Ancient Hominid Males Stayed Home While Females Roamed, Study Finds

Science Daily ^ | 06-001-2011 | Staff + University of Colorado at Boulder.

[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."

[Tanniker Smith]

... And they died out, right?

[Red Badger]

They threw stones..............

[sjmjax]

I don't know.... sounds like the just borrowed the social model of Lions.

Woman! Fetch me some bacon!

[dartuser]

It is truly stunning what passes for scientific analysis these days. You don't need empirical evidence at all; you only need a plausible explanation ... and a few of your buddies to go along with it.

[Reeses]

it is generally thought the evolution of bipedalism was due in part to allow individuals to range longer distances

They are so clueless. Walking on two legs is not a net advantage. Having two arms free to wield weapons is. Hunting does not cause our armpits to start lubricating for an extended fight, but the approach of a strange human does. Most human specific traits were and still are for tribal warfare.

[Buckeye McFrog]

the key word in there being “extinct”...

[MrB]

Amazing what conclusions you can come to, as this article does, when you make some basic erroneous assumptions.

Usually, you can “prove” your assumptions by assuming your assumptions and examining the evidence through the lens of those assumptions... and NOT GET DIZZY DOING SO!

[MrB]

Strong the BS is with this article.

[TASMANIANRED]

BS

[Oztrich Boy]

alternate explanation. The females were tradeable commodities.

[Verginius Rufus]

But of course...it was the Stone Age.

They had a little child throw the first one ("let him who is without sin cast the first stone...").

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

Probably visiting their mothers.

[SunkenCiv]

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