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107-411: As a subfield of anthropology, biological anthropology itself is further divided into several branches. All branches are united in their common orientation and/or application of evolutionary theory to understanding human biology and behavior. Biological Anthropology looks different today from the way it did even twenty years ago. Even the name is relatively new, having been 'physical anthropology' for over

214-442: A common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace , he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection , in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding . Darwin has been described as one of

321-451: A genealogical branching of a single evolutionary tree , in which "It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another", thereby discarding Lamarck's idea of independent lineages progressing to higher forms. While developing this intensive study of transmutation, Darwin became mired in more work. Still rewriting his Journal , he took on editing and publishing the expert reports on his collections, and with Henslow's help obtained

428-433: A "new physical anthropology." He changed the focus from racial typology to concentrate upon the study of human evolution, moving away from classification towards evolutionary process. Anthropology expanded to include paleoanthropology and primatology . The 20th century also saw the modern synthesis in biology: the reconciling of Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel 's research on heredity. Advances in

535-562: A 230-page "Essay", to be expanded with his research results if he died prematurely. In November, the anonymously published sensational best-seller Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation brought wide interest in transmutation. Darwin scorned its amateurish geology and zoology, but carefully reviewed his own arguments. Controversy erupted, and it continued to sell well despite contemptuous dismissal by scientists. Darwin completed his third geological book in 1846. He now renewed

642-845: A Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican country parson . Darwin was unqualified for Cambridge's Tripos exams and was required instead to join the ordinary degree course. He preferred riding and shooting to studying. During the first few months of Darwin's enrolment at Christ's College, his second cousin William Darwin Fox was still studying there. Fox impressed him with his butterfly collection, introducing Darwin to entomology and influencing him to pursue beetle collecting. He did this zealously and had some of his finds published in James Francis Stephens ' Illustrations of British entomology (1829–1932). Through Fox, Darwin became

749-673: A Treasury grant of £1,000 to sponsor this multi-volume Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle , a sum equivalent to about £115,000 in 2021. He stretched the funding to include his planned books on geology, and agreed to unrealistic dates with the publisher. As the Victorian era began, Darwin pressed on with writing his Journal , and in August 1837 began correcting printer's proofs . As Darwin worked under pressure, his health suffered. On 20 September, he had "an uncomfortable palpitation of

856-591: A beginning to each crop of species". Darwin's book The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs on his theory of atoll formation was published in May 1842 after more than three years of work, and he then wrote his first "pencil sketch" of his theory of natural selection. To escape the pressures of London, the family moved to rural Down House in Kent in September. On 11 January 1844, Darwin mentioned his theorising to

963-547: A book on geology. When they reached Brazil, Darwin was delighted by the tropical forest , but detested the sight of slavery there , and disputed this issue with FitzRoy. The survey continued to the south in Patagonia . They stopped at Bahía Blanca , and in cliffs near Punta Alta Darwin made a major find of fossil bones of huge extinct mammals beside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or catastrophe. He found bony plates like

1070-718: A break and went "geologising" in Scotland. He visited Glen Roy in glorious weather to see the parallel "roads" cut into the hillsides at three heights. He later published his view that these were marine-raised beaches, but then had to accept that they were shorelines of a proglacial lake . Fully recuperated, he returned to Shrewsbury in July 1838. Used to jotting down daily notes on animal breeding, he scrawled rambling thoughts about marriage, career and prospects on two scraps of paper, one with columns headed "Marry" and "Not Marry" . Advantages under "Marry" included "constant companion and

1177-471: A calm spell. On their first stop ashore at St Jago in Cape Verde, Darwin found that a white band high in the volcanic rock cliffs included seashells. FitzRoy had given him the first volume of Charles Lyell 's Principles of Geology , which set out uniformitarian concepts of land slowly rising or falling over immense periods, and Darwin saw things Lyell's way, theorising and thinking of writing

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1284-436: A century, with some practitioners still applying that term. Biological anthropologists look back to the work of Charles Darwin as a major foundation for what they do today. However, if one traces the intellectual genealogy back to physical anthropology's beginnings—before the discovery of much of what we now know as the hominin fossil record—then the focus shifts to human biological variation. Some editors, see below, have rooted

1391-562: A close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens Henslow . He met other leading parson-naturalists who saw scientific work as religious natural theology , becoming known to these dons as "the man who walks with Henslow". When his own exams drew near, Darwin applied himself to his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paley 's Evidences of Christianity (1795). In his final examination in January 1831, Darwin did well, coming tenth out of 178 candidates for

