By Heechan Lee
Humanity has been around for less than 0.001% of the Earth’s history, yet the impact we have had on the globe far surpasses any other species. However, the road to get to our current state has proven to be a very intricate one; it wasn’t a steady march from ape to human but a winding road with many missing links and questions.
Humans are part of the primate family, meaning that we are almost genetic copies of other primates such as chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Our last common ancestor—which has not been named or found in fossils—most likely lived during the Miocene epoch:23 million to five million years ago.
Encompassed within the umbrella of primateswas the Hominini tribe. The tribe consists of all humans that will ever exist. The first evidence of such humans were discovered in Africa, where humans are thought to have originated. Because the Earth was home to a supercontinent called Pangea at that time, ihumanity could spread across the globe. So,humans migrated to Asia two to 1.8 million years ago, Europe between 1.5 and one million years ago, and Australia and America within the last hundredthousand years.
The first evidence of Homo Sapiens, the modern human and the only living member of the Hominini tribe, was found in Africa dating back to nearly 315,000 years ago. According to fossil and DNA analysis of early Homo Sapiens fossils, humans seemed to live in small tribes across Africa. We were separated by geological barriers like deserts or mountains, causing these small pockets of humans to become isolated and gain genetic differences; these groups would seldom come across each other, but when they did it allowed for our genes to intermingle. Thusm humanity has become more diverse. We migrated from Africa about 70 to 50 thousand years ago, spreading across the world. Invading Homo Sapiens would sometimes mate with other human species, allowing us to quickly use their millenia of evolution to our benefit. Homo Sapiens also had the benefit of having a larger and smarter brain than our other human species, allowing us to adapt and advance . In around 260 thousand years the homo-diversity within the Earth went from including several species all across the globe to just Homo Sapiens.
The evolution and constant struggle of Homo Sapiens to come out on top is what created us- the ‘modern human’.. Thanks to our ancestors from hundreds of millenia ago, humans all across the globe have different languages, music, art, cultural and genetic differences. Without the diversity across nations we have today, humanity would look far more different than it does now.
References
Wong, Kate. “Why Is Homo Sapiens the Sole Surviving Member of the Human Family?” Scientific American, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0918-64.
Laland, Kevin. “What Made Us Unique.” Scientific American, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0918-32.
Wong, Kate. “How Scientists Discovered the Staggering Complexity of Human Evolution.” Scientific American, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0920-66.
“Human Evolution | History, Stages, Timeline, Tree, Chart, and Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/science/human-evolution.
“Introduction to Human Evolution.” Introduction to Human Evolution | the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program, 11 July 2022, humanorigins.si.edu/education/introduction-human-evolution.
Comments