Human Evolution: Tracing Our Ancestral Journey

Sometimes you look at yourself and ask if evolution would make you change to become another specie but you do not have the answer since you only have an idea of the life you are living and not the one that another unknown specie would but there is a saying that if we do not know where we are going to, at least we should have a vivid knowledge of where we are coming from. So how did humans evolve to become Homo sapiens

About 300,000 years ago the new specie of apes known Homo sapiens appeared on the earth surface. For reference, earth is so much older than the first existence of Homo sapiens as it has been existing for 4.543 billion years but you see, this specie of Apes that are upright walkers are responsible for the amazing innovations in the world and the understanding of earth itself.

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Homo sapiens are the last of Ape species at least for now but when we arrived, there were other close ape relatives on earth surface such as the Homo floresiensis that learned to control fire, Homo neanderthalensis that were already cooking foods, and Homo naledi that were already burying their dead.

The term "human" holds varied interpretations among scientists, with some defining Homo sapiens exclusively as humans while others encompass all hominin species. Understanding the word human can be very complicated and we have had similarities with so many species including chimpanzee and Bonabo including sharing about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzee. Surprisingly, Chimpanzee are closely related to us than they are to Gorilla that looks like them based on fur.

Humans do not evolve from chimps or any living ape because Chimps and humans split happened 7 million years ago from a similar primate ancestor Sahelanthropus tchadensis and have been evolving differently ever since but back to our Hominins species. There are about 20 homonins species that has lived before us such as Homo ergaster, Homo rudolfensis Homo floresiensis*, and so on, and we are still looking at how these species relate to one another including ourselves.

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While all Homonins are not our ancestors they are our relatives but then some are our ancestors like the Australopithecus Afarensis which lived about 4 million years ago in East Africa and this homonin worked on two feet. 1.8 million years ago also exist another homonin known as Homo Erectus which also stand erect. Homo erectus according to fossil study were taller than Australopithecus Afarensis and they were the first Homonin to migrate to other regions outside Africa.

Using technology to extract DNA from fossils, scientists have been able to see a relationship between Neanderthals and us. Neanderthals existed about 400,000 years ago, they made arts and they bury their dead and a few Homo sapiens have a little bit of Neanderthals in them, about 4% in them even they both are different sub species. It looks like we also interbred with Denisovans and this is why some people are able to handle low-oxygen mountain tops. Even though we do not know what evolution would become with evolution, finding our past is still very fuggy when checking through fossil study but they are our ancestors.

As we navigate the enigma of human evolution, fossil studies provide crucial insights into our ancestral past, shedding light on our shared heritage and the intricate web of connections among hominin species. Though the path of evolution remains veiled in uncertainty, our quest to understand our origins continues, unveiling the rich tapestry of human history.

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2023-11-30
https://theconversation.com/when-humans-split-from-the-apes-55104
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7612221/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-023-00643-4
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/homo
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-floresiensis
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/homo-floresiensis-hobbit.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498939/
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/human-origins/understanding-our-past/dna-comparing-humans-and-chimps