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.
With a colossal spread of over 1,260,000km², granting it the largest known ancient civilization. For over seven hundred years, the Indus civilization was thriving with excellence as seen in modern day religion & business, this soon declined and disappeared. But how could a civilization of such magnitude disappear leaving very little or even no traces? Archaeological excavations of Harappan sites began in 1842 by Charles Masson; many archaeologists persistently furthered the excavation of these sites. During this process, pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is the Indus Valley Civilization have been fixed together suggesting answers to questions, but an extreme lack of definitive proof.
Lucy the Beginnings of Humankind is a novel about the impressive discovery of our ancestors by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey. This discovery changed the way scientists thought about the origins of humankind. The discovery of Lucy proves that humans evolved from apes millions of years ago. It also provides further evidence that supports the fact that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size in human evolution. Finding 40% of the bones from Lucy was extremely impressive to scientists and especially to a paleoanthropologist because of the simple fact that these bones are over 3 million years old.
"Blacks," "American Indians," "Whites"); his conclusion, based on his measurements, that Whites were superior to other groups. While, almost a century later, Harvard biologist Gould rebuted Morton theory because he found that the average size of black male skulls was larger than that of white males. He knows now that skull size or cranial capacity (the brain size) tells us nothing about intelligence, but in the nineteenth century such "scientific" efforts were used by people to legitimate their racial
Humans are said to be one of the most, if not the most intelligent and successful species on the planet, but it was not always like that. It took seven million years of evolution for us to be what we are now. From our earliest ancestors, Australopithecus, to us, Homo sapiens different changes in the environment and challenges forced us to adapt, discover, and learn new things in order to survive. Through this process of natural selection only those with the right abilities and brainpower will live on. 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.
This suggests that genetic monomorphism did not prevent the cheetah from flourishing across two continents for thousands of years. The cheetah likely evolved in Africa during the Miocene epoch (26 million to 7.5 million years ago), before migrating to Asia. Recent research has placed the last common ancestor of all existing populations as living in Asia 11 million years ago, which may lead to revision and refinement of existing ideas about cheetah evolution. The now-extinct species include: Acinonyx pardinensis (Pliocene epoch), much larger than the modern cheetah and found in Europe, India, and China; Acinonyx intermedius (mid-Pleistocene period), found over the same range. The extinct genus Miracinonyx was extremely cheetah-like, but recent DNA analysis has shown that Miracinonyx inexpectatus, Miracinonyx studeri, and Miracinonyx trumani (early to late Pleistocene epoch), found in North America and called the "North American cheetah" are not true cheetahs, instead being close relatives to the cougar.
However, throughout history, human beings have done more than just believe based on observation. The faith in a higher power and superstitions have driven Civilizations from the very beginning of time. Due to the advances made by Nobel Peace prize winner, Williard Libby, carbon-dating has enabled us to date artworks back to the Upper Paleolithic Period hinting the creation of icons, sympathetic magic, entoptic designs, and most importantly totemic imagery; the belief that humans can adopt animal like characteristics. The lion-human in the Upper Paleolithic Period and the jade Kunz Axe from the Olmecs are two interesting sculptures proving the existence and variety of totemic beliefs in history. The lion-man is a statuette made out of mammoth tusk and it is a combination of human and animal characteristics during the Upper Paleolithic period.
It included many historically important city states, including Assyria to the north, Elam to the south-east and Babylonia towards the centre. Today, most of Mesopotamia lies in Iraq but parts can also be located in Kuwait, Syria, Turkey and Iran, with Babylonia’s capital city Babylon (whose name translates to Gate of the Gods) lying 94 kilometres southwest of Baghdad. Babylonia, and particularly Babylon, soon rose quickly in power and status thanks to the early reign of a ruler known as Hammurabi. The sixth king of the first dynasty of Babylon forged coalitions between the separate city-states of Mesopotamia, and promoted science and scholarship. Hammurabi made Babylonia into an empire and the society was thriving - he also created the earliest written set of laws called The Code of Hammurabi.
The saga has been retold for hundreds of years and has become even harder to trace back to truth because of the many views on the account mainly by Homer’s take on the event in his fictions The Odyssey and The Iliad. His versions both contain gods and portray Achilles as immortal except for the heel of his foot. The movie Troy, aside from a bit of dramatization and a few minor twists in the tale, is probably more accurate than not. The main question that has been posed is if Troy really existed. Manfred Korfmann, a German archeologist, has led excavations on the site believed to be Troy told of by legends for the past 16 years.
His main evidence was the continents appear to have a jigsaw like fit, the west coast of Africa and South America have the same pattern of rock layers and have the same plant and animal fossils; some of these animals are only found in those parts of the world and their fossils show they could not swim. Although it had been noted that the shapes of the continents seemed to fit together Wenger died in 1930 and his ideas had still not been accepted. This was because there was no explanation for how the continents moved and because he was not a geologist. In the 1950s and years later geologists began to consider the theory of continental drift due to fossil records from separate continents showing the same species and mineral specimens along the same break lines of the continents. His ideas were not fully accepted until the 1960s when the Atlantic Ocean floor was surveyed in detail and the mid Atlantic ridge was discovered.