Question

Essay: Homo erectus differs from earlier hominins in having a subsistence pattern that includes higher amounts of meats and foods that required extractive foraging. 1) Describe the relationship between brain size, body size/limb proportions and this shift in subsistence patterns for H. erectus. Be sure to include specific references to biological adaptations related to the subsistence pattern. 2) How does culture (think stone tools and social behaviors) influence these factors? Your answer should include a definition/discussion of the biocultural feedback loop and make reference to how the pattern and process of human evolution was changed during the Early Pleistocene. Important! Banned words for your essay include: Need(s/ed/ing), want(s/ed/ing), and try(s/ed/ing).

Answer 1

HOMO ERECTUS

Homo erectus are the earliest species in the human lineage to have so many human-like qualities. Homo erectus is often referred to as the first cosmopolitan hominin lineage, that is the first hominin species whose geographic range had expanded beyond a single continental region. Homo erectus was about the size of modern humans and was fully adapted for upright walking.The first hominid to leave Africa for Europe and Asia was Homo erectus.

BODY SIZE

The most common trait ssociated with Homo erectus is an increase in body size. The adolescent male individual, was over five feet tall at the time of his death. Living humans generally experience a marked increase in growth during early adolescence, a growth pattern that distinguishes humans from apes. Even if H. Erectus did not have such a modern human-like pattern of growth, the specimen was clearly a tall one relative to earlier huminids.

ធ្វើកមក A

BRAIN SIZE

It is also called as encephalization. ​​​​​It's brain was much larger than it's ancestor's brain, but it had features that separate it from modern humans. The brain size of Homo erectus are 600- 1200 cubic centimetre.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAIN SIZE AND BODY SIZE

As the body size of hominins increases, the brain size increases as well. While the smallest-bodied early H. Erectus fossils have brain sizes only slightly larger than earlier hominins. So it refers that increase in body size increases the brain size as of Homo erectus.

INFLUENCE OF CULTURE IN IT'S SUBSISTENCE PATTERN

The tools Homo erectus were more sophisticated than those of Homo habilis. Homo erectus was perhaps the first hunter-gatherer. Homo erectus was skillful at hunting and butchering animals and is presumed to be the first fire user. Archaeologists believe that H. Erectus established early cultures and had methods for communicating information to the next generation. The concept of language is believed to have existed inin Homo erectus. The Homo erectus fossil record provides clear evidence of a large range of skeletal size variation, atleast equivalent to that observed in living human populations, but it does not provide conclusive evidence that males were systematically larger than females to a greater extent than they are today.

Language is perhaps the hallmark human trait, but can be difficult to assess directly from the fossil record. Attempts to identify language ability in the fossilized skeleton remains of Homo erectus have focused on aspects of the nervous system, including the size of vertebral canal and external features of endocasts(natural fossils of endocranial space and a proxy for brain size and shape).

Homo erectus represents a significant transformation from previous hominins, like the australopiths, to a species much more similar to modern humans. Relative to their australopith forebears, Homo erectus was bigger, smarter, and more able to occupy and survive in differing landscapes in a changing world. The movement towards a more ecologically intense, cognitively reliant, and behaviourly malleable adaptive pattern set the stage for the evolutionary change that followed in Pleistocene, up to and including the present. In many ways, modern humans are just an updated version of our H. Erectus ancestors.