Thursday, January 30, 2020
The Origin of Childhood †National Geographic Magazine Essay Example for Free
The Origin of Childhood – National Geographic Magazine Essay The article talks about the discovery of the remains of a hominin child 3.3 million year back by an Ethiopian scientist Zeresenay Alemseged. The differentiating factor of this find is the fact that the child’s bones were intact and the find itself is like digging gold in the world of archeology. The find is able to give us an in-depth knowledge about the body structure and capabilities of the hominins, it also tells us how the babies were changing from chimps to what we are now. It also draws comparisons to Lucy, the fossil of a mother 3.2 million years old which was found in the 1970’s. with the finding of the child, the family of Australopithecus afarensis is now complete and scientists are able to make conclusions about how they lived, what they could and what they could not do.                        Based on the shape of its shoulders scientists can say that this child could climb tress, also the shape and size of its knee cap suggests that this child could walk on 2 legs.                        The article also talks about how Zeresenay is one of the few Ethiopian scientists involved in this field although this part of the world has been a treasure cove for finding many remains of animals and different species of mammals. Most of the expeditions in this part of the world had mainly been foreign before Zeresenay took the lead in 1999. the article talks about their struggle as there were a couple of findings of mammals in that area but no hominins and Zeresenay’s belief that they will be able to find hominins in that part of the world. Finally in 2000, it all came true when Zeresenay’s team found the remains of a child. However, to the contrast of making a skeleton out of hundreds of small pieces of bones their challenge was quite the opposite. The remains were found in a ball of sandstone and thus Zeresenay had to cut through it with a dentist’s drill to ensure that no part of the child’s’ body was damaged and they could recover everything there was in that ball of sandstone. The result of 5 years of that effort is a treasure that he says comes only once in a lifetime.                        The startling features being a full set of both the milk teeth and unerupted adult teeth; also a bone in the throat that is considered to be the main crucial part of human speech. Other findings include a curled finger which tells us their resemblance with chimpanzees and her ribs that tell us the size of the child.                        It talks about how the knee caps of the child were the size of the pea that tells us that this ‘man’ could walk on 2 legs. What is also worth noting is that the brain of this child was very small at 330cc compared to a 5 year old human child whose brain is over a 1000cc. this tells us that the growth of the brain was slow and there is resemblance with chimpanzees there. It talks about the feet of the child that were not like a chimpanzee but rather like us humans. This meant that the child could not hang on to its mother and had to b carried by the mother, this left the mother helpless and dependant for food and other things on her mate. The scientists say this should have been the time when the bonds became stronger and that is why humans are monogamous as compared to other apes.                        The article ends by telling us that this specie did not eat meat and a million years late when man started eating meat, which is when the brain size started getting larger as 40% of our food goes into sustaining our brain. For specie that is mainly dependent on vegetables and leaves, this would have been very difficult. The article ends by saying that as the brains of the humans keep growing bigger and bigger we will have more ‘intellectual power’ to find our roots. Why I chose this article                        I am quizzical about how human life started and how and why we changed from being Chimps to being who we are today and what lies beyond our planet and if there is life on other planets. I chose this particular article because it tries to tell us or rather the whole article is about that part in time where we were still dependent on our parents but starting to live longer than other ‘close’ members of our specie.                        The human child is very weak, it can’t talk, it can’t walk, it can’t express itself in any other way apart from crying and making face expressions. Basically, it is helpless. It someone does not take care of the child, the child cannot survive.                        This article tells us about the life of a 3 year old girl who lived 3.3 Million year ago. However, the special thing about this girl is the fact that she is in one of those defining moments of time where we as specie started to separate from chimpanzees and started having the physical capabilities to live as human beings.                        Another motivation to choose this article was the way they talk about the little child. It is almost magical and makes me felt hat I have been transported into a world where I can actually visualize this child and see how we humans came about to be who we are today. The way the author talks about the scientist who discovered and painstakingly got the bones from the sandstone vs. how he talks about the parts of the honninin baby body parts brings a sense of life to that child. The biological aspect is obviously enchanting but I will talk about that in the next section.                        The articles use of graphics is phenomenal in showing how the child looked and what were the limitations of his body compared to ours, it also clearly mentions the developments of this child compared to that of his and our ancestors. An important part is the development of the brain and the hands as discusses in the earlier section. Overall, the reason to choose this article is the impact that it has had on me about human evolution. My opinion of the article and how it relates to Biology                        As I just mentioned, this article has left a beautiful impression on me about the evolution of human beings and has in a way made me fall in love with the 3 year old child from our history. I feel the article is very well written because it brings along a vivid image about the life of the child in that era and the use of imagery is phenomenal in showing us how the child looks and how it has changed to how we look now. There is also a sketch of the mother in that era holding her child and it shows how the child in that era was beginning to be dependent on his or her mother for care protection and other needs.                        The relation to biology comes from the fact that it talks about the development of the body and how it had changed from that of a chimpanzee and starting to look like ours. For example, the fingers of the child were curved and that is more like a chimpanzee however the feet of the child did not have long fingers which meant that unlike children of chimpanzees this child could not cling on to this mothers’ body as there was no grasp. It also talks about the set of milk teeth and adult teeth and their placement in the jaw or rather the jaw line, this tells us about what the child could and what it could although the food habits are not specifically mentioned in the article. The article also gives a glimpse about how the hominins lived and survived.
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