Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. Where did we come from? Humans continue to search for the answer to this fundamental question. Over the years, we've turned to both religion and science to explain where our species came from.
Innovators of their time, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, used science to explain where humans came from, posing the theory of evolution. Then, Mary and Louis Leaky explored the fossil record to see if they could piece together the story of humans.
Evolutionary science and archaeology continue today. Use these materials in your classroom to teach your students about the origins of the homo sapien. Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students.
Skip to content. Lucy's Cousin "Lucy" is the nickname given to the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton fossils discovered in East Africa in Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom.
What we're proposing here is the first hypothesis that's out there, and we've had her for 42 years now, about how she died. I am not aware that anyone else has ever [done that]. The original fossil and CT scans of fractures to her skeleton paint a more vivid portrait of what happened in Lucy's final moments, and although it was probably swift, it wasn't without pain. The new study that proposes the hypothesis reads like a coroner's report, making Lucy's stone-like bones seem more lifelike than ever.
Read More. What happened to Lucy? Analysis of her skeleton and teeth shows she had reached maturity, but not unlike chimpanzees, her species matured young. Kappelman estimates she was 15 or 16 years old. African roots of the human family tree. Given her size, predators such as hyenas, jackals and saber-toothed cats would have posed a threat to Lucy. So Lucy most likely turned to the trees, Kappelman said.
It's possible she scaled them only from time to time for safety or that she nested in them every night. Based on data on the nesting habits of chimps, an average of 46 feet above the ground makes them feel safe. She stood up straight, with feet, knees and hips that are similar to ours. If you saw her walking from afar, you would think Lucy was human by her silhouette.
But up close, she had a small head, a brain comparable in size to a chimpanzee's, longer arms and hair covering her body. Bridging the gap between humans and chimps, Lucy had slightly curved fingers and toes, with mobile ankles and shoulders that provided more overhead range of movement.
Even with those abilities, she would have been better at walking than climbing. Perhaps Lucy was spooked by a predator, or perhaps she was asleep or settling in for the night. Maybe she spied some fruit and wanted to forage. Either way, this is what Kappelman believes happened next.
The 'Underground Astronauts' in search of new human species. A sculptor's rendering of the hominid Australopithecus afarensis. From 46 feet in the air, Lucy fell out of her tree, fully conscious. Some peers refused to believe that she was a member of the human family — and thus refused to accept all her disturbing implications. Others insisted she actually was more like chimp than acknowledged by the discovery team. Over the last decade, a number of independent scholars have examined the fossils and affirmed that Ardi indeed was a hominin formerly called hominid , a creature on our branch of the family tree after we split from the ancestors of chimps.
Not every claim has won wide acceptance, but Ardi certainly forced a major rethinking of our origins. Gradually, the debate has shifted from whether to accept Ardi into the human family to how to do so. Ardi was an inconvenient woman who did not slot easily into prevailing theory. As we go deeper into the past, our ancestors look more like apes though not necessarily like modern apes and the clues that link them to us become more subtle — and controversial.
The traits that ally Ardi with the human family include diamond-shaped canine teeth, bipedal features of the pelvis and foot, anatomy in the base of the skull, and more.
Ardi represented something entirely new — a hitherto-unknown climber with an opposable toe and odd upright gait. It was not only a new species but an entirely new genus. By contrast, Lucy slotted easily into the existing genus Australopithecus because she was an older variation on a well-established anatomical theme.
As a consequence, Lucy remains much more famous than Ardi. The discoverer of Lucy, Don Johanson, excelled at public relations, wrote popular books, starred in television documentaries, and turned his skeleton into a household name. In contrast, the Ardi team — which included several veterans of the Lucy team — eschewed that style. They worked in isolation, took 15 years to publish their skeleton, and engaged in numerous spats with peers.
The Ardi team aggressively challenged prevailing theories — particularly the notion that we evolved ancestors that looked like modern chimps or the longstanding belief that expanding African savannahs played a crucial role in human evolution.
Such disagreements blinded some peers to the scientific value of the oldest family skeleton. Both skeletons testify to the importance of fossils. Theories and analytical models are essential components of science, but hard evidence sometimes defies predictions. Despite the hype that often comes with big discoveries, no single fossil represents the beginnings of humankind, the mother of humanity, or the missing link. Rather, they are just random relics of ancient populations that we are lucky enough to find — and probably a fraction of the past forms that have been erased by time.
In the quarter of a century since Ardi was discovered, the ranks of our family have roughly doubled and there are now more than two dozen species of hominins. This includes three species older than Ardi, the most ancient being the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis , at least 6 million years old from Chad.
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