ANTHRCUL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Upper Paleolithic, Human Taxonomy, Oldowan

• School: U of M
• Department: Anthropology, Cultural
• Course: ANTHRCUL 101
• Professor: Holly Peters- Golden

Document Summary

Absolute dating: age of something without comparison to something else: carbon-14 dating, molecular dating. How archaeologists categorize time: mya: million years ago, bp: before present (defined as before 1950) Ardipithecus ramidus (4. 4 mya: ancestral to australopithecus: oldest hominin to date, bipedal locomotion dated to 4. 4 mya, 1 mya earlier than previous evidence suggested. Ardipithecus kadabba (5. 8 mya: now the oldest hominin discovered, bipedal. Maeve leakey and allan walker: she discovered anamensis, bipedalism date set back to 4. 2 mya. Laetoli fossils dated to 3. 8-3. 6 mya, discovered by mary leakey: mary leakey established bipedalism at 3. 8 mya. Hadar 3. 3-3. 0 mya: donald-joh(cid:374)so(cid:374) (cid:862)lucy(cid:863) (the missing link in ancestral human lineage) Bipedal locomotion: spine is curved in bidepals in the lumbar region, hips are wider in bipedals foramen magnum: hole at base of skull, through which the spinal cord enters. Anamensis evolved into afarensis, which split into africanus, robustis and boisei. Gracile (smaller, more slender): a. africanus (3-2 mya)