A TIMELINE FOR THE PLANET click for Home Page
Primates are the group of animals that we come
from. There are two sorts, big brains
and small brains. We stem from the big
brained primates.
Types
of ape: Anthropoids
Hominoids
Hominids Homo
Neanderthals
Homo sapiens
The small brained primates are creatures like the Lemurs of Madagascar,
and others that have the least resemblance to us. They are also called prosimians.
The large brained primates are the anthropoids. They include monkeys, apes – and us. Anthropoids are also called simians.
The Anthropoids split into: new-world monkeys (which have prehensile
tails and are not actually terribly bright), old-world monkeys (whose tails are
just balancing aids, and are considerably brighter) and the hominoids.
We’re beginning to get a bit close to home here. Compared with all other primates, the
hominoids are seriously bright. They
include the gibbons, great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and such)
and of course us.
The hominids were the first of our line to split off from the great
apes. We are not descended from
chimpanzees. Our line split off from a
common ancestor called Ardipithecus.
There were quite a lot of different species of hominid. But they have all died out except us. Why? Who knows?
We only know about them from fossils, and precious few fossils have been
found. So the details are very
sketchy. Anthropologists are arguing
fiercely about how many different species there were, and which ones were in
the direct line to us.
Apparently we are supposed to start calling this branch (our branch)
‘hominins’ instead of ‘hominids’. I’m
not sure how far this notion is catching on.
But I propose to resist it until I’ve no choice.
We’re getting seriously close to home here. Homos (Homo
this and Homo that) used to walk
on two legs and have brains from ¼ the size of ours and upwards.
That may sound small, but homos were serious tool users and fairly soon
mastered fire.
Again there were many species of homo, but again they all died out
except us. We are entitled to wonder
whether perhaps we had a hand in this!
The Neanderthals were very much homos.
Their brains were actually bigger than ours. They had first-class stone tools and
jewellery. They buried their dead, and
so on. But they clearly lacked
something because the Neanderthals died out and we didn’t. Did we do for them? Or were they unable to cope with a change of
climate? Again, who knows?
That’s us.
We think of ourselves and being civilised and all that. But it was probably at least 100,000 years
before our lifestyles became noticeably different from our predecessors. Mind you that’s partly because some of our
predecessors had pretty good lifestyles too (butchers
of Boxgrove).
© C B Pease, February 08