Anthropology

Mankind has demonstrated successfully dominance of the world as they evolved with time. As humans progressed, they brought about changes and developments, by which human beings emerged as distinct species. Humans are essentially above other species due to their unique sense of adaptation and by standing upright and developing bipedalism. These evolutionary characteristics enabled human beings to adapt to the challenges of the environment and move around more easily than quadrupeds in search of food, self protection, cultivation, crafts, fire making and tools for survival.

Early human adaptations evolved in response to environmental instability. An adaptation is a characteristic with a specific function that enables an organism to live in its environment and successfully reproduce. Adaptation is also a process in which organisms adjust to their environment. Selection pressure is the force that shapes specific adaptations. This term is viewed as a response to problems set by the environment.

The ability to adjust to a variety of different habitats and environments is a characteristic of humans. Homo erectus, for instance, were very successful in creating cultural technologies that allowed them to adapt to new environmental opportunities. They were true pioneers in developing human culture and in expanding their geographic range beyond Africa to populate tropical and subtropical zones elsewhere in the Old World. They began to migrate, which was made possible by greater intelligence and new cultural technologies, probably including better hunting skills and the ability to create fire.

Hominids were not limited to a single type of environment, but were found in a many different environments. Over the course of human evolution, hominids increased their abilities to cope with a number of different environments rather than specializing on a single environment. Lucy feasted mostly on fruits and fibrous materials, climbing trees occasionally for food because it would be a forest like kind of environment. This was a good home for her and others because climbing on trees at night shelters them from predators during sleep periods.

All organisms encounter some amount of environmental change. Some changes occur over a short time, or might be cyclical, such as daily or seasonal variations in the amount of temperature, light and precipitation. On longer time scales, hominids experienced large-scale and unpredictable shifts in temperature and precipitation that in turn caused vast changes in vegetation from grasslands to forests, and from extremely cold to warm climates. The tall, thin body and long limbs of the Turkana Boy are completely unlike those of earlier human ancestors but like those of modern tropical populations. Anthropologists suggest he was adapted for living in a hot climate with extremely high mean annual temperatures.

The curvatures of the spine, the orientation and balancing of the hips, and the presence of a barrel-shaped rib cage like that of modern humans rather than a funnel-shaped one like apes indicate that the Turkana Boy was fully adapted to habitual upright walking; his locomotion

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