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Asked by 282evnb42 to Thad, Thomas on 19 Mar 2015.
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Thomas Clements answered on 19 Mar 2015:
This is a great question – and a difficult one to answer.
Like most animals, humans have a latin name – which is Homo Sapiens. This translates as meaning ‘wise man’. Our genus (the group of animals we belong to) is thought to be about 2.5 million years old.
You can see a nice drawing of our evolutionary tree here:
There is very little fossil evidence for the transitional form between primates and humans – however, the earliest member of our genus that we definitely have fossils for is Homo habilis, which lived around 2.5 million years ago. These fossils were found in Tanzania.
Homo habilis were still very ape-like, and had brains about the same size as of a chimpanzee but they had begun to become bipedal (walk on two legs) as an adaptation to living on the ground and not in trees.
If you met one, you would not think of them as people, but they definitely are more related to us evolutionary than any of the primates.
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Thaddeus Aid answered on 19 Mar 2015:
Hi,
The first people lived in Eastern Africa, we know this because that is where the oldest human fossils have been found. It was much later that we left Africa and inhabited the rest of the world. But did you know that there used to be other species that were very closely related to us like the Neanderthals? They lived in Europe when we were still living in Africa. They beat us in the race out of Africa!
Unfortunately, the Neanderthals have gone extinct, but there is a possibility that you have some of their DNA in you!
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