1498-412: A copy of his journal for his family. He had some expertise in geology, beetle collecting and dissecting marine invertebrates, but in all other areas, was a novice and ably collected specimens for expert appraisal. Despite suffering badly from seasickness, Darwin wrote copious notes while on board the ship. Most of his zoology notes are about marine invertebrates, starting with plankton collected during

1605-596: A fascination and expertise in marine invertebrates, dating back to his student days with Grant, by dissecting and classifying the barnacles he had collected on the voyage, enjoying observing beautiful structures and thinking about comparisons with allied structures. In 1847, Hooker read the "Essay" and sent notes that provided Darwin with the calm critical feedback that he needed, but would not commit himself and questioned Darwin's opposition to continuing acts of creation . In an attempt to improve his chronic ill health, Darwin went in 1849 to Dr. James Gully 's Malvern spa and

1712-529: A fortnight mapping strata in Wales. After leaving Sedgwick in Wales, Darwin spent a few days with student friends at Barmouth . He returned home on 29 August to find a letter from Henslow proposing him as a suitable (if unfinished) naturalist for a self-funded supernumerary place on HMS  Beagle with captain Robert FitzRoy , a position for a gentleman rather than "a mere collector". The ship

1819-532: A freed black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the South American rainforest . In Darwin's second year at the university, he joined the Plinian Society , a student natural-history group featuring lively debates in which radical democratic students with materialistic views challenged orthodox religious concepts of science. He assisted Robert Edmond Grant 's investigations of

1926-473: A friend in old age ... better than a dog anyhow", against points such as "less money for books" and "terrible loss of time". Having decided in favour of marriage, he discussed it with his father, then went to visit his cousin Emma on 29 July. At this time he did not get around to proposing, but against his father's advice, he mentioned his ideas on transmutation. He married Emma on 29 January 1839 and they were

2033-530: A giant capybara . The armour fragments were actually from Glyptodon , a huge armadillo-like creature, as Darwin had initially thought. These extinct creatures were related to living species in South America. In mid-December, Darwin took lodgings in Cambridge to arrange expert classification of his collections, and prepare his own research for publication. Questions of how to combine his diary into

2140-556: A giant version of the armour on local armadillos . From a jaw and tooth he identified the gigantic Megatherium , then from Cuvier's description thought the armour was from this animal. The finds were shipped to England, and scientists found the fossils of great interest. In Patagonia, Darwin came to wrongly believe the territory was devoid of reptiles. On rides with gauchos into the interior to explore geology and collect more fossils, Darwin gained social, political and anthropological insights into both native and colonial people at

2247-506: A great name among the Naturalists of Europe". On 2 October 1836, Beagle anchored at Falmouth , Cornwall. Darwin promptly made the long coach journey to Shrewsbury to visit his home and see relatives. He then hurried to Cambridge to see Henslow, who advised him on finding available naturalists to catalogue Darwin's animal collections and to take on the botanical specimens. Darwin's father organised investments, enabling his son to be

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2354-594: A little more than two years, in the winter of 1929, Pei Wenzhong , then the field director at Zhoukoudian, unearthed the first complete calvaria of Peking Man . Twenty-seven years after Schlosser’s initial description, the antiquity of early humans in East Asia was no longer a speculation, but a reality. Excavations continued at the site and remained fruitful until the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The decade-long research yielded

2461-515: A minor role to natural selection, and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences , explaining the diversity of life . Darwin was born in Shrewsbury , Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his family's home, The Mount . He

2568-649: A new species, Ardipithecus ramidus , based on fossils from Ethiopia. In 1999, two new species were announced. Berhane Asfaw and Tim D. White named Australopithecus garhi based on specimens discovered in Ethiopia's Awash valley . Meave Leakey announced a new species, Kenyanthropus platyops , based on the cranium KNM-WT 40000 from Lake Turkana. In the 21st century, numerous fossils have been found that add to current knowledge of existing species. For example, in 2001, Zeresenay Alemseged discovered an Australopithecus afarensis child fossil, called Selam , from

2675-642: A new species, Australopithecus sediba , based on fossils they had discovered in Malapa cave in South Africa. In 2015, a team also led by Lee Berger announced another species, Homo naledi , based on fossils representing 15 individuals from the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa. New species have also been found in eastern Africa. In 2000, Brigitte Senut and Martin Pickford described

2782-539: A programmer of laws. Darwin stayed with his freethinking brother Erasmus, part of this Whig circle and a close friend of the writer Harriet Martineau , who promoted the Malthusianism that underpinned the controversial Whig Poor Law reforms to stop welfare from causing overpopulation and more poverty. As a Unitarian, she welcomed the radical implications of transmutation of species , promoted by Grant and younger surgeons influenced by Geoffroy . Transmutation

