Human evolution

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.

		Last common ancestor with chimps
	Sahelanthropus tchadensis	Orrorin tugenensis
		Ardipithecus ramidus
		Australiopithecus afarensis
	Paranthropus aethopicus	Australopithecus africanus3 – 2.2 million years ago
Paranthropus robustus	Paranthropus boisei	Australopithecus sediba
	Homo habilis 2.3 – 1.4 million years ago	Homo erectus	Homo rudolfensis
	Homo floresiensis	Homo heidelbergensis
	Homo neanderthalensis	Archaic Homo sapiens
		Homo sapiens

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.
• The common ancestor of chimps and humans didn’t walk on their knuckles like chimps.

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.