The first lecture, introducing Human Evolution

1. Introduction to the Study of Human
Evolution
Scope of the Study, Recent Trends and New
Perspectives

2. Human Evolution as a Narrative
● The study of human origins is
ultimately a narrative on our place in
Nature and a reflection on the
attributes which distinguish us from
other animals
● This reflection must bring us into the
realm of philosophy no matter how
objective we endeavour to be in our
studies
● At once, it causes conflict with literal
interpretations of the major religious
traditions of Europe and the Middle
East (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) in
that the divinely ordained place of
Man as elevated above the animals is
contradicted
● It also causes conflict amongst those
philosophical traditions that argue for
the special characteristics of the
human spirit and intellect

3. Significance of Evolutionary Studies
● This should not, however, imply that conflict
with these traditions is inevitable
● Religious traditions that do not interpret the
holy books as literal expressions of
historical truth, but take a more allegorical
and critical approach, can accommodate
evolutionary thought quite comfortably
● Moreover, some of the psychological works
have been keen to incorporate the main
findings of evolutionary theory: the works of
Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, for instance,
built on the ideas of behavioural and
psychical structures common to primates
and mammals
● Some specialist studies in psychology are
concerned explicitly with primate behaviour
and use their results to elucidate childhood
development
● Even the phenomenological schools of
thought in modern philosophy have profited
greatly from evolutionary theory

4. Problems
● We must recognise at the outset that the
evolutionary paradigm is not without
problems and major gaps
● Firstly, the fossil record is incomplete and
large unrepresentative inasmuch that there
are simply not enough remains to be
certain of the scope of diversity
● The recent discovery of the 'Hobbit Man'
has also emphasised how much we still
have to find and the problems inherent in
the spatial and temporal distribution of the
evidence
● Secondly, the evidence is subject to much
controversy and the reconstructions are
based on a chain of suppositions that may
not all be applicable
● This reflects the paucity of remains and
also their condition—it is rare to find more
than a few small fragments and inferences
concerning the rest of the skeleton must be
made from these

5. Problems, continued
● A third problem arises from the
contributions of other disciplines,
mainly those made by genetics
● Archaeologists are not competent to
assess the genetic evidence, and
even amongst geneticists there is
considerable uncertainty regarding the
implications of the findings
● Some of the most important
breakthroughs in the study of human
evolution have been provided by
geneticists in recent decades, and the
archaeological and fossil record has
been reconsidered according to these
studies
● A danger therefore exists of us
formulating circular arguments to
support hypotheses deriving from
other disciplines

6. Concepts of Human Origins
Before the Advent of Evolutionary Theory

7. Man and Nature
● The major religious faiths of Europe and the
Middle East averred that humans were set
apart from the natural world and that a chasm
therefore existed between us and other living
organisms
● In Biblical tradition, Man was divinely accorded
supremacy over animals and plants because
he was created in God's image
● The Medieval understanding of this resulted in
the explicit formulation of an hierarchical
structure, with Man being situated below God
and the angels and above all the other
creations—namely, animals and plants
● This is sometimes described as the Great
Chain of Being and became important in
natural philosophy
● A good summation of this concept can be
found at:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/re/
chain.htm

8. Nature and Change
● The Chain of Being, elaborated and
formalised primarily by Renaissance
philosophers, implied the immutability
of relations amongst species
● No philosophical scope for changes
in species, resulting in the
transformation of their position in this
chain, was therefore possible as their
respective situations were divinely
ordained
● This should perhaps be regarded
partly as an expression of Medieval
and Renaissance conceptions of
essences, which in itself is derived
from the philosophical works of Plato
and Aristotle
● An essence or spirit cannot be
transformed and was granted by the
Divine

9. A Biblically Derived Chronology
● No philosophical grounds for disagreement
with the Biblical record were therefore
present
● It was accepted that the Bible was an reliable
record and scholars attempted to establish
the antiquity of Man by tallying biblical
chronologies, combining these with other
historical records, and various astronomical
calculations
● Most famous and authoritative of these
chronological determinations was that
proffered by Archbishop of Armagh, James
Ussher (1581 – 1656)
● He concluded that the Creation had occurred
'upon the entrance of the night preceding the
twenty third day of October' in the year 4004
BC
● This left roughly six millennia for the creation
of the planet, but it must be recalled that the
Greek histories extended back to roughly 700
BC and therefore the entirety of the
prehistoric era had to be accommodated
within the period 4004 BC – 700 BC

10. Doubts Concerning the Biblical Chronology
● The literal interpretation of the
chronological scheme presented in the
Bible was not, however, accepted
uncritically by all
● Philosophers such as John Ray
expressed worries and wrote in a letter
that fossils would 'shock the Scripture-
History of ye novity of the World'
● Another expression of discomfort with
the literal Biblical chronological structure
was made by Thomas Burnett that
attempted to reconcile his impression
concerning the antiquity of Earth and
Man by suggesting that the accounts of
Creation in Genesis were allegorical
● Problems with the accepted age of the
planet and man were also expressed by
the astronomer Edmund Halley and
published in 1715, but his concerns
arose from empirical observation rather
than philosophical speculation