2889-692: A proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation seeking financial support for systematic excavation at Zhoukoudian and the establishment of an institute for the study of human biology in China. The Zhoukoudian Project came into existence in the spring of 1927, and two years later, the Cenozoic Research Laboratory of the Geological Survey of China was formally established. Being the first institution of its kind,

2996-591: A sand beach. He theorised that as the land rose, oceanic islands sank, and coral reefs round them grew to form atolls . On the geologically new Galápagos Islands , Darwin looked for evidence attaching wildlife to an older "centre of creation", and found mockingbirds allied to those in Chile but differing from island to island. He heard that slight variations in the shape of tortoise shells showed which island they came from, but failed to collect them, even after eating tortoises taken on board as food. In Australia,

3103-517: A self-funded gentleman scientist , and an excited Darwin went around the London institutions being fêted and seeking experts to describe the collections. British zoologists at the time had a huge backlog of work, due to natural history collecting being encouraged throughout the British Empire, and there was a danger of specimens just being left in storage. Charles Lyell eagerly met Darwin for

3210-579: A series of books, and in his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms (1881), he examined earthworms and their effect on soil. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species . By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact . However, many initially favoured competing explanations that gave only

3317-719: A similarity between farmers picking the best stock in selective breeding, and a Malthusian Nature selecting from chance variants so that "every part of newly acquired structure is fully practical and perfected", thinking this comparison "a beautiful part of my theory". He later called his theory natural selection , an analogy with what he termed the "artificial selection" of selective breeding. On 11 November, he returned to Maer and proposed to Emma, once more telling her his ideas. She accepted, then in exchanges of loving letters she showed how she valued his openness in sharing their differences, while expressing her strong Unitarian beliefs and concerns that his honest doubts might separate them in

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3424-467: A single human tooth from Beijing . Although Schlosser (1903) was very cautious, identifying the tooth only as "? Anthropoide g. et sp. indet ?," he was hopeful that future work would discover a new anthropoid in China. Eleven years later, the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson was sent to China as a mining advisor and soon developed an interest in "dragon bones". It was he who, in 1918, discovered

3531-661: A thing of the past" (1977: 139). The first paleoanthropological find made in Africa was the 1921 discovery of the Kabwe 1 skull at Kabwe (Broken Hill) , Zambia. Initially, this specimen was named Homo rhodesiensis ; however, today it is considered part of the species Homo heidelbergensis . In 1924 in a limestone quarry at Taung , Professor Raymond Dart discovered a remarkably well-preserved juvenile specimen (face and brain endocast), which he named Australopithecus africanus ( Australopithecus meaning "Southern Ape"). Although

3638-468: A time of revolution, and learnt that two types of rhea had separate but overlapping territories. Further south, he saw stepped plains of shingle and seashells as raised beaches at a series of elevations. He read Lyell's second volume and accepted its view of "centres of creation" of species, but his discoveries and theorising challenged Lyell's ideas of smooth continuity and of extinction of species. Three Fuegians on board, who had been seized during

3745-399: A vital tool of research of the evolutionary kinship lines of related species and genera. The term paleoanthropology derives from Greek palaiós (παλαιός) "old, ancient", ánthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος) "man, human" and the suffix -logía (-λογία) "study of". Hominoids are a primate superfamily, the hominid family is currently considered to comprise both the great ape lineages and human lineages within

3852-523: A wealth of faunal and lithic materials, as well as hominin fossils. These included 5 more complete calvaria, 9 large cranial fragments, 6 facial fragments, 14 partial mandibles, 147 isolated teeth, and 11 postcranial elements—estimated to represent as least 40 individuals. Evidence of fire, marked by ash lenses and burned bones and stones, were apparently also present, although recent studies have challenged this view. Franz Weidenreich came to Beijing soon after Black’s untimely death in 1934, and took charge of

3959-471: Is known as a Malthusian catastrophe . Darwin was well-prepared to compare this to Augustin de Candolle 's "warring of the species" of plants and the struggle for existence among wildlife, explaining how numbers of a species kept roughly stable. As species always breed beyond available resources, favourable variations would make organisms better at surviving and passing the variations on to their offspring, while unfavourable variations would be lost. He wrote that

4066-686: The Linnean Society of London . Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of natural diversification. In 1871, he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex , followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). His research on plants was published in

4173-554: The Narrative were resolved at the end of the month when FitzRoy accepted Broderip's advice to make it a separate volume, and Darwin began work on his Journal and Remarks . Darwin's first paper showed that the South American landmass was slowly rising, and with Lyell's enthusiastic backing he read it to the Geological Society of London on 4 January 1837. On the same day, he presented his mammal and bird specimens to

