Page 206 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

her species—classified as Australopithecus afarensis—has been accepted
by the majority of palaeoanthropologists as our earliest direct ancestor.
2
About two million years ago representatives of Homo habilis, the
founder members of the Homo line to which we ourselves belong, began
to leave their fossilized skulls and skeletons behind. As time went by this
species showed clear signs of evolution towards an ever more ‘gracile’
and refined form, and towards a larger and more versatile brain. Homo
erectus, who overlapped with and then succeeded Homo habilis,
appeared about 1.6 million years ago with a brain capacity in the region
of 900cc (as against 700cc in the case of habilis). The million or so years
3
after that, down to about 400,000 years ago, saw no significant
evolutionary changes—or none attested to by surviving fossils. Then
Homo erectus passed through the gates of extinction into hominid
heaven and slowly—very, very slowly—what the palaeoanthropologists
call ‘the sapient grade’ began to appear:
Exactly when the transition to a more sapient form began is difficult to establish.
Some believe the transition, which involved an increase in brain size and a
decrease in the robustness of the skull bones, began as early as 400,000 years
ago. Unfortunately, there are simply not enough fossils from this important period
to be sure about what was happening.’
4
What was definitely not happening 400,000 years ago was the emergence
of anything identifiable as our own story-telling, myth-making subspecies
Homo sapiens sapiens. The consensus is that ‘sapient humans must have
evolved from Homo erectus’, and it is true that a number of ‘archaic
5
sapient’ populations did come into existence between 400,000 and
100,000 years ago. Unfortunately, the relationship of these transitional
species to ourselves is far from clear. As noted, the first contenders for
membership of the exclusive club of Homo sapiens sapiens have been
dated by some researchers to the latter part of this period. But these
remains are all partial and their identification is by no means universally
accepted. The oldest, part of a skullcap, is a putative modern human
specimen from about 113,000 BC. Around this date, too, Homo sapiens
6
neanderthalensis first appears, a quite distinct subspecies which most of
us know as ‘Neanderthal Man’.
Tall, heavily muscled, with prominent brow ridges and a protruding
face, Neanderthal Man had a bigger average brain size than modern
humans (1400cc as against our 1360cc). The possession of such a big
7
brain was no doubt an asset to these ‘intelligent, spiritually sensitive,

2 Donald C. Johanson and Maitland C. Eddy, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind,
Paladin, London, 1982, in particular, pp. 28, 259-310.
3 Roger Lewin, Human Evolution, pp. 47-49, 53-6; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 6:27-8.
4 Human Evolution, p. 76.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 18:831.
5
6 Human Evolution, p. 76.
7 Ibid., p. 72.

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