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As contemporary humans, we are a product of our evolutionary past. That past can be directly observed through the study of the human fossil record, the materials preserved for archaeological study, and the DNA of living and extinct human populations. This course will provide an overview of human evolutionary history from the present--contemporary human variation in a comparative context--through our last common ancestor with the living great apes, some 5-7 million years in the past. Emphasis will be placed on major evolutionary changes in the development of humans and the methodological approaches used by paleoanthropologists and related investigators to develop that knowledge. The course will begin by asking basic questions about how evolution operates to shape biological variation and what patterns of variation look like in living humans and apes. We will then look at how the human lineage first began to differentiate from apes, the rise and fall of the Australopithecines, the origin and dispersal of the genus Homo, and eventually the radical evolutionary changes associated with the development of agricultural practices in the past 15,000 years. Throughout the course students will be exposed to the primary data, places and theories that shape our understanding of human evolution. Categories:
Social Sciences
Starts :
2015-09-03 |
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AlternativesIf you know any alternatives, please let us know. PrerequisitesIf you can suggest any prerequisite, please let us know. Certification Exams-- there are no exams to get certification after this course --If your company does certification for those who completed this course then register your company as certification vendor and add your exams to the Exams Directory. StudentsPeople who learned this course or plan to learn. These people added the course to their Education Passport or their Personal Education Path. 
Alexis Graf
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