Chapter 2, The Great Leap Forward Summary and Analysis

Chapter 2 presents a brief overview of human evolution. The author presents a greatly simplified view of the human evolutionary process where numerous uncertain elements are noted but dismissed. This allows a fairly straightforward presentation of human evolution in an intelligible and accessible format. The author states his bias and assumptions for most areas that are presented.

About four millions of years ago the first proto-human hominids began to walk upright; this is known from skeletal limb changes discovered in the fossil record. About three millions of years ago a great division in the human lineage occurred when two species, Australopithecus africanus and A. robustus, arose and survived contemporaneously for many tens of thousands of years. Eventually A. robustus became extinct and A. africanus gave rise to Homo habilis, the first commonly accepted Homo...