11. Finding Time for Evolution
Geological Contributions to the Antiquity of the
Earth and Life

12. Emergence of Geology
● The principal problem with the Biblical
chronology, according to the
observations of eighteenth century
scholars, was that it did not provide
sufficient time for some processes to
take their course
● Some attempted to overcome this by
arguing for catastrophic changes in the
environment and life—namely, that the
Deluge had obliterated the extinct
species seen in the fossil record and
the Earth was repopulated in a fresh
wave of Creation
● This theory was known as
Catastrophism, but it was quickly and
cogently challenged by the seminal
studies undertaken by James Hutton
(1726 - 1797) in Edinburgh, the
Lothians, Berwickshire and
Northumberland which were based on
observations of current rates of erosion

13. Uniformitarianism
● The proponents of catastrophism
and the Biblical chronological
framework required special
pleading to explain the formation
of certain geological features
● This is because observation of
erosion and sedimentation
demonstrated that these
processes occurred very slowly
● If these processes were assumed
to have prevailed in the past, the
formation of some features would
have taken tens of millions of
years to form
● This theory was championed by
Thomas Hutton and is commonly
known as Uniformitarianism—
that is to say, the the processes
operative today are the same as
those in the past

14. Sufficient Time Depth
● The implications of Hutton's work
were not fully developed until the
first half of the nineteenth century
when Charles Lyell (born in
Kinnordy) published his book
'Principles of Geology' in three
volumes (1830 – 1833)
● This publication could not have
come at a more opportune time, for
in France the work of Jacques
Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes
in the Somme Valley was affording
evidence of flint tools in association
with the bones of extinct animals
● The antiquity of the Earth was
established by the work of Hutton
and Lyell, which made it sensible to
speak about the antiquity of Man, or
at least the likelihood that the human
family was older than six thousand
years

15. Rivers and Hominids
● The evolution of rivers was understood in
broad outline at the time of de Perthe's work,
which made the discoveries at different
levels of the terraces so surprising
● Moreover, the human remains that occurred
along with the fossils were sometimes
unusual—this was not recognised as
evidence for hominid species preceding the
emergence of modern humans at the time,
but it did suggest that our ancestors might
have been different
● The importance of the work by Hutton, Lyell
and de Perthes to the study of evolution can
be traced through their profound impact on
the theories of Charles Darwin
● The captain of the Beagle was, indeed,
asked by Lyell to collect boulder samples
and the first volume of his book was passed
by the captain to Darwin on the voyage
● All this work therefore helped Darwin's ideas
seem both possible and plausible

16. Evolution and Hominids
The Impact of Darwin's Theories and the Discovery
of the First Hominids

17. Evolutionary Theory
● The theories of Charles Darwin, and their
profound influence on the intellectual
climate of the nineteenth century, are too
well known to warrant much discussion
● It should be noted, though, that his theory
afforded a mechanism and process of
evolution for the physical transformation
of species
● Moreover, the theory was also taken over
by those studying behaviour and culture
and this was ultimately also applied to the
archaeological record
● The main problem was, however, the
absence of fossil hominid species to
confirm the applicability of Darwin's
theories to human evolution
● This caused a great stir amongst
geologists and archaeologist as they
embarked to find such evidence

18. The Earliest Finds
● The first find of an archaic hominid
went unrecognised—it was found at
Engis, in Belgium, in 1829
● This was followed by a discovery in
Forbes' Quarry in Gibraltar in 1848
● Both of these specimens were from
Neanderthal, but it was the find at
Eckrath near Düsseldorf in 1856
(three years before 'The Origins of
Species' was published) that was
most immediately significant because
of its timing
● The theories of Darwin forced a
reassessment of these finds and they
were soon the subject of strident
controversy and discussion
● This signalled the beginning of
palaeoanthropology as a discipline

19. Interpretation
● The discovery and acceptance of the
Neanderthal remains was a relatively
straightforward matter when
compared with the interpretation of
the finds and the perceptions of the
behaviour and attributes of this
species
● Insofar that Neanderthal was seen as
being situated somewhere between
Man and Ape, the species was
regarded as resembling the 'lesser'
races behaviourally, intellectually,
spiritually and anatomically
● It can only be said that the earliest
depictions were implicitly racist in
some instances, whereas in others
the ape-like characteristics were
enhanced to emphasise the distance
between this species and modern
Europeans

20. Neanderthal as Ape

21. Assumptions and Preconceptions
● Some sought to explain the
patterns in the Neanderthal
archaeological record with
reference to the 'lesser' races,
which was becoming quite
common in social anthropology in
the Victorian era
● Others did not even go so far,
preferring to see this species as
some sort of bipedal ape that
shared few behavioural attributes
with humans
● Both interpretations were based
on assumptions of their situation in
the evolutionary hierarchy rather
than on any evidence, and this is
something that continues to
plague us in our reconstructions
and preconceptions of archaic
hominids nowadays

22. Neanderthal as Human