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Australopithecus Hominid Essay

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Australopithecus Hominid Essay
TOPIC: The physical characteristics of the Australopithecus hominid.
The first Australopithecus hominid (later named Australopithecus africanus) was discovered in by an anatomy professor in Johannesburg, South Africa named Raymond Dart in 1924. Prof. Dart initially discovered a five year old skull and it was unlike that of an ape’s he had ever seen. According to!!!!!!!!!, Studying the skull, he made the following discoveries:
-The skull had “ape-like” features
-had a projecting face
-small brain
Dart discovered that the skull had human features too:
-rounded jaw (unlike the pointed jaw of apes)
-The specimen walked upright, judging by the ventral position of the foramen magnum (the hole at the base of the skull where the spinal cord appears)
Professor Dart after these major discoveries
…show more content…
It was until 90 000-75 000 years ago when they started to make new kinds of artifacts that showed technical sophistication during the Old Stone Age.
According to Scupin (2012), modern tribal technologies have become extremely broad. They also vary among different populations depending on types of environments to which they had to adapt. Tribal technologies also vary on what kind of society or group – i.e. Horticulturist, Pastoralist or other.
Horticulturist Society
Horticulturist used sharpened digging sticks and wooden hoes to plant their gardens. This was all until the 1950s. The horticulturists Yanomamo people used crude stone or wooden axes to down trees in the primary forest, with the wood they built their homes. Today they use machetes and steel axes (Scupin 2012) Pastoralist Society
This group relied on moving around for their survival which prevented them from relying on technology. But some pastoralists such as the Mongols were helped by the advancement of technology. They had saddles for their horses and camels, weapons for hunting etc. (Scupin

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