09 Nature Evolution
With the birth of life also started the Conscience and together they covered a long evolutionary path.
Evolution is a theme, a concept, a reality still little known by the majority.
It is not long since, dinosaurs, genome and clones helping, people are interested in the discovery of the realities of the world.
The principal reason is that the evidence of Evolution clashes with dogmas and religious beliefs, that in truth little have to do with the core of the faith.
Still few years ago, when I started to investigate, it was even difficult to find publications on the subject.
Today, on the matter of Brain evolution in Nature, our mind has not since long, the fantastic tool of the Web, eventually even with optics fibbers. Click www.google.com and search for anything, for example: Human brain evolution, hominid, evolution, human origin and similar. About tens of thousand of sites will appear. All in English, because this is by now the language of Humanity. (Never mind if English speaking peoples use it!)
The Earth was formed around 4,5 billion years ago.
Fossils recoveries underline that when Earth was only one billion years old, the bacteria already existed. The bacteria can seem a very simple form of life, but they are a real chemical industry that depends on the simultaneous manufacture of thousand different chemical elements. If the bacteria, so complicated, already existed after a billion of years, the creatures of the primordial beginning had to already exist since a long, perhaps since a few hundred million years. And hundred million of years, for the success of a similar experiment, is for certain not a long period. This brings us to suppose that conditions had to be particularly favourable.
(Refer to Sperando and to the chapter of earth and the life birth)
The single-celled bacteria still exist and I are able to feel, to recognize the chemical ingredients with which they come in contact as the first organic molecules of carbon oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen mutually recognized themselves, then as now.
550 million years ago - The first Invertebrates
| The Idra one of the Philum Cnidaria from which we descend, is similar to bacteria and has still today one of the simpler nervous systems. In the Planaries, for instance, we start to notice the beginning of encephalisation in correspondence of the receptorial and feeding structures at the extremity of the animal. In them in fact we notice the appearance of the Cephalic ganglions that receive the stimuli from the environment and that control the alimentary functions. |
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| Fig 9-1 Invertebrate | |
| 450 million years ago. The first fishes | |
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The first fishes already had skeleton and fish bones and also the first small real brain. |
| Fig, 9 - 2 Fishes | |
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Very ancient and still now alive at great depths Fig. 9 – 56 Colecantus |
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| And shortly after - The first Amphibians | |
The modern amphibians are not much different from their distant ancestors and we can discern all the components of the brain of a mammal even if they where little diversified and developed Fig. 9-3 Salamander |
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300 million years ago. The first Reptiles The brain of these predecessors of ours was clearly already separated in three parts: The frontal zone for the sense of smell, the intermediary one for vision, and the back one for equilibrium and movements coordination. The receptors of the sense of smell and the vision were coordinated by a small region among them said Hindbrain. The base instincts for the survival as the sexual desire, the search of the food and the aggressive answers of attack or escape, where elaborated in this region. |
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Fig. 9 – 5 Yale Peabody Museum: The Mural Click here to magnify the different frames We have too often the impression that everything stays equal! |
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| Fig. 9 – 59 | |
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| Fig. 9 – 60 | |
| This is a Cinodont and this at the bottom a Terapsid, they where the first mammals that differentiated from the reptiles 300 million years ago. |
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| Fig. 9 – 4 Cinodont | |
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| Fig. 9 – 5 Terapsid |
200 million years ago. The first Mammals
When the mammals started to differentiate from the reptiles and to evolve, to the fundamental instincts of the reptiles were added those necessary to the protection of the offspring that was born defenceless and as a result the Hindbrain was enlarged.
The mammals were, mainly for survival reasons, nocturnal animals. This decreased the importance of the vision and increased that of the sense of smellIn the beginning these regions were relatively small and they were situated inside the skull. When the great reptiles disappeared the intensive use of the Sight returned, with the amplification of the relative zones and the Cortex began to wrinkle to increase its surface.
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| Fig. 9. 6 Primitive brain | |
| 55 million years ago - Ancestral Antropoidei | |
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| Fig. 9 – 7 Gibbon | Fig. 9. 12 Genealogical tree |
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| Fig. 9 – 8 Gorilla | |
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| Fig. 9 - 10 Scimpanzé | Fig. 9 - 11 Orang |
And 5 / 6 million years ago The first Hominids
Last discovery is of July of 2001 in Ethiopia
But this representation, even if of effect, is too much modern!
