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 […]
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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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Human Evolution Resources Emotions What is an emotion? What are emotions? How would you define the term? What characterizes emotions? What are some examples of emotions? What are some things that we do or that happen in us that are not examples of emotions? Lesson idea: Students work in groups to create a mind map
Human Evolution Resources Evolution of upright walking Changes in environmental conditions About 6 million years ago, a global change in the climate gradually began. This was, among others, caused by oscillations in the Earth’s orbit (so-called Milankovic cycles). The global climate gradually became cooler, but also increasingly unstable. Cool-dry and moist-warm phases alternated. Uplift in
Our collection of resources for learning about human origins and evolution
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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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