Human Evolution Resources Life with other groups The evolution and history of our species is not only characterized by living in isolated and small hunter-gatherer groups, in which everyone knows each other and has personal contact. Our human traits have also been shaped by competition and cooperation between groups, and finally by the fusion into […]
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Human Evolution Resources Early stone tools For a long time it was thought that the use and manufacture of tools are features that distinguish us humans from all other species. But today we know that many species of animals use objects from their environment for different purposes, and some can even make tools by modifying
Human Evolution Resources Agriculture and domestication For most of our evolutionary history, our species fed on the hunting and gathering of animals and plants in the environment. An innovation with far-reaching consequences was the “invention” of agriculture. Agriculture is a kind of co-evolution or symbiosis of humans and other living things: certain plant and animal
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Human Evolution Resources Evolution of endurance running Many features of our body and our physiology suggest that they are not merely adaptations to upright walking but to endurance and long-distance running. Thus, anthropologists suspect that Homo erectus was able to secure and improve his food intake by endurance running. After all, they had no sharp
Human Evolution Resources Childhood, teaching, learning Primates, and apes in particular, have a long developmental phase (relative to the total lifespan) compared to other mammals. Among other things, this seems to be related to the need for social learning. The more vital skills need to be learned in the course of development, the longer it
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Human Evolution Resources Creativity and flexibility Many traits are strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. Through random mutations in the genome, new features and traits can emerge in the course of evolutionary history and be passed on to subsequent generations through reproduction and genetic inheritance. However, many living beings can also adapt to a certain degree
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Human Evolution Resources Cultural Evolution At Darwin’s time, nothing was known about genes. Darwin and others only knew from observations in the world that there is a lot of variation between and within speices, and that offspring resembled their parents. Characteristics are inherited in some way to offspring, and new variation come into the world
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Human Evolution Resources Gene-culture Co-evolution Biological evolution and cultural evolution are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they can influence each other. Genetically evolved human characteristics and abilities allowed for the accumulation and transmission of certain technologies, knowledge, behaviors, and environmental changes. These human-created conditions have in turn influenced our behavior, our body, our brain,
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Exploring various “behaviors of our mind” from an evolutionary perspective, including “Fast and Slow Thinking”, “Moral Taste Buds”, “Mental Time Travel”,
the “Noticer”, the “Discoverer”, and the “Advisor”
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Classroom ideas and resources for exploring the evolution of emotions
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OpenEvo is an educational innovation project from the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
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