Paleoanthropology
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Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of
The field draws from and combines primatology, paleontology, biological anthropology, and cultural anthropology. As technologies and methods advance, genetics plays an ever-increasing role, in particular to examine and compare DNA structure as a vital tool of research of the evolutionary kinship lines of related species and genera.
Etymology
The term paleoanthropology derives from Greek palaiós (παλαιός) "old, ancient", ánthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος) "man, human" and the suffix -logía (-λογία) "study of".
Hominoid taxonomies
Hominoids are a primate superfamily, the hominid family is currently considered to comprise both the
Hominoids | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hominids | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Subfamily Homininae | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tribe Gorillini | Tribe Hominini | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Genus Ardipithecus | Genus Australopithecus | Genus Paranthropus | Genus Kenyanthropus | Genus Homo | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
History
18th century
In 1758
19th century
The science arguably began in the late 19th century when important discoveries occurred that led to the study of
The modern field of paleoanthropology began in the 19th century with the discovery of "
Though Darwin's first book on evolution did not address the specific question of human evolution—"light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history," was all Darwin wrote on the subject—the implications of evolutionary theory were clear to contemporary readers.
Debates between
Asia
Prior to the general acceptance of Africa as the root of genus Homo, 19th-century naturalists sought the origin of humans in Asia. So-called "dragon bones" (fossil bones and teeth) from Chinese apothecary shops were known, but it was not until the early 20th century that German paleontologist, Max Schlosser, first described a single human tooth from Beijing. Although Schlosser (1903) was very cautious, identifying the tooth only as "?Anthropoide g. et sp. indet?," he was hopeful that future work would discover a new anthropoid in China.
Eleven years later, the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson was sent to China as a mining advisor and soon developed an interest in "dragon bones". It was he who, in 1918, discovered the sites around Zhoukoudian, a village about 50 kilometers southwest of Beijing. However, because of the sparse nature of the initial finds, the site was abandoned.
Work did not resume until 1921, when the Austrian paleontologist, Otto Zdansky, fresh with his doctoral degree from Vienna, came to Beijing to work for Andersson. Zdansky conducted short-term excavations at Locality 1 in 1921 and 1923, and recovered only two teeth of significance (one premolar and one molar) that he subsequently described, cautiously, as "?Homo sp." (Zdansky, 1927). With that done, Zdansky returned to Austria and suspended all fieldwork.
News of the fossil hominin teeth delighted the scientific community in Beijing, and plans for developing a larger, more systematic project at Zhoukoudian were soon formulated. At the epicenter of excitement was Davidson Black, a Canadian-born anatomist working at Peking Union Medical College. Black shared Andersson’s interest, as well as his view that central Asia was a promising home for early humankind. In late 1926, Black submitted a proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation seeking financial support for systematic excavation at Zhoukoudian and the establishment of an institute for the study of human biology in China.
The
The first of the major project finds are attributed to the young Swedish paleontologist,
Excavations continued at the site and remained fruitful until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The decade-long research yielded a wealth of faunal and lithic materials, as well as hominin fossils. These included 5 more complete calvaria, 9 large cranial fragments, 6 facial fragments, 14 partial mandibles, 147 isolated teeth, and 11 postcranial elements—estimated to represent as least 40 individuals. Evidence of fire, marked by ash lenses and burned bones and stones, were apparently also present,[9] although recent studies have challenged this view.[10] Franz Weidenreich came to Beijing soon after Black’s untimely death in 1934, and took charge of the study of the hominin specimens.
Following the loss of the Peking Man materials in late 1941, scientific endeavors at Zhoukoudian slowed, primarily because of lack of funding. Frantic search for the missing fossils took place, and continued well into the 1950s. After the establishment of the
Africa
1920s – 1940s
The first paleoanthropological find made in Africa was the 1921 discovery of the
In 1924 in a limestone quarry at
All of these traits convinced Dart that the Taung child was a bipedal human ancestor, a transitional form between ape and human. However, Dart's conclusions were largely ignored for decades, as the prevailing view of the time was that a large brain evolved before bipedality. It took the discovery of additional australopith fossils in Africa that resembled his specimen, and the rejection of the Piltdown Man hoax, for Dart's claims to be taken seriously.
In the 1930s, paleontologist Robert Broom discovered and described a new species at Kromdraai, South Africa. Although similar in some ways to Dart's Australopithecus africanus, Broom's specimen had much larger cheek teeth. Because of this difference, Broom named his specimen Paranthropus robustus, using a new genus name. In doing so, he established the practice of grouping gracile australopiths in the genus Australopithecus and robust australopiths in the genus Paranthropus. During the 1960s, the robust variety was commonly moved into Australopithecus. A more recent consensus has been to return to the original classification of Paranthropus as a separate genus.[12]
1950s – 1990s
The second half of the twentieth century saw a significant increase in the number of paleoanthropological finds made in Africa. Many of these finds were associated with the work of the
Numerous other researchers have made important discoveries in eastern Africa. Possibly the most famous is the Lucy skeleton, discovered in 1973 by Donald Johanson and Maurice Taieb in Ethiopia's Afar Triangle at the site of Hadar. On the basis of this skeleton and subsequent discoveries, the researchers came up with a new species, Australopithecus afarensis.[12] In 1975, Colin Groves and Vratislav Mazák announced a new species of human they called Homo ergaster. Homo ergaster specimens have been found at numerous sites in eastern and southern Africa.[12] In 1994, Tim D. White announced a new species, Ardipithecus ramidus, based on fossils from Ethiopia.[16]
In 1999, two new species were announced.
