Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Evolutionary Anthropology - Homo 'Incendius', Richard Roberts, Michael Bird

Richard G Roberts

Humans have long been captivated by the flickering flames of the campfire. But when did our ancestors first master the use of fire, and which ancient human species was the first to do so? In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Berna and colleagues1 report that they have found fragments of burnt bone and ashed plants in one-million-year-old sediments at Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa. This evidence of fire occurs in the same sedimentary layers as Acheulian stone tools, usually considered the handiwork of Homo erectus. Their discovery more than doubles the accepted antiquity of the habitual …

Tree Climbing And Human Evolution, Vivek V. Venkataraman, Thomas S. Kraft, Nathaniel J. Dominy

Dartmouth Scholarship

Paleoanthropologists have long argued—often contentiously—about the climbing abilities of early hominins and whether a foot adapted to terrestrial bipedalism constrained regular access to trees. However, some modern humans climb tall trees routinely in pursuit of honey, fruit, and game, often without the aid of tools or support systems. Mortality and morbidity associated with facultative arboreality is expected to favor behaviors and anatomies that facilitate safe and efficient climbing. Here we show that Twa hunter–gatherers use extraordinary ankle dorsiflexion (>45°) during climbing, similar to the degree observed in wild chimpanzees. Although we did not detect a skeletal signature of dorsiflexion …

Evolution Of The Human Diet: What We Can Learn From Hunters And Gatherers, Kara Osborne, Alyssa Crittenden

McNair Poster Presentations

The study of hunter-gatherer populations around the world can greatly inform our understanding of the evolution of the human diet. Ethnographic research of modern hunter-gatherers has been used to infer the possible food consump­tion and acquisition patterns of our ancestors. Hunter-gatherers provide the in­formation necessary for the understanding of the past human diet, due to these populations living similar lifestyles in similar environments, therefore procuring similar foods.

The Hadza, a group of nomadic hunters and gatherers living in Tanzania, East Africa, are one of the primary populations that nutritional anthropologists study to infer what possible foods our ancestors acquired and …