End

of Apes + Hominins
Monday, October 23, 2017 9:15 PM

Evolution of Apes Continued

Anthropoids
- Sub group of primates including apes and monkeys
- Ape and anthropoid synonymous for this course
- Monkeys are not a clade

Ape Adaptations
- Apes are more adapted for swinging through trees
- Monkeys more adapted for climbing and leaping
- More upright
- Better at hanging and worse at sitting
- Lots of missing pieces – may be a lot of convergent evolution and secondary
loss

Patterns of replacement
- Apes radiated into many habitats before monkeys
o Many ape species apparently later replaced by monkeys
§ Why?
• Changing climactic conditions
• Changes in plants or insects
• Unpredictable adaptive innovations
• Competition
o What if ape radiation had never happened?
§ Humans would not be here

Hominins
- Refer to people and our upright ancestors
- Characterized by
o Walking upright
o Specific changes in chewing design: teeth jaws skull
 Hominins
- Refer to people and our upright ancestors
- Characterized by
o Walking upright
o Specific changes in chewing design: teeth jaws skull
Taxonomy
- Homonoidea Hominidae, Hominininae Hominini hominina homo
o We have such detailed splitting because we are interested in ourselves
o Observer bias – things that are close to us look more different to us
compared to things that may be equally as different but not as familiar to
us
Putting together the Puzzle
- What did our common ancestor with chimpanzees look like?
- Which fossils are related to which other fossils?
- Which features are reliable indicators of relatedness?
o How do we tell the difference between convergence and homology?
§ Look in details of structure à if the structure is similar, it could be
due to a common ancestor, if it supports the same function but it is
built differently, could be homoplasy
Apelike Ancestors
- Were our ancestors more like us, or more like apes?
o Common Mistake
§ If apes are a clade, we are apes
o Among living apes, the closest relatives of our ancestors is us
o We have evolved more than chimpanzees have
§ Chimpanzees have probably evolved more than we assume
• Observer bias
Upright Posture
- How did bipedalism evolve?
o Adaptation to walking on ground instead of swinging through trees
§ Probably dependent on gradual evolution from existing form
o Adaptation for keeping cool
o Adaptation for harvesting food
o Adaptation for carrying food

Gradual Evolution
- Hominins evolution of upright posture dependent on evolutionary history and
circumstances (built on previous adaptations)
- Evolution of upright posture led to further evolutionary change
o Carrying/storing things
 Gradual Evolution
- Hominins evolution of upright posture dependent on evolutionary history and
circumstances (built on previous adaptations)
- Evolution of upright posture led to further evolutionary change
o Carrying/storing things
o Making/using tools
- Loops – changes lead to other changes to explain how dramatically ancestors
evolved

Studying Evolution
- Evidence from fossils
o Knees, hips, backs, skulls à provide evidence about posture
o Teeth and jaws provide evidence about diet
- Evidence from archaeology
o Hominin fossils may be found in particular places
o Associated w/ fossils from things that hominins used to eat or with tools

Complex foraging
- Key part of human evolution
- They relied on many types of food à includes types of foods that are difficult
to get/process
- What adaptations favoured this strategy?
o Clever hands, upright walking, teeth, large brains
- What further adaptions might this strategy have favoured?
o Big brains
o Male female cooperation
o Social behaviour

Back and Forth Evolution

- Early hominins (6mya) had facial/dental features similar to later hominins
(2mya)
o Less similar to chimpanzees
o Less similar to australopiths (3mya)
- Why?
o Radiation and contraction
o Changing conditions
§ Evolution NOT goal directed

Hominin phylogenies (Fig. 10.37)

- Lots of speciation and extinction events (radiation and contraction)
 o Changing conditions
§ Evolution NOT goal directed

Hominin phylogenies (Fig. 10.37)

- Lots of speciation and extinction events (radiation and contraction)
- Tree is not well understood
o Observer bias
o Convergent evolution and changing environments
§ Causes similarities in species not due to common ancestor, and
causes differences in species related by common ancestor
Sociality

Complex Foraging and Cooperation

- Complex foraging promoted cooperation between females and males
o Primate child care not well suited to hunting lifestyle
- Promoted cooperation between people with different skills
o They might have access to food at different times
- Promoted cooperation among hunters
o Hunting success is highly variable
- Promoted cooperation in teaching and learning

Complex foraging and thinking

- Favours large brains that can learn a lot
- Also favours long learning period
o Sensitivity vs crystallization
- Favours communication

Complex foraging and gender roles

- How might complex foraging affect child care and sexual dimorphism
o If males and females cooperate, child care might be more equal à less
sexual dimorphism

Social Behaviour
- As behaviour becomes more social, a wide variety of other adaptations may
become available
o Mostly related to thinking and communication
- Leads to more opportunities for looping
o Bigger brains may facilitate more food gathering and survival strategies
o Communication favours cooperation
- How Social were early hominins?
o Clues:
 o Mostly related to thinking and communication
- Leads to more opportunities for looping
o Bigger brains may facilitate more food gathering and survival strategies
o Communication favours cooperation
- How Social were early hominins?
o Clues:
§ Sexual dimorphism
• Extent of sexual dimorphism tells us about social structures
• More sexual dimorphism à less sociality and cooperation
(especially adult males)
• Which bones are male/female?
o Can tell because of childbirth
o Pelvises (hip bones) are different in all of our ancestors
• Which teeth are male and female?
o Usually can’t tell
o Bimodality can tell us about dimorphism
§ Physical structures consistent with vocal communication
§ Dental enamel
Bimodality à Fig. 10.9
- Having two peaks in a distribution
o Modern human height distribution would have peak for men and peak
for women
o If traits are strongly dimorphic, we should be able to tell by sampling,
even if we don’t know which teeth come from men and which from
women

