From Smart Apes to Human Brain Boxes. A Uniquely Derived Brain Shape in Late Hominins Clade

Melchionna, Marina; Profico, Antonio; Castiglione, Silvia; Sansalone, Gabriele; Serio, Carmela; Mondanaro, Alessandro; Febbraro, Mirko Di; Rook, Lorenzo; Pandolfi, Luca; Vincenzo, Fabio Di; Manzi, Giorgio; Raia, Pasquale

doi:10.3389/feart.2020.00273

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 97 publications

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“…Yet, the habitual use of fire (Shimelmitz et al, 2014) and the ability to work hide, wood and ivory (d' Errico and Henshilwood, 2007;Thieme, 1997) is attested at a much later date, during the Middle Stone Age (d 'Errico, 2003) and attached to MHS only. Brain asymmetry and right handiness, usually linked with advanced cognitive skills (Crow, 1993;Xiang et al, 2019;Melchionna et al, 2020a), similarly characterize MHS (Frayer et al, 2012;Lozano et al, 2009;Poza-Rey et al, 2017). In contrast to MHS, EHS either did not venture outside Africa or went across Eurasia longitudinally.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

A Major Change in Rate of Climate Niche Envelope Evolution during Hominid History

et al. 2020

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Homo sapiens is the only species alive able to take advantage of its cognitive abilities to inhabit almost all environments on Earth. Humans are able to culturally construct, rather than biologically inherit, their occupied climatic niche to a degree unparalleled within the animal kingdom. Precisely, when hominins acquired such an ability remains unknown, and scholars disagree on the extent to which our ancestors shared this same ability. Here, we settle this issue using fine-grained paleoclimatic data, extensive archaeological data, and phylogenetic comparative methods. Our results indicate that whereas early hominins were forced to live under physiologically suitable climatic conditions, with the emergence of H. heidelbergensis, the Homo climatic niche expanded beyond its natural limits, despite progressive harshening in global climates. This indicates that technological innovations providing effective exploitation of cold and seasonal habitats predated the emergence of Homo sapiens.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

A Major Change in Rate of Climate Niche Envelope Evolution during Hominid History

et al. 2020

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“…The earliest archaeological evidence for human control of fire was found in Israel 790 kyr ago (Goren-Inbar et al, 2004). As the control of fire profoundly affected social evolution (Foley and Gamble, 2009) and brain size (Melchionna et al, 2020), it may be associated with the big bang in population size at the end of the super bottleneck.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genomic inference of a human super bottleneck in Mid-Pleistocene transition

Hao

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The demographic history has been a foundation of human evolutionary studies for more than a century. In this study, we developed a novel method referred to as the fast infinitesimal time coalescent (FitCoal) process. This method allows the accurate calculation of the composite likelihood of a site frequency spectrum and provides the precise inference of recent and ancient demographic history. Genomic sequences of the 1000 Genomes Project and the Human Genome Diversity Project-Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain panel were analyzed. Results showed that all ten African populations had a population super bottleneck, a small effective size of approximately 1,280 breeding individuals between 813 and 930 thousand years ago, and a 20-fold rapid growth at the end of the bottleneck. The super bottleneck caused a loss of 65.85% in current human genetic diversity, but it may have separated our ancestors from other hominins. Further analysis confirmed the existence of the super bottleneck in all 40 non-African populations. Our results provide new insights into human evolution in the Early Stone Age.

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“…Great apes have also been shown to have leftward asymmetries in the size of the planum temporale and Broca's area [72,73]. Additionally, previous studies have revealed that levels of brain asymmetry varied in the evolution process of Homo species, especially when the common ancestor of Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens emerged [40]. This study reveals that modern humans have a more complex pattern of endocast asymmetry than previously understood, which involves both fluctuating and directional asymmetry in different lobes.…”

Section: Significance and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The evolution of the unique structure of the human brain has long been explored by analyzing the evolutionary sequence of endocasts and comparing humans and other primates [3,40,70,71]. A detailed understanding of the asymmetric patterns of the brain structure in modern humans is central to this topic.…”

Section: Significance and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As mentioned above, most of the work on the asymmetry of endocasts has been focused on the degree of anterior or posterior protrusion, the lateralization of some regions associated with speech (e.g., Broca's cap), or the relative width and area of frontal and occipital lobes [39]. Moreover, previous research usually compared the human endocast with that of great apes or other primates to reveal a shared directional asymmetry pattern or a particular characteristic rather than conduct a global comparison of the entire brain surface [3,12,32,40]. The breadth of endocast asymmetry patterns within modern humans remains unclear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Asymmetry of Endocast Surface Shape in Modern Humans Based on Diffeomorphic Surface Matching

2022

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Brain asymmetry is associated with handedness and cognitive function, and is also reflected in the shape of endocasts. However, comprehensive quantification of the asymmetry in endocast shapes is limited. Here, we quantify and visualize the variation of endocast asymmetry in modern humans using diffeomorphic surface matching. Our results show that two types of lobar fluctuating asymmetry contribute most to global asymmetry variation. A dominant pattern of local directional asymmetry is shared in the majority of the population: (1) the left occipital pole protrudes more than the right frontal pole in the left-occipital and right-frontal petalial asymmetry; (2) the left Broca’s cap appears to be more globular and bulges laterally, anteriorly, and ventrally compared to the right side; and (3) the asymmetrical pattern of the parietal is complex and the posterior part of the right temporal lobes are more bulbous than the contralateral sides. This study confirms the validity of endocasts for obtaining valuable information on encephalic asymmetries and reveals a more complicated pattern of asymmetry of the cerebral lobes than previously reported. The endocast asymmetry pattern revealed here provides more shape information to explore the relationships between brain structure and function, to re-define the uniqueness of human brains related to other primates, and to trace the timing of the human asymmetry pattern within hominin lineages.

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From Smart Apes to Human Brain Boxes. A Uniquely Derived Brain Shape in Late Hominins Clade

Cited by 11 publications

References 97 publications

A Major Change in Rate of Climate Niche Envelope Evolution during Hominid History

A Major Change in Rate of Climate Niche Envelope Evolution during Hominid History

Genomic inference of a human super bottleneck in Mid-Pleistocene transition

Asymmetry of Endocast Surface Shape in Modern Humans Based on Diffeomorphic Surface Matching

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