I'm going to do two series to answer two ultimate human questions, where did they come from? Where will it go.
First of all, there is a misconception that many Chinese today may have, that is, the Peking Ape Man is not the ancestor of the Chinese, and the common ancestor of all people in the world today is Homo sapiens who came out of Africa 70,000 years ago, and the Peking Ape Man was extinct like the dinosaurs 200,000 years ago.
The representative of Homo sapiens in China is the peak cave man, the peak cave man is the late Homo sapiens should be the direct ancestor of the Chinese They lived about 20,000 years ago, the human appearance of the mountain cave is very close to today's Mongolian appearance, the male height is 174 cm female 159 cm, and the life expectancy of the mountain cave man can already exceed 60 years.
Chinese often said that 500 years ago was a family, and scientists through the study of human mitochondrial DNA found that note that mitochondrial DNA is a kind of DNA that is only transmitted between human women, at the end of the 80s scientists completed the dna plasticization of thousands of female DNA sources from different countries and regions around the world, and found that all humans had a common Homo sapiens female ancestor 15 or 200,000 years ago, she was called mitochondrial Eve.
The ancestors of Homo sapiens were Australopithecus, who lived in Africa millions of years ago.
One day in a certain month of a certain year, there was a loud bang, the earth cracked, the flat land rose from the mountains, the forests became grasslands, because of the plate movement of the continents, the East African Rift Valley, which stretched for hundreds of kilometers and stretched to the bottomless east Africa, was born.
In fact, the Great Rift Valley began to appear in 30 million years, and completely formed in about 12 million years, in the process of the earth's crust fractures continue to occur, underground lava continues to gush out, the terrain on both sides of the rift valley is raised by more than 270 meters, gradually forming a tall lava plateau. The volcanoes on the plateau become numerous peaks, while the faulty depression becomes the bottom of the Great Rift Valley, with a total length of 6,400 kilometers.
For the ancient apes living in the west of the Great Rift Valley, where is still paradise, lush water and grass, dense forests, eat and drink. They later evolved into human cousins chimpanzees and bonobos.
The hapless eggs living in the east evolved into what is now humanity, and according to Darwin's theory of evolution, the survival of the fittest is naturally chosen. Because of the change in topography that led to climate change, East Africa became a rainy area, and the continuous forests became fragments of sparse forests, until they finally became shrub grasslands unsuitable for human survival.
This change is a continuous and uninterrupted process of change, providing uninterrupted power and precious time for human evