Kevin Tarr wrote: > When I was at the Natural Museum in NYC they had a human > skeleton, well pre-human, that was at least a million years > old. What surprised me was the dated it as a young male, > teenaged, and said he would have been at least 6'3" (5,000 > millibars) tall if he had lived to 21. I thought all pre-human > were under 5 foot at least, and it was rare for 6 footers even > at the begining of recorded history. Another known fact wiped > from my mind.
He may have been a Homo Erectus, a species that was fairly tall. They are the most likely species to be our direct ancestors, since their bodies were shaped a lot like ours. Their heads, however, were *not* much like ours, since they had only a little more brain capacity than a chimp. (30% more?) I think there is some evidence that they could keep and use fire, if they could find a fire already started by natural causes, but they weren't smart enough to start their own. Earlier hominids *were* small. Erectus' other descendant, the Neandertal, was short and stocky (and quite strong) as an adaptation to Ice Age cold. So, two new species evolved from Erectus: the Neandertals got brainier than their ancestors, and physically adapted to cold as they moved from Africa into Ice Age Europe. Later on, modern humans also got brainier, but did not physically change much as they moved into colder climes. Of course, that all assumes that Neandertals actually *were* a seperate species, and not just a subspecies... Just in case you can't tell, I've been reading a lot of SF about hominids lately. ;-) I read Robert J. Sawyer's new novel HOMINIDS, about a Neandertal-dominated alternate history, when it was serialized in Analog. I also read Stephen Baxter's ORIGIN. The two books had very different theories about why Neandertals were so different from us. The HOMINIDS theory fits right into old list discussions -- in the Neandertal timeline, they got quantum-generated consciousness, and we didn't. ORIGIN seems to suggest that Neandertals had innate differences in brain structure, that kept them from trying new technology. My theory, based on some ideas from Jared Diamond's THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE, is that our species managed to invent complex language before the Neandertals, which gave us the ability to think more efficiently with the same (or even less) brain capacity. ______________________________________________________________________ Steve Sloan ......... Huntsville, Alabama =========> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brin-L list pages ........................ http://brinlist.sloan3d.com Chmeee's POV-Ray Objects ................... http://chmeee.sloan3d.com 3D and Drawing Galleries .................. http://www.sloansteady.com Software ................ Science Fiction, Science, and Computer Links Science fiction scans ......................... http://www.sloan3d.com
