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African Archaeology
Africa has the longest record of human habitation in the world. The first hominins emerged 6–7 million years ago, and among the earliest anatomically modern human skulls found so far were discovered at Omo remains, Omo Kibish,Jebel Irhoud, and Florisbad Skull, Florisbad. European archaeology, as well as that of Prehistoric North Africa, North Africa, is generally divided into the Stone Age (comprising the Lower Paleolithic, the Middle Paleolithic, the Upper Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, and the Neolithic), the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. For Sub-Saharan Africa, Africa south of the Sahara, African archaeology is classified in a slightly different way, with the Paleolithic generally divided into the Early Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age, and the Later Stone Age. After these three stages come the Pastoral Neolithic, the Iron Age and then later historical periods. Africa's prehistory has been largely ignored, with the exception of research into early human evolution. However, it is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1993 161-14 Olduvai Gorge (Leakey)
The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its calendar advanced 24 hours to the Eastern Hemisphere side of the International Date Line, skipping August 21, 1993. Events January * January 1 ** Czechoslovakia ceases to exist, as the Czech Republic and Slovakia separate in the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia. ** The European Economic Community eliminates trade barriers and creates a European single market. ** International Radio and Television Organization ceases. * January 3 – In Moscow, Presidents George H. W. Bush (United States) and Boris Yeltsin (Russia) sign the START II, second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. * January 5 ** US$7.4 million is stolen from the Brink's Armored Car Depot in Rochester, New York, in the fifth largest robbery in U.S. history. ** , a Liberian-reg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pastoral Neolithic
The Pastoral Neolithic (5000 BP - 1200 BP) refers to a period in Africa's prehistory, specifically Tanzania and Kenya, marking the beginning of food production, livestock domestication, and pottery use in the region following the Later Stone Age. The exact dates of this time period remain inexact, but early Pastoral Neolithic sites support the beginning of herding by 5000 BP. In contrast to the Neolithic in other parts of the world, which saw the development of farming societies, the first form of African food production was nomadic pastoralism, or ways of life centered on the herding and management of livestock. The shift from hunting to food production relied on livestock that had been domesticated outside of East Africa, especially North Africa. This period marks the emergence of the forms of pastoralism that are still present. The reliance on livestock herding marks the deviation from hunting-gathering but precedes major agricultural development. The exact movement tendencies o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Africanus
''Australopithecus africanus'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived between about 3.3 and 2.1 million years ago in the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of South Africa. The species has been recovered from Taung, Sterkfontein, Makapansgat, and Gladysvale. The first specimen, the Taung child, was described by anatomist Raymond Dart in 1924, and was the first early hominin found. However, its closer relations to humans than to other apes would not become widely accepted until the middle of the century because most had believed humans evolved outside of Africa. It is unclear how ''A. africanus'' relates to other hominins, being variously placed as ancestral to ''Homo'' and ''Paranthropus'', to just ''Paranthropus'', or to just '' P. robustus''. The specimen " Little Foot" is the most completely preserved early hominin, with 90% of the skeleton intact, and the oldest South African australopith. However, it is controversially suggested that it and similar speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knapping
Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian, or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing walls, and flushwork decoration. The original Germanic term ''knopp'' meant to strike, shape, or work, so it could theoretically have referred equally well to making statues or dice. Modern usage is more specific, referring almost exclusively to the free hand percussion process pictured. It is distinguished from the more general verb "chip" (to break up into small pieces, or unintentionally break off a piece of something) and is different from "carve" (removing only part of a face), and "cleave" (breaking along a natural plane). Method Flintknapping or knapping is done in a variety of ways depending on the purpose of the final product. For stone tools and flintlock strikers, chert is worked using a fabricator such as a hammerstone to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Afarensis
''Australopithecus afarensis'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would not take place until the 1970s. From 1972 to 1977, the International Afar Research Expedition—led by anthropologists Maurice Taieb, Donald Johanson and Yves Coppens—unearthed several hundreds of hominin specimens in Hadar, Ethiopia, Hadar, Ethiopia, the most significant being the exceedingly well-preserved skeleton AL 288-1 ("Lucy (Australopithecus), Lucy") and the site AL 333 ("the First Family"). Beginning in 1974, Mary Leakey led an expedition into Laetoli, Tanzania, and notably recovered fossil trackways. In 1978, the species was first species description, described, but this was followed by arguments for splitting the wealth of specimens into different species given the wide range of variation which had been attributed to sexual dimorphi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Johanson
Donald Carl Johanson (born June 28, 1943) is an American paleoanthropologist. He is best known for discovering the fossil of a female hominin australopithecine known as "Lucy" in the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia. Biography Early life and education Johanson was born in Chicago, Illinois to Swedish parents. He is the nephew of wrestler Ivar Johansson. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1966 and his master's degree (1970) and PhD (1974) from the University of Chicago. At the time of the discovery of Lucy, he was an associate professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. In 1981, he established the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, California, which he moved to Arizona State University in 1997. Johanson holds an honorary doctorate from Case Western Reserve University and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Westfield State College in 2008. "Lucy" Lucy was discovered in Hadar, Ethiop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucy (Australopithecus)
AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy or Dinkinesh (), is a collection of several hundred pieces of fossilized bone comprising 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species ''Australopithecus afarensis''. It was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, at Hadar, a site in the Awash Valley of the Afar Triangle, by Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Lucy is an early australopithecine and is dated to about 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of non-hominin apes, plus evidence of a walking-gait that was bipedal and upright, akin to that of humans (and other hominins); this combination supports the view of human evolution that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size. A 2016 study proposes that ''Australopithecus afarensis'' was, at least partly, tree-dwelling, though the extent of this is debated. Lucy was named by Pamela Alderman after the 1967 song " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Leakey
Mary Douglas Leakey, Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (née Nicol, 6 February 1913 – 9 December 1996) was a British paleoanthropologist who discovered the first fossilised ''Proconsul (mammal), Proconsul'' skull, an extinct ape which is now believed to be ancestral to humans. She also discovered the robust ''Zinjanthropus'' skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, eastern Africa. For much of her career she worked with her husband, Louis Leakey, at Olduvai Gorge, where they uncovered fossils of ancient hominines and the earliest hominins, as well as the stone tools produced by the latter group. Mary Leakey developed a system for Taxonomy, classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai. She discovered the Laetoli footprints, and at the Laetoli site she discovered hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old. During her career, Leakey discovered fifteen new species of animal. She also brought about the naming of a new genus. In 1972, after the death of her husband, Leake ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paranthropus Boisei
''Paranthropus boisei'' is a species of australopithecine from the Early Pleistocene of East Africa about 2.5 to 1.15 million years ago. The holotype specimen, OH 5, was discovered by palaeoanthropologist Mary Leakey in 1959 at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania and described by her husband Louis a month later. It was originally placed into its own genus as "''Zinjanthropus boisei''", but is now relegated to ''Paranthropus'' along with other robust australopithecines. However, it is also argued that ''Paranthropus'' is an invalid grouping and synonymous with ''Australopithecus'', so the species is also often classified as ''Australopithecus boisei''. Robust australopithecines are characterised by heavily built skulls capable of producing high stresses and bite forces, and some of the largest molars with the thickest enamel of any known ape. ''P. boisei'' is the most robust of this group. Brain size was about , similar to other australopithecines. Some skulls are markedly smaller than ot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecine
The australopithecines (), formally Australopithecina or Hominina, are generally any species in the related genera of ''Australopithecus'' and ''Paranthropus''. It may also include members of '' Kenyanthropus'', ''Ardipithecus'', and '' Praeanthropus''. The term comes from a former classification as members of a distinct subfamily, the Australopithecinae. They are classified within the Australopithecina subtribe of the Hominini tribe. These related species are sometimes collectively termed australopithecines, australopiths, or homininians. They are the extinct, close relatives of modern humans and, together with the extant genus ''Homo'', comprise the human clade. There is no general agreement to whether australopithecines are closest relatives of modern humans, as it has been argued that they are more closely related to extant African apes. Members of the human clade, i.e. the Hominini after the split from the chimpanzees, are called Hominina (''see Hominidae; terms "hominids" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ardipithecus Ramidus
''Ardipithecus ramidus'' is a species of australopithecine from the Afar region of Early Pliocene Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago (mya). The species ''A. ramidus'' is the type species for the genus ''Ardipithecus''. There is an older species in this same genus, ''Ardipithecus kadabba''. ''A. ramidus'', unlike modern hominids, has adaptations for both walking on two legs (bipedality) and life in the trees (arboreality). However, it would not have been as efficient at bipedality as humans, nor at arboreality as non-human great apes. Its discovery, along with Miocene apes, has reworked academic understanding of the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor from appearing much like modern-day chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas to being a creature without a modern analogue. The facial anatomy (specifically the reduced sexual dimorphism of the canines) suggests that ''A. ramidus'' males were less aggressive than those of modern chimps, which is correlated to increased parental care an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olduvai Gorge
The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropology, paleoanthropological localities in the world; the many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches across East Africa, it is about 48 km long, and is located in the eastern Serengeti Plains within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in the Olbalbal ward located in Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region, about from Laetoli, another important archaeological locality of early human occupation. The British/Kenyan paleoanthropologist-archeologist team of Mary Leakey, Mary and Louis Leakey established excavation and research programs at Olduvai Gorge that achieved great advances in human knowledge. The site is registered as one of the National Historic Sites of Tanzania. The gorge takes its name from the Maasai language, Maasai word ''oldupai'' which means "the place of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
