Written for the picture/Wu
We know that in the process of human evolution, its physical characteristics have changed greatly. From the earliest discovered human-Tuomai people, through thousands of people, apes, Australopithecus, homo habilis, early Homo sapiens to late Homo sapiens, in the past millions of years, the human brain has grown, the height has increased, the mandible has shrunk, the face has become flat, the teeth have tended to decrease, the gender difference has narrowed, the proportion of upper limbs relative to the body has decreased, and the firmness of bones has weakened.
We evolved from apes.
For a long time, it is generally believed in academic circles that the physical characteristics of late Homo sapiens (about 30,000 years ago) are basically similar to those of modern people, so it is also called "dissecting modern people". In the Holocene, the physical characteristics of human beings remained basically unchanged. In recent years, many scholars at home and abroad have studied the remains of ancient people unearthed from Holocene archaeological sites, and found that the physical characteristics of Holocene human beings have been constantly evolving in the past ten thousand years, and their skull capacity, height, skull morphological characteristics, disease resistance, ethnic differences and many other aspects have undergone micro-evolution. Many people cannot help asking, are we still evolving? What is the trend of human evolution in the future?
In the past 10,000 years, the human skull has been gradually shrinking.
In the process of human evolution, the skull volume has changed greatly. The numerical value of the early human brain volume was mainly obtained by measuring the skull volume. Because there are blood vessels, nerves, cerebrospinal fluid and meninges between the brain and skull, the measured brain volume is slightly larger than the actual brain volume, with a difference of about 5%. Nevertheless, because the skull volume is close to the brain volume, and the data can be easily measured from fossils, the skull volume is generally used to represent the brain volume.
The increase of brain capacity is one of the important signs of human evolution. Tomai people who lived 6-7 million years ago have brains similar to chimpanzees. Australopithecus, dating from 4.4 440- 1.5 million years ago, has a skull size of about 400-530 ml. Homo habilis, who lived 2.5-10.6 million years ago, had a skull volume of 5 10-752 ml. 1700 ~ 200,000 years ago, the volume of homo erectus skull was 600 ~ 125 1 ml, with an average of about 1050 ml. Early homo sapiens about 200 ~ 65438+ 10,000 years ago had a skull volume of1100 ~1500ml. Late homo sapiens, about 10 ~ 30000 years ago, was found all over the world, and the skull volume was 1300 ~ 1750 ml. In the late Pleistocene in China, the skull capacity of Homo sapiens cavemen was1300 ~1500ml, and that of Liujiang man was1400ml.
From Neolithic Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age to modern times, is the human skull volume still changing?
Some foreign scholars have studied the cranial capacity of modern people since the late Pleistocene, and found that the cranial capacity of new people has not changed much in the past ten thousand years, and its evolution trend is not to continue to increase, but to decrease. During 6000 years, the average skull volume of African adult males decreased by 95 ~ 65,438 0.65 ml, while that of females decreased by 74 ~ 65,438 0.06 ml.
Some scholars in China have also studied the changes of human skull volume in Holocene. The average skull volume of a Neolithic resident, Zhupiyan Man, unearthed in the southern suburb of Guilin, China, is 65,438 0.459 ml for males and 65,438 0.434 ml for females. The average cranial capacity of modern residents in North China is 1406 ml for males and 1360 ml for females. Since the Neolithic Age, the skull volume of men has decreased by 53 ml and that of women by 74 ml. The reduction of skull size means the reduction of skull size, and the physical characteristics of human beings are still changing.
Height won't always grow.
The height of early humans was mainly judged by the length of the femur found. "Tuomai people" can't judge their height at present because they haven't found limb bone fossils. "Thousand-legged man" has already started to walk on two feet, but at the same time it has the function of climbing. The height of Australopithecus varies greatly. The height of Australopithecus baumannii is about 65438 0.20 ~ 65438 0.40m, and that of Australopithecus afarensis is about 65438 0.50m. The height of Homo habilis is similar to that of Australopithecus Australopithecus, but there are great differences between men and women. The height of Homo erectus varied greatly. For example, the height of a Tekana boy in Africa is about 1.65 meters, and it is estimated that he can reach 1.80 meters in adulthood. The height of Homo erectus in Zhoukoudian is about 65438±0.60m for males and 65438±0.50m for females. Jinniu Mountain, an early Homo sapiens living in northern China, is1.68m tall. The height of late Homo sapiens-cavemen was 1.69 ~ 1.70 meters, and that of Liujiang people was about 1.60 meters.
From Australopithecus to Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, the height of human beings is increasing. During the Holocene, did the height of human beings continue to increase? In addition, we find that the height of children has increased obviously now, so will the height of human beings become higher and higher in the future?
Anthropologists have found that height is closely related to nutritional status. The average height of Neolithic residents in China from 6,000 to 4,000 years ago was 65,438 0.65 meters for males and 65,438 0.54 meters for females. From 3000 to 1800 years ago, the average height of the residents in the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Western Han Dynasty was 1.67 meters for men and 1.55 meters for women. During the Sui, Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties, the average height of men was1.66m, while that of women was1.56m.. From 65438 to the 1960s, there was a negative growth in height. According to statistics, in 1944, the height ratio of male and female students aged 7 ~ 14 in Shanghai was 5.7 ~ 7.3 cm shorter than that of students of the same age in19361932. At present, the average height of adult males in China is 1.69 meters, and that of females is 1.58 meters. With the improvement of people's living standards, the height will increase to a certain extent, but it will not show an increasing trend forever. According to the survey, the height of the offspring of a tall family will not be higher than that of the next generation. After reaching a certain level, the height of their offspring will decline.