WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE AUSTRALOPITHECINES?

[sca_sethe]

And the hominins for that matter~

Like last night, when I typed up some stuff regarding vitamins and nutrition, I'm going to type up the answers to the essay questions in my study guide to prepare for the biological anthropology exam tomorrow. Which I also didn't get to study for.

Here goes.

I. Identify ten anatomical changes associated with

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[sca_sethe]

Unsurprisingly, she did chose that question for the exam, so I argued that if the hallmark of humans was first considered a more complex brain (capable of culture and toolmaking) as well as being bipedal, then why shouldn't he australopithecines be considered such, which exhibit both. Furthermore, if we continually consider them as primitive or pre-human, we suggest that being human is a final product of evolution, which is definitely not the case - we are a product (and our teacher was adamant that evolution is not goal oriented). Besides, what are we going to call the humans of a million years from now? ((I wanted to quote C.S. Lewis there, who came up with that reasoning in that we shouldn't call everything "awesome" - what happens when we come across something that is truly awesome? We don't have the word, then, to express the level we feel

[sca_sethe]

We talked about that, and I probably should have mentioned that part, too, but humans (and australopithecines) are capable of making tools in advance of a need, unlike Capuchin monkeys or insects.

The difference is also making tools that create other tools and tools with multiple parts, which is unique to humans, but there's not signs of that in australopithecines.