Becoming Human's Summary

Summary from Becoming human's documentary

Prologue

• Donald C. Johanson  perhaps human’s existence begins 4 millions years ago.

Some species adapted to the changing world while others were extinct. They developed a complex culture than nobody does it before and for that reason they could survive.



Evidence

1) HADAR (Ethiopia) it’s placed in the northern.

1972 they do a little travel to explore and they discover how rich the place was in fossil animals.

19731st fossil hominid discover, a knee joint, dated in 3.4 millions of years from a hominid

1974return to Hadar (last October) discovered the most important hominid on the all times. LUCY


2) LUCY

Donald looks further and found the whole skeleton of an hominid. The son “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” was sounding all the time while they were celebrating the discover. 3.2 millions years old.

AUSTROLOPITHECUSAFARENSIS

AUSTRO: Southern
PITHECUS: ape
AFARENSIS: afar region (where she was discovered)

Around ETHIOPIA they find more interesting hominid fossils.

3) RECONSTRUCTING ENVIRONMENTS

Kaye Reed Paleocologist She reconstruct the environment

Animals are a good source of information about past environment. Their anatomy reveals whether they were grass eaters or fruit eaters. That help us to reconstruct the environment.
HADAR very dusty place now but before there were a lot of plants and vegetation and animals.

AFRA REGIONthey work with them and they help to discover from who are the bones (fossils) from cats, lions…

The preservation of the bones gives us information about the past, how they are conserved through the years. The environment exposition give us interesting clues. They find more carnival bones than others.
Lucy was bipedal, and she’s got long arms with the benefit to climb a tree and get away from other dangers. However the trees disappear and this specie certainly will not survive.


Anatomy

1) The common ancestor

1971 Darwin proposed than human and apes got a common ancestor.

Primatesinclude monkeys, apes and humans, and they share many important similarities to make us distinct from other animals, they share brains, eyes, nose, teeth, clavicle, hands and thumbs.

African Chimpanzee=a lot of similarities

We share a common ancestor. In a concrete time in Africa, apes begin to develop like for example. Grasping toes (there was a big diversity of apes living there).

6 millions years ago, the world became a dryer and a colder place. African forest change and some apes species extinct but other begins to adapt to the new climate. And it survives the common ancestor of apes and humans.