Page 113 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1414 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer... the great
question that has never been answered: what does a woman want? • Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

when functional comparisons can be made with the thropologists fell under the sway of the “Evolutionary Syn-
structures of extant forms whose behaviors are known, thesis,” a view of the evolutionary process that ultimately
such study allows tentative reconstruction of the anatom- ascribed virtually all evolutionary phenomena to gradual
ically limited (in the hominid case, most importantly generation-by-generation change of gene frequencies in
locomotor) behaviors of the species concerned. In rare populations, under the guiding hand of natural selection
cases, such as the famous 3.5-million-year-old footprints (whereby in each generation those individuals with favor-
preserved at Tanzania’s Laetoli that directly document able heritable adaptations reproduce more successfully
upright bipedalism at that great remove in time, the infer- than those less favorably endowed).This perspective led
ences made from bony anatomy may be independently to an essentially linear view of human evolution, which
confirmed. Our understanding of what our predecessors was seen as involving a slow, dogged slog from primi-
ate is enhanced by analyses of teeth and of how they tiveness to our current burnished perfection.
wear, and the analysis of stable isotope ratios in fossil Subsequently, an enlarging hominid fossil record forced
bone can further augment our understanding of ancient the realization that the evolutionary process is more
diets. Further, the examination of associated fossil faunas complicated than this, and is subject to a host of exter-
and floras, and of the geological evidence for the cir- nal influences, many of which are entirely random with
cumstances in which sediments enclosing particular fos- respect to adaptation. The resulting picture of the hom-
sils were deposited, can reveal a great deal about the inid record is one of diversity, of evolutionary experi-
environments in which the creatures of interest had lived mentation whereby many hominid species have emerged
and behaved. and done battle in the ecological arena, trying out the
In the hominid case, our knowledge of ancient behav- many ways there evidently are to be hominid.The story
iors is vastly enhanced by the archaeological record, of our family is one of many species originations, and of
which begins around 2.5 million years ago with the many extinctions. It may seem natural to us today, since
invention of the first stone tools.Archaeology, sometimes this is what we are familiar with, that Homo sapiens is the
defined as “the study of ancient garbage,” focuses upon lone hominid in the world; but in fact it is a highly atyp-
the traces—of any and all kinds—of their activities left ical situation, and one that strongly hints that there is
behind by ancient humans. It is not confined simply to something very unusual indeed about our species.
the study of ancient artifacts, but also extends to the ways
in which those artifacts were accumulated at particular The First Upright Bipeds
sites, and to how such sites are located within the land- The earliest fossils that have been claimed to lie some-
scapes in which they are found. By combining analyses where in our ancestry, but not in that of the apes as well,
at all these levels, much can be determined about how come from African sites in the period between 7–6 and
now-extinct humans interacted with the environment 4.4 million years ago.The genera Sahelanthropus, Orror-
around them and to a certain extent with each other, in, and Ardipithecus are largely known from different
though it has to be admitted that even a rich archaeo- parts of the skeleton, and all of them have been disputed
logical record is but an indirect reflection of the complex as hominids in one way or another—reflecting the fact
social, economic, and material lives that were led by ear- that as yet we have no clear idea of what the earliest
lier hominids. hominid ought to look like. What they all have in com-
mon, however, is that each genus has been claimed on
The Human one slender basis or another to have been an upright
Evolutionary Record biped. In the period between about 10 and 7 million
The reconstruction of the human evolutionary past has years ago the ancient African forests began to fragment,
been greatly influenced by views of the evolutionary pro- as the climate became less humid and more seasonal
cess itself. In the mid-twentieth century, most paleoan- and this clearly provided new ecological opportunities