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The age that has been given to him is from 5,2 to 5,8 million of years. Kadabba stays for “family ancestor” in Afar dialect. The recovery seems to put again in cause the passage to the erect posture thought to be due to the passage of life in forests to that in the savannas. Our ancestor, as his bones show, was already biped and lived in a damp forest. |
| Fig. 9- -51 Ardipitecus Ramidu Kadabba | |
| Reports | |
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The reports of our ancestors are in the thousand, and the researchers that study them, in the hundreds. The modern scientific means as the analysis of Carbon 12 and of DNA help a lot to date them but the details are in continuous evolution |
| Fig. 9. 13 Report | |
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| Fig. 9 – 14 Genealogical tree |
The numbers in the strips point out the number of find.
| 4,4 million years ago | |
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Fig. 9 – 15 Ardipitecus ramidus It was the most primitive hominid found up to now. And the more kin to the Chimpanzee. It walked erect and probably lived in the forests. First fossil found in 1992 |
| 4,2 – 3,9 million years ago | |
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Fig, 9 – 16 Australopitecus anamensis It still has some monkey features but his humerus is very similar to the human one . First fossil found in 1965 |
| 3,5 – 2,9 million years ago | |
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Fig, 9 – 17 Australopitecus afarensis This kind includes Lucy, old of 3,2 million years. The skull is small the teeth are big and the mandible muscles are similar to those of the Chimpanzees. Legs, pelvic bones and teeth already have human characteristics. Brain 400 ccs as that of a monkey. The first fossil has been found in 1973. |
| 3,0 – 2,4 million years ago | |
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Fig. 9 – 18 Australopitecus africanus Similar to the previous, but with brain slightly bigger than that of a monkey. Small worn out Canine and great Molars suggest base feeding of fruits and leaves. Found in 1924. |
| 2,1 – 1,6 million years ago | |
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Fig. 9 – 19 Australopitecus robustus Tall from one meter to one meter and a half. With saggittal crest to which the jaw muscles were attached. Strong. . First fossil found in 1938 |
| 2,3 – 1,1 million years ago | |
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Fig. 9 – 20 Australopitecus bosei Similar to the A. robustus, probably evolved from Australopitecus africanus. Walked erect. The first fossil found in 1959 |
| 2,4 – million years ago 1,5 | |
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Fig. 9 – 21 Homo Abilis It seems to be the first kind that made use of primitives tools, 1,5 m tall weighed 45 kg. His brain was bigger than the biggest ones of the Australopitechis. Brain 750 ccs First fossil found in 1960. |
| 1,8 – 0,3 million years ago | |
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Fig. 9 – 22 Homo erectus The first sample of Homo erectus was found in Java in 1893. Exemplary of this kind have been found subsequently all around, in Asia and Africa (Brain 900 ccs) approximately one million years ago and subsequently 500 000 years ago (Brain1200 ccs ) |
| 500 – 200 thousand years ago | |
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Fig. 9 – 23 Homo sapiens archaic Brain of intermediary size among H. erectus and H. modern but rounder. H. erectus fossils skulls found both in Asia and in Europe. First fossil found in 1921 |
| 230 –30 thousand years ago | |
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Fig. 9 – 24 Homo sapiens neanderthalensis Mean height 1,65 ms, short legs, well adapted to live in the cold great bones and robust muscles. Brain of 1500 ccs, but of oblong form and not frontally developed.. Coexisted with the Homo sapiens and according to the last studies of the DNA he could procreate with him. First fossil found in1856 |
| Last 120 thousand years | |
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Fig. 9 – 25 Homo sapiens modern That of 40.000 years ago already made elaborate tools of bone, ivory, stone and wood and produced artistic paintings and sculptures in wood. The first specimen" Cro Magnum". Brain 1400 ccs Found in 1868 |
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| Fig. 9. 28 Progressions of skull and brains | Fig. 9 – 26 Homo abilis |
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| Fig. 9-28 a Geological Era | |
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| Fig. 9 – 29 a/b Homo erectus and his mistress ! | |
| Begining of third millennium DC | |
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| Fig. 9 – 27 Homo Sapiens Sapiens mindfull |
The most known find reveals a man of age for that time advanced with hunchbacked posture.