4280-602: The Royal Society 's Royal Medal, and it made his reputation as a biologist . Upon the conclusion of his research, Darwin declared "I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before." In 1854, he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London , gaining postal access to its library. He began a major reassessment of his theory of species, and in November realised that divergence in the character of descendants could be explained by them becoming adapted to "diversified places in

4387-942: The Zoological Society . The ornithologist John Gould soon announced that the Galápagos birds that Darwin had thought a mixture of blackbirds , " gros-beaks " and finches , were, in fact, twelve separate species of finches . On 17 February, Darwin was elected to the Council of the Geological Society, and Lyell's presidential address presented Owen's findings on Darwin's fossils, stressing geographical continuity of species as supporting his uniformitarian ideas. Early in March, Darwin moved to London to be near this work, joining Lyell's social circle of scientists and experts such as Charles Babbage , who described God as

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4494-521: The first Beagle voyage then given Christian education in England, were returning with a missionary. Darwin found them friendly and civilised, yet at Tierra del Fuego he met "miserable, degraded savages", as different as wild from domesticated animals. He remained convinced that, despite this diversity, all humans were interrelated with a shared origin and potential for improvement towards civilisation. Unlike his scientist friends, he now thought there

4601-486: The hominoid superfamily. The " Homininae " comprise both the human lineages and the African ape lineages. The term "African apes" refers only to chimpanzees and gorillas . The terminology of the immediate biological family is currently in flux. The term "hominin" refers to any genus in the human tribe (Hominini), of which Homo sapiens (modern humans) is the only living specimen. In 1758 Carl Linnaeus introduced

4708-519: The marsupial rat-kangaroo and the platypus seemed so unusual that Darwin thought it was almost as though two distinct Creators had been at work. He found the Aborigines "good-humoured & pleasant", their numbers depleted by European settlement. FitzRoy investigated how the atolls of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands had formed, and the survey supported Darwin's theorising. FitzRoy began writing

4815-598: The ordinary degree. Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831. He studied Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (first published in 1802), which made an argument for divine design in nature , explaining adaptation as God acting through laws of nature . He read John Herschel 's new book, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), which described

4922-596: The "final cause of all this wedging, must be to sort out proper structure, & adapt it to changes", so that "One may say there is a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying force into every kind of adapted structure into the gaps of in the economy of nature, or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones." This would result in the formation of new species. As he later wrote in his Autobiography : In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate

5029-454: The 17th to 18th centuries with the study of racial classification ( Georgius Hornius , François Bernier , Carl Linnaeus , Johann Friedrich Blumenbach ). The first prominent physical anthropologist, the German physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) of Göttingen , amassed a large collection of human skulls ( Decas craniorum , published during 1790–1828), from which he argued for

5136-409: The 1930s, paleontologist Robert Broom discovered and described a new species at Kromdraai , South Africa. Although similar in some ways to Dart's Australopithecus africanus , Broom's specimen had much larger cheek teeth. Because of this difference, Broom named his specimen Paranthropus robustus , using a new genus name. In doing so, he established the practice of grouping gracile australopiths in

5243-419: The 19th century with the discovery of " Neanderthal man" (the eponymous skeleton was found in 1856, but there had been finds elsewhere since 1830), and with evidence of so-called cave men . The idea that humans are similar to certain great apes had been obvious to people for some time, but the idea of the biological evolution of species in general was not legitimized until after Charles Darwin published On

5350-607: The Cenozoic Laboratory opened up new avenues for the study of paleogeology and paleontology in China. The Laboratory was the precursor of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Science, which took its modern form after 1949. The first of the major project finds are attributed to the young Swedish paleontologist, Anders Birger Bohlin , then serving as

5457-437: The Origin of Species in 1859. Though Darwin's first book on evolution did not address the specific question of human evolution—"light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history," was all Darwin wrote on the subject—the implications of evolutionary theory were clear to contemporary readers. Debates between Thomas Huxley and Richard Owen focused on the idea of human evolution. Huxley convincingly illustrated many of

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5564-535: The Taung child was a bipedal human ancestor, a transitional form between ape and human. However, Dart's conclusions were largely ignored for decades, as the prevailing view of the time was that a large brain evolved before bipedality. It took the discovery of additional australopith fossils in Africa that resembled his specimen, and the rejection of the Piltdown Man hoax , for Dart's claims to be taken seriously. In

5671-618: The Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism . Robert Darwin, a freethinker , had baby Charles baptised in November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury , but Charles and his siblings attended the local Unitarian Church with their mother. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for natural history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus in attending

5778-459: The afterlife. While he was house-hunting in London, bouts of illness continued and Emma wrote urging him to get some rest, almost prophetically remarking "So don't be ill any more my dear Charley till I can be with you to nurse you." He found what they called "Macaw Cottage" (because of its gaudy interiors) in Gower Street , then moved his "museum" in over Christmas. On 24 January 1839, Darwin

