Evolution Of Man Essays - Transitional Fossils, Lower Paleolithic

Evolution Of Man The evolution of man is an area of study that will never fully be understood, however, evidence has been accumulated to allow us to paste together a picture of what happened in the beginning of time. It allows us to gather an idea of how man progressed to exist in the state in which we see him now. We can see that the evolution of man was directly influenced by his environment. Mans intellectual development directly effected the physical changes that we see. It is apparent through observation that the environmental changes also induced some of the physical changes that man underwent. These environmental changes and seemingly intellectual development slowly refined mans behavior, as well as his way of life. We also can see how man develops along with the changes in sophistication of the tools he used. We can observe that the progression of the tools coincide directly with the progression of the evolution of man. As the technology, as simple as it was, slowly became more advanced, we see how the apparent effect that it has on early mans development and how those advances made, effected the actions and behavior of man. It is essentially those changes in behavior and lifestyle which lead to mans evolution. In this paper, I will include some of my observations of the physical development of man from ancient human-like animals to modern day man. At the American Museum of Natural History I observed the exhibit of Lucy. Lucy was found in Hadar Ethiopia and is the name given to a fossil skeleton of a hominid who lived over 3.2 million years ago. Lucy stands as the most complete skeleton known of an early human predecessor. She is known to be part of the bipedal primate know as Australopithecus afarensis. Lucy was expected to be twenty-five years old and roughly four feet tall. What we know about Australopithecus afarensis is that they walked upright and were able to climb trees. Australopithecus afarensis, like Lucy, had small skulls, small brain cases, projecting faces, large chewing teeth and looked ape-like. Looking at Lucy, my tour guide pointed out her primitive limb proportions. Although she did walk upright on two legs, her legs were very short, adopted to climbing, indicating that she may have taken shelter in the trees at night. We can also observe that Lucy had very long hands. The proportion of her hands in comparison to her short legs would implicate that she walked in a different fashion than the way we do today. She would have had to swing her arms around, making her motions similar to those of an ape. Five million years after Lucy, Australopithecus africanus appears. This creature also walked upright but lived in relatively open country and obtained food mainly by gathering and scavenging. Australopithecus africanus face did not project as far as his ancestors, had smaller incisor teeth and a slightly larger brain compared to body size. I enjoyed the exhibit of Australopithecus africanus because it showed what he would have looked like with flesh. It looked like a hairy, short cross between man and ape. In the same exhibit as Lucy was Turkana boy. He was found in 1984 at Nariokotome, Kenya. Turkana boy existed about 1.6 million years ago and looks more like modern man. The Turkana boy was five feet three inches and weighed one hundred and six pounds. Although we would view his skeletal height as that being one of an adult, his bones were those of an adolescent. It was believed that if he had lived to maturity, he would have grown to about six feet one inch and would have weighed approximately one hundred and fifty pounds. The proportions of his body maximized the surface area to best shed body heat in a hot dry open environment. He was more advanced than Lucy and had increased brain cell capacity and had rock tools which was evidence of hand crafted tool kits which were primitive but sophisticated. Turkana boy came about one million years after Lucy and it is interesting to see the difference in their skeletal structure. He is tall and his neck is very close to the body, his skeleton reveals a more complex being , whereas Lucy had a little frame and looks more animal-like. The next exhibit showed the skulls and tools of Paranthropus robustus (near man). This early man lived in wooded to open