ANT101H5 Chapter 11: Chapter 11 Textbook Notes
Document Summary
Compare premodern humans with earlier hominins (specifically, homo erectus) both anatomically and in terms of what the archaeological evidence tells us. Explain why premodern humans are called humans and how they relate to modern humans. Explain how the latest dna evidence helps resolve the issue of whether the neandertals are a different species from living people. All living people today are members of one species, sharing a common anatomical pattern and similar behavioral potentials. We call hominins like us modern homo sapiens . Homo erectus took crucial steps in the human direction and defined a new adaptive level in human evolution. Most of the hominins lived during the middle pleisocene: middle pleistocene the portion of the pleistocene epoch beginning 780,000 ya and ending 125,000 ya. Later premodern humans, especially the neandertals, lived well into the late pleistocene: late pleistocene the portion of the pleistocene epoch beginning 125,000 ya and ending approximately 10,000 ya.