1 year ago (12/03/21) | 169 Views |
How old is the Thumb?
Our thumb is useless. Making various tools, sewing clothes, opening ritual jars, using mobile phones, etc. Do you think we do not have the thumb? Well think of him. I am writing today about how old our thumb is! For a long time it was a mystery to researchers. A new study says the thumb is about 2 million years old.Our ancestors got it about 2 million years ago. Tracy Kiwel, an archaeologist at the University of Kent, says the study is reasonable. It is not so easy to know how the big toe of the ancestors works.
Fossils do not store enough muscle. So in this case our ancestors have to rely on exactly how close some of the bones that have similarities to us are. The bones of the hand are already small and the fossils are very few. The analogy varies depending on how the muscles are connected to the bone. It is often seen that fists can differ in strength despite having the same structure as the rest.
Photo: newscientist
Katarina Harbati and her colleagues at the University of Teubingen in Germany studied fossils of different species of humans on their thumbs. They work with their bone shape and soft tissues. At the same time they make three dimensional structures of the samples and calculate their torque.Researchers worked on fossils of two modern human species and four Neanderthals about a million years ago. He also worked on specimens of the Homo naledi species from two and a half to three million years ago. Samples of the Homo genus Sister Mass Australopithecus (Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanas, A. sediba) were also included in the study.
Photo source: Science Magazine
Scientists created a three-dimensional image using 3D computer software to reconnect the fossils of the fossils. Note that the appendix muscle helps to bend the thumb towards the inside of the palm of the hand. This muscle also helps to hold something tighter and tighter, such as a needle during sewing or a hammer when working with a hammer.It is a triangular muscle that basically works in the opposite direction of the thumb.
A total of ten different types of muscle help move the thumb, said Laurent Vigaroux, a biomechanics at the University of Marseille. They then run the same process on modern Homo sapiens and chimpanzees. The results show that the two Homo genus are included Matches the species sample. Scientists report in “Current Biology” that all members of the Homo genus have the same thumb (thumb) firmness.
Harbati said the finger craftsmanship levels of modern Homo sapiens are similar to those of the two hominin species found in Swartcrans, South Africa. Those species are about two million years old. Their skeletal system is so incomplete that it is impossible to say for sure which race or species they belong to.The authors of the study said that their thumbs are so similar to those of members of the Homo genus that they may be members of the Homo genus. But the thumbs of members of the genus Australopithecus resemble chimpanzees. However, there are similarities between the fossil specimens found at Swartcrans and A. Sedibar. But they did not become as skilled as the home sapiens.The researchers said that members of this group might have been able to use different tools without being so adapted. Where members of the Homo genus were able to create more tools and become more efficient.
The whole study suggests that modern sapiens, or our thumbs, are about 2 million years old. And these old thumbs have helped people to reach this civilization, starting with making better stone tools.