet parallel and interacting, process hierarchies that together combine to yield evolution. Organisms, as members of both hierarchies, threaten to muddy the picture. It is possible, of course, to distinguish between the economic and reproductive functions of organisms, as I have done at length in the preceding chapter. Physiologists, after all, have long been telling their students that reproduction is the one physiological process not essential to the survival of an organism; thus, it is no surprise that it is invariably the first such process to be dispensed with when the organism is stressed. It is easy to distinguish the economic from the reproductive functions of the vast majority of organisms, but in many vertebrates, most especially Homo sapiens, sexuality has clear economic implications, obscuring the distinction between the two hierarchies perhaps even more.

scholarly journals A ‘Denisovan’ genetic history of recent human evolution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
João C Teixeira ◽  
Alan Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Sister Group ◽  
Genetic History ◽  
The World ◽  
Anatomically Modern Humans ◽  
History Of ◽  
Out Of Africa ◽  
Western Eurasia ◽  
Genomic Signal

As anatomically modern humans (AMH) migrated out of Africa and around the rest of the world, they met and interbred with multiple extinct hominid species. The traces of genetic input from these past interbreeding events, recorded in the genomes of modern populations, have created a powerful record of recent human migrations. The first of these events occurred between Neandertals, and a small group of AMH shortly after they left Africa, somewhere in western Eurasia around 55-50 ka, and left a genomic signal of about 2% Neandertal DNA that was subsequently spread across the rest of the world. In contrast to the Neandertals, the interbreeding events with other extinct hominid groups – such as the Denisovans, the east Eurasian sister group of Neandertals – remain poorly understood, but are potentially far more complex.

scholarly journals A ‘Denisovan’ genetic history of recent human evolution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
João C Teixeira ◽  
Alan Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Sister Group ◽  
Genetic History ◽  
The World ◽  
Anatomically Modern Humans ◽  
History Of ◽  
Out Of Africa ◽  
Western Eurasia ◽  
Genomic Signal

As anatomically modern humans (AMH) migrated out of Africa and around the rest of the world, they met and interbred with multiple extinct hominid species. The traces of genetic input from these past interbreeding events, recorded in the genomes of modern populations, have created a powerful record of recent human migrations. The first of these events occurred between Neandertals, and a small group of AMH shortly after they left Africa, somewhere in western Eurasia around 55-50 ka, and left a genomic signal of about 2% Neandertal DNA that was subsequently spread across the rest of the world. In contrast to the Neandertals, the interbreeding events with other extinct hominid groups – such as the Denisovans, the east Eurasian sister group of Neandertals – remain poorly understood, but are potentially far more complex.

Homo canis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Pierotti ◽  
Brandy R. Fogg
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
Nuclear Families ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines what it means to be human, a member of the biological species Homo sapiens. Comparing humans to a wide range of primates, it shows that no other species has a similar social structure, with social groups of varying sizes built around nuclear families. Moreover, it explores how these traits may have been shaped by humans' shared experience with Canis lupus. Humans are indeed unique, but their adaptations emerge from a set of unusual events, and a considerable amount of the history of modern human evolution seems to be influenced by their association with wolves and their dog descendants. The chapter then demonstrates how modern attitudes toward predators result from religious traditions rather than scientific understanding.

scholarly journals Evolution of Protein-Mediated Biomineralization in Scleractinian Corals

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tal Zaquin ◽  
Assaf Malik ◽  
Jeana L. Drake ◽  
Hollie M. Putnam ◽  
Tali Mass
Keyword(s):  
Protein Function ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Organic Matrix ◽  
Distinct Species ◽  
Specific Protein ◽  
Proteomic Profiling ◽  
Stony Corals ◽  
Core Set ◽  
History Of

While recent strides have been made in understanding the biological process by which stony corals calcify, much remains to be revealed, including the ubiquity across taxa of specific biomolecules involved. Several proteins associated with this process have been identified through proteomic profiling of the skeletal organic matrix (SOM) extracted from three scleractinian species. However, the evolutionary history of this putative “biomineralization toolkit,” including the appearance of these proteins’ throughout metazoan evolution, remains to be resolved. Here we used a phylogenetic approach to examine the evolution of the known scleractinians’ SOM proteins across the Metazoa. Our analysis reveals an evolutionary process dominated by the co-option of genes that originated before the cnidarian diversification. Each one of the three species appears to express a unique set of the more ancient genes, representing the independent co-option of SOM proteins, as well as a substantial proportion of proteins that evolved independently. In addition, in some instances, the different species expressed multiple orthologous proteins sharing the same evolutionary history. Furthermore, the non-random clustering of multiple SOM proteins within scleractinian-specific branches suggests the conservation of protein function between distinct species for what we posit is part of the scleractinian “core biomineralization toolkit.” This “core set” contains proteins that are likely fundamental to the scleractinian biomineralization mechanism. From this analysis, we infer that the scleractinians’ ability to calcify was achieved primarily through multiple lineage-specific protein expansions, which resulted in a new functional role that was not present in the parent gene.

Processes in Human Evolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco J. Ayala ◽  
Camilo J. Cela-Conde
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Graduate Courses ◽  
Isolated Populations ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
University Courses ◽  
Population Migrations

Processes in Human Evolution is a fully reconsidered treatment of Human Evolution, the previous book by the same authors published by OUP in 2007. The major discoveries of the last decade have necessitated a completely revised view of how to understand human evolution, incorporating the advances in genetics, paleontology, ecology, archaeology, geography, and climate science. The genera Sahelanthropus, Ardipithecus, Orrorin, Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo are analyzed in detail. Particular attention is given to the population migrations necessary to understand the origin and dispersion of the different genera and species in each continent. It becomes apparent that some of the accepted species may be just isolated populations and that the distinctive features of Homo sapiens may have been shared by other ancestors. The evolutionary process takes into account the features of the lithic cultures and their impact on the evolution of the cognitive capacities. The outcome is a new model about the evolution of symbolism. Processes in Human Evolution is intended as a primary textbook for university courses on human evolution. It may be used, as well, as supplementary reading in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. It is also eminently suited for general-interest readers seeking a readable but up-to-date and fairly inclusive treatment of human origins and evolution.

Tadeusz Tomaszewski and His Theory of Action

1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Materska
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
History Of

Tadeusz Tomaszewski, born in 1910, graduate of the Jan Kazimierz University, Lvov, doctor honoris causa of Marja Sklodowska-Curie University, Lublin, is an exceptional figure in the history of Polish psychology. His scientific accomplishments and organizational talents, multipled by the achievements of his students, had a decisive impact on the shape and prestige of Polish psychology among other scientific disciplines and determined the rank of Polish psychology in the international arena.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document