Homo habilis
First found: Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, 1962
Significance: The first hominid known to have made stone tools
Open question: This poorly known species closely resembles Australopithecus and might actually belong in that genus instead of in Homo.
Image: Viktor Deak
When Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, he pondered the evolution of organisms ranging from orchids to whales. Conspicuously missing from his magnum opus, however, was any substantive discussion of how humans might have arisen. He wrote only “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” Scholars attribute Darwin’s relative silence on this matter to reluctance on his part to further nettle the Victorian establishment (and his pious wife), for whom the origin of all living things—especially humans—was God’s work.
Thomas Henry Huxley, the biologist otherwise known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” had no such reservations. In 1863 Huxley penned Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, in which he explicitly applied Darwin’s theory of evolution to humans, arguing that we had descended from apes. Eight years later Darwin himself, possibly encouraged by Huxley’s effort, wrote The Descent of Man. In it he declared the chimpanzee and gorilla our closest living relatives based on anatomical similarities and predicted that the earliest ancestors of humans would turn up in Africa, where our ape kin live today. At the time, only a handful of human fossils were known—all of them Neandertals from sites in western Europe.
This article was originally published with the title The Human Pedigree.
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26 Comments
Add CommentIf humans arose in Africa, how did they manage to reach Europe? They would be directed by nature from cold to heat, not the reverse!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this....light the way?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe blind leading the blind via hallucinations.
Finding food is a greater priority for animals than working on their tan. They may have followed a food species north and then potentially found other food species to follow. Also, there tend to be fewer diseases and pests further from the equator so that may have inspired migration. There may have also been fewer predators. You are aware that there are many species today that live in cold climates that are capable of moving to warmer climates if, as you indicated, nature directed them to do so, but seem to prefer the cold. Have you ever read a book on evolution? Try, "The Origin of Species", you may find that it answers many of your questions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust because you imagine a scenerio doesn't mean it's true. How would Inuits, and other Arctic peoples, fit into your imaginative "logic"? Both DNA and archaeogical evidence are very clear...Humans, and human "cousins", originated on the continent of Africa and some radiated out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese imaginary scenarios that lack any evidence, and the blind bias against scientific and objective evidence, have this county in a serious education crisis. More than 30 percent of incoming college freshman are having to take remedial courses besause people with these biases are manipulating the high school curriculm and sabbotaging young people's education. We have to import graduate students from other countries because these biases have our own students completely unprepared for college and advanced studies. Evolution is "change"...that means one must be familiar with the priciples of evolution if s/he will be capable of understanding the cellular evolution of disease, cancer, aging and respective their cures.
There is no need to create a war between faith and science. Science explains "how"; faith explains "why". I've seen deeply devout men and women (even clergy) who are excellent scientists, and vice versa.
Could it be possible that, instead of a single individual (e.g. "African Mary") heralding the advent of modern humans, the same mutation/development occurred in different areas from the same ancestral group? Could the same species of ape, widely dispersed, have gone through the same stages in different places, even at different times, maybe thousands of years apart?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere a predator is found, there also, food is found. I guess both are part of the same chain. Concerning diseases, how could they imagine there tend to be fewer pests further from the equador if they were simply moved by nature?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConcerning capable species preferring cold, this indicates they were first of all living in cold, not preferring moving from heat to cold.
In that line of reasoning, our ancestors (the sons of Noah) were used to cold just after the global flood. Thereafter, some decided to move toward the equador (more heat) while others preferred more cold.
It is factually incorrect that there is "abundant evidence from fossils" validating Darwin's prediction that the chimpanzee and gorilla our closest living relatives. In fact, there is no evidence at all, which is why paleoanthropologists get so tied up in the contradiction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother absurdity is that We now know that our closest living relative is the chimpanzee and that humans arose in Africa between five million and seven million years ago, after our lineage diverged from that of the chimp." We dont know that at all. There is abundant living and fossil evidence to the contrary.
The image of Homo habilis making it look like a chimpanzee has no scientific foundation
Actually genetic evidence strongly suggests both of these situations, if fossils don't do it for you. The human and chimp genomes differ by less than 2%, making the chimpanzee our closest living ancestor genetically. Also there is strong evidence from both mitochondrial DNA and markers on the Y-chromosome supporting the theory of an African origin with multiple migrations that eventually colonized the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you would like to read a great book explaining the genetic evidence for this origin and these migrations, Spencer Wells' Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey is an easy read, even for those with absolutely no science background.
Also, what is the "abundant living and fossil evidence to the contrary" of this close relationship between chimps and humans because I would love to explore that.
'Fabrice LOTY', 'toothful', 'John Greham', and other creationists should either contribute valid science to the debate or stay in their congregations where their pseudo-scientific opinions will be heard by more gullible ears.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf John Grehan considers that the reconstruction of Homo habilis is incorrect, and 'has no scientific foundation', then let him produce the science which refutes it. And I do mean science, and not religious belief.
