| Ever feel like a caged animal? Visitors to Zagreb's zoo can find out what it is really like to be in a cage. The zoo has set aside two partially furnished cages for humans labeled
"Homo Sapiens". Visitors will be able to enter and leave at will.
But the project, launched Friday by the head of the zoo, Mladen Anic, goes beyond offering a behind-the-bars experience to warn about human devastation of nature. "We wanted people to get a perception of how the animal perceives the cage," Anic told The Associated Press. "But we also wanted to inform people about all the ecological problems for which humans are directly responsible."
The evolutionary connection between humans and monkeys:
In areas of south east Asia and China, new discoveries of bones of Pithecanthropus were found, the age of which was estimated to be 1.7 million years ago. Excavations done afterwards in Asia (since the discovery of Dubois in 1892) brought forth the belief that man could be of Asian origin. However, remains of ancient primates, more primitive and closest to apes than Pithecanthropus - Australopithecus were later found in the southern and eastern Africa regions since 1924. Presently, there exists about 8 species, though one of these species - Australopithecus Afar (Ethiopia) - according to its anatomical features, is believed to be one of the most ancient (3.9-3.0 million years), and can be evolutions links to man. Australopithecus was not a man (not included in genus Homo), but was a significant representative of the hominid family, which formed the basis for the appearance of man. The remains of the creature, which can be considered as first man (species of Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis) were found in Africa (Tanzania, Kenya) in the middle of the 20th century. The first populations of people inhabited territories of present day Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Africa. They are also known as the ancestors of Pithecanthropus and all forms of people appearing later, including Homo sapiens ( modern Homo sapiens).
This landmark scientific achievement of the 20th century illustrated a complete success of Darwin's simian theory : firstly, the Darwinian hypothesis of the occurrence of man in Africa was established and secondly, the oldest branches of evolution of the human race were found, which were very close to apes (even the first man had many features, which brought him closer to apes). During the 20th century, bones of other hominids were discovered step by step, which formed part of an evolution chain from ape to modern man.
From Africa:
Practically resolving the issue about the origin of first man, anthropologists further extended their study for finding a solution to the question about the time when the first human began appearing.
By the end of the 20th century, science came up with a solution to this question, the skeletal remains of early hominids in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia established that the earliest and most primitive "apemen", who were capable of making weapons from stones, moved on Earth around 2.3 - 2.5 million years ago.
The human is not an ancient race - because Australopithecus is considered to be anatomically more primitive than Homo habilis.
It's a fact, with evidence, that the oldest stone tools found so far (made crudely by hitting with choppers - "hammers") are of an "age" of 2.7 to even 2.9 million years.
Who made them ? If they were made by australopithecines (which appear to be most plausible assumption), we have to agree that the ancestors have begun hard work even without fully achieving the human form anatomically.
It needs to be remembered that, australopithecines belonged to the hominids family ("human") Not yet people (Homo), they (at least few of them) supposedly had a sufficiently developed brain to carry out simple works.
The distinctive line between ape and man appears to be less defined, as it was thought earlier, but its concerned mainly to time period from 3 to 2.5 million years. Whatever happened after 2.5 million years was explained more reliably although broadly.
In modern science, it is well established that about 1.8 million years ago, in addition to Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis, a new species appeared - Homo ergaster (working man), which was closer to modern man, though even having some archaic anatomical features.
This species appeared in Africa, on the territories of present-day Kenya and Ethiopia. In 1983, an almost complete skeleton of the representative of this evolution was excavated in Kenya (Nariokotome region). The age of the adolescent from Nariokotome was 1.6 million years – it was the latest important "intermediate link".
Also, there exists a controversy on this issue : hominids inhabited Asia many long years ago - the first Asian Pithecanthropus appeared on Jawa around 1.7 million years ago (according to excavations near Modjokerto, Indonesia).
Of course, it is justified, but the Jawanese ancient forms of man were very primitive and therefore they cannot be compared with Nariokotome, but with Homo rudolfensis, who existed long before (2.3 million years) and apart from this, only the ancient hominids lived in Africa, who were considered as the human evolution substrate, who were not found in Asia. Which means, it was Africa! |
