Evolution Of The First Human Ancestors - 2766 Words

The chapter 1 called Up To The Starting Line gives a brief report on the topic of evolution of the first human ancestors. The earliest stages of human evolution took place in Africa with abundant of fossil evidence to prove. We all originated in Africa around 7 million years age. Our closet common ancestor living are called the surviving species of the great apes that are chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla. But the most closets animal to humans are chimpanzee. The homo erectus was significantly close to us in modern human body size but lacks half of the brain. Homo erectus were more than an ape but still more different than a human. Neanderthals so called cavemen, had brain slightly larger than normal human being. But the Neanderthals†¦show more content†¦They were from Europe and had modern skeleton. The Americas were the first to colonized by the Clovis people. While archaeologist claim that they were Clovis people to first settle but somehow Diamond doesn t believe it because he need more proof or fossil evidence. Only reason that this explanation fail to express why Eurasia became advance earlier than Africa when they had a head start. . In the chapter called A Natural Experiment of History the Moriori and Maori both descended from the Polynesian people. The question that Diamond is trying to answer is what made the two group so different from each other because they came from the same people. The Moriori were hunter gathers of a small isolated population that were equipped with only simply technology and weapons. They were inexperienced at war. Also lacked strong leadership in order to take care of their group. But the Maori invader (from New Zealand s North Island) came from large population of famers. The farmers in Maori constantly engaged in wars, more advanced in technology and weapon. Maori operated under a strong leadership. There is no hesitation that when the two group came in contact Maori would had destroyed the Moriori. On the other hand since the Maori and Moriori descended from the same race cannot defend why one group was more advance over the other. It was the environmental and geographical factors that caused Maori to advance more. For example, Chatham is very small and remote