News: Early Humans lived in The Savannas

Early humans lived in

the Savannas, not forests

Washington: Pre-humans living in East Africa 4.4 million years ago inhabited savannas, grassy plains dotted with trees and shrubs, according to a team of researchers.

       This theory opposes another theory - that of Berkeley researcher Tim D While - who said that early humans occupied forests as their natural habitat. "Our team examined the data published by white and his colleagues last October and found that their data does not support their conclusion that Ardipithecus ramidus lived exclusively in woodlands and forest patches," said Naomi Levin of The Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

        The claim that the 4.4 million-year-old fossil nicknamed "Ardi" lived in woodlands and forest patches was used as an argument against a longstanding theory of human evolution known as the "savanna hypothesis." According to that premise, the expansion of savannas prompted our ape-like forebears to descend from trees and begin walking upright to find food more efficiently, or to reach other trees for resources or shelter.

       Levin's team used the White team's data to draw very different conclusion about the environment inhabited by Ardi, an ape-like creature that stood about 4 feet tall and had a brain less than a quarter of the size of a modern day human.