Homo Habilis essays

Homo Habilis essays How do we describe early human behaviour? Certainly this is a debate that has been argued more than once. It seems that there has been some kind of a consensus between archaeologists and anthropologists that the earliest form of human behaviour was the making of tools. It is generally recognised that early Australopiths may have used rudimentary tools in much the way modern chimps do to coax termites from there nests, but these where simply fashioned sticks and twigs. (Feder, 1996 p.79) Scientists were looking for a hominid that had the ability to create a permanent tool. Feder (1996) was certain that this required increased intelligence and a sophisticated process of forethought.(p.79) These tools where found in the form of stone tools made by the early hominid Homo habilis. Homo habilis, handy man represented an important turning point in the evolution of humans. The species appeared about 2.5million years ago. It is likely that it evolved from Austalopithecus afarensis or africanus and the main thing that differentiated it from early hominids was the brain size. This had increased by over 20 percent from earlier hominids but was still only about one third the size of modern man. This was revealed through skulls found in Africa, which exhibited a rounded cranium resulting from an increased brain capacity. (Mohammed, 2002) This increased brain size allowed Homo habilis to develop a characteristic that is unique to man, the ability to engineer tools. Homo habilis set out to create tools by deliberately hammering on rocks to crack and flake them into useful shapes. Oldawan tools, named by Louis and Mary Leakey, are the oldest stone tools found to date. The Leakeys made their discovery in 1935. The tools date back to some 2.5 million years (Feder, 1996). Oldawan describes tools that had a specific shape and were sharpened in a specific way. The name is derived from the Olduvai Gorge area in ...