Posted on 10/23/2009 8:58:12 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Humans were living and thriving on open grassland in Africa as early as 2 million years ago, making stone tools and using them to butcher zebra and other animals... All of the other earlier hominins that have been found in the geological record -- such as Ardipithecus ramidus and Australopithecus afarensis -- known as Ardi and Lucy, respectively -- lived either in dense forest or in a mosaic of woodland, shrub and grasses, says Plummer... Plummer's team first started excavating Kanjera South in the 1990s, in search of primitive toolkits consisting of hammer stones, stone cores that were struck to create sharp edges, and stone slivers. In the process, they uncovered the fossils of 2190 different animals and 2471 tools, all deposited within a window of just decades to a few centuries. To investigate whether they were standing on the site of ancient grassland, Plummer's team analysed the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the soil and in the tooth enamel of the fossilised animals. Grass has a higher ratio than trees and shrubs. Both the soil and the tooth enamel of fossilised animals had similarly high ratios... The team also found that the site was littered with the fossils of young, butchered zebra carcasses. The youth of the prey suggested that the hominins were hunting these animals rather than scavenging for them. Plummer's team also found that the ancient humans who lived in Kanjera 2 million years ago carried stone raw materials over surprisingly long distances.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
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To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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bump.
I hear Savannah is nice this time of year. Sorry I couldn’t resist.
From what I remember from the cinema, she was pretty nice all year round.
"...So, scientists split the Hominoids into two subfamilies: Ponginae (orangutans) and Homininae (humans and their ancestors, and chimps and gorillas). But, we still need a way to discuss humans and their ancestors as a separate group, so researchers have proposed a further breakdown of the Homininae subfamily, to include Hominini (humans and their ancestors), Panini (chimps), and Gorillini (gorillas)."
- From Hominin, About.com
These developments have been under the cultural radar. I had been aware that chimps had been placed into the same subfamily as humans, unbeknowst to the general public, who continue to refer to chimps as "monkeys," for crying out loud. But I had not heard of "Hominin", which is nothing but an abrogation of the newly pronounced "Homininae".
Thanks for homin’ in on it. :’)
Now I always thought that a hominim was one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...;) sarc/off
Thanks!
This fits in with my own theories about human evolution.
We are the only Primates to habitually walk upright.
We are the only primates to have entirely freed our hands for use.
We are the only primates to have lost our canines.
We are the only primates to feed to such a large degree on meat.
ERGO, before modern “humans” came to be, our immediate ancestors were actually “formed” by the use of weapons in food getting and later fighting.
WE really are “The Killer Apes”.
Oh, you bad, bad boy.
Just try asking for either dark meat or white meat, and be labeled a troublemaker.
That explains why we blew it all to hell.
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