Savanna hypothesis

This page contains too many unsourced statements and needs to be improved. Savanna hypothesis could use some help. Please research the article's assertions. Whatever is credible should be sourced, and what is not should be removed.

We're all Homo here Evolution

Relevant Hominids

Charles Darwin Alfred Russel Wallace Gregor Mendel Richard Dawkins Jerry Coyne

A Gradual Science

List of transitional forms Cataclysmic evolution Endurance running hypothesis Mae-Wan Ho

Plain Monkey Business

Young Earth Creationism Old Earth Creationism Intelligent Design Microevolution vs. Macroevolution v - t - e

The savanna hypothesis is the proposal that the major divergence between the hominins and other great apes was driven by hominins moving out of the forests and onto the grasslands. It is one of the oldest and most established hypotheses for what separated humans from the other apes, dating back to Charles Darwin's time.

The hypothesis has come under intense fire in recent years with alternative hypotheses such as rapidly fluctuating environments or the pseudoscientific aquatic ape hypothesis competing for attention. But the savanna hypothesis received new support by a proposal that humans adapted to run down animals in the hot African sun. This included the development of large leg tendons and buttocks which do not appear in the other great apes, but allow humans to run efficiently on two legs by recycling the energy of running motions, as well as the loss of hair over most of the body to allow efficient cooling. The animal chosen to be a victim would be able to sprint faster than the relentless human hunter until heat exhaustion caused it to collapse.

This evolution-related article is a stub.
You can help RationalWiki by expanding it.