In 1953, according to the isotope method of scientists, we got the approximate age of the earth, which is 4.55 billion years old, and for such a long time, countless species continued to appear on the earth, reproduce, and finally ushered in extinction.
"First Man"?
We may think of this question, although we are already the successors of socialism and the firm believers in materialism, we will invariably think of those ancient myths and legends.
The legend of Nüwa's creation of man, as well as the story of God's creation of Adam and Eve in the Bible, these two man-making myths should be regarded as the most classic human origin myths in the East and the West, respectively, according to such mythological thinking, regardless of the words of The Gods, the first person is probably either the clay man that Nuwa first pinched out, or Adam.
But mythology can only be a myth, it does not have the slightest real basis as a support, it is a castle in the air suspended in the splendid traditional culture of mankind, and it is a false and dreamy bubble. In modern society, whether it is science or theory, it must pay attention to a piece of evidence.
After nine years of compulsory education, when we see the question of the "first person" mentioned above, we may already have some answers to this question in our minds, but in fact, the answers that everyone thinks may be wrong.
Problem Error?
The reason why everyone's answer may be wrong is actually because the question itself is a bit "deviated", there is no so-called "first person" in the world, but it should be said that it is "the first human race".
After all, a single person could not produce offspring at all, and unless the humans that appeared at that time were hermaphrodites and could reproduce asexually, it was impossible to expand the huge population of today.
According to the research conducted by scientists between different species, if a species wants to maintain sustainable reproduction in the natural environment, the minimum population should be greater than or equal to 50 individuals, which still does not consider the impact of the natural environment and individual health.
Factors influencing population changes
This also shows that if human beings want to reproduce to this day, at that time, there must not be only "one", but should be the evolution of greater than 50 human races, and their appearance must be in no particular order.
Even if the first human being really appeared in the evolution of ancient apes to humans, this human being could reproduce with other tribes in the original group, but this lonely human gene would also be diluted in the continuous process of reproduction, resulting in the disappearance of that part of his special gene that made him a human being, resulting in the extinction of human beings.
If human genes are to be passed on and continued, there must be a large number of humans with the same or similar genes at the same time, in order to reproduce from generation to generation, so that the genetic differences between generations are small, so that more and more human beings appear.
If a man and a woman appear at the same time, it is equivalent to Adam and Eve, then it is difficult for these two people to reproduce for a long time, because inbreeding is extremely easy to cause large genetic problems in the offspring, which will have an impact on the IQ, physiology and other conditions of the offspring.
Although the reproduction of inbreeds is not 100% of the offspring malformations, but the amount of genetic DNA of the parents is extremely limited, the evolution of offspring is therefore greatly limited, the genetic differences between the offspring are very small, and the mutual reproduction of each other will further increase the harm of inbreeding.
Maybe even the first generation will not continue. With this in mind, humans should also need to maintain a population of about 1,000 people so as not to be in danger of extinction due to inbreeding.
Wrong answer?
In fact, the so-called "first people" are actually wrong, because according to the theory of evolution, human beings have slowly evolved from ancient apes, and it has not suddenly changed from ancient apes to a new race, but has continuously and gradually eliminated and transitioned in a slow process of evolution.
In other words, there is no such definition as an absolute "first man" or "first man," and our answer may have been wrong in the first place. We cannot simply draw a dividing line and think that after this line is human beings, and above the line is ancient apes.
The scientific community generally divides ancient apes into three stages, that is, ancient apes, apes and modern humans, through molecular biology, we can get the general separation time between ancient apes and humans, that is, 4 million years to 5 million years, this period has a more modern human appearance, but the past can also be said to be human ancestors.
From ancient apes to humans, the genes in the bodies of our ancestors have undergone subtle changes for a long time, and after a long period of accumulation, they have undergone major changes, such as becoming more intelligent, learning writing and language, coming to live upright under trees, and having significantly different body hair from ancient apes.
Under the slightest change of perhaps millions of years, human beings have finally become what they are modern. Perhaps in the current view, ancient apes and humans have a significant difference, but the transition stage of the two is basically without a clear demarcation point, in the end where to start to say that the emergence of the "first people"?
Did you go from a tree to the ground, did you learn to use tools, did you learn to hunt, or did you learn to use fire and so on? We don't really have an exact definition of the criteria, and even the demarcation is our own. Then we can change our perspective and no longer dwell on the "first person" and the "first person", but to pursue the ancestors of mankind.
Ancestors of mankind
According to archaeological data, the ancient apes that appeared about 14 million years ago to 7 million years ago were the first apes to differentiate from the ancient apes, and they already had a more human-like nature at that time, and it is very likely that the earliest human family was divided from the ancient apes of the ape family.
However, some scholars believe that according to the conclusions of molecular biology, the time of differentiation between humans and ancient apes should be about 5 million years ago, and the latest time point of The Ancient Ape of Rama is 7 million years ago, and there is almost a gap of about 2 million years in between.
Therefore, the earliest human ancestors are still in doubt, and there is no clear answer. As for the origin of modern people, there are actually many debates in the scientific community, and the original African origin theory is not just the only reliable reasoning, and many scientists have endorsed the origin theory of many places.
The former believes that whether it is black, yellow or white in the world, whether it is the people of Africa, Asia, Europe and other countries, they are actually Homo sapiens in Africa a long time ago, they invaded the world at that time, eliminated the local population and replaced them, which became the current human structure.
At the same time, scientists have studied and analyzed 12,000 chromosomes from different regions and found that there is genetic material in East Asians that only existed in African ancestors 79,000 years ago. Therefore, they believe that this is because more than 60,000 years ago, African ancestors came to Southeast Asia and eventually became the ancestors of modern East Asians.
And according to the technology of modern molecular biology, scientists traced the mitochondrial DNA that can only be passed down from mother to mother, and finally found that the difference between the mitochondrial DNA of all people in the world was extremely small, only about 0.32% of the average ambiguity, which means that they have a "Eve" (named by scientists) who lived about 140,000 years ago, and her location is in Africa.
However, according to the research of scientists on the mainland, mainly academician Wu Xinzhi, we can find that the mainland has a relatively continuous and complete evidence of ancient human evolution, forming an evolutionary chain from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens to modern humans, and there is an obvious cultural transition between them, and there is no cultural interruption caused by foreign human invasion.
After all, if African Homo sapiens really came to ancient China and exterminated or driven away local humans, then the cultures excavated on the mainland must not remain continuous, even if they are integrated, at least there will be some shadows of foreign cultures.
Mainland scientists even tested the "Liujiang man" fossils on the mainland again in 2002, and finally found that the time point of liujiang man's survival was 70,000 to 130,000 years, and possibly even earlier than this time, which was almost a direct and powerful evidence to counter the African origin theory.
Therefore, we can find that Africa is not the origin of human beings in the whole world, and there may have been integration between ethnic groups in various regions, which has led to such similar genes that it can be said that human beings themselves evolved from the same ancestors.
There is no accurate answer to the question of how the "first people" or "first people" appeared on Earth, and the fossils we find cannot fully give us an answer, and there are still some gaps in the evolutionary path of human beings.
If we want to know the truth, we can't get the answer by guessing alone, and only by excavating more and more ancient fossils of ancient humans can we glimpse the deeds that happened millions of years ago, or even tens of millions of years ago.
Perhaps this road forward is still very far away for us, and it is very long, because it not only needs the fossils of ancient humans as the cornerstone of research, but also needs more sophisticated scientific research equipment and more experienced archaeologists, only in this way will we discover the truth of human evolution and discover the real human ancestors.