• Question: How were the first ever people made and create all us. how did they get to planet earth?

    Asked by Paigeee to MarthaNari, Hannah on 17 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Courtney.
    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      Hmmm, this is going to be kind of imprecise because I’m no evolution expert…
      It seems that all the different animal species (including humans) have evolved from the same early life forms (one-cell organisms, then worms, then fish, then reptiles, birds, mammals etc.), so you can imagine them as part of one big family tree. Drawn very nicely here:

      For humans, it seems that our branch of the family tree began around 6-7 million years ago in Africa. At that point, we start seeing different types of apes whose skeletons are made to live in trees, and separately from those some first skeletons of beings that would be able to walk on two feet. Those are considered the ‘first humans’. See for example here:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahelanthropus

      By comparing genes between the skeletons of early humans that we found on different continents, people have tried to reconstruct how the first humans from Africa slowly wandered over the rest of the planet over thousands of years. Here’s a map:

      That doesn’t mean though that these humans were like us – there were probably a few different variations of humans, and they all looked somewhat different from us. It took another few million years of development to arrive at the humans we see today. 🙂

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