How old is modern mankind

Every year, we fell forests and destroy other natural areas, driving species into smaller areas or into endangerment, because of our need to build more housing to contain our growing population. The first tangible link to humanity started around six million years ago with a primate group called Ardipithecus, according to the Smithsonian Institution. Based in Africa, this group began the path of walking upright. This is traditionally considered important because it allowed for more free use of the hands for toolmaking, weaponry and other survival needs.

The Australopithecus group, the museum added, took hold between about two million and four million years ago, with the abilities to walk upright and climb trees. Next came Paranthropus, which existed between about one million and three million years ago. The group is distinguished by its larger teeth, giving a wider diet. The Homo group — including our own species, Homo sapiens — began arising more than two million years ago, the museum said.

Our species was distinguished about , years ago and managed to survive and thrive despite climate change at the time. While we started in temperate climates, about 60, to 80, years ago the first humans began straying outside of the continent in which our species was born. Using genetic markers and an understanding of ancient geography, scientists have partially reconstructed how humans could have made the journey.

By , years ago modern humans were collecting and cooking shellfish and by 90, years ago modern humans had begun making special fishing tools. Then, within just the past 12, years, our species, Homo sapiens , made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings. Humans found they could control the growth and breeding of certain plants and animals. As humans invested more time in producing food, they settled down. Villages became towns, and towns became cities. With more food available, the human population began to increase dramatically.

Our species had been so successful that it has inadvertently created a turning point in the history of life on Earth. Modern humans evolved a unique combination of physical and behavioral characteristics, many of which other early human species also possessed, though not to the same degree. The complex brains of modern humans enabled them to interact with each other and with their surroundings in new and different ways. As the environment became more unpredictable, bigger brains helped our ancestors survive.

They made specialized tools, and use tools to make other tools, as described above; they ate a variety of animal and plant foods; they had control over fire; they lived in shelters; they built broad social networks, sometimes including people they have never even met; they exchanged resources over wide areas; and they created art, music, personal adornment, rituals, and a complex symbolic world.

Modern humans have spread to every continent and vastly expanded their numbers. They have altered the world in ways that benefit them greatly. But this transformation has unintended consequences for other species as well as for ourselves, creating new survival challenges.

Fossils and DNA confirm humans are one of more than species belonging to the order of Primates. Within that larger group, humans are nested within the great ape family. Although we did not evolve from any of the apes living today, we share characteristics with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans the great apes , as well as other apes.

We most likely evolved from Homo heidelbergensis , the common ancestor we share with Neanderthals, who are our closest extinct relatives. Through studies of fossils, genetics, behavior, and biology of modern humans, we continue to learn more about who we are. Below are some of the still unanswered questions about Homo sapiens that may be answered with future discoveries:. McBrearty, S. The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern humans.

We make art. We preen our hair, adorn our bodies with ornaments, tattoos and makeup. We craft shelters. We wield fire and complex tools. We form large, multigenerational social groups with dozens to thousands of people. We cooperate to wage war and help each other. We teach, tell stories, trade. We have morals, laws.

The details of our tools, fashions, families, morals and mythologies vary from tribe to tribe and culture to culture, but all living humans show these behaviours. That suggests these behaviours — or at least, the capacity for them — are innate.

These shared behaviours unite all people. We inherited our humanity from peoples in southern Africa , years ago. Archaeology and biology may seem to disagree, but they actually tell different parts of the human story.

Bones and DNA tell us about brain evolution, our hardware. Tools reflect brainpower, but also culture, our hardware and software. Humans in ancient times lacked smartphones and spaceflight, but we know from studying philosophers such as Buddha and Aristotle that they were just as clever.

That creates a puzzle. If Pleistocene hunter-gatherers were as smart as us, why did culture remain so primitive for so long? Why did we need hundreds of millennia to invent bows, sewing needles, boats? And what changed? Probably several things.