Word: savannas
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Next Kortlandt put a sheep in a wire-mesh cage surrounded by thorn branches. This time, several hungry lionesses began pulling at the branches. But when thorns became lodged in their paw pads, they retreated to lick their wounds. That suggested early man could have protected himself on the savanna by building thorn-branch shelters. But could he survive long sieges? To find out, Kortlandt attached branches to a remote-controlled motor on a framework over chunks of meat. When lions approached, the branches spun as they might had they been brandished by man. The lions darted away...
Also, the notion that man became bipedal in tandem with his brain growth is no longer widely held. (More likely, changing survival needs led him out of the jungle to the African savanna, where he stood to peer over tall grasses.) As for Johanson's announcing a "new" name for Lucy, some specialists observe he did that a year ago in a little-noticed Cleveland Museum journal. "I don't think Johanson has made a particularly good case for her being a different species," says a leading anthropologist, and adds...
...changing food supply offered new opportunities for feeding outside the forest. Some of the forest-dwelling apes began venturing into the savanna, or grasslands, in search of food such as roots, seeds and finally the meat of other animals...
...erect position enabled them to see over the tall grass to spot and hunt their prey?and to see and escape the carnivores that preyed on them. Thus they were able to survive longer and produce more offspring, who shared their physical characteristics. After many generations of selection, the savanna-dwellers had evolved into upright-standing animals distinctly different from the forest-dwelling relatives they had left behind...
...time when this earliest form of man emerged. Fossil evidence shows the split that produced the first human must have occurred longer ago than 3.5 million years?the age of the oldest known Homo fossils, which were found in 1975 by Mary Leakey. Again, the rigorous demands of savanna living may have been responsible for the branching out. Australopithecus africanus, straining to augment its food supply in the flat grasslands, began to eat meat?probably obtaining it not by hunting, but by scavenging the kills left behind by large predators. Australopithecus robustus, on the other hand, continued to subsist largely...