The conformation of the skull points out an average intelligence with frontal associative areas GS and FV well developed. (Good sense and Free will).
The examination of the feet soles, very wide), point out that he used his feet naked and therfore we deal with a Navigator, a specimen that the fragments of the known Papyrus Bowline, found in a sailboat wreckage in the submerged atoll of Suvarov, defines as Yachtsmen.
The artrosic concretions of his right arm and of the hand, reveal the habit to “crush mice” and we deduce that this specimen had at late age recycled to the navigation on the Web. The web was the precursor of the actual system of Mental sharing, which at that time was based on the canalisation of the photons by reflection. Brain not yet measured.
Earth and Man histor
| Date |
event .............. |
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| 14.7 billion BC |
Starts of creation history with Big Bang |
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| 4 billion BC |
Earth formation |
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| 4 million BC |
First humanoid fossils |
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| 1,800,000 BC |
First humans Homo erectus migrate from Africa |
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| 125,000 BC |
The warmer period before Ice - Age |
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| 120,000 BC |
Language invention |
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| 100,000 BC |
Modern men Homo sapiens migrate from Africa |
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| 65,000 BC |
Human findings in Australia suggest the to build boats |
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| 35,000 BC |
Men reach the Americas from Asia |
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| 10,000 BC |
Agriculture Invention |
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| 9,000 BC |
Invention of Pastoralism (domesticate and pasture ) |
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| 7000 BC |
Development of agriculture in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America |
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| 5000 BC |
Discovery of utensils of metal (Copper and Bronze) |
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| Around 3500 BC |
Uruk Town founded by Sumerian (Mesopotamia) |
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| Around 3500 Bc |
Sumerian Station for tea commerce at Nile delta |
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| Around 3000 BC |
Town of Memphis and Tebe founded in Egypt |
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| Around 3000 BC |
Towns of Mohenjo-Dara and Harappa founded in India |
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| After 2850 BC |
Town of Ur founded by Sumerian (Mesopotamia) |
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| About 1500 BC |
Discovery of iron (Modern Turkey) |
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| Around 1200 BC |
Minoic Civilisation (Island of Crete) |
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| After 1122 BC |
Town of Hao founded in China (Chou Dynasty) |
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| Around 800 BC |
Restoration of civil authority in Greece |
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| Around 753 BC |
Founding of Roma |
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| Around 500 BC |
Beginning of big centralized Religions |
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The evolutionist theory of Darwin
Before examining the evolutionary factors that have intervened in the past on our ancestors it will be a good thing to refresh our knowledge as how evolution operates.
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The great theory that for life takes the place of Big Bang it is that, of Darwinian origin, the Adaptation; when some environment conditions change, the best fit organism survives and the others disappears. We say, theory of darvinian origin, because since then it had many developments and confirmations, but has not substantially changed even if some unexplained things still remain. At the base of everything there is the hereditary information of the DNA that imparts to the organism the commands for its development from the very first division in two of the mother cell. |
| Fig. 9 – 30 Darwin |
The DNA, presides to the whole development with the expression in time and space of all the characteristics of the cells of the organisms. This activity is developed by every cell and it also concerns its following divisions that contain the totality of the information in this fantastic chain of the DNA that employs only 4 letters and for which please refer to the chapter 5 of Sperando
On one side the DNA already contains homologous genes coming from parents that can be explicit or recessive, on the other side a lot of other variations can happen for different causes, among which for example the energetic radiations of the sun, or casual deviations in the processes of expression and replication.
In a population the difference of the genes that do the same job is rather big, but because of their natural remixing, particular variations of the Phenotype are not noticed.
Only if the environment conditions vary, the individuals with the most proper gene affirms themselves. Classical is the example of the English Moths: Biston Betularia that exists clear and dark, they feeds at night and in the daytime they rest, I suppose on the birch trees, prey to the birds. In the zones where they have started to extract coal are established the dark ones, now that coal extraction has been stopped and that the environment is purified, the clear ones have also returned.
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| Fig. 9. 32 Moth Betularia | Fig 9 – 33 Pepper Moth Tipica |
There are numerous other examples, that broadly confirm the phenomenon to species level, above all if few individuals suddenly found themselves isolated because of geologic or of other type events.
More difficulty however is to understand with this mechanism the macroevolution.
One of the involved mechanisms can be the preadaptation for which pre-existing anatomical structures are made available for functions alternative to that ancestral ones.
