Discoveries in Human Evolution
The Rift Valley in East Africa has been a rich source of fossils that allow study of human evolution.
Because the rapidly eroding highlands have filled the valley with sediments, a favorable environment for the preservation of remains has been created. The bones of several hominid ancestors of modern humans have been found there, including those of "Lucy", a partial, yet eye-opening australopithecine skeleton, which was discovered by anthropologist Donald Johanson dating back over 3 million years. Richard and Mary Leakey have also done significant work in this region.
More recently, two other hominid ancestors have been discovered there: a 10 million year-old ape called Chororapithecus abyssinicus, found in the Afar rift, in eastern Ethiopia, and the Nakalipithecus nakayamai, which is also 10 million years old.
Read more about this topic: East African Rift
Famous quotes containing the words discoveries in, discoveries, human and/or evolution:
“Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your “emancipation.” You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields—discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West—superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your “emancipation.” You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields—discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West—superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Like Freud, Jung believes that the human mind contains archaic remnants, residues of the long history and evolution of mankind. In the unconscious, primordial “universally human images” lie dormant. Those primordial images are the most ancient, universal and “deep” thoughts of mankind. Since they embody feelings as much as thought, they are properly “thought feelings.” Where Freud postulates a mass psyche, Jung postulates a collective psyche.”
—Patrick Mullahy (b. 1912)