Emergence of Humans and Major Races of the World

What are Humans?

1. Bipedalism:
- one step at a time
- by 6 million years ago humans became bipedal
- Strong Knee: 4.1 million years ago
- Curved Spine to absorb shocks while walking: 2.5 million years ago
- Hip Support: 1.95 million years ago
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Benefits of Walking:
As environments changed, walking on two legs helped early humans survive by:

• making it easier to pick fruits and other food from low-lying branches;
• freeing hands for carrying food, tools, or babies;
• enabling early humans to appear larger and more intimidating;
• helping early humans cover wide, open landscapes quickly and efficiently.

Costs of walking:
- back pain and related problems
2. Encephalisation:
- an evolutionary increase in the complexity or relative size of the brain, involving a shift of function
from non-cortical parts of the brain to the cortex.

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Benefits
The modern human brain can:

- store many decades worth of information;

- collect and process information, then deliver output, in split seconds;

- solve problems and create abstract ideas and images.

It can also do much more.

Costs

- A big brain gobbles up energy. Your brain is 2 percent of your body’s weight but uses 20 percent of your
oxygen supply and gets 20 percent of your blood flow.

- Large brains mean large heads, making childbirth more difficult and painful for human mothers than for
other primates.
3. Sexual Dimorphism:
4. Ulnar Opposition: The ulnar opposition—the contact between the thumb and the tip of the little finger of the
same hand
1. Dryopithecus:
- Earliest known ancestor of man
- tree dwelling apes originated in Africa 15 million years ago.
- Also radiated out in Europe and Asia

2. Ramapithecus/ Sivapithecus
- late Miocene period
- Sivalik Himalayas

3. Australopithecus:
- Where Lived: Eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania)
When Lived: Between about 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago

4. Homo Habilis:
Where Lived: Eastern and Southern Africa
When Lived: 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago
• This species, one of the earliest members of the genus Homo, has a slightly larger braincase and
smaller face and teeth than in Australopithecus or older hominin species.
• But it still retains some ape-like features, including long arms and a moderately-prognathic face.
• Its name, which means ‘handy man’, was given in 1964 because this species was thought to
represent the first maker of stone tools.
• Currently, the oldest stone tools are dated slightly older than the oldest evidence of the genus
Homo.

5. Homo Rudolfensis:
Where Lived: Eastern Africa (northern Kenya, possibly northern Tanzania and Malawi)
When Lived: About 1.9 million to 1.8 million years ago
• Originally considered to be H. habilis, the ways in which H. rudolfensis differs is in its larger
braincase, longer face, and larger molar and premolar teeth.
• Due to the last two features, though, some scientists still wonder whether this species might better
be considered an Australopithecus, although one with a large brain!
6. Homo Erectus:
Where Lived: Northern, Eastern, and Southern Africa; Western Asia (Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia); East
Asia (China and Indonesia)
When Lived: Between about 1.89 million and 110,000 years ago
• Early African Homo erectus fossils (sometimes called Homo ergaster) are the oldest known early
humans to have possessed modern human-like body proportions with relatively elongated legs and
shorter arms compared to the size of the torso.
• These features are considered adaptations to a life lived on the ground, indicating the loss of earlier
tree-climbing adaptations, with the ability to walk and possibly run long distances.
• Compared with earlier fossil humans, note the expanded braincase relative to the size of the face.

• Early fossil discoveries from Java (beginning in the 1890s) and China (‘Peking Man’, beginning in the
1920s) comprise the classic examples of this species.
• Generally considered to have been the first species to have expanded beyond Africa, Homo
erectus is considered a highly variable species, spread over two continents (it's not certain whether
it reached Europe), and possibly the longest lived early human species - about nine times as long as
our own species, Homo sapiens, has been around!

7. Homo Neaderlthalensis:
- Where Lived: Europe and southwestern to central Asia
When Lived: About 400,000 - 40,000 years ago

• Neanderthals (the ‘th’ pronounced as ‘t’) are our closest extinct human relative.
• Some defining features of their skulls include the large middle part of the face, angled cheek bones,
and a huge nose for humidifying and warming cold, dry air.
• Their bodies were shorter and stockier than ours, another adaptation to living in cold
environments.
• But their brains were just as large as ours and often larger - proportional to their brawnier bodies.
• Neanderthals made and used a diverse set of sophisticated tools, controlled fire, lived in shelters,
made and wore clothing, were skilled hunters of large animals and also ate plant foods, and
occasionally made symbolic or ornamental objects.
• There is evidence that Neanderthals deliberately buried their dead and occasionally even marked
their graves with offerings, such as flowers.
• No other primates, and no earlier human species, had ever practiced this sophisticated and
symbolic behaviour.

