Читать книгу Anthropology For Dummies - Cameron M. Smith - Страница 43

Paleoanthropology (paleo meaning “old”) specifically studies the human species and its relatives in the ancient past, particularly focusing on the early proto-human species, known as the hominins. (You can check out more on hominins in Chapter 6.) Paleoanthropology is extremely diverse and involves finding ancient human fossils, excavating them (and any artifacts found with them, including stone tools), interpreting the skeletal remains to understand the anatomy, and reconstructing hominin behavior as well as evolutionary relationships. To accomplish all this, most paleoanthropologists have a strong background in the following fields:

 Evolution: Because the foundation of biology must be comprehensively understood to make sense of the fossil record

 Skeletal anatomy: Because fossilized bone (bone turned to stone by a geochemical process) is the bread and butter of paleoanthropology, understanding how the body’s skeletal tissues reflect daily life, disease, stress, and other factors is critical to reconstructing ancient ways of life

 Geology: Because fossils are often found in complex geological circumstances, such as fossil beds that contain the fossils of lots of plants and animals, perhaps millions of years extinct

 Archaeology: Because archaeologists must exercise great care to excavate fossils, the principles of keeping track of where they find items and carefully bringing them back to the lab are important

Some people even specialize within these divisions; some paleoanthropologists focus on certain parts of the skeleton (like the teeth, the hand bones, or the pelvis), some focus on specific geological layers (for example, layers representing time before or after some event), and some focus on paleoecology, reconstructing entire ancient ecosystems in which early hominins evolved.

One of the main contributions of paleoanthropology to the human understanding of humanity is to fill in the missing links of the evolutionary chain connecting modern people to our most ancient ancestors. Unfortunately the term missing link is something of a misnomer because species aren’t so easy to define or draw lines around when you know them from fossil material only. But fossils do tell a lot about ancient life, and they do indeed show us, as a species, where we’ve been both figuratively and literally. (You can read more about fossils in Chapter 6.) Today, hundreds of fossil specimens bear some resemblance to modern people, and more ancient human-like forms. Because new species don’t pop up out of nowhere today, anthropologists can reasonably assume that these hundreds of fossils don’t represent early proto-humans that simply popped up and then vanished, either. Instead, they represent members of our own lineage that slowly changed over time by the evolutionary process. Fossil specimens are better thought of as shades from an evolutionary spectrum than links in a chain, but the chain metaphor has stuck, and it’s a tough one to fight.