The Earliest Social Organizations
The few early sites that have been excavated show that the first phase of human evolution involved shifts in the basic patterns of subsistence and locomotion as well as new ingredients —food sharing and tool making. These led to enhanced communication ¸ information exchange¸ and economic and social insight¸ as well as cunning and restraint. Human anatomy was augmented with tools. Culture became an inseparable part of humanity ¸ and social life acquired life acquired a new¸ and yet little understood¸ complexity.
What sort of social organizations did Homo Habilis enjoy? However¸ much we look at contemporary non–humans primates ¸ we cannot be sure. Most primates are intensely social and live in groups in which the mother–infant relationship forms a central bond. The period of infants´ dependency on mothers found in¸ say chimpanzees was probably lengthened considerably with Homo Habilis. The larger brain size would mean maturity that infants were born with much smaller heads than adults¸ at an earlier stage of mental maturity. This biological reality would have had a major impact on social organizations and daily habits.
Chimpanzees have flexible¸ matriarchal social groups. They occupy a relatively small territory¸ one with sufficient vegetable resources to support a considerable population density ¦ this pattern contrasts sharply with the average hunter–gather band¸ typically a closely knit group of about 25 people of several families. The kind of systematic hunting such people engage in requires much lager territories and permits much lower densities per square kilometer or mile. The few sites that have been excavated suggest that Homo Habilis tended to live in bands that were somewhat more akin to those of modern hunter–gatherers, but in all probability their social organizations resembled more closely that of chimpanzees and baboons¸ which is very different from those of humans.
The world of Homo Habilis was much less predictable and more demanding than that of even Austalopithecus. What was it that was more complex? Why do we have to be so intelligent? Not for hunting animals or gathering food but for our interactions with other people. The increased complexity of our social interactions is likely to have been a powerful force in the evolution of the human brain. For Homo Habilis¸ the adoption of a wider based diet with a food–sharing social group would have placed much more acute demand son the ability to cope with the complex and unpredictable¸ and the brilliant technological ¸ artistic¸ and expressive skills of humankind may well be a consequence of the fact that our early ancestors had to be more and more social adept.
Summary
The story of human evolution begins with the separation of the chimpanzee and human lines from a common ¸ and as yet unknown¸ ancestor about 5 to 6 million years ago. The first hominids were tree–living¸ with long arms and legs and broad chests¸ who eventually became bipedal¸ walking on two limbs. They adapted to more open country in Africa¸ which resulted from global cooling over 4 million years ago¸ by broadening their diet to include more meat¸ and by achieving great mobility and behavioral flexibility. A small bipedal hominid named Ardipithecus ramidus is the earliest known form and flourished 4.5 million years ago in Ethiopia. A later hominid¸ Australopithecus afarensis¸ was ancestral to later hominids and flourished after 3 million years ago. Then by 3 million years ago¸ the hominid line had radiated into many forms¸ among them robust and more gracile Australopithecines and the larger–brained Homo Habilis ¸ another hominid form. Homo Habiliswas a forager who also scavenged game meat and perhaps hunted. These hominids used a simple stone technology ¸ had some ability to communicate¸ and had a very rudimentary social organization. New definitions of the genus Homo make a major distinction between the more ape–like hominids described later on¸ which flourished before 2 million years ago¸ and the true humans¸ beginning with Homo Erectus¸ which evolved 1.9 millions years ago.
