2015 MIDATLANTIC ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PANEL: HOMINID DIG FINDINGS

Australopithecus  Physical features (similar to both humans and apes)  Strong brow ridge (apes)  Small brain case (apes)  Bipedal (humans)  Beginnings of opposable thumbs and “big toe”

Homo erectus (1.8 million-300,000 years ago)  First hominid species found outside of Africa (found in Indonesia, China, and Eastern Europe)  Survived for nearly 1.8 million years. In comparison, humans have only been around for 196,000 years!  Physical characteristics  First hominid to share similar proportions to modern humans- looked more human than ape  Long legs, shorter arms, larger brain than Australopithecus  Pelvis and hips had developed so they could walk MORE upright/taller  First species to have actively used fire

“Cooked Food Hypothesis”  With fire, homo erectus could cook their food  Made food tastier and easier to digest  Made the extraction of energy from raw ingredients quicker and more efficient.  useful for powering an over-sized, energy-hungry brain  Homo erectus brain was 50% bigger than the preceding species of human, Homo habilis.  Advancement in brain size attributed to development of cooked foods  It gave extra energy, used for evolutionary success  reduced feeding time, freeing men to hunt  lowered weaning time, creating bigger families

Homo neanderthalis (lived 150,000-30,000 years ago)  Found in Belgium, Spain, Germany  Coexisted with homo sapiens in Europe and Western Asia  Huge Skeletons  Short, wide hips/legs, big chest  SUPER STRONG- could crush a modern-day wrestler  Protruding jaw, basically no chin  Effects of big muscle mass= draining for body. Required a lot of calories to maintain energy (think Michael Phelps)  Evidence suggests Neanderthals may have interbred with homo sapiens  As much as 4% of our DNA matches that of Neanderthals

Cultural elements of Neanderthals  Limited cognitive abilities  Strong evidence that all tools found at Neanderthal sites were copied from Cro- Magnon tools  Replicas of knives, spears, arrowheads  Possibly buried their dead?

Homo Sapiens (35,000-10,000 years ago)  Found in Southern Europe and Eastern Asia  First appeared about 150,000 years ago  Brain size  Smaller than Neanderthals; HOWEVER, proportionally to body size, homo sapiens have the larger brain  Anatomically identical to modern humans

Unique behavior  Hunted animals of all sizes, as well as fished  Able to craft tools made of different materials and sizes so that they could hunt many different types of animals  Basic knives/handaxes  spears, harpoons, nets, needles, bow and arrows  Symbolic behavior- evidence of this did not appear until about 47,000 years ago