Humans are almost hairless, frail, bipedal apes with relatively large brains, which have resulted in increasingly complex tools, behaviour, and social structures.

Some 2.5 million years ago, give or take a couple hundred thousand years, the first humans evolved from an earlier genus of apes¹ in Africa. Scientists gave them the name Homo habilis (Handy Man) because they are believed to have made stone tools, the very first human invention.

Homo habilis was still small, probably spending nights in the trees safe from lions and other predators, and had brains not much larger than that of other apes. But within a few hundred thousand years, humans grew bigger. They adapted fully to live on the ground, lost body hair, and grew brains considerably larger (still half the size of our own).²

Some left their homelands, too, and migrated to vast areas of Asia and Europe. The living conditions varied widely around the world, and therefore, human populations began to evolve in different directions, eventually resulting in several distinct species.

Some human species became hunters, others plant gatherers, and many may have practised both, fishing too. Where food was abundant, humans could grow bigger. But where resources were scarce, some species became barely a metre tall, adapting to the prevailing conditions. Some survived hundreds of thousands of years, if not more, but others were less successful.

For example, in Europe and Western Asia, humans evolved into Homo neanderthalensis (Man from the Neander Valley). They were shorter but more robust than our species, Homo sapiens (Wise Man), and well adapted to cold climates. Homo erectus (Upright Man) lived in eastern Asia. It survived almost 2 million years, longer than any other human species. And Homo soloensis populated the Island of Java in Indonesia and was well suited to life in the tropics.

The evolution in Africa did not stop either, and the continent remained the melting pot for many different human species. More than 300,000 years ago, one of those species eventually evolved into our own, Homo sapiens.

Thus, the Earth has been home to many different human species. Only 50,000 years ago, at least four other of them inhabited our planet besides our own – Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis, Homo denisova, and Homo neanderthalensis. But around 30,000 years ago, for one reason or another, Homo sapiens became the only human species alive when all the others had become extinct.

¹ We are all apes. The common ancestor of orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans lived in Africa between ten and sixteen million years ago. The split off to orangutans began around ten million years ago, gorillas six to ten million years ago, and the divergence between chimpanzees and the branch that led to humans occurred between five and seven million years ago.

² Humans lost their body hair between three and two million years ago, and more human-like body sizes and shapes appeared less than two million years ago. Around the same time, human brains were already considerably larger than that of other apes but still half the size of our own.

Bibliography

Pettitt, P. 2022. Homo Sapiens Rediscovered the Scientific Revolution Rewriting Our Origins. London, United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson. 304 p. ISBN 9780500252635. Pages 13-26, 28, 40, 88.

Potter, W. 2023. Homo Sapiens the History of Humanity And the Development of Civilization. London, United Kingdom: Arcturus Publishing Limited. 256 p. ISBN 9781788280914. Pages 9-13.

Parker, P. 2020. World History from the Ancient World to the Information Age. London, United Kingdom: Penguin Random House. 416 p. ISBN 9780241457856. Page 31.

Harari, Y. N. 2015. Sapiens a Brief History of Humankind. London, United Kingdom: Vintage. 512 p. ISBN 9780099590088. Pages 6-8.

Panciroli, E. 2022. The Earth a Biography of Life The Story of Life On Our Planet Through 47 Incredible Organisms. London, United Kingdom: An Hachette UK company. 255 p. ISBN 9781529413984. Pages 240-243.

Frankopan, P. 2023. The Earth Transformed an Untold History. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing. 695 p. ISBN 9781526622563. Pages 41-44.

Smithsonian. 2018. Inventions a Visual Encyclopedia. New York, United States: DK Publishing. 304 p. ISBN 9781465458384. Page 8.

Baker, D. 2024. The Shortest History of Sex. Exeter, United Kingdom: Old Street Publishing. 310 p. ISBN 9781913083519. Pages 136-137.

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