by Randall Susman
Calliope magazine
Article summary :
A lot of people ask why and how we evolved. Were we branched off from other hominids? Fossils give us information about our ancestors and the physical changes they went through overtime. They also tell us about the changes in behavior of them. Scientists now compare anatomy and behavior, through fossils, in living animals to extinct animals in order to better understand our ancestors. For a long time theories on human origins were based on science and concrete evidence like fossils. At the 1800 a man called Darwin, thought that we are not the only ones that change and grow but also plants and animals show the same characteristics. His theory was widely used among scientists. After a time period, Thomas Huxley started comparing human and apes. According to the author " Huxley believed that anatomically, apes and humans were similar, more similar in fact than apes were to monkeys". This is interesting because apes look like monkeys on the outside but on the inside they are actually more like humans- no one knew this before. That means it was a new idea! No hominid fossils was ever found before and that meant that no evidence proved those two theories.
The first hominid fossil was found by Raymond Dart in the 1925 at the south Africa. That means that it was the first piece of the puzzle, a piece that helped to explain the human evolution and started to prove Darwin's and Huxley's theories. Scientists and archaeologists continued to search and dig in Africa and found more fossils and stone tools (more puzzle pieces/ evidence). From all these fossil finds, Susman explained that some believed "our earliest ancestors were tree dwelling apes, or four legged knuckle- walkers, or even bipeds that lived in water". Did you actually know that stone tools meant that our ancestors hunted for food?We also learn from the article that people had different opinions because they didn't have an accurate fossil record.
Susman, Randall. "Why We Study Human Origins." Calliope: Exploring World History Sept. 1999: 4-5. Print.
