Debating Humankind's Place in Nature, 1860-2000 by Richard Delisle

Author:Richard Delisle [Delisle, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781317348887
Google: HfkoCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-07-14T02:47:39+00:00

Although the australopithecines were thus far known to be geographically restricted to Africa, von Koenigswald (1952, 1956, 1960 [1962], 1968 [1976]) was inclined to believe that they may ultimately have sprung from an Asian ancestor common to all the branches, part of his broad hominid radiation. In fact, he insisted on a few large isolated fossil teeth from China that could have belonged to a robust australopithecine form not unlike Paranthropus, although he recognized there was as yet no unequivocal proof of their presence in Asia (Tobias and von Koenigswald, 1964). In von Koenigswald’s (1952) view, both the australopithecines and Gigantopithecus are over-specialized hominid extinct side branches evolving toward a greater robusticity or size during the Pleistocene period.

At first, von Koenigswald (1956: 163; 1957) hinted that his broad hominid radiation had a common ancestor in the Middle or Upper Pliocene period, an ancestor that was characterized by its massiveness or robusticity. This latter feature was assumed to have been shared by all the branches of this radiation: the australo-pithecines, Gigantopithecus, and Meganthropus palaeojavanicus (the earliest pithecan-thropines). After having decided to exclude Gigantopithecus from the hominid radiation, von Koenigswald (1963) hypothesized that the Lower or Middle Pliocene common ancestor to both the australopithecine and the human lines possessed features such as a brain somewhat smaller or equal in size to that of the more ancient and gracile australopithecines, a diastema (as seen in Meganthropus), and medium-size canines. It was hinted that this common ancestor may not be unlike Ramapithecus, a form not yet sufficiently known.

If Genet-Varcin and von Koenigswald once believed that the known australopithecines were far too specialized to assume a direct ancestral position to the living humans, Weidenreich and Vallois, for their part, inclined more toward the notion that they were just slightly too specialized for that phyletic position. For instance, Weidenreich (1943b, 1945, 1946) held that if the australopithecines were not directly ancestral to the human line, they nonetheless constituted an extinct evolutionary group which departed very near the human evolutionary line. It was argued that the australopithecines, during their evolutionary history, avoided going through an ape phase which is too specialized: “The common ancestor [of the hominids and the australopithecines] must have had a short face, small canines of the incisor type, bicuspid lower premolars …” (Weidenreich, 1945: 122). Although Weidenreich recognized a very close relationship between the human branch and the australopithecines, the latter were presented as ape-like creatures with remarkably humanlike dentition. Weidenreich insisted that it should not be readily accepted that the australopithecines were bipedal creatures.

Like Weidenreich, Vallois found in the known australopithecines a fossil group that just barely missed the ancestral position of the human evolutionary line. Vallois (1955a, 1956, 1961) contended that key human features such as a bipedal gait, a reduced snout, and reduced frontal teeth and canines had developed quite early in human evolution, as seen in the combination of human-like and ape-like features in the australopithecines. Although Vallois (1961) insisted on the early rise of the bipedal gait, he

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.