In his book “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, the author Jared Diamond tried to explain why history evolved differently for peoples from various geographical areas. Diamond believes that environmental factors, like plant and animal domestication, gave some civilizations benefits over others. In Chapter 1, Diamond discusses human evolution and migrations across the planet. He mentions that the history of humanity started approximately 7 million years ago, when a population of African apes diverged into three separate populations, one of which evolved into modern humans. For the first 5 or 6 million years after this separation, humans were confined to Africa.
Vocabulary: Guns, Germs, and Steel Chapter 1 Protohumans: prehistoric primate, resembling humans Australopithecus: fossil bipedal primate with apelike and human characteristics Refutation: evidence that helps to establish the falsity of something Homo erectus: extinct species of hominid that lived in most of the Pleistocene epoch Neanderthals: extinct species of human that was widely distributed in ice-age Europe Cro-Magnon: common name that has been used to describe the first early modern humans Aesthetic: concerned with beauty Anatomical: relating to bodily structure Anthropologist: study of humankind Hybridization: combining two complementary single-stranded DNA or RNA molecules Chapter 2 Moriori: indigenous people of the Chatham Islands
o Because this date corresponds approximately to the beginnings of village life in a few parts of the world, the first undisputed peopling of the Americas, the end of the Pleistocene Era and last Ice Age, and the start of what geologists term the Recent Era. Plants and animal domestication began in at least one part of the world within a few thousand years of that date Chapter Two: A Natural Experiment of History How does the fact that the Maori defeated the Moriori (a “natural experiment of history) support Diamond’s
The animal I chose to do my report over for the prehistoric era is the Stegosaurus. Stegosaurus translates to meaning, “roof lizard or"plated lizard". Stegosauruses most likely lived during the late Jurassic period, about 156-140 million years ago. Fossils have been found in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, USA, and in North America, western Europe, southern India, China, and southern Africa. The first Stegosaurus fossil was found in Colorado, USA, in 1876 by M. P. Felch.
To better understand our history of evolution we will have to go back three point two million years ago where one of the first species of upright walking apes or hominids were discovered. Lucy, a female Australopithecus afarencis is well known for being part of the earliest species of hominids and was discovered containing forty-seven out of two hundred six bones in a full skeleton. During Lucy’s time the Earth’s plates were shifting causing the environment and climate to change. The rift valleys were forming and the rain forests were dying. In this new environment they found it more efficient to move about on two legs.
Abstract From the nearly 7 million year old skull of the Sahelanthropus to the 28,000 year old skull of the Cro-Magnon or “Homo sapiens sapiens”, paleoanthropologists have been attempting to complete the human evolutionary timeline or “tree” in order to document and understand human origins; culturally and biologically for hundreds of years. Their efforts have not been unrewarded. The discovery of a nearly complete Homo erectus or possibly Homo ergaster skeleton also known as the “Nariokotome boy” in 1984 gave anthropologists an abundant amount of information concerning the capabilities and body proportions of this early hominin species. The skeleton is also classified as KNM-WT 15000 (Kenya National Museums-West Turkana). Discovery “In August 1984, a small piece of human cranial bone was recovered by Kenyan fossil-finder Kamoya Kimeu at a site located near the Nariokotome sand river, some 5 kilometers inland from the western shore of Lake Turkana, northern Kenya (F. H. Smith 1994: 418).” Kimeu was part of the Richard Leaky and Alan Walker excavation team.
Java man was the “missing link”, he proclaimed. All over the world, people started to hunt for traces of our distant ancestors. With every new fossil they found it became ever clearer that there was not just one “missing link” but a whole chain of them between apes and modern man. Comparison of the fossils that Dubois found on Java in the nineteenth century with other finds from Africa has revealed that what Dubois found was actually a Homo erectus. In 1972 Mary Leakey’s son, Richard, and Alan Walker were looking for fossils near Lake Turkana in Kenya.
Diamond points out six things that can make a domesticated animal; diet, growth rate, problems of captive breeding, nasty disposition, tendency to panic, and social structure. I would then go into great detail on what these criteria actually mean. For example, explaining the growth rate criteria. Domestication requires that an animal can grow quickly. Some animals, like the elephant, take 16 years to reach full maturity.
Name: Course: Instructor: Date: “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond The key theme of Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is the history of societies and cultures as well as their place in that history. In 1998, it won the prize for a nonfiction book and became the national best seller that year. Diamond caught the attention of the public by his book with a fascinating account of more than 13000 years of human evolution and development. He contends that the lapses in power and technology in the human societies originated from differentiated environments. The author argues that while cultural or genetic make-up has favored Eurasians regarding resistance to endemic diseases and development of writing earlier than on the other
Magdalenian Culture: Personal Ornamentation and other uses of Art The Stone Age was a wildly innovative time period for humans across the world. Estimated lasting about 3.4 million years and ending between 6000 and 2000 BCE, there is loads about this ancient era that is widely theorized and mysterious. Since there is so much to cover within the Stone Age, it was reasoned by scholars in the 1800’s, that it be broken up chronologically, starting with the Paleolithic era and continuing with the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The Paleolithic era, meaning “old stone”, is the earliest division of the Stone Age and covers the greatest portion of humanity’s time. Separated into three stages, Lower, Middle and Upper, the Paleolithic period is still very much unaccounted for.