Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Profile of Professor Tobias
- List of participants
- Foreword
- Address
- Keynote address
- Searching for common ground in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and genetics
- The history of a special relationship: prehistoric terminology and lithic technology between the French and South African research traditions
- Essential attributes of any technologically competent animal
- Significant tools and signifying monkeys: the question of body techniques and elementary actions on matter among apes and early hominids
- Tools and brains: which came first?
- Environmental changes and hominid evolution: what the vegetation tells us
- Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
- Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
- The impact of new excavations from the Cradle of Humankind on our understanding of the evolution of hominins and their cultures
- Stone Age signatures in northernmost South Africa: early archaeology in the Mapungubwe National Park and vicinity
- Vertebral column, bipedalism and freedom of the hands
- Characterising early Homo: cladistic, morphological and metrical analyses of the original Plio-Pleistocene specimens
- Early Homo, ‘robust’ australopithecines and stone tools at Kromdraai, South Africa
- The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
- Contribution of genetics to the study of human origins 276
- An overview of the patterns of behavioural change in Africa and Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene
- From the tropics to the colder climates: contrasting faunal exploitation adaptations of modern humans and Neanderthals
- New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
- Late Mousterian lithic technology: its implications for the pace of the emergence of behavioural modernity and the relationship between behavioural modernity and biological modernity
- Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
- Stratigraphic integrity of the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave
- Testing and demonstrating the stratigraphic integrity of artefacts from MSA deposits at Blombos Cave, South Africa
- From tool to symbol: the behavioural context of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof, Western Cape
- Chronology of the Howieson's Poort and Still Bay techno-complexes: assessment and new data from luminescence
- Subsistence strategies in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave: the microscopic evidence from stone tool residues
- Speaking with beads: the evolutionary significance of personal ornaments
- Personal names index
- Subject index
Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Profile of Professor Tobias
- List of participants
- Foreword
- Address
- Keynote address
- Searching for common ground in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and genetics
- The history of a special relationship: prehistoric terminology and lithic technology between the French and South African research traditions
- Essential attributes of any technologically competent animal
- Significant tools and signifying monkeys: the question of body techniques and elementary actions on matter among apes and early hominids
- Tools and brains: which came first?
- Environmental changes and hominid evolution: what the vegetation tells us
- Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
- Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
- The impact of new excavations from the Cradle of Humankind on our understanding of the evolution of hominins and their cultures
- Stone Age signatures in northernmost South Africa: early archaeology in the Mapungubwe National Park and vicinity
- Vertebral column, bipedalism and freedom of the hands
- Characterising early Homo: cladistic, morphological and metrical analyses of the original Plio-Pleistocene specimens
- Early Homo, ‘robust’ australopithecines and stone tools at Kromdraai, South Africa
- The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
- Contribution of genetics to the study of human origins 276
- An overview of the patterns of behavioural change in Africa and Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene
- From the tropics to the colder climates: contrasting faunal exploitation adaptations of modern humans and Neanderthals
- New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
- Late Mousterian lithic technology: its implications for the pace of the emergence of behavioural modernity and the relationship between behavioural modernity and biological modernity
- Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
- Stratigraphic integrity of the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave
- Testing and demonstrating the stratigraphic integrity of artefacts from MSA deposits at Blombos Cave, South Africa
- From tool to symbol: the behavioural context of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof, Western Cape
- Chronology of the Howieson's Poort and Still Bay techno-complexes: assessment and new data from luminescence
- Subsistence strategies in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave: the microscopic evidence from stone tool residues
- Speaking with beads: the evolutionary significance of personal ornaments
- Personal names index
- Subject index
Summary
Abstract
Until 2000, several scientists considered Ardipithecus ramidus from Ethiopia, at 4,5 Ma old (million years) to be a very early ancestor of later hominids, australopithecines and hominines. Based on molecular clocks, the dichotomy between apes and humans was supposed to be situated around 6 Ma, and this discovery was viewed as supporting the molecular data. But, at the time, the hominoid fossil record between 9,5 and 4,5 Ma was very poor (only a few fragments of bones, maxillae and mandibles were known – all from Kenya) and new material was clearly needed. In 2000, field work by the Kenya Palaeontology Expedition (a Franco-Kenyan cooperative project) led to the discovery of Orrorin tugenensis in the Tugen Hills (Kenya), which dates to between 6,0 and 5,7 Ma. The species was originally represented by eleven specimens: a mandible in two pieces, several isolated teeth and postcranial bones (three fragmentary femora, a distal humerus and a proximal manual phalanx). Since 2000, the number of specimens has doubled, including more teeth and postcranials. The teeth show a complex mixture of primitive ape-like features (such as the presence of a low distal shoulder on the upper canine crown, a mesiodistally elongated upper canine) and derived hominid features (the molars – small, squarish with thick enamel and with almost vertical lingual walls – recall those of hominids, a lower canine with a distal tubercle and a mesial marginal ridge, and the absence of a C-P3 diastema). The femoral features show clear evidence of adaptation to bipedalism (presence of an obturator externus groove, an elongated femoral neck, an anteriorly twisted head, and the pattern of the cortical distribution in the femoral neck among others). However, Orrorin exhibits some differences from the australopithecines in the morphology of the femoral neck, the position of the lesser trochanter and projection of the femoral head; but also shares some features with them (asymmetrical cortical distribution in the neck, length of the neck, presence of the m. obturator externus groove, among others). The humerus and phalanx imply arboreality in Orrorin. Dentally, Orrorin appears to be a very early hominid, a conclusion reinforced by the adaptation to bipedalism.
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- Information
- From Tools to SymbolsFrom Early Hominids to Modern Humans, pp. 134 - 151Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2005