• Question: How do you personally think the human race started?

    Asked by to Lewis, Jess, Ian on 20 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Jess Smith

      Jess Smith answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      I think that we are here as a result of a huge alien invasion!

      Just kidding!

      Humans are a result of evolution. We share a common ancestor with primates, but have obviously evolved in a different way from other primates. Lewis will be able to give a really good answer to this as he studies in this area!

    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      Yep I think the fossil evidence is obvious – we have loads of fossils of different species of early human relatives and know that even as little as 12,000 years ago there were still other species of human around.

      Both fossils and genetics suggets we has a common ancestor with chimpanzees around 4 or 6 million years ago and at that point, chimps started specialising in forests and our ancestors started moving out onto the plains where walking upright was suddenly very handy. That left out hands free to carry tools around and before you know it we’re running around all over the place texting and making shopping malls.

      I really wish there were still other human species around but somehow I don’t think we’d treat them very nicely, do you?

    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      Evolution! As Ian said, humans and chimps shared an ancestor about 5 million years ago, then we both started specialising in different things (remember chimps have been evolving for the last 5 million years, as well as humans).

      There have been many human-like species in the last 5 million years and this is one of the most exciting areas of science, because there have been some amazing new fossil discoveries in the last few years.

      Our species (Homo sapiens) probably evolved in east Africa between 150000 and 200000 years ago. Gradually we moved around the world and used our huge brain power to be able to work out how we could live in a huge range of different environments.

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