Are Big Brains the Key to Our Species' Dominance?
In this video, we'll take a look at the development of the human brain from Homo erectus to modern humans. We'll explore the changes that have occurred over time, and the reasons for them.
2023-03-09 19:00:00 - Highly Compelling
This video is a great resource for students studying human evolution, or anyone interested in the origins and development of the human brain.
By the end of this video, you'll have a better understanding of how the human brain has evolved over time, and what that means for today's humans.
According to a recent study, early humans still had brains that were similar to giant apes. Modern humans just recently gained our high mental faculties, between 1.7 million and 1.5 million years ago.
This indicates that a million years after the Homo genus emerged and the first Homo erectus left Africa, the distinctive brain of modern humans evolved.
The majority of these small stocky fossils, which have been discovered in China and Indonesia, had a peculiar skull shape and prominent brow ridges.
The discovery disproves the notion that humans' frontal lobes, which process sophisticated cognitive functions like social reasoning, tool usage and language, evolved around the time of the transition from Australo-pithecus, between 2.8 million and 2.5 million years ago.