How Evolution Put Us at the Top of the Food Chain: 6 Traits

The traits that gave humans an evolutionary edge over our competitors took millions of years of evolution to develop. During those years, we fought to survive, endure the hardships of nature, and even barely survived an extinction event that reduced our species to just a few thousand individuals. Despite that, we survived and took ourselves to the top of the food chain, and this wouldn't have been possible without these 6 traits of human evolution.

1. Bipedalism
- This is the ability to stand upright and walk on our two hind legs.
- It was more energy efficient and exposed less of our body to sunlight. This also meant that we could see farther over the tall grasses of the savannah.
- Bipedalism also guided our evolutionary hunting style and made way for the further evolution of other things, which gave us advantages over other species.
- The most vital of these things was the freeing up of our arms and hands, which allowed us to concentrate on and interact with things with skill and focus in a way much better than before.

2. Loss of Fur, Sweating, and Long-Distance Running
- A change in habitat requires humas to make particular adaptations in order to hunt. As bipeds, we lacked the speed that others were capable of, and our main mode of hunting became that of persistence hunting - a method still practiced today.
- Running for hours in hot weather meant humans needed a special way to cool down. Therefore, we lost virtually all of our fur and developed sweat glands across all our naked skin.
- Combined with bipedalism, this turned human beings into the animal with the most endurance for long-distance running.

3. Hands
- Hands are the most precise biological tool for physical manipulation in the entire animal kingdom.
- Through prehistory, to the dawn of the Homo genus, our hands were the tools by which we shaped objects around us, turning them into the ideal tools for creating weapons and other helpful implements.
- Our fingertips are very sensitive: it makes us feel pressure, detect temperature changes, and analyze an object's consistency just by touching it. For blind people, the hand is an invaluable sensory organ that allows them to experience the world in detail (for example: braille).
- Hands also make up the multitude of sign languages we use today, along with basic gestures of hand and arm movements when talking to convey ideas and emotions.
- Coupled with our amazing ability to throw, our hands are effective close-range weapons when needed.

4. Speech and Language
- Humans evolved the unique technique of using our tongues to adapt our vocalizations into speech, eventually becoming fully formed and extremely complex languages.
- Our tongue helps us produce fricatives, stops, and consonants that other animals cannot produce.
- The development of language allowed us to retain knowledge through generations. That knowledge could be built upon generation after generation until our skills, techniques, and tools became so advanced that they helped us become the apex predators in every environment in which we lived.
- Our effective communication helped our societies become stronger. Without even knowing it, we are helping each other to understand each individual and create a better functioning society.
- We are capable of making around 10,000 facial expressions, each one communicating something slightly different and with each one displaying a certain type of emotion.
- The ability to communicate silently through gestures also aids in cooperating and functioning as highly organized groups without making a sound.

5. Throwing
- Throwing gave us a highly effective defensive and offensive range that no other animal was capable of.
- Developments came together in Homo erectus about 2 million years ago, allowing our ancestors to throw objects with enough speed and accuracy in hunting.

6. Intelligence: Human Evolution's Coup de Grâce
- Human beings are the most intelligent animals on this planet. Our cognitive abilities are much stronger than any other animal and allow us to conceive things that have defined human culture and led us to civilization.
- Intelligence has allowed us to manipulate the world around us and create the tools that we needed to mitigate the strength and speed advantages that other animals had over us.
- Our brains helped us socialize and cooperate. They guided the possibilities within our advanced hands and helped us learn from our mistakes and our elders, enabling us to pass down information from generation to generation.
- We could envision and imagine the future, giving us an unrivaled edge in evolutionary terms as it allowed us to visualize the creative possibilities contained in simple objects.

In the competition for survival, it was a combination of intelligence and physical traits that gave us the ability to recreate nature and turn reality to our advantage.

Creds: https://www.thecollector.com/evolution-food-chain/
How Evolution Put Us at the Top of the Food Chain: 6 Traits

The traits that gave humans an evolutionary edge over our competitors took millions of years of evolution to develop. During those years, we fought to survive, endure the hardships of nature, and even barely survived an extinction event that reduced our species to just a few thousand individuals. Despite that, we survived and took ourselves to the top of the food chain, and this wouldn't have been possible without these 6 traits of human evolution.

1. Bipedalism
- This is the ability to stand upright and walk on our two hind legs.
- It was more energy efficient and exposed less of our body to sunlight. This also meant that we could see farther over the tall grasses of the savannah.
- Bipedalism also guided our evolutionary hunting style and made way for the further evolution of other things, which gave us advantages over other species.
- The most vital of these things was the freeing up of our arms and hands, which allowed us to concentrate on and interact with things with skill and focus in a way much better than before.

2. Loss of Fur, Sweating, and Long-Distance Running
- A change in habitat requires humas to make particular adaptations in order to hunt. As bipeds, we lacked the speed that others were capable of, and our main mode of hunting became that of persistence hunting - a method still practiced today.
- Running for hours in hot weather meant humans needed a special way to cool down. Therefore, we lost virtually all of our fur and developed sweat glands across all our naked skin.
- Combined with bipedalism, this turned human beings into the animal with the most endurance for long-distance running.

3. Hands
- Hands are the most precise biological tool for physical manipulation in the entire animal kingdom.
- Through prehistory, to the dawn of the Homo genus, our hands were the tools by which we shaped objects around us, turning them into the ideal tools for creating weapons and other helpful implements.
- Our fingertips are very sensitive: it makes us feel pressure, detect temperature changes, and analyze an object's consistency just by touching it. For blind people, the hand is an invaluable sensory organ that allows them to experience the world in detail (for example: braille).
- Hands also make up the multitude of sign languages we use today, along with basic gestures of hand and arm movements when talking to convey ideas and emotions.
- Coupled with our amazing ability to throw, our hands are effective close-range weapons when needed.

4. Speech and Language
- Humans evolved the unique technique of using our tongues to adapt our vocalizations into speech, eventually becoming fully formed and extremely complex languages.
- Our tongue helps us produce fricatives, stops, and consonants that other animals cannot produce.
- The development of language allowed us to retain knowledge through generations. That knowledge could be built upon generation after generation until our skills, techniques, and tools became so advanced that they helped us become the apex predators in every environment in which we lived.
- Our effective communication helped our societies become stronger. Without even knowing it, we are helping each other to understand each individual and create a better functioning society.
- We are capable of making around 10,000 facial expressions, each one communicating something slightly different and with each one displaying a certain type of emotion.
- The ability to communicate silently through gestures also aids in cooperating and functioning as highly organized groups without making a sound.

5. Throwing
- Throwing gave us a highly effective defensive and offensive range that no other animal was capable of.
- Developments came together in Homo erectus about 2 million years ago, allowing our ancestors to throw objects with enough speed and accuracy in hunting.

6. Intelligence: Human Evolution's Coup de Grâce
- Human beings are the most intelligent animals on this planet. Our cognitive abilities are much stronger than any other animal and allow us to conceive things that have defined human culture and led us to civilization.
- Intelligence has allowed us to manipulate the world around us and create the tools that we needed to mitigate the strength and speed advantages that other animals had over us.
- Our brains helped us socialize and cooperate. They guided the possibilities within our advanced hands and helped us learn from our mistakes and our elders, enabling us to pass down information from generation to generation.
- We could envision and imagine the future, giving us an unrivaled edge in evolutionary terms as it allowed us to visualize the creative possibilities contained in simple objects.

In the competition for survival, it was a combination of intelligence and physical traits that gave us the ability to recreate nature and turn reality to our advantage.

Creds: https://www.thecollector.com/evolution-food-chain/
Tags: evolution All Articles

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