Origin and Evolution of Man

The lineage leading to modern humans can be traced through a sequence of hominid fossils spanning several million years, each stage showing incremental change in brain size, posture, dentition and behaviour. Mammals themselves first evolved in the early Jurassic period, roughly 210 million years ago, with hominid evolution proper occurring later across Asia and Africa. The earliest known prehistoric-man-like fossils, Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus, lived around 14 million years ago and were themselves derived from the more ape-like Dryopithecus; all three were hairy and moved in a gorilla/chimpanzee-like manner, walking on their knuckles rather than fully upright. Australopithecus ('southern ape-man') lived in the East African grasslands roughly 5 million years ago: about 1.5 metres tall, bipedal, omnivorous, semi-erect in posture and cave-dwelling, with a low forehead, prominent brow ridges, a protruding face, no chin, a brain capacity of only about 350–450 cc, human-like dentition and a lumbar curve in the vertebral column. Homo habilis ('handy man'), around 2 million years ago, had a larger brain capacity of 650–800 cc, was probably largely vegetarian, walked bipedally, and used simple tools made from chipped stone. Homo erectus, the first truly human-like hominid, appeared around 1.7 million years ago with a flatter, thicker skull than modern humans and a markedly larger brain capacity of around 900 cc, and probably ate meat; Homo erectus (along with Homo ergaster) was among the first hominids to migrate out of Africa. Neanderthal man, found in the Neander Valley in Germany and dated to between about 34,000 and 100,000 years ago, had a brain capacity of 1400 cc — larger than modern humans' average — but differed in a semi-erect posture, flat cranium, sloping forehead, thin/large eye orbits, heavy brow ridges, protruding jaws and absence of a chin; they used animal hides for protection, knew the use of fire and buried their dead, but did not practise agriculture or animal domestication. Cro-Magnon man, found at Cro-Magnon in France, is considered an ancestor of modern European …