Q.Try to trace the various components of human evolution (hint: brain size and function, skeletal structure, dietary preference, etc.)
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Human evolution unfolds as a documented sequence — Dryopithecus/Ramapithecus → upright-walking early hominins → the Australopithecines → Homo habilis → Homo erectus → Neanderthal man → Homo sapiens — with brain size, skeletal structure and diet all changing together along the way.
Tracing human evolution means following three threads at once — brain size and function, skeletal structure, and dietary preference — exactly the components the question asks us to isolate, rather than treating human evolution as one smooth, single-cause story.
The story begins around 15 million years ago with Dryopithecus and Ramapithecus, two hairy, ape-like primates that walked somewhat like modern gorillas and chimpanzees. Of the two, Ramapithecus was more man-like in its features, while Dryopithecus stayed closer to the apes. Neither yet shows the skeletal hallmark of the human lineage — upright, bipedal walking.
That hallmark appears next: by about 3 to 4 million years ago, man-like primates living in eastern Africa had begun walking on two legs. They were small — not more than about 4 feet tall — but this shift in skeletal structure is the true starting point of the human lineage as distinct from the other apes.
By roughly 2 million years ago, the Australopithecines were living in the grasslands of East Africa. Their skeletal structure supported an upright, hunting lifestyle — they used stone weapons — yet their diet was still mainly fruit rather than meat, showing that tool use came before any major shift toward meat-eating.
The genus Homo then appears. Homo habilis, literally "the first human-like being," had a brain capacity of about 650–800 cc and, like the Australopithecines before it, probably did not eat meat. Homo erectus followed — fossils were first discovered in Java in 1891 — living about 1.5 million years ago with a larger brain of roughly 900 cc, and this time the evidence points to a meat-eating diet. Brain size and dietary change move together here: a bigger brain, tool use, and access to more calorie-dense food each reinforce the others.
Neanderthal man carries this trend further: a brain capacity of about 1400 cc — larger in absolute terms than the modern human average — living in the Near East and central Asia between about 1,00,000 and 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals used animal hides and buried their dead, signs of behavioural complexity alongside their physical evolution. …
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