Model answer & approach
- Human evolution is a product of both biological and cultural factors. Elaborate. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Human evolution cannot be read off anatomy alone. Biological change made particular cultural capacities possible, and culture then became a selective environment acting back on the body.
Body
1. The biological record: habitual bipedalism is attested by 4.4 to 3.6 million years, in Ardipithecus, the Laetoli footprints and Lucy from Hadar. Cranial capacity rises from about 450 cc in australopiths through roughly 600 cc in Homo habilis and 900 to 1100 cc in Homo erectus to modern values, alongside dental reduction and a precision grip.
2. The cultural record: flaked stone at Lomekwi by 3.3 million years, Oldowan tools at Gona by 2.6, Acheulian bifaces by 1.7 million years and at Attirampakkam in India by about 1.5, controlled fire from around a million years, then hafting, blade technology, ornament and art.
3. Where each shaped the other: obligate bipedalism freed the hands, and tools plus cooked, meat-rich diets reduced gut and jaw, funding brain expansion on Aiello and Wheeler's expensive-tissue argument. A narrowed pelvis forced secondary altriciality, so learning moved outside the womb and culture became obligatory. Later, culture altered gene frequencies directly, in lactase persistence and in the sickle-cell response to cultivation-borne malaria.
4. What the joint account explains: the accelerating pace of change, and why hominin morphology cannot be predicted from habitat alone.
Conclusion
Biology and culture form a feedback system, not two competing causes. Gene-culture coevolution is the mechanism, and it is still running.
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