Dear Otus,
My buddy, Harry, and me are debating which venue to visit next Saturday [today]. Should we go to the 24th annual Arkansas Big Buck Classic at the fairgrounds (I love those rattlesnakes), or the Lucy to Robots & Us exhibit at the Museum of Discovery? Both cost $10 for adults.
I enjoy science stuff, but Lucy confuses me. Was she a human or a monkey?
- Robert Leroy Parker, Black Rock
Dear Bob,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you. You’ll get more bang for your buck with Lucy. The exhibit has interactive animatronics!
Paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey discovered Miss Lucy’s bones in Ethiopia in 1974 and the scientific community went bonkers. What Leakey found was a two-thirds-complete female skeleton with long arms and short legs, a funnel-shaped chest and V-shaped jaw.
With her were remnants of a rudimentary pantsuit, coarse madapolam tunic and open slippers that left the toes free to support plantigrade phalangeal prehensility.
Miss Lucy, according to potassium-argon analysis, hunted and gathered an astonishing 3.2 million years ago. She was the closest thing we had to the “missing link” between man and ape.
She also had a face only another Australopithecus afarensis could love.
Miss Lucy stood only 3 feet 7 inches tall. American females average a towering 5-feet-4 by comparison. Short or not, Lucy could lay claim to being the proto-mama to all humans today and a menagerie of other species that never quite cut the Darwinian mustard.
Lucy’s offspring begot several branches on the human family tree.
Splitting off to one side were Australopithecines (“southern apes”) and Australopithecus africanus (“southern African apes”), which stayed in the trees and never amounted to much.
Paranthropus boisterae (“near human rowdy ape”) and Paranthropus robustus (“near human strapping ape”) came and went by 1.5 million years ago. These evolutionary experiments were dead ends, but important to note.
More importantly for today’s humans is the other four-pronged branch to spring from Lucy’s loins.Scientists call these four creatures Homo, or “true man.”
Lucy’s clan first begat Homo habilis (“handy man”) about 1.9 million years ago. These guys were the first to make tools, usually shaped rocks and deer antlers with which they beat the brains out of those pesky Paranthropus fellows. Habilis wasn’t too good at other tools because they, also, faded out about 1.5 million years ago.
Part of their demise came about because of Homo erectus (“upright man”), Lucy’s more successful line. Homo erectus kicked in about 1.65 million years ago, had massive eyebrow ridges and looked a bit like Lou Diamond Phillips. They were quite the world travelers and migrated out of Africa all over the place.
Erectus gave way to Lucy’s best-known descendants - Homo sapiens (“wise man”). Sapiens evolved a mere 400,000 years ago with the Neanderthals. Modern man came along 130,000 years ago.
Neanderthal man, bearing a resemblance to a young Ernest Borgnine, was first discovered in 1856 in the Neander River Valley in Germany. His kind never developed good personal hygiene and eventually died out. That left Modern man to carry on Miss Lucy’s legacy and genes.
It’s important to note that the Western Hemisphere was devoid of humans until the Pleistocene epoch(Ice Age), when the Bering Sea land bridge was exposed and New Jersey man crossed from Asia to settle on what was to become America’s East Coast.
As the eons passed, skulls grew increasingly larger. This was due to the increase in the braincase caused by the invention of condiments,especially chrain and salsa. Lucy’s cranial capacity was a modest 585 cubic centimeters, whereas that of living humans is around 2,000. The brain of the modern Homo sapiens mensae is often half again as large as that, but mensae are so obnoxious you don’t want to be around them.
Many believe Lucy can no longer be considered the proto-mama since an even older hominid (“family of man”) was unearthed in Ethiopia in 1995.
Anthropologists working near Aramis found the fossils of 17 individuals and named them Australopithecus ramidus (“ugly as sin southern ape”). These folks (creatures?) lived in the forests about 4.4 million years ago.
But to her credit, Lucy ventured out onto the dangerous open plains in what was a bold and daring move. Ramidus’ bones and teeth suggest it walked upright and tools have been found that appear for all the world to be prehistoric swizzle sticks.
The debate continues on which is your mama.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you to keep those thumbs opposable at all times.
Disclaimer Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. Email: [email protected]
HomeStyle, Pages 34 on 01/25/2014