National Geographic: Mysteries of Mankind Page #3

Year:
1988
991 Views


Leopards are natural predators

of chimpanzees.

Here, as the chimps attack,

we catch a glimpse

of how our ancestors,

having left the safety of the trees,

may have first met the challenges

of life on the ground.

Once the leopard is decapitated,

the chimp may not comprehend

that it is '"dead,'"

but it clearly knows the enemy

is no longer a threat.

If a chimpanzee has the intelligence

to defend itself with natural weapons,

it seems likely our early ancestors

did the same.

The chimpanzee has never

become an habitual upright walker.

Why did we?

Upright walking is so fundamental

we seldom think about it,

and yet it is one of the crucial ways

we are set apart

from all other mammals on earth.

When did our ancestors take that first

tentative step out of the trees

to brave the vast African landscapes?

Lmportant answers would be found in

the Afar Triangle region of Ethiopia.

Here, in 1974,

an international expedition

of 15 specialists

headed out to

the remote badlands known as Hadar.

Co leader of the team,

Dr. Donald Johanson

describes himself as superstitious.

After two frustrating months

on the sun scorched slopes,

he woke up one morning feeling lucky

and so noted in his diary.

Later that very day

the team discovered bones

that made headlines around the world

at the time the oldest,

most complete hominid ever found.

To anthropologists

who usually consider themselves

lucky to recover a tooth

or a broken fragment of bone,

this 40% complete skeleton

was a bonanza.

Nicknamed Lucy,

she quickly became the obiect

of intense study.

What is most exceptional

about a skeleton

as complete as Lucy

is all the information that

we as anthropologists can glean

from a skeleton like this.

For example, looking at

her femur or her thigh bone,

which is only about

we know that she was no taller

than three and a half or four feet.

Now that brings up the question

of was it perhaps a child?

If we look at the state of development

for example, of the third molar

or the wisdom tooth,

it is fully erupted and

is already beginning to wear.

So that relative to modern humans,

she was an adult when she died.

We're able to tell from

the weight bearing area

of the hip socket, for example,

that she probably only weighed

about 50 or 55 pounds.

From the size of the brain case,

there is enough

of the brain case preserved

to suggest to us

that the brain was very small

about one fourth the size

of a modern human brain.

Historically, large brains have been

considered the fundamental human trait.

In the 20s when Raymond Dart suggested

a small brained creature walked upright

he had only a skull to work with.

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Barbara Jampel

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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