5885-506: The anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates in the Firth of Forth , and on 27 March 1827 presented at the Plinian his own discovery that black spores found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech . One day, Grant praised Lamarck 's evolutionary ideas . Darwin was astonished by Grant's audacity, but had recently read similar ideas in his grandfather Erasmus' journals. Darwin

5992-437: The botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker , writing with melodramatic humour "it is like confessing a murder". Hooker replied, "There may, in my opinion, have been a series of productions on different spots, & also a gradual change of species. I shall be delighted to hear how you think that this change may have taken place, as no presently conceived opinions satisfy me on the subject." By July, Darwin had expanded his "sketch" into

6099-455: The brain was small (410 cm ), its shape was rounded, unlike the brain shape of chimpanzees and gorillas, and more like the shape seen in modern humans. In addition, the specimen exhibited short canine teeth , and the anterior placement of the foramen magnum was more like the placement seen in modern humans than the placement seen in chimpanzees and gorillas, suggesting that this species was bipedal . All of these traits convinced Dart that

6206-418: The division of humankind into five major races (termed Caucasian , Mongolian , Aethiopian , Malayan and American ). In the 19th century, French physical anthropologists, led by Paul Broca (1824–1880), focused on craniometry while the German tradition, led by Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), emphasized the influence of environment and disease upon the human body. In the 1830s and 40s, physical anthropology

6313-542: The duties of Secretary of the Geological Society. After initially declining the work, he accepted the post in March 1838. Despite the grind of writing and editing the Beagle reports, Darwin made remarkable progress on transmutation, taking every opportunity to question expert naturalists and, unconventionally, people with practical experience in selective breeding such as farmers and pigeon fanciers . Over time, his research drew on information from his relatives and children,

6420-797: The economy of nature". Paleoanthropology Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans , a process known as hominization , through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship lines within the family Hominidae , working from biological evidence (such as petrified skeletal remains, bone fragments , footprints) and cultural evidence (such as stone tools , artifacts, and settlement localities). The field draws from and combines primatology , paleontology , biological anthropology , and cultural anthropology . As technologies and methods advance, genetics plays an ever-increasing role, in particular to examine and compare DNA structure as

6527-713: The family butler, neighbours, colonists and former shipmates. He included mankind in his speculations from the outset, and on seeing an orangutan in the zoo on 28 March 1838 noted its childlike behaviour. The strain took a toll, and by June he was being laid up for days on end with stomach problems, headaches and heart symptoms. For the rest of his life, he was repeatedly incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils , palpitations, trembling and other symptoms, particularly during times of stress, such as attending meetings or making social visits. The cause of Darwin's illness remained unknown, and attempts at treatment had only ephemeral success. On 23 June, he took

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6634-654: The famous Laetoli footprints in Tanzania, which demonstrated the antiquity of bipedality in the human lineage. In 1985, Richard Leakey and Alan Walker discovered a specimen they called the Black Skull , found near Lake Turkana. This specimen was assigned to another species, Paranthropus aethiopicus . In 1994, a team led by Meave Leakey announced a new species, Australopithecus anamensis , based on specimens found near Lake Turkana. Numerous other researchers have made important discoveries in eastern Africa. Possibly

6741-415: The field advisor at Zhoukoudian . He recovered a left lower molar that Black (1927) identified as unmistakably human (it compared favorably to the previous find made by Zdansky), and subsequently coined it Sinanthropus pekinensis . The news was at first met with skepticism, and many scholars had reservations that a single tooth was sufficient to justify the naming of a new type of early hominin. Yet within

6848-536: The field even deeper than formal science. Attempts to study and classify human beings as living organisms date back to ancient Greece. The Greek philosopher Plato ( c. 428– c. 347 BC) placed humans on the scala naturae , which included all things, from inanimate objects at the bottom to deities at the top. This became the main system through which scholars thought about nature for the next roughly 2,000 years. Plato's student Aristotle ( c. 384–322 BC) observed in his History of Animals that human beings are

6955-597: The first time on 29 October and soon introduced him to the up-and-coming anatomist Richard Owen , who had the facilities of the Royal College of Surgeons to work on the fossil bones collected by Darwin. Owen's surprising results included other gigantic extinct ground sloths as well as the Megatherium Darwin had identified, a near complete skeleton of the unknown Scelidotherium and a hippopotamus -sized rodent -like skull named Toxodon resembling

