The Evolution Of Human Evolution

Human evolution began in Africa six million years ago, it describes the process of our ancestors went through to ultimately become the modern humans we are today. Major changes in the evolution of humans have eventuated into the appearance and development of modern Homo sapiens. These major changes have included skull shape, brain size and muzzle size. This research essay will outline and evaluate these changes to describe and explain how modern humans have evolved. Natural selection plays a major role with the development of humans over time. Natural selection is Darwin’s most famous theory; it states that evolutionary change comes through the production of variation in each generation and differential survival of individuals with different combinations of these variable characters (Natural Selection, 2009).

Brain size

Environmental conditions have stimulated the important developments of how we became who we are today. The development of early humans faced environmental changes and evolved bigger bodies, larger, more complex brains. With having a bigger more complex brain came as an advantaged. Processing and storing a lot of information became easier, it gave early humans the advantage to interact more socially and to become aware with encounters to unfamiliar habitat (Bigger Brains: Complex Brains for a Complex World, 2015).

From Two million to 800,000 years ago brain and body size increased dramatically during a time of climate change. During this time, having a large, complex brain gave humans an advantage to interact with each other and with their surroundings in different ways. Homo erectus the eldest known humans to have possessed modern human like body proportions. The average brain size for Homo erectus is estimated ...

... middle of paper ...

...is why the mutation is seen in every human being on this planet.

When the jaw muscles got weaker, it allowed the muscles in the head to grow bigger, this made room in the skull for a bigger brain. The picture shown on the right shows that the chimpanzee skull is much smaller because it has a larger jaw to support, the human skull is larger because the jaw is smaller. It gave the skull extra room for the front of the brain to grow larger. The prefrontal cortex (larger part of the brain) gave humans an advantage, they made them more intelligent. Giving them the opportunity to learn how to speak and to plan for the future.

The development of our ancestors overtime has lead us to become the complex, modern humans we are today. The ability for our species to create new realities in our minds that enables us to perceive things pervious primates weren’t able to ever do.