Last time we left off with Ardipithecus ramidus, the first bipedal ape, around 4.4 million years ago. Let’s fast-forward a bit to Ethiopia, 3.3 million years ago, where a 4 foot tall, apelike creature walks the savanna. The Australopithecus afarensis is the most famous species in its genus, known for having one of the most complete hominin skeletons: “Lucy”, a female hominin that was found with over 40% percent of the skeleton remaining (yes, that’s actually a large amount for scientists) in the Afar region of Ethiopia.
Australopithecus africanensis, a close relative of Lucy, is also well known for having one of the oldest juvenile specimens of a hominin. The Taung child, dated back to 2.8 million years ago, is very famous for its discovery by Raymond Dart and for being the first skeleton of an early hominin discovered. The Taung child was a toddler that had been killed by a bird of prey, likely an eagle or vulture. However, unlike the hypotheses of Raymond Dart, the Taung child’s species was not our direct ancestor, but just a distant relative of a branch that would lead to the herbivorous and robust Paranthropus.
Rather, there are two candidates for our direct ancestor: A. garhi and A. sediba. Australopithecus garhi was the first meat-eater and the first hominin to make stone stools, and these are behaviors that we see in members of our own genus. However, Australopithecus sediba has a much less muscular and more human-like body and a flatter face, even though it was a herbivore and only things like leaves, fruits, and interestingly, it was the only known ape to eat bark. Therefore, scientists have been puzzled by this.
All we know is that 2 million years ago the first real “human” appeared and that was Homo habilis, which didn’t appear too different from its ancestors. 1.5 million years ago, a new species of human, much more intelligent and powerful, evolved to become Homo ergaster, the working man, and it would usher in an era of innovations and technologies. Homo ergaster was the first to harness fire and to actively hunt large prey, and it outlasted the primitive australopithecines. The closely related Homo erectus was the first human species to venture out of the African homeland, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about in the next post.
Anay Ganesh 