Fossils show that one species of early human evolved into another. It began in Africa with a series of man-apes and then Lucy. Then came Turkana Boy and a bit later Neanderthal man and finally us. Almost every year, new fossils are found and we know even more about how we evolved.
On two legs or all fours
The apes and us. Chimpanzees are apes and so are we. But chimpanzees and humans don’t look the same. What do we have in common with chimps? Nothing. What did their long-ago ancestors have in common with ours? Practically everything. Once upon a time there was almost no difference between our two species. They looked the same and existed in equal numbers. Our ancestors were unlike both modern chimps and modern human beings. Chimps have travelled the same long evolutionary road as we have. They, however, still move around on all fours. And their hands, their intellectual abilities, eating habits and lives are all completely different from ours. But we share a common starting point, around six million years ago.
Handy humans
We didn’t get so good with our hands from one day to the next. It took a long time to evolve. A lot had to change. Our distant ancestors didn’t have bendy thumbs like ours. And they had smaller brains. You can only really be good with your hands if your whole body and brain work together. The entire human body changed in the course of evolution.
More and more intelligent
Homo erectus was a lot cleverer than the hominids. With a litre-sized brain, our ancestors were pretty intelligent. Bright enough to use their strong, straight legs to take them out of Africa and into Europe and Asia. Slowly but surely their skulls grew bigger and they got better and better at thinking.
Fire-maker
All animals are instinctively afraid of fire. So are humans. We shall never know which of our ancestors realised that fire can also be useful. Homo erectus used fire. And we know that Neanderthal man was good at it. That was just as well, because when the Neanderthals lived in Europe there was an ice age on the way and the weather was getting colder all the time. From around forty thousand years ago, Neanderthals lived in Europe side by side with our kind of humans. Neanderthals were much stronger and had bigger brains. But 27,000 years ago they vanished without trace and we’re still here. Something must have happened… But what?
Human language
Each of us looks different but we are all members of the same human race. Neanderthal man and Homo erectus died out long ago. We have managed to survive thanks to our highly developed brains and the neural networks in them. Networks are also important to link people together. Family, friends and acquaintances…. We survive by living together in social groups. That’s not easy but language helps. By agreeing how to do things, we make ourselves stronger as a group than we would each be on our own. Language enables us to learn about our past and plan our future.