Human Evolution: The Process and My Thoughts

Imagine. Meeting someone from a different species, but is still like yourself. I honestly can't because I find it impossible today. But the thing is this did happen thousands of years ago. Imagine how that would feel to meet some that is not like you but a distant relative from a distant ancestor.  Going back in time think about an early Homo sapien meeting a group of Homo neanderthalensis for the first time. the eerie silence folding around you with tension. A break from that may be with violence or just pure curiosity as you move closer to them. You find similar features on them that belong to you as well as some that doesn't match up. They are shorter and thicker than you. They have a longer face with a bigger head than yours. This is a historical moment in prehistory (if that makes sense) that will be looked upon and studied by future generations. All of these thoughts that I have, our ancestors most likely didn't think of at that time but we think it now and actually h

When I think of bipedalism and its effects on the skeleton my thoughts always go to the pelvis. I guess since the pelvis is one of my favorite parts of the body because of the unique design evolved for our bipedal locomotion and some fun other stuff. Overtime in our different species ancestors there are changes within the pelvis that allow us to walk upright without discomfort, and (tying back to my previous blog post) why our pelvis is much different than our cousins the chimps. We evolved our narrow anatomic modern pelvis with a more circular birth canal about 200,000 years ago (Gruss, Schmitt 2015), but it did not happen all at once. This took millions of years of our changing of different species ancestors who used different locomotion or in later times similar locomotion to get were our pelvis are now. according to Gruss and Schmitt our pelvis are shorter than that of apes which lowers our center of gravity allowing lumbar lordosis to occur (inward curve in our lower back). This a

Chimps and humans diverged millions of years ago. Many of the chimps may not have diverged with the rest of the future homo . Early homo of this divergent time may have evolved to best suit their environment, while the others (chimps) still did things that chimps do not needing to evolve into a bipedal homo . Evolution is always branching off throughout all living things, this includes chimps and humans. We aren't 100% certain why this is we can just make inferences on why this might be. Chimps ancestors might have thrived in the way they were in their environments, while human ancestors could have challenged the ways of the chimp and began slowly evolving and adapting into what we are today. not all changes were good and beneficial but are side effects of the evolution of homo. Chimps today are very well adapted to their surrounding environment in the wild and have some advantages over us as humans (ex child birth). There are always going to be divergence in evolution and chimps

With this week's readings, the differences in thoughts and views are brought up and challenged. And rightfully so. We are taught as anthropologist the ideas of the western white men that came before us and how we could affect and change them. During their time they the only ones in the field, with no one to challenge their thinking. The conclusions made in the past of the superiority of the "white race" in evolution are very much wrong. This topic is widely debated and is brought up in many other anthropology class as well as other disciplines. These readings brought up the many issues that are mentioned in many classes within the humanities. The thought of the white race as superior to all others, Asian and African regions of evolution as inferior and primitive, as well as today's group of anthropologist not being diversified because of the old (and some new) views of white supremacy. The racism is clearly stated within evolution teachings from the past and some have

Hello! My name is Sara Drake and I am a senior majoring in Biological Anthropology with a minor in Criminal Justice at Appalachian State University. This is where I will be posting my responses to the prompts of the class and giving my thoughts on the different subjects. I hope you all are doing well and I am excited to interact and discuss Human Evolution with all of you!