7062-577: The fossil KNM-ER 1470 near Lake Turkana in Kenya. KNM-ER 1470 has been interpreted as either a distinct species, Homo rudolfensis , or alternatively as evidence of sexual dimorphism in Homo habilis . In 1967, Richard Leakey reported the earliest definitive examples of anatomically modern Homo sapiens from the site of Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, known as the Omo remains . In the late 1970s, Mary Leakey excavated

7169-489: The fossil hominin teeth delighted the scientific community in Beijing, and plans for developing a larger, more systematic project at Zhoukoudian were soon formulated. At the epicenter of excitement was Davidson Black , a Canadian-born anatomist working at Peking Union Medical College . Black shared Andersson’s interest, as well as his view that central Asia was a promising home for early humankind. In late 1926, Black submitted

7276-450: The genus Australopithecus and robust australopiths in the genus Paranthropus . During the 1960s, the robust variety was commonly moved into Australopithecus . A more recent consensus has been to return to the original classification of Paranthropus as a separate genus. The second half of the twentieth century saw a significant increase in the number of paleoanthropological finds made in Africa. Many of these finds were associated with

7383-582: The heart", so his doctors urged him to "knock off all work" and live in the country for a few weeks. After visiting Shrewsbury, he joined his Wedgwood relatives at Maer Hall , Staffordshire, but found them too eager for tales of his travels to give him much rest. His charming, intelligent, and cultured cousin Emma Wedgwood , nine months older than Darwin, was nursing his invalid aunt. His uncle Josiah pointed out an area of ground where cinders had disappeared under loam and suggested that this might have been

7490-472: The highest aim of natural philosophy as understanding such laws through inductive reasoning based on observation, and Alexander von Humboldt 's Personal Narrative of scientific travels in 1799–1804. Inspired with "a burning zeal" to contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics. In preparation, he joined Adam Sedgwick 's geology course, then on 4 August travelled with him to spend

7597-435: The human form. His research showed that head shape was malleable to environmental and nutritional factors rather than a stable "racial" trait. However, scientific racism still persisted in biological anthropology, with prominent figures such as Earnest Hooton and Aleš Hrdlička promoting theories of racial superiority and a European origin of modern humans. In 1951 Sherwood Washburn , a former student of Hooton, introduced

7704-527: The idea that human beings could have evolved their apparently boundless mental capacities and moral sensibilities through natural selection . Prior to the general acceptance of Africa as the root of genus Homo , 19th-century naturalists sought the origin of humans in Asia. So-called "dragon bones" (fossil bones and teeth) from Chinese apothecary shops were known, but it was not until the early 20th century that German paleontologist, Max Schlosser , first described

7811-626: The most famous is the Lucy skeleton , discovered in 1973 by Donald Johanson and Maurice Taieb in Ethiopia's Afar Triangle at the site of Hadar . On the basis of this skeleton and subsequent discoveries, the researchers came up with a new species, Australopithecus afarensis . In 1975, Colin Groves and Vratislav Mazák announced a new species of human they called Homo ergaster . Homo ergaster specimens have been found at numerous sites in eastern and southern Africa. In 1994, Tim D. White announced

7918-538: The most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey . Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh ; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates . His studies at the University of Cambridge 's Christ's College from 1828 to 1831 encouraged his passion for natural science . However, it

8025-454: The name Homo sapiens as a species name in the 10th edition of his work Systema Naturae although without a scientific description of the species-specific characteristics. Since the great apes were considered the closest relatives of human beings, based on morphological similarity, in the 19th century, it was speculated that the closest living relatives to humans were chimpanzees (genus Pan ) and gorilla (genus Gorilla ), and based on

8132-752: The natural range of these creatures, it was surmised that humans shared a common ancestor with African apes and that fossils of these ancestors would ultimately be found in Africa. The science arguably began in the late 19th century when important discoveries occurred that led to the study of human evolution . The discovery of the Neanderthal in Germany, Thomas Huxley 's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature , and Charles Darwin 's The Descent of Man were both important to early paleoanthropological research. The modern field of paleoanthropology began in

8239-503: The nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder . Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the well-regarded University of Edinburgh Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. Darwin found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so he neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone ,

8346-433: The official Narrative of the Beagle voyages, and after reading Darwin's diary, he proposed incorporating it into the account. Darwin's Journal was eventually rewritten as a separate third volume, on geology and natural history. In Cape Town , South Africa, Darwin and FitzRoy met John Herschel, who had recently written to Lyell praising his uniformitarianism as opening bold speculation on "that mystery of mysteries,

8453-502: The only animals to walk upright and argued, in line with his teleological view of nature, that humans have buttocks and no tails in order to give them a soft place to sit when they are tired of standing. He explained regional variations in human features as the result of different climates. He also wrote about physiognomy , an idea derived from writings in the Hippocratic Corpus . Scientific physical anthropology began in

