ÿþ<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Section I</TITLE> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="Richard Fuerle" name=Author> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2668" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <CENTER><FONT size=+5>SECTION I</FONT><FONT size=+4><BR>What Every Paleoanthropologist Should Know</FONT></CENTER><BR> &emsp;&emsp;&emsp; In order to understand our origins, you are going to have to be familiar with some of the fossil humans that have been found and how evolution  works to change living things <A HREF=#Foot1><SUP><B><U> 1</SUP></U></B></A><A NAME=Back1></A> to best fit their environment. Definitions of technical terms can be found in the <A HREF=#Glossary>Glossary</A>; here are a few shorcuts that will be used:<P><UL><UL><UL> Africans or s-S Africans = sub-Saharan Africans.<BR> LCA = last common ancestor  the most recent ancestor from which two individuals or groups descended.<P> yr = year.<BR> yrs = years.<BR> myrs = million years.<BR> ya = years ago.<BR> kya = thousand years ago.<BR> mya = million years ago.<BR> BP = before present, taken as 1950.<P> <I>Hs</I> = <I>Homo sapiens</I>  our immediate archaic predecessors.<BR> <I>Hss</I> = <I>Homo sapiens sapiens</I>  modern man, us.<BR> <I>He</I> = <I>Homo erectus</I>  the species of man just prior to <I>Hs</I>.<BR> <I>Hn</I> = Neanderthals.<P> OoA = Out of Africa, the dominant theory of the origin of modern humans.<BR> OoE = Out of Eurasia, a theory of human origins put forth in this book.<P> Early man = <I>Homo</I>, but not <I>Homo sapiens</I>.<BR> Archaic man = <I>Homo sapiens</I>, but not <I>Homo sapiens sapiens</I>. Modern man = <I>Homo sapiens sapiens</I>.</UL></UL></UL><P> <CENTER><A HREF="Chap1.html">Chapter 1</A><BR> <P><A HREF="index.html">Table of Contents</A><BR> <P><B>FOOTNOTE</B></CENTER><P ALIGN=justify> <A NAME=Foot1>1. </A> Broadly, a  living thing could be defined as a mechanism that uses matter and energy from its environment to make copies of itself, e.g. (<A HREF="References.html#Lin">Lin, 2006</A>). Also see <a href="http://www.chemoton.com/eng1.html">Chemoton Theory.</a><P> <A HREF=#Back1>Back</A><BR> </CENTER></BODY></HTML>