Brain, locomotion, diet, and culture: how a primate, by chance, became a man
In demonstrating the stages on how a primate became a man, the chapter divides this into two steps. The first step is set about 8 million years ago, during the time of Australopithecus, the first representative of the family Hominidae. The brain of this species, which is considered to be the earliest, already had an expansion of the parietal association cortex and brain reorganization. Thus, this species adapted a new posture, new locomotor repertoire, and new diet. Also, for the first time, with stone tools as evidence, it can be assumed that the species had a culture. The second step is situated about 3 million years ago, the time of the Homo. Their brain is larger and with better drainage as compared to the skull of Australopithecus. This resulted to more bipedalism for locomotion, less vegetarian for their diet, and more progressive cultural environment.
Keywords: Australopithecus, Homo, locomotor repertoire, bipedalism, parietal association cortex, posture, diet
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .