The evidence on which scientific accounts of human evolution are based comes from many fields of natural science. The main source of knowledge about the evolutionary process has traditionally been the fossil record, but since the development of genetics beginning in the 1970s, DNA analysis has come to occupy a place of comparable importance.
Of Homo sapiens, Darwin made only a passing mention on the third-to-last page of the tome, noting coyly that "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." That's it. That's it.
Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years. One of the earliest defining human traits, bipedalism -- the ability to walk on two legs -- evolved over 4 million years ago.
Scientists have discovered a wealth of evidence concerning human evolution, and this evidence comes in many forms. Thousands of human fossils enable researchers and students to study the changes that occurred in brain and body size, locomotion, diet, and other aspects regarding the way of life of early human species over the past 6 million years. . Millions of stone tools, figurines and ...
Projectile points like those Potts and colleagues dated to 298,000 to 320,000 years old in southern Kenya were an innovation that suddenly made it possible to kill all manner of elusive or ...
Introduction The study of human origins is one of the most compelling areas of scientific discovery today. It is a vibrant field that encompasses the search for fossils, discovery of the major milestones in the origin of our species and advances in DNA research. ... Humans in Central Africa used barbed points made of bone to spear huge catfish ...
The story of human evolution began about 7 million years ago, when the lineages that lead to Homo sapiens and chimpanzees separated. Learn about the over 20 ...
Paleoanthropology is the scientific study of human evolution that combines ... made purposeful use of fire starting about 800,000 years ago and experienced an accelerated increase in brain size between roughly 800,000 and 200,000 years ago. ... and thus a hominid, "handy man" (the translation of the name from Latin) existed from 2.4 million to ...
Scientific evidence shows that the biological and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years. Paleoanthropology is the scientific study of human evolution which investigates the origin of the universal and defining traits of our species.
It isn't until the emergence of the genus Homo that we begin to see a more significant increase in the size of brains, dominated by a swelling of the cerebral cortex.. Between 1.8 million and 700,000 years ago the average brain size of Homo erectus doubled, and the brains of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are even larger.. What caused this drastic increase in size is unclear, but it was made ...
Shedding body hair made them faster swimmers, while standing upright enabled them to wade. The “aquatic ape” hypothesis is widely dismissed by the scientific community. But, in 2013, David ...
Where did we come from? Humans continue to search for the answer to this fundamental question. Over the years, we've turned to both religion and science to explain where our species came from. Innovators of their time, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, used science to explain where humans came from, posing the theory of evolution. Then, paleoanthropologists Mary and Louis Leakey ...
Studies in evolutionary biology have led to the conclusion that human beings arose from ancestral primates. This association was hotly debated among scientists in Darwin's day. But today there is no significant scientific doubt about the close evolutionary relationships among all primates, including humans.
Early forms of humans first existed more than 2 million years ago. All species of humans belong to a scientific group within the hominin tribe called Homo. The scientific names of all human species begin with the word Homo, which means “man.” These early humans had larger brains and mostly smaller teeth and jaws than the australopithecines.
Scientifically, the answer isn’t a single event of “poof, here’s a person!” but rather a gradual evolutionary process. The “first person” wasn’t born one day; instead, it emerged from a long line of ancestral hominins slowly accumulating traits that we recognize as distinctively human.
Discoveries made over the past few decades have revealed a far more luxuriant tree, however—one abounding with branches and twigs that eventually petered out.
Either they were made by australopithecines like Lucy—or scientists simply haven’t yet found the early form of Homo that made them. Like australopithecines, early Homo species, such as H ...
Editor's Note: This is Part 4 in 10-part series LiveScience series on the origin, evolution and future of the human species and the mysteries that remain to be solved.
