It's all in the family- emergence theory as seen in skulls

This photo taken during lab on Friday helped me to better relate the emergence theory to a visual. In other words, the skulls helped me better understand the concept of emergence. Starting from the left, the three skulls shown are of: the Peking man (homo erectus), homo sapien, and Australopithecus afarensis. The emergence theory asks many questions, such as how did humans evolve and how did the environment affect us? The difference in these three artifacts clearly shows the arising of novel and coherent physical structures and characteristics that emergence is all about. The physical changes that can be seen in the skulls are most definitely a reflection of ways in which the environment affected humans and their need to fit in with the evolving complex systems. If you compare the three, you can notice how different features seemed to emerge as time passed. If you look at Australopithecus, much of their facial structure is horizontal-like, while Homo erectus shows a more evenly proportioned look and eventually Homo sapiens’s facial structure is more vertical and narrow. As the environment changed, the ways in which each creature functioned advanced leading to features that could better suit their lifestyle (neurological changes that could lead to a change in brain size which could mean a larger skull, brow lobe in Australopithecus became the frontal lobe in humans, or even changes in diet which could change their teeth size). The coming together of populations and even the isolation of populations could also account for the progressive changes that each of these skulls demonstrate.

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