Test: From the Beginning of Time- 2 (Old Syllabus) - UPSC MCQ

By about 24 mya, there emerged a subgroup amongst primates, called hominoids. This included apes.

Hominids have evolved from hominoids and share certain common features; there are significant differences as well.

Hominoids have a smaller brain than hominids.

Hominids belong to a family known as Hominidae, which includes all forms of human beings.

The name Australopithecus comes from a Latin word, austral, meaning southern, and a greek word, pithekos, meaning ape.

Mary Leakey directed archaeological excavations at Olduvai and Laetoli and made some of the most exciting discoveries.

As the finds in Asia belong to a later date than those in Africa, the genus homo is likely that hominids migrated from east Africa to southern and northern Africa, south and north-eastern Asia, perhaps to Europe, sometime between 2 and 1.5 mya.

Hominids migrated from east Africa to southern and northern Africa, south and north-eastern Asia, and perhaps to Europe, sometime between 2 and 1.5 mya.

Modern humans are due to their descent from a population that originated in a single region: Africa.

Scholars who hold this view suggest that today’s physical differences among modern humans are the result of adaptation (throughout thousands of years) by populations who migrated to the particular regions where they finally settled down.

Evidence for this comes from sites in Europe.

Gradually, these may have developed into language.

The paintings on the ceiling of the cave were first brought to the attention of Marcelino Sanz Desautuola, a local landowner and an amateur archaeologist, by his daughter maria in November 1879.

Prehistoric artists used natural pigments that were found nearby in the Earth such as limonite and hematite (reds, orange, yellows and browns), greens from oceanic deposits, blues from crushed stones and manganese ore, charcoal from the fire and white from ground calcite or chalk.

The act of painting could have been a ritual to ensure a successful hunt.

The last ice age came to an end about 13,000 years ago.

Hadza relies mainly on the wild vegetable matter for their food. As much as 80 percent of their food by weight is vegetables, meat, and honey; they account for the remaining 20 percent.

Upper Palaeolithic female figurines are collectively described as "Venus figurines" in reference to the Roman goddess of beauty Venus.