Video: Origins
of Homo sapiens: East African Roots
WSU 18234,
1997, 45 minutes
- Note: The film
continues to follow Friedemann Schrenk, the German paleoanthropologist,
and the co-editor of a volume entitled African biogeography,
climate change & human evolution, edited by Timothy G.
Bromage & Friedemann Schrenk (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Questions:
- Where is
the Transvaal and what are its characteristics, both as a home
for hominids 2-3 million years ago, and why might it be a favorable
location for the preservation and later discovery of hominid
bones?
- Know who
each of the following are:
- Raymond Dart
(and what is the status of his "killer ape" hypothesis
today?)
- Ron Clark
(incidentally, four years after this film was made, he was credited
with the discovery of "the oldest hominid fossils yet found
in South Africa, which date to around 3.5 my; they have been
assigned to the genus Australopithecine but not to a species)
- Why are the
hominid (and other) bones from Sterkfontein black?
- According
to Tobias, what were (probably) the Taung child's
- capabilities
for language (and what is the basis for this inference)
- manner of
death?