WHAT WAS EARLY LIFE LIKE IN AFRICA?
Directions: Put yourself in the role of an anthropologist. You have just discovered the skeleton you see below
named “Lucy”. What would you have learned from each of the bones that were discovered? To find out what you
would have learned, draw a line from column B to what you would have learned in column C. You can use the
picture of Lucy’s remains and your knowledge of Social Studies to complete this assignment.
Anthropology, a major area of study and experimentation, is primarily concerned with human evolution, human
biology, and the study of other primates. One branch of anthropology is now widely known because of the work of a
family of anthropologists: Louis S. B., his wife, Mary, who was British and their son, Richard. Their discovery
during the 1960’s of a series of fossils in Olduvai Gorge in East Africa led to major revisions in the understanding of
human biological evolution. Fossil remains unearthed in the late 1970’s and 1980’s have provided further evidence
that in the period from 1 to 3 million years ago the genus Homo (“true human”) coexisted in East Africa with other
advanced man-ape forms known as Australopithecine. Both of these hominids appear to be descendants of an
Ethiopian fossil, Australopithecus Afarensis, 3 to 3.7 million years old (the famous “Lucy,” a skeleton found in
1974). These ancient ancestors of humans had the legs and body for walking bipedally, which freed the hands for
manipulating objects.
COLUMN A
COLUMN B
COLUMN C
LUCY’S BONES
WHAT WAS FOUND
WHAT WAS LEARNED
1.
Bits of a skull.
2.
Wisdom teeth erupted and worn
from chewing.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
3.
Vertebrae is deformed.
4.
One complete pelvic bone and
sacrum.
5.
The weight bearing part of the
hip socket is fairly small.
6.
The femur is only twelve (12)
inches long.
A. Lucy was an adult, perhaps 25 –
30 years old.
B. Lucy was probably only 50
pounds.
C. Lucy had either arthritis or some
other type of ailment – another
sign of her age.
D. Since the pelvic opening is
always larger for females in
order to allow child birth, this
identifies the skeleton as female.
E. Lucy’s entire head was the size
of a softball. We can only guess
about her brain size – perhaps
one-quarter (¼) that of modern
humans. Lucy was either a
direct ancestor of humankind or
a primitive relative.
6.
F.
The longest and strongest bone
in the skeleton, is almost
perfectly cylindrical in the
greater part of its extent. Lucy
was no more than 3 ½ - 4 feet
tall. She walked erect on two
legs – like all hominids (erect
walking primates).