21st century
In the 21st century, numerous fossils have been found that add to current knowledge of existing species. For example, in 2001, Zeresenay Alemseged discovered an Australopithecus afarensis child fossil, called Selam, from the site of Dikika in the Afar region of Ethiopia. This find is particularly important because the fossil included a preserved hyoid bone, something rarely found in other paleoanthropological fossils but important for understanding the evolution of speech capacities.[11][12]
Two new species from southern Africa have been discovered and described in recent years. In 2008, a team led by
New species have also been found in eastern Africa. In 2000,
Although most hominin fossils from Africa have been found in eastern and southern Africa, there are a few exceptions. One is
Renowned paleoanthropologists
- Robert Ardrey (1908–1980)
- Lee Berger(1965–)
- Davidson Black (1884–1934)
- Robert Broom (1866–1951)
- Michel Brunet (1940–)
- J. Desmond Clark (1916–2002)
- Carleton S. Coon (1904–1981)
- Raymond Dart (1893–1988)
- Eugene Dubois(1858–1940)
- Johann Carl Fuhlrott (1803–1877)
- Yohannes Haile-Selassie (1961–)
- Sonia Harmand (1974–)
- John D. Hawks
- Aleš Hrdlička (1869–1943)
- Glynn Isaac (1937–1985)
- Donald C. Johanson(1943–)
- Kamoya Kimeu (1938–2022)
- Jeffrey Laitman (1951–)
- Louis Leakey (1903–1972)
- Meave Leakey (1942–)
- Mary Leakey (1913–1996)
- Richard Leakey (1944–2022)
- André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–1986)
- Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801–1880)
- Kenneth Oakley (1911–1981)
- David Pilbeam (1940–)
- Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald (1902–1982)
- John T. Robinson(1923–2001)
- Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948–)
- Chris Stringer (1947–)
- Ian Tattersall (1945–)
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955)
- Phillip V. Tobias(1925–2012)
- Erik Trinkaus (1948–)
- Alan Walker (1938–2017)
- Franz Weidenreich (1873–1948)
- Tim D. White (1950–)
- Milford H. Wolpoff (1942–)
- Bernard Wood (1945–)
See also
- Dawn of Humanity (2015 PBS film)
- Human evolution
- The Incredible Human Journey—Television documentary film series
- List of human evolution fossils
- Timeline of human evolution
References
- ^ "paleoanthropology". Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on December 12, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2015.
- ^ "paleoanthropology". Dictionary com LLC. Archived from the original on March 8, 2016. Retrieved October 1, 2015.
- ^ "Hominoid taxonomies August 1, 2001 Science Week". University of California Los Angeles. Archived from the original on October 23, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2015.
- ^ "Paleoanthropology Hominid Family History". Communication Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Archived from the original on October 17, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2015.
- ^ "Fossil Hominids The Evidence for Human Evolution". Jim Foley. Archived from the original on June 3, 2019. Retrieved October 2, 2015.
- ^ a b Caroli Linnæi Systema naturæ. Biodiversity Heritage Library. 1894. Archived from the original on November 8, 2012. Retrieved September 27, 2015.
- ^ Kerry Bright, sponsored by the National Science Foundation at the University of Montana. "Human Evolution: Background Information". Evolution Education website, evoled.org. Archived from the original on 2003-12-26.
- ISBN 9781598744583. Archivedfrom the original on 2023-10-27. Retrieved December 26, 2015.
- ^ Black, 1931[page needed][full citation needed]
- ^ Weiner et al., 1998[page needed][full citation needed]
- ^ a b Cartmill, M.; Smith, F. H. (2009). The Human Lineage (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Boyd, R.; Silk, J.B. (2014). How Humans Evolved. WW Norton & Company.
- from the original on 2020-09-14. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- from the original on 2021-05-25. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- from the original on 2021-06-10. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- from the original on 2020-11-15. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- .
- from the original on 2021-02-14. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
Further reading
- David R. Begun, A Companion to Paleoanthropology, Malden, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
- Winfried Henke, Ian Tattersall (eds.), Handbook of Paleoanthropology, Dordrecht, Springer, 2007.
External links
- Paleoanthropology in the 1990s – Essays by James Q. Jacobs.
- Fossil Hominids
- Aspects of Paleoanthropology
- Becoming Human: Paleoanthropology, Evolution and Human Origins
- Department of Human Evolution ~ Max Planck Institute, Leipzig
- Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016).