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Ancient Hominid Males Stayed Home While Females Roamed, Study Finds
Science Daily ^ | 06-001-2011 | Staff + University of Colorado at Boulder.

Posted on 06/08/2011 10:19:59 AM PDT by Red Badger

The males of two bipedal hominid species that roamed the South African savannah more than a million years ago were stay-at-home kind of guys when compared to the gadabout gals, says a new high-tech study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

The team, which studied teeth from a group of extinct Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus individuals from two adjacent cave systems in South Africa, found more than half of the female teeth were from outside the local area, said CU-Boulder adjunct professor and lead study author Sandi Copeland. In contrast, only about 10 percent of the male hominid teeth were from elsewhere, suggesting they likely grew up and died in the same area.

"One of our goals was to try to find something out about early hominid landscape use," said Copeland, who also is affiliated with the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "Here we have the first direct glimpse of the geographic movements of early hominids, and it appears the females preferentially moved away from their residential groups."

A paper on the subject is being published in the June 2 issue of Nature.

[snip]

The new study results were somewhat surprising, said Copeland. "We assumed more of the hominids would be from non-local areas since it is generally thought the evolution of bipedalism was due in part to allow individuals to range longer distances," she said. "Such small home ranges could imply that bipedalism evolved for other reasons."

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: ggg; godsgravesglyphs
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This is a skull of a Paranthropus robustus from Swartkrans Cave in South Africa. (Credit: Darryl de Ruiter)

I suppose they are the ones that decorated the caves..............

1 posted on 06/08/2011 10:20:02 AM PDT by Red Badger
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To: SunkenCiv

GGG Ping!............


2 posted on 06/08/2011 10:20:47 AM PDT by Red Badger (Nothing is a 'right' if someone has to give it to you................)
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To: Red Badger

That evidence suggests raiding and kidnapping to me, not sexy cave girls stepping out.


3 posted on 06/08/2011 10:22:53 AM PDT by SeeSharp
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To: Red Badger

The origin of the beer run.


4 posted on 06/08/2011 10:23:54 AM PDT by Stosh
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To: Red Badger
No wonder they went extinct. That face reminds me of Larry Sinclair's ex’s wife.
5 posted on 06/08/2011 10:26:48 AM PDT by kbennkc (For those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know.)
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To: Red Badger

Not much volume for a brain in there,Must be a early Democrat judging from the culture.


6 posted on 06/08/2011 10:26:58 AM PDT by Cheetahcat ( November 4 2008 ,A date which will live in Infamy.)
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To: Red Badger

The tradition continues on Sundays during football season.


7 posted on 06/08/2011 10:27:45 AM PDT by forgotten man (forgotten man)
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To: Red Badger

And they know this from looking at teeth? Here’s my hypothesis - Fast Lions Deposit Teeth of Slow Women in Their Feces and Scientists Look at Shinola and Claim It’s Sh_t.


8 posted on 06/08/2011 10:27:55 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: forgotten man

Yes, the descendants of the Neanderthals gather round the campfire/TV to watch other Neanderthals...................


9 posted on 06/08/2011 10:29:37 AM PDT by Red Badger (Nothing is a 'right' if someone has to give it to you................)
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To: Red Badger
The smell of BS is heavy on this article.
10 posted on 06/08/2011 10:31:19 AM PDT by The Cajun (Palin, Free Republic, Mark Levin, Rush, Hannity......Nuff said.)
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To: SeeSharp

That’s what I thought, but the kollege edukated perfessers don’t think that way................


11 posted on 06/08/2011 10:31:25 AM PDT by Red Badger (Nothing is a 'right' if someone has to give it to you................)
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To: Red Badger

The conclusions are almost laughable......What’s not laughable is the Grant Money we passed out.


12 posted on 06/08/2011 10:32:52 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Red Badger
Just proves the men were more likely to respect The Forbidden Zone.


13 posted on 06/08/2011 10:34:47 AM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: kbennkc

LOL! That was my first thought as well.


14 posted on 06/08/2011 10:36:26 AM PDT by LibertarianLiz
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To: SeeSharp
Not just raiding and kidnapping - but also trading.

All primates species that form small bands (we are no exception) have all the juveniles of one sex or the other leave the home group and join a new group. Some suggest that teenage angst and alienation is a biological remnant of this behavior.

Among baboons it is the males.

Among chimps it is the females.

The point is that even a baboon ‘knows’ that you cannot keep reproducing within the same small group. One sex or the other has to be ‘swapped’ with another group.

15 posted on 06/08/2011 10:42:07 AM PDT by allmendream (Tea Party did not send the GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism.)
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To: SeeSharp

“That evidence suggests raiding and kidnapping to me, not sexy cave girls stepping out.”

BINGO.


16 posted on 06/08/2011 10:42:41 AM PDT by Crim (Palin / West '12)
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To: Red Badger
Apparently there was a local shortage of blonds.
17 posted on 06/08/2011 10:47:27 AM PDT by ArmstedFragg (hoaxy dopey changey)
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To: Red Badger
Taboos against incest seem to be universal--it seems that all human societies know that too-close interbreeding is harmful. What this study suggests is that the pattern of the sons staying in the family abode while the daughters married out to another household was already found among these ancient hominids.

At a much more recent period, the Proto-Indo-European speakers seem to have had patriarchal families where the sons stayed put and the daughters married away--that is deduced from various words for family relationships in the later Indo-European languages.

Of course the marriage customs among the Paranthropi robusti would have differed in detail from later hominid species--they didn't throw rice since they didn't have rice.

18 posted on 06/08/2011 10:56:24 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: forgotten man

Ya, but.... we never should have given them the right to vote.


19 posted on 06/08/2011 11:00:17 AM PDT by donhunt (I am sick and tired of those bastards insulting and lying to me.)
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To: Red Badger

... And they out, right?


20 posted on 06/08/2011 11:02:03 AM PDT by Tanniker Smith (I didn't know she was a liberal when I married her.)
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