8560-496: The origin of species". Without telling Darwin, extracts from his letters to Henslow had been read to scientific societies, printed as a pamphlet for private distribution among members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society , and reported in magazines, including The Athenaeum . Darwin first heard of this at Cape Town, and at Ascension Island read of Sedgwick's prediction that Darwin "will have

8667-491: The paleoanthropological spotlight shifted westward to East Africa. Although China re-opened its doors to the West in the late 1970s, national policy calling for self-reliance, coupled with a widened language barrier, thwarted all the possibilities of renewed scientific relationships. Indeed, Harvard anthropologist K. C. Chang noted, "international collaboration (in developing nations very often a disguise for Western domination) became

8774-522: The parents of ten children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Continuing his research in London, Darwin's wide reading now included the sixth edition of Malthus 's An Essay on the Principle of Population . On 28 September 1838, he noted its assertion that human "population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio", a geometric progression so that population soon exceeds food supply in what

8881-573: The possibility that "one species does change into another" to explain the geographical distribution of living species such as the rheas, and extinct ones such as the strange extinct mammal Macrauchenia , which resembled a giant guanaco , a llama relative. Around mid-July, he recorded in his "B" notebook his thoughts on lifespan and variation across generations – explaining the variations he had observed in Galápagos tortoises , mockingbirds, and rheas. He sketched branching descent, and then

8988-520: The replacement of extinct species by others" as "a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process". When organising his notes as the ship sailed home, Darwin wrote that, if his growing suspicions about the mockingbirds, the tortoises and the Falkland Islands fox were correct, "such facts undermine the stability of Species", then cautiously added "would" before "undermine". He later wrote that such facts "seemed to me to throw some light on

9095-423: The similarities and differences between humans and apes in his 1863 book Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature . By the time Darwin published his own book on the subject, Descent of Man , it was already a well-known interpretation of his theory—and the interpretation which made the theory highly controversial. Even many of Darwin's original supporters (such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Lyell ) balked at

9202-459: The site of Dikika in the Afar region of Ethiopia. This find is particularly important because the fossil included a preserved hyoid bone , something rarely found in other paleoanthropological fossils but important for understanding the evolution of speech capacities. Two new species from southern Africa have been discovered and described in recent years. In 2008, a team led by Lee Berger announced

9309-698: The sites around Zhoukoudian , a village about 50 kilometers southwest of Beijing. However, because of the sparse nature of the initial finds, the site was abandoned. Work did not resume until 1921, when the Austrian paleontologist, Otto Zdansky , fresh with his doctoral degree from Vienna, came to Beijing to work for Andersson. Zdansky conducted short-term excavations at Locality 1 in 1921 and 1923, and recovered only two teeth of significance (one premolar and one molar) that he subsequently described, cautiously, as "? Homo sp. " (Zdansky, 1927). With that done, Zdansky returned to Austria and suspended all fieldwork. News of

9416-406: The species Orrorin tugenensis , based on fossils they found in Kenya. In 2004, Yohannes Haile-Selassie announced that some specimens previously labeled as Ardipithecus ramidus made up a different species, Ardipithecus kadabba . In 2015, Haile-Selassie announced another new species, Australopithecus deyiremeda , though some scholars are skeptical that the associated fossils truly represent

9523-408: The struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work... By mid-December, Darwin saw

9630-649: The study of the hominin specimens. Following the loss of the Peking Man materials in late 1941, scientific endeavors at Zhoukoudian slowed, primarily because of lack of funding. Frantic search for the missing fossils took place, and continued well into the 1950s. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, excavations resumed at Zhoukoudian. But with political instability and social unrest brewing in China, beginning in 1966, and major discoveries at Olduvai Gorge and East Turkana ( Koobi Fora ),

9737-409: The systematics of the taxa. He wrote his first examination of the species in 1846, but did not formally describe it until 1854. FitzRoy's long delayed Narrative was published in May 1839. Darwin's Journal and Remarks got good reviews as the third volume, and on 15 August it was published on its own. Early in 1842, Darwin wrote about his ideas to Charles Lyell, who noted that his ally "denies seeing

9844-611: The understanding of the molecular structure of DNA and the development of chronological dating methods opened doors to understanding human variation, both past and present, more accurately and in much greater detail. Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( / ˈ d ɑːr w ɪ n / DAR -win ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist , geologist , and biologist , widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology . His proposition that all species of life have descended from

9951-420: The voyage began on 27 December 1831; it lasted almost five years. As FitzRoy had intended, Darwin spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections, while HMS Beagle surveyed and charted coasts. He kept careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations, and at intervals during the voyage his specimens were sent to Cambridge together with letters including