8. Homo Sapiens:
Where Lived: Evolved in Africa, now worldwide
When Lived: About 300,000 years ago to present
• The species that you and all other living human beings on this planet belong to is Homo sapiens.
• During a time of dramatic climate change 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa.
• Like other early humans that were living at this time, they gathered and hunted food, and evolved
behaviours that helped them respond to the challenges of survival in unstable environments.
• Anatomically, modern humans can generally be characterized by the lighter build of their skeletons
compared to earlier humans.
• Modern humans have very large brains, which vary in size from population to population and
between males and females, but the average size is approximately 1300 cubic centimetres.
• Housing this big brain involved the reorganization of the skull into what is thought of as "modern" -
- a thin-walled, high vaulted skull with a flat and near vertical forehead.
• Modern human faces also show much less (if any) of the heavy brow ridges and prognathism of
other early humans. Our jaws are also less heavily developed, with smaller teeth.

9. Denisovan:
The Denisovans or Denisova hominins ( /dɪˈniːsəvə/ di-NEE-sə-və) are an extinct species or subspecies of
archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic.
DNA evidence suggests they had dark skin, eyes, and hair, and had a Neanderthal-like build and facial
features. However, they had larger molars which are reminiscent of Middle to Late Pleistocene archaic
humans and australopithecines.
Race and Ethnicity:

Ethnicity:

Ethnicity is identification through language, religion, collective history, national origin, or other cultural
characteristics. A cultural characteristic or a set of characteristics is the constituent element of an ethnicity.

Race:

Humans are just too similar as a population. If the question is rephrased as, “Are there some superficial
differences between previously spatially isolated human groups?” then the answer is yes. There are
genetic, heritable differences between groups of people. However, these differences in phenotype
(appearance) say very little about genotype (genetics).

In 1775 that the term connotes its contemporary meaning when Kant used the phrase "races of mankind"
to designate peoples, distinguished from others, according to their physical attributes

Hooton (1926) defined ‘race’ as a great division of mankind, the member of which though individually
varying are characterized as a group by certain combinations of morphological, metrical features,
principally non-adaptive, which have been derived from their common descent.

While talking about the origin of human races, broadly there can be two schools of thought, i.e.
monogenism and polygenism. Monogenists believed in the theory that all human varieties or races arise
from a single stock, while polygenists are of the opinion that the human varieties or races are of different
origin.

Parameters for Racial Classification:

A. Phenotypic Traits
B. Genotypic Traits

1) Phenotypic Traits: Phenotypic traits are those physical characteristics of an individual, which may be
examined: These are of two types:
• Indefinite Physical (Phenotypic) Traits and
• Definite Physical (Phenotypic) Traits

Indefinite Physical (Phenotypic) Traits: Those physical traits which are observable but immeasurable to
any measurement are called indefinite physical traits, such as the colour of skin, hair and eyes.

1. Skin Colour
• White skinned people or Leucoderms, e.g. Caucasian
• Yellow skinned people or Xanthoderms, e.g. Mongolian
• Black skinned people or Melanoderms, e.g., Negroes.

2. Hair:
- Colour
- Texture
3 .Eyes:
- eye opening
- Eye fold
- Eye color
4. Nose:
- Nasal depression: None, shallow, medium, deep.
- Nasal bridge: Straight, concave, convex, Concave-convex.
- Nasal tip: Sharp, Medium, thick, bulbous.
- Nasal septum: Sloping upward, horizontal and sloping downward.
- Disposition of the nares: High and narrow, medium broad, broad and flaring.

5. Lips:
thin, medium, thick and very thick lips

6. Face Form:
- Poch has distinguished ten facial types, viz., elliptic, oval, reversed oval, round, rectangular, quadratic,
rhombic, trapezium, inverted trapezium and pentagonal

7. Ears:
Definite Physical (Phenotypic) Traits: Definite physical traits are those, which can be measured with the
help of anthropological methods and instruments. In brief, the following are definite physical traits:

1. Stature
2. Head Form

Anthropologists have adopted a method for classifying the head form based on the ratio of the maximum
breath and maximum length expressed as cephalic index. On the basis of cephalic index, head is classified
into three classes, i.e.,Dolicocephalic, Mesocephalic and Branchycephalic.

CEPHALIC INDEX= (width of head/ length of head) * 100

a) Long headed (DOLICHOCEPHALIC) below 78.5

3. Nose Form:

The nasal index is a good indicator to know the dimension of the nose. It is the proportion of the width of
the nose to its length.

An index of the ratio of (nose width at the nostril/nose length)* 100

a) Leptorrhinae upto 70.9

4. Face Form:
The proper evaluation of the face form can be possible with
the help of Facial Index. It is an indicator of the proportion of the facial length to its breadth.

o Hypereuryprospic upto 78.9

5. Ear Form

B. Genotypic Traits:
1. Blood groups
2. Dermatoglyphics
3. Haemoglobin variation
4. DNA finger prints