Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Setting the stage: What do we know about human growth and development?
- 2 The human pattern of growth and development in paleontological perspective
- 3 Postnatal ontogeny of facial position in Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes
- 4 Variation in modern human dental development
- 5 Developmental variation in the facial skeleton of anatomically modern Homo sapiens
- 6 Linear growth variation in the archaeological record
- 7 Hominid growth and development: The modern context
- Part II The first steps: From australopithecines to Middle Pleistocene Homo
- Part III The last steps: The approach to modern humans
- Index
- References
7 - Hominid growth and development: The modern context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Setting the stage: What do we know about human growth and development?
- 2 The human pattern of growth and development in paleontological perspective
- 3 Postnatal ontogeny of facial position in Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes
- 4 Variation in modern human dental development
- 5 Developmental variation in the facial skeleton of anatomically modern Homo sapiens
- 6 Linear growth variation in the archaeological record
- 7 Hominid growth and development: The modern context
- Part II The first steps: From australopithecines to Middle Pleistocene Homo
- Part III The last steps: The approach to modern humans
- Index
- References
Summary
Arm length varies among humans, and some people must have longer arms than others. The average chimp has a longer arm than the average human, but this doesn't mean that a relatively long-armed human is genetically similar to apes. Normal variation within a population is a different biological phenomenon from differences in average values between populations.
(Gould, 1981: 127)Introduction
The above quotation, from Stephen Jay Gould, is a good starting-point for any discussion of the evolution of human ontogeny. This is because we must integrate an understanding of within- and between-population variation in addressing the questions of when and how the modern human pattern of growth and development first appeared. However, before we can even attempt to address this question, we must first consider: What is the modern human pattern of growth and development? What aspects of growth and development make modern humans unique? Inevitably, what we attempt to do is to characterize what constitutes the average pattern. Such an approach, to typify a species, is a common practice in paleoanthropology. We use similarities, differences, and unique features to distinguish between different species, and even genera. Hence the practice of using a “type specimen,” an individual fossil against which all others are compared to determine their species attribution, in the naming of a new fossil species. A similar approach is used in auxological paleontology (Bogin, this volume; Tillier, 2000), a term used to describe research into patterns of growth and development of fossil species.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Patterns of Growth and Development in the Genus Homo , pp. 170 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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