Another mechanism is that of the allometric development by which differences in succession and duration of development bring to notable different results.
What doesn't seem for now demonstrable it is the influence of the adaptations of the organism on its progeny. For example the bodybuilders' children if they do not also exercise, will not resemble to their fathers, and the child of a Chinese speaks Chinese only if they teach him. On the other hand it is also calculated that the probability that a certain characteristic of the eye, emerges for example only trough the game of the probabilities of mutation that for any reason can happen in the DNA during the generations, is so low that million of million of years are not enough. Realism, implies that other mechanisms competes, more finalized or better influenced by the existing conditions, as it happened in Cosmos history, to address the evolution toward greater complexity, and whose trend appears to be that to free itself more and more from said conditions.
Here for example: It is a news of these days (15 02 2002)
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Working on the extensively studied Midge of Fruit Drosophilae, have been discovered the genes that control the growth. They are the Omeotic genes that check the form of the body during the growth. If one of these genes spontaneously mutate or subsequently to intervention in laboratory, a fly can be had with two chests, with four wings or with more legs than normal. |
| Fig. 9 - 31 Drosophilae |
It has been now found a further demonstration of their power. A normal insect has only 6 legs confined in the thoracic region because its abdomen does not have legs. Altering one of these genes called Hox it can be made to also grow thoracic legs as in a shellfish or as in the common insects and shellfishes ancestor. A single gene can be enough to make therefore appear a whole new category of animals.
But recently October 2002 an even more clarifying discovery has been made: Apparently other genes make proteins that keep growth in line preventing casual mutation to interfere. But this mutation are stored just the same in the DNA. When the surrounding environment abruptly changes, the stress affects this proteins that lower their guard and mutations are released.
When I started, 10 years ago, to dig this subject, this was the big interrogative that many brought forward to fight Evolution theory.
The study of Evolution has put in evidence different factors by which it is influenced, and after all they are not other than the variations due to the environment and the usual game of mutual interaction of the situations that are created.
This is why situations in which there was a shortage of oxygen kept the activity of chemo-autotrophic bacteria under control so they were not able to transform all the seas into a brownish mire before the eteroautotrophs could keep them at bay.
This is also the reason why situations in which there was a shortage of food altered the species, specializing their ability to use alternative sources of food.
Even periods of abundance had considerable and various effects. Feathers for example originated as protuberances for the purpose of storing the surplus of proteins taken in abundance by their creatine. These feathers were initially useful for keeping in the warmth and then they took on another purpose, that of enabling longer jumps.
Even the flight of birds, an activity requiring a enormous amount of energy, was possible thanks to the abundance of insects to be eaten. The plants were able to grow taller by transforming the excess glucose in cellulose to act as a skeletal system. And so on, the number of examples connected with contingencies are countless.
Even the catastrophes had an enormous influence on evolution. In the history of evolution have taken place at least five great mass extinctions. The first was that of the flora and the fauna of Ediacara that were already present with their fossils 700 million years ago. They are very strange organisms, if compared with subsequent ones, of which no trace remains and which were followed by the birth of the first animals 250 million years ago. Another was the joining of continents that had emerged into only one, called Pangea. At the same time it has been noted that 90% of the life in the sea became extinct.
Than again 65 million years ago the dinosaurs became extinct
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At that time Pangea split up again due to powerful volcanic activity that obscured the sun for a long time, cooling the atmosphere and leading to the extinction of many marine and terrestrial animals. Recent studies have also correlated these drastic changes with the fall of large meteorites, the proof being the presence of iridium in the relevant fossil layers. |
Also recently a series of periods with a strong “greenhouse effect” have been discovered, presumably linked to the increase in carbon dioxide of volcanic origin. The proof is in the relevant fossil vegetation which only in those periods shows a reduction in the stomas, those openings through which plants absorb the carbon dioxide. This proof coincides with the extinction of species 65.000.000! million years ago. In fact, from the type of leaf that developed in this period, a leaf that was more suitable for dissipating heat, it can be deduced that it was not the cold but the excessive heat due to a greenhouse effect that caused the mass extinction in the cases mentioned.
The news comes from a recent article in the science section of “The Economist”. Together with the plants, the animals that fed
on them would also have become extinct and evolution would have put on another spurt and taken another turn.