10058-421: The voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and, in 1838, devised his theory of natural selection. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research, and his geological work had priority. He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting the immediate joint submission of both their theories to

10165-403: The work of earthworms , inspiring "a new & important theory" on their role in soil formation , which Darwin presented at the Geological Society on 1 November 1837. His Journal was printed and ready for publication by the end of February 1838, as was the first volume of the Narrative , but FitzRoy was still working hard to finish his own volume. William Whewell pushed Darwin to take on

10272-577: The work of the Leakey family in eastern Africa. In 1959, Mary Leakey 's discovery of the Zinj fossin ( OH 5 ) at Olduvai Gorge , Tanzania, led to the identification of a new species, Paranthropus boisei . In 1960, the Leakeys discovered the fossil OH 7 , also at Olduvai Gorge, and assigned it to a new species, Homo habilis . In 1972, Bernard Ngeneo, a fieldworker working for Richard Leakey , discovered

10379-707: Was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). On 29 January, Darwin and Emma Wedgwood were married at Maer in an Anglican ceremony arranged to suit the Unitarians, then immediately caught the train to London and their new home. Darwin now had the framework of his theory of natural selection "by which to work", as his "prime hobby". His research included extensive experimental selective breeding of plants and animals, finding evidence that species were not fixed and investigating many detailed ideas to refine and substantiate his theory. For fifteen years this work

10486-418: Was a " wren " was in the finch group . Darwin had not labelled the finches by island, but from the notes of others on the ship, including FitzRoy, he allocated species to islands. The two rheas were distinct species, and on 14 March Darwin announced how their distribution changed going southwards. By mid-March 1837, barely six months after his return to England, Darwin was speculating in his Red Notebook on

10593-472: Was anathema to Anglicans defending social order, but reputable scientists openly discussed the subject, and there was wide interest in John Herschel's letter praising Lyell's approach as a way to find a natural cause of the origin of new species. Gould met Darwin and told him that the Galápagos mockingbirds from different islands were separate species, not just varieties, and what Darwin had thought

10700-418: Was his five-year voyage on HMS  Beagle from 1831 to 1836 that truly established Darwin as an eminent geologist. The observations and theories he developed during his voyage supported Charles Lyell 's concept of gradual geological change . Publication of his journal of the voyage made Darwin famous as a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on

10807-425: Was in the background to his main occupation of writing on geology and publishing expert reports on the Beagle collections, in particular, the barnacles . The impetus of Darwin's barnacle research came from a collection of a barnacle colony from Chile in 1835, which he dubbed Mr. Arthrobalanus . His confusion over the relationship of this species ( Cryptophialus minutus ) to other barnacles caused him to fixate on

10914-504: Was no unbridgeable gap between humans and animals. A year on, the mission had been abandoned. The Fuegian they had named Jemmy Button lived like the other natives, had a wife, and had no wish to return to England. Darwin experienced an earthquake in Chile in 1835 and saw signs that the land had just been raised, including mussel -beds stranded above high tide. High in the Andes he saw seashells, and several fossil trees that had grown on

11021-523: Was prominent in the debate about slavery , with the scientific, monogenist works of the British abolitionist James Cowles Prichard (1786–1848) opposing those of the American polygenist Samuel George Morton (1799–1851). In the late 19th century, German-American anthropologist Franz Boas (1858–1942) strongly impacted biological anthropology by emphasizing the influence of culture and experience on

11128-577: Was rather bored by Robert Jameson 's natural-history course, which covered geology – including the debate between neptunism and plutonism . He learned the classification of plants and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum , one of the largest museums in Europe at the time. Darwin's neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who sent him to Christ's College, Cambridge , in January 1828, to study for

11235-574: Was surprised to find some benefit from hydrotherapy . Then, in 1851, his treasured daughter Annie fell ill, reawakening his fears that his illness might be hereditary. She died the same year after a long series of crises. In eight years of work on barnacles, Darwin's theory helped him to find " homologies " showing that slightly changed body parts served different functions to meet new conditions, and in some genera he found minute males parasitic on hermaphrodites , showing an intermediate stage in evolution of distinct sexes . In 1853, it earned him

11342-482: Was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). His grandfathers Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood were both prominent abolitionists . Erasmus Darwin had praised general concepts of evolution and common descent in his Zoonomia (1794), a poetic fantasy of gradual creation including undeveloped ideas anticipating concepts his grandson expanded. Both families were largely Unitarian , though

11449-446: Was to leave in four weeks on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. Robert Darwin objected to his son's planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood II , to agree to (and fund) his son's participation. Darwin took care to remain in a private capacity to retain control over his collection, intending it for a major scientific institution. After delays,

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