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3.6 gather and process information from secondary sources to analyse and evaluate the evidence for two different models of human evolution
gather and process information from secondary sources to analyse and evaluate the evidence for two different models of human evolution
- Gather information from a range of resources including popular scientific journals and the Internet. Some starting points are given below. Look for two alternative models of human evolution.
Books:
Lewin, R. (1993.) The Origin of Modern Humans. Scientific American LIBRARY NY
Parker, S. (1992.) The Dawn of Man. New Burlington Books. London.
Jones, Steve, R.D. Martin and David Pilbeam. (1992.) The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Human Evolution. New York. Cambridge University Press.
Tattersall, Ian. (1993.) The Human Odyssey. Prentice-Hall.
Tattersall, Ian. (1995.) The Last Neanderthal. MacMillan. USA
Webpages:
What makes us human?
Smithsonian Institute
- When you have enough information process it by organising the information from the two models in such a way that they can be compared. You might have two columns with each model as headings and aspects to compare on the left hand side.
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Model 1 |
Model 2 |
Ancestral species |
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|
Number of species |
|
|
Number of gaps |
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|
Anatomical evidence |
|
|
Biochemical evidence |
|
|
- Analyse the information in the table and any other information you have. Weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of each of the models. Are more gaps necessarily a bad thing?
- In your opinion is one model more credible than the other? Give reasons for your decision.
- Analyse and evaluate alternative models and look for contradictions such as different naming systems between the different models. Older models of evolution had a straight line of evolution between extinct apes and modern humans. The evidence from fossils is that there were many dead ends and extinctions in hominid evolution. At various times in the past there were more than one species living in an area at the same time. This means that there could not have been a straight line of evolution. When evaluating the evidence for different models of hominid evolution make sure that the information is recent and takes into account the latest finds.
- Use a search engine such as Google
using search terms such as hominid + evolution. You could also search hominin as some web sites use this term. (See The Human Story, 1 for an explanation of the differences between hominid and hominin.)