Rate of Development
- Human children develop slowly
o Skills, sociality, we have a lot to learn
- We are interested in how long it took our ancestors to mature
o Clues
§ Dental enamel
§ Molar development

Tool Making
- Several species can make tools à tools people make are more complex
o Hominins make more sophisticated tools than non-hominins
- What other animals make tools? (not counting programmed behaviours, spiky
nests, ant traps)
o Otters
o Chimpanzees, orangutans
- Several species can make tools à tools people make are more complex
o Hominins make more sophisticated tools than non-hominins
- What other animals make tools? (not counting programmed behaviours, spiky
nests, ant traps)
o Otters
o Chimpanzees, orangutans
o Elephants
o Octopus
o Crows
Looping:
- Tool making à important part of “loop” that provided many opportunities
for new adaptations along hominin tree
- Others include:
o Complex foraging
o Sociality
o Communication
- All of these things probably interacted with and encouraged each other along
the way

Difficulties: à Fig. 11.2

- We find amazing stone tools from 2-3.5 mya
o Oldowan tools
- Hard to know who made them and used them/how they were used
o Stone keeps better than bone (tools lasts longer after the early hominins
are gone)

Active Science – pp. 270-273

- Scientists have practiced making and using tools similar to the Oldowan tools
- Surprising Conclusions
o Cores made by striking off flakes
§ Flakes are surprisingly useful
§ Cores may just be leftovers
o Spheroids (used as hammer) may be discarded hammers
o Tool makers were mostly right handed

Tools and Adaptation

- Tools opened up new strategies that likely favoured cooperation
communication and culture
o Hunting and scavenging with weapons
o Advanced foraging
 Tools and Adaptation
- Tools opened up new strategies that likely favoured cooperation
communication and culture
o Hunting and scavenging with weapons
o Advanced foraging

Active Science – p. 270-273

- Scientists lived with and attempted to learn from remaining forage based
societies
o Skills are very detailed à take a long time to develop
o Possible support for looping with culture and language
- What can we learn from modern humans about our ancestors?
o Lots of evolution has happened since then, and its hard to figure out
which parts are relevant and how relevant

Scavenging
- Eating meat that is found or taken from predators
- Evidence of early hominins butchering large animals including elephants raises
the question of whether they were hunting or scavenging
o Not easy to kill an elephant à did they have techniques or tools we
didn’t know about?

Scavenging and Hunting

- Complementary activities
o Most hunters scavenge
o Most mammalian scavengers hunt
§ Cheetahs - highly adaptive
• Good hunters
• Don't scavenge
o Our ancestors probably did both
- Scavenging:
o Requires ability to
§ Take kills from other predators
§ Use resources others can’t use
Tools for scavenging and hunting
- Some tools may have been used as weapons
o For killing prey or for fighting off carnivores
o No evidence of this
- Tools could be used to process leftovers
o Cracking large bones for marrow
- Some tools may have been used as weapons
o For killing prey or for fighting off carnivores
o No evidence of this
- Tools could be used to process leftovers
o Cracking large bones for marrow
Tools for complex foraging
- Tools and knowledge can make a wide range of food sources available
o Colonial insect resources
o Deeply buried plant resources
o Poisonous things that can be processed

Humans

Radiation and Contraction

- Early humans replaced other hominins starting about 2 mya
- Modern humans replaced other humans starting about 0.2 mya
o Probably through competition
o We still don't know all of the reasons
- Both early and modern humans evolved in Africa spread from there

Early Humans à Fig 12.8

- Acheulean industry lasted almost 1 million years
- It took people longer to move on from Acheulean industry to the next thing
than to move from what came after Acheulean industry to self driving cars

Modern Humans
- Characterized by small face and teeth
- Less robust skeletal structure
- Evolved in Africa around 200 kya (thousand years ago)
- Took over most of the world in the last 50,000 years

Why are we here?

- Modern humans arose around 200 kya but took over the world around 50 kya
- What happened?
o A sudden evolutionary change?
o Gradual evolutionary change?
§ Why don't we see evidence?
§ Might be about our brains and not reflected in fossils
o A sudden cultural change?
- What happened?
o A sudden evolutionary change?
o Gradual evolutionary change?
§ Why don't we see evidence?
§ Might be about our brains and not reflected in fossils
o A sudden cultural change?
o Gradual cultural change?

Summary
- People evolved by the same basic rules as other organisms
o Adaptation by natural selection
- Followed a very different path
o Strong loops that continually created new adaptive opportunities
- There is a lot we can learn about ourselves from biology
o We are affected by all of the same basic processes as other organisms
- And also a lot that we can’t learn
o We are strongly affected by our complex brains and complex cultures