Whatever has been the cause it is however noticed that these massive extinctions had a great and deep effect on the biodiversity, so big as to led us to affirm that in these holocausts exists a creative side.
The species that succeed in overcoming the critical phase of the extinction and in surviving, for their own qualities of adaptation or for a series fortunate coincidences, assume the role of new biological matrix for new radiations, (evolutionary rays of variety) and they have the tendency to occupy a lot of the adaptive zones made available by the disappearance of the precedents tenants.
The actual world would be very different if some families of Dinosaurs had survived to the extinctions of the Cretaceous and if Purgatorius, so was baptized by the palaeontologist joker who discovered it, the only known primate of the Cretaceous, had not overcome the crisis of that period.
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| Fig. 9 – 34 |
We now try to give a broad outline of the causes of the of hominids evolution.
At that time, 6 / 7 million years ago in Africa the forests were warm and damp, the trees full of edible fruits and the monkeys thrived.
Under lived the feline: the great cats and the leopards, probably also at the expenses of the monkeys that however, if in good health with four hands, could escape most of the time.
All of a sudden for climatic reasons in those regions the forests started thinning out and forced local monkeys to step down from the trees to eat at least the gras and the roots, and so they became easily prey and drew near to extinction limit.
As for the feline they extinguished or migrated: There was not anymore a population of animals sufficiently numerous to maintain them.
Lets suppose that this region was then somehow isolated. The remaining monkeys came permanently down from the trees and adapted to live at ground level, and forced by circumstance, became herbivorous, they also even ate insects. Some mutation favours the change of the "hands", standing for their needs was obviously more practical, and they became bipeds.
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| Fig 9 – 35 Ramidus worried | Fig. 9 – 36 Sabre tooth cats |
They also even learned to use clubs, as still now some monkeys do beating them on earth to frighten flocks of other monkeys. The situation lasted for a long time, tens of thousand years, there is no shortage of time in the history of the evolution! But all of a sudden the climate changed again, and moreover the region didn't result anymore isolated. The true monkeys returned and with them they also returned the feline.
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| Fig. 9- 37 Paranthropus Before Hominides branching |
The situation was wretched for the Ardipitecus Ramidus.
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He was not anymore able to climb on trees with the speed of a quadruman, and at earth level with only the club that he had not yet learned well to use, alone or in small groups, was easy prey. The Ardipitecus Ramidus succeeded in surviving, gathering in packs where group of males armed with clubs, defended females and children. |
| Fig 9 – 38 Arcipitecus ramidus |
The tribe (that is what the became) had to live together with women and children in places more defensible by the old men, while groups of men went farther to pick the food consisting mainly of grasses, and in this work they where also helped by the hands.
Once the first period was overcome, who knows how much millennia and who knows how many times it did happen, life becomes a little easier
Owing to the inferior mortality the group increases and the shortage of food forces to nomadism. For hundreds of thousand of years the hominids go around and populate those that will become the actual continents
It is evident that the strive to live together, to program, to defend themselves, sharpens the skills and it increase the brain not because is already full of knowledge but because the mutations in that direction favour survival.
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| Fig. 9 – 41 Afarensis | Fig. 9 - 42 Australopitecus |
The language is born
The language is also born. The hypothesis is that to which has been given the name of Displacement. With signs and grunts, at direct presence of one another ominides where already able to communicate since two million years. But do you realize the eternity of these periods of our history? In the meantime the erect position had also favoured the lowering of the larynx and given more place in the skull for the brain.
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| Fig 9 – 39 | Fig. 9 - 40 |
If the group is numerous and we wish to indicate someone we can not see, it is necessary to invent a custom designed grunt, the same thing is also necessary for an object: the river the lake the club! when this is not in sight to be pointed out. From one thing another arises, the concepts emerge: the words for feelings, for the time of the past and of the future, and so on.
The theory of the displacement is not sufficient to invent the language, it is also necessary an ability of symbolisation that had already been previously developed. It is known in fact that chimpanzee and bonobos that have been educated to use a wide dictionary of symbols to communicate with man, have a considerable abstract symbolic ability.
It has been recently discovered that to the areas of the brain mantle of the man that manage symbols gestures and sounds, correspond same areas in primates.
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| Fig 9 – 3 Homo erectus | Fig. 9 – 45 Homo seated |
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| Fig 9 – 44 Homo abilis |
