This page contains the family tree of all members of the human lineage (hominins) discussed so far on this blog. Clicking on each species will take you to a page which provides general information on that species, as well as a summary of the posts concerning it.
| Archaic Homo sapiens |  |
Homo sapiens | ||||||
| Australopithecus sediba | |
Homo habilis | |
Homo erectus | |
Homo heidelbergensis | |
Homo neanderthalensis |
| Homo floresiensis |
General hominin evolution
- During the course of their evolution, hominins lost the air sacs on their vocal tract, which may make their pronunciation clearer.
- Hominins’ large brains evolved to keep track of social relationships and not because their gut shrank in size.
- Duplication of the SRGAP2 gene made brain development faster, allowing big brains to evolve.
- Climate change may have been responsible for the success of the genus Homo and the adaptive radiation of hominins.
- Eating more meat sped up our reproductive cycle.
General hominin behaviour
- Food sharing is an important part of hominin behaviour that probably existed before they split from chimps.
- They live in fission-fusion societies so a single population can search a wider area for food.
- Since the first hominin species there has been little between-male competition but still quite a bit of polygyny.
- We may have started to walk bipedally so as to hoard valuable food.
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