Lucy's Lost Child Found In Africa 3 Million Years Later

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The full skull as well as other bones of a humanoid child in Africa 3.3 millions of years ago has been found. I like to draw the faces of ancient people. I don't make them scary, I make them happy looking. I will note the pictures made from these same skulls, done by 'professionals' look very 'scary' like they were some sort of ill-gained thugs including nearly universally, showing the whites of the eyes. Impossible! This is totally wrong.

This story confirms the existence of a continuous and considerable tribe of homonids living in the Great African Rift Valley at the dawn of our species when we split off from the Great Apes.

The 3.3 million-year-old skull of a female Australopithecus afarensis was recently unearthed by paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged—22 years after the discovery of "Lucy," the most famous fossil of the early human ancestor species.

Some experts have taken to calling the young ape, who died at the age of three, Lucy's baby, despite the fact that the toddler's fossil is tens of thousands of years older.

The new fossil will provide scientists with a crucial piece of evidence that was missing from the Lucy find. The baby's skull and skeleton not only represent arguably the best example of A. afarensis found to date, but unlike Lucy the child's fossil includes fingers, a foot, a complete torso, and a face.

I am so happy they published a very good photo of this skull. I take the picture and then using it as my 'form', I draw the possible image of what the living creature looked like, using my considerable experience interacting with many animals including some interesting monkeys.

Here is the initial drawing showing the skull underneath. Click on image to enlarge

The chin is very big, the nose flat, the eye orbs are big and since the homonid came out of the forest, it still has biggish, brown eyes relative to the size of the face. Also, it doesn't have the deep, beetling brow the other Great Apes developed. This is due to neoteny which is the greatest force in our evolution, we became increasingly 'babyish' over several million years. This ran alongside our ever-lenthening childhoods and is directly connected with the fact that our brains grow much longer than any of our nearer relatives.

I placed the ears where the ear's opening is. Since the head is small and the creature was not large, again, part of the 'neotony' aspect of humanoids, I am guessing the ears were larger relative to the head so it could detect dangerous sounds. Gorillas fear virtually nothing (except for HUMANS) so they don't have the big ears which, say, a squirrel monkey has. Since human ears are rather large, considering how big our heads are!---I am betting our ears were always this size and our brain cases expanded while the ears remained relatively stable, genetically speaking.

Here is the National Geographic rendition of what these humanoids looked like.

First off, the ears are tiny. I seriously doubted our ears grew in size as our heads grew in size. Just like our body hair has drastically changed, all the parts don't change in unison. And since our chins started out huge relative to the face, so the ears probably have a different history from say, the nose, which has grown more and more over the eons in many populations. We still don't know or understand why this is so, yet.

What particularily irks me is the artist gave this early humanoid white eyes! Homosapiens has evolved unusual eyes. No other ape or monkey species shows so much white of the eyes. Nearly universally, animals protect their eyes by showing only the colored parts. When they are frightened or mad, they widen the eyelids so expose the hidden whites.

When my horse is frightened, for example, his great brown eyes are suddenly ringed with white. Humans are scared of white eyes yet WE SHOW THEM CONSTANTLY. There are some dangerous, deep things going on here we try to ignore.

Showing the whites causes the most primitive parts of our brains to short circuit.

By Kathleen Wren
Science
Updated: 7:16 p.m. CT Dec 16, 2004
WASHINGTON - If you look into the eyes of someone who is frightened, your brain will pick up on the fear in a split second, well before you can consciously put a name to the emotion, scientists say.

Why such a hair-trigger response to what someone else is feeling? Recognizing a fearful expression on another person’s face might save your skin some day, because whatever has spooked your friend might also be a danger to you.

According to a new study in the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society, seeing the enlarged whites of fear-widened eyes is enough to activate a fear-related structure in the brain called the amygdala.

This is why people desiring to control others through inspiring fear and anxiety show as much of the whites of their eyes as possible. Here is the classic example, no? I very seriously doubted our earliest ancestors walked around the veldt, glaring at everyone with the white of the eyes! I would strongly suggest, they lived in fear and if anyone showed the whites of the eyes, they did so when running away from lions, for example.

The one thing that would cause us to evolve eyes that look scared all the time was to scare each other. As a child, I used to try to scare my playmates and they, me. I did have an advantage: I could (and still can) outstare anyone. Indeed, all children like to play the staring game. To be really good at it, one has to have the ability to 'bore holes' into the victim's eyes. This means widening the eyes more and more and more until the suffering is too great and the other child flinches.

I never flinched. I played this game more than once with the founder of more than one religious cult (came from hanging out in San Francisco in the sixties). It can be a real riot. Heh. Gads, even Ratzi the Nazi ran off when we tangled in Germany in 1968.

To go back: whenever I really needed to bend someone to my will, I would start staring into their eyes. When negotiating, this causes the other party to begin to sweat. Sometimes, someone tries to do it back to me. This is when I lean forwards, touch them and then double the staring. The ability to stare is very important. I was told, one doesn't stare into a stallion's eye (can't do two at once!) because the horse will then go bezerk.

So...once Sparky and I got in a big, long battle when I first got this totally untamed horse. At one point, my eye was only three inches from his. He glared at me. I widened my eyes and blew on him, a snort of derision. He snorted at me. And then I laughed at him. He gave up. Has been tame ever since (except for occassional escapades when he breaks down a gate).

I suspect humans evolved the white of the eye thing in order to command and control each other. And the winners were the ones capable of making really big eyes.

And the part of the brain activated by staring is the seat of our deepest fears.

The brain structure which appears to be at the very center of most of the brain events associated with fear is the "amygdala" (Greek for "almond", its shape). The amygdala seems to respond to severe traumas with an un-erasable fear response ("post-traumatic stress disorder", or PTSD; click for a superb site by the Madison Institute of Medicine on PTSD). It seems to be genetically different and "wired" for a higher level of fear in some individuals, such as those with panic disorder. And it recently has been shown to be larger in some people with bipolar disorder, though what that means is still a mystery.

This is why there is the concept of 'the Evil Eye' and the evil eye is also Medusa's stare and that is a star next to Pegasus. Which is why all this doesn't affect me, I guess. Been hit by so much lightning, harsh looks just bounce right off.

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