Kate Wong is a pretty good editor/writer on prehistoric themes. And your illustration of Homo habilis is reasonable in flat-face profile and pigmen-tation suite. What is crumbling in paleoanthropology is the Out-of-Africa 2 theory that posits a superrace came out of Africa and eliminated archaics all over the Old World (i.e., genocide).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fossil evidence from Skuhl Cave to Vindija Cave suggests multiethnic admixture, as do the redated Cro-Magnons with reduced Neanderthal traits. The big Q that O-o-A 2 theorists cannot answer is: where did pale white people, blondism and huge projecting noses come from, especially in northern Europe, if not from the indigenes? That is, from the Neander-thals, who were as ethnically mixed as we are today, with DNA from preNeanderthals, migrants from North Africa, the Levant and the Black Sea, as well as their own wide range of diversity and grade. In the last decade, we have found nothing but admixed fossil remains in the period following the date of the supposed African invasion of Europe, by such eminent scholars as Trinkhaus.
I studied with a well-respected, very intelligent physical anthropologist who thought very strongly there was something to this. Personally, I have yet to be convinced. I'd need more data from the archaeological record before I'd support such a theory. It seems to me Occam's razor would make multiple-origins of a single speciation unlikely...but physical anthropology is not my area of concentration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat evidence would that be? There is no evidence, archeaological nor genetic, of human habitation in arctic regions that predate habitation in Africa.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo what living and fossil evidence do you refer when you deny the African origin of earliest hominoids? You contradict yourself in asserting our close relatioonship with the chimpanzee.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfab loty: your pegging the human adaption to colder climate as based on the noachian flood is supported by no evidence. if you admit to the possibility of advancing and retreating glaciation you can find archaeological evidence to human habitation following the ever warming climates at the edge of habitable range. there is now plenty of evidence that human life had reached around the planet about 13,000 years ago (read Jared Diamond), and that the most recently settled regions have been the tropical islands, and these in historic times.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisapparently your scientific view is constructed as an apologia for your existing belief, rather than allow for an evolution of understanding. (e.g.: Diamond is certainly not the last word on the peopling of the americas).
The chart accompanying this article should settle at least one argument with the ID crowd who insist on noting "all the gaps" in the record. A rather simple inspection shows that each gap filled creates one more. It's good to know our field biologists aren't swayed by the ID argument and go right on discovering more (not fewer) gaps!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOrganisms, humans included, produce too many offspring to fit the environment. Therefore the population must spread in order to find enough food to survive, humans migrated north out of Africa twice; one at about 50-60 thousand years whos descendants ended up in Indonesia and Australia and another about 20 thousand years later which was the Big One, the descendants of which drifted into the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, Europe and Asia and finally to the Americas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn The Human Pedigree, Henry Huxley is described as "...arguing that we had descended from apes." As implied later in the article, this is not what evolution teaches and I believe Huxley would have asserted correctly that humans and apes descended in parallel from a common ancestor. The distinction is important and forms the best rejoinder when creationists ask... "if humans descended from apes, how come apes are still around?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this''Science explains "how"; faith explains "why".''
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrong. In science, facts and laws explain how and theories explain why. Faith explains nothing.
''It is factually incorrect that there is "abundant evidence from fossils" validating Darwin's prediction that the chimpanzee and gorilla our closest living relatives. In fact, there is no evidence at all, which is why paleoanthropologists get so tied up in the contradiction.''
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrong. The problem faced by palaeoanthropologists today is that there is too much of an abundance of fossil evidence and categorising them accordingly is the main issue.
Our closet relative in fact is dead, Neanderthal man! and our closest other relatives are also dead. In that respect the only other 'living' organism to which we could identify is the living apes & monkeys, but that connection was never direct, it was a primitive branching even before monkeys looked like monkeys and we certainly did not look like humans. If we were to trace the hereditary lines back to a common ancestor then it would be the smaller tree dwelling monkeys that are now long extinct because they became us, or branched of to become another species.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Humanevolutionchart.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Age-of-Man-wiki.jpg
Although whimsical, I have written some thoughts along the lines of evolution and religion in my Spaces blog here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://cid-03d3bdc6e62389ef.spaces.live.com/
Evolution & Hairy men...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/09/08/2679925.htm?topic=ancient
Normally, when an animal is extremely successful, it expands its range. Perhaps the human population was growing such that resources were scarce and we had to look in other locations. Once we developed clothing to keep us warm, choosing to go where no human had gone before meant we got more things to ourselves. Additionally, it's often really difficult to find food in Africa during the dry season.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe did not come from apes, but from god.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo not want to publish my work in his "Ancient society in the era of stone technology," which denies the appearance of people in Africa and other stuff and provides an objective understanding of ancient human history:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://kraevedenie.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=895
http://stoneagekurtdode.wordpress.com/%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%89%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%B2-%D1%8D%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%85%D1%83-%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9-%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%85-2/
The material given in the reduction, but to give you the full text.
rogdana5@mail.ru
they went to europe when humans were starting to gain the ability to both think and to explore and have an imagination they werent driven by nature they were driven by curiosity
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