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The Evolution of the Primate Hand pp 515–543Cite as

Evolution of the Early Hominin Hand

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Part of the book series: Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects ((DIPR))

Abstract

Over the course of early hominin evolution, two fundamental changes in hand function occurred: the loss of a locomotor role and unparalleled intensification of manipulation, tool making, and tool use. In the context of these functional changes, early hominin hand anatomy evolved a number of derived characteristics within an otherwise primitive bauplan. Here we explore the functional significance and evolutionary history of seven major anatomical changes that make our hands distinctive, including hand proportions, thumb robusticity, thumb musculature, distal tuberosities, carpal architecture, wrist mobility, and finger curvature. This chapter highlights many areas that need more research and leads to several major conclusions: the abandonment of arboreal locomotion and rise in manipulative capabilities evolved over long periods of time and in a nonlinear fashion; early hominin taxa likely varied in their locomotor repertoires and manipulative abilities, not unlike differences in behavior seen among closely related species living today; and intensification of manipulation, rather than the origin of stone tool making, was a major driver of human hand evolution. Finally, we propose a new term, hyper-opposable, to describe the derived human ability to produce extensive contact area between the thumb and other digits, and forcefully secure and precision handle objects between the thumb and other digits through pad-to-pad contact.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We note, of course, that hands are used for crawling in humans during a brief period of development, and some people occasionally use their hands to climb trees in natural settings (Kraft et al. 2014). However, these instances of hand-based locomotion are rare.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Sergio Almécija, Erin Marie Williams-Hatala, Marisa Macias, Erik Trinkaus, Tracy Kivell, Pierre Lemelin, and Dan Schmitt for their helpful discussions and suggestions that improved this manuscript. We thank Tracy Kivell for H. naledi hand data and images of a number of early hominin fossils and Tim White for images of the hand of Ardipithecus ramidus (ARA-VP-6/500). We are grateful to the following collection managers and curators for access to skeletal remains and fossils in their care: Bernhard Zipfel and Lee Berger, University of the Witswatersrand; Kyalo Manthi and Emma Mbua, National Museums of Kenya; Kristofer Helgen, Richard Thorington, and Darrin Lunde, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution; and Eileen Westwig, American Museum of Natural History. This work was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the George Washington University, and NSF DGE-0801634, BCS-0924476, BCS-1128170, and BCS-1515054.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, 10024, USA

    Brian G. Richmond

  2. Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany

    Brian G. Richmond

  3. Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA

    Neil T. Roach

  4. Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Neil T. Roach

  5. Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, Department of Anthropology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

    Kelly R. Ostrofsky

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  1. Brian G. Richmond
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  2. Neil T. Roach
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  3. Kelly R. Ostrofsky
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Correspondence to Brian G. Richmond .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary An, Leipzig, Germany

    Tracy L. Kivell

  2. Division of Anatomy Department of Surgery Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Pierre Lemelin

  3. Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, USA

    Brian G. Richmond

  4. Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University , Durham, North Carolina, USA

    Daniel Schmitt

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Richmond, B.G., Roach, N.T., Ostrofsky, K.R. (2016). Evolution of the Early Hominin Hand. In: Kivell, T., Lemelin, P., Richmond, B., Schmitt, D. (eds) The Evolution of the Primate Hand. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3646-5_18

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