“How humans evolved through decades and how well they adapted to their environments.”
Introduction
Human evolution is the long procedure of alteration that led to individuals coming from ancestors that looked like apes. Scientists have found proof that all people share the bodily and behavioural traits of apelike descendants and changed over about six million years. This essay discusses how humans have evolved through the decades and how they have adapted to their environments.
How humans have evolved through decades
Throughout evolution, essential organisms acquire more sophisticated features over time. It is generally accepted that human beings evolved from more primitive ancestors. It is believed that development started billions of years ago in the sea. Through evolution, humans have gone through six stages; dryopithecus-Considered human and ape ancestors. China, Africa, Europe, and India were home. Oak-wood apes are Dryopithecus (Kewley et al., 2019). Dryopithecus lived in heavily wooded tropical lowlands and may have been herbivorous.
Ramapithecus– The first of their skeletons were uncovered in the Shivalik Mountains of Punjab, while further ones were found in Africa and Saudi Arabia. Their homes were on the open meadows. Australopithecus– This first fossil was discovered in 1924 in South Africa. They walked upright, used stones as weapons, and sat on the ground to build their homes. Homoerectus-Java produced the first Homo erectus fossil in 1891. Pithecanthropus Erectus were these. They were the missing link between humans and apes. China discovered the Peking man.
Homo sapiens neanderrthalensis– It was from the Homo erectus that the modern human race arose. Throughout our species’ development, two distinct branches, Homo sapiens Neanderthal and Homo sapiens, emerged.Homo sapiens– Cro-Magnon was the earliest European Homo Sapiens skeleton found. They had rounder skulls, shortened jaws, and a modern man’s chin.
How have humans adapted to their environment?
Humans have changed and adapted to their environments for millions of years, resulting in a wide range of observable physical and behavioural differences. Some significant steps in human evolution are summarized here.
The capacity to walk upright on two legs, or bipedalism, is often regarded as one of humanity’s most crucial evolutionary achievements. It also let early humans see further than they could have otherwise amid the savannah’s thick grasses, which freed up their hands for other duties(Schipper, 2020). Species like Ardipithecus and Australopithecus, which evolved this way, probably did so approximately 4 million years ago.
Humans’ intelligence and problem-solving capacity improved significantly as their brain sizes grew. The brain size of Homo erectus, which existed around 1.8 million years ago, was about two-thirds that of modern humans. Their brain size was roughly identical to modern humans when Homo sapiens first appeared around “300,000 years ago”.
The use of tools is another crucial step in human progress. Prehistoric peoples fashioned crude but practical tools from stones, wood, and other materials to aid their foraging, hunting, and construction endeavours. More advanced toolmaking skills coincided with rising IQs, paving the way for advances in agriculture, building design, and other fields of study.
The human race has moved throughout history, changing with the landscapes and climates it encountered. Because of this, specific populations have developed distinctive physical characteristics (Schipper, 2020). In order to get more vitamin D from the sun, humans in colder portions of the planet evolved lighter skin, while those in hotter regions acquired darker skin as a defence against the sun’s damaging rays.
Humans have adapted not only physically to their environments but also culturally. We must build tools like language, social institutions, and beliefs to adapt to our surroundings. Humans have adapted to their settings, including food scarcity and harsh weather, because of the cultural innovations that have arisen over time.
Conclusion
Humans can adapt to various surroundings because of our long genetic and cultural evolution history. Nevertheless, many of the problems we confront now, from global warming to social inequality, directly result from our capacity for adaptation.
References
Kewley, L. J., Nicholls, D. C., & Sutherland, R. S. (2019). Understanding galaxy evolution through emission lines. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, pp. 57, 511–570.
Bjorklund, D. F. (2022). Human Evolution and the Neotenous Infant. Evolutionary Perspectives on Infancy, 19-38.
Schipper, E. L. F. (2020). Maladaptation: when adaptation to climate change goes very wrong. One Earth, 3(4), 409-414.
Module 2: Genomic Variation
