ANTHR101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Big Bang, Evolution, Susan Blackmore
5 Feb 2016
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Document Summary
The human story began in the great rift valley of east africa. For millions of years africa was the landscape of human evolution. Across this terrain, an ancestral people survived, reproduced and passed on their traits from generation to generation. On the tree of life, human evolution began 6 million years ago o o: without africa humanity as we know it might never have evolved, when hominids split off their common ancestor, the chimpanzee o o. About 4 million years ago, hominids descended from the trees. 2. 5 million years ago, with a modified hand, they fashioned stone tools and began to depend more on a diet of meat; the size of their brains increased dramatically. 2 million years ago, some began to leave africa. It wasn"t until about 60 thousand years ago that our modern human ancestors left africa o. They were different from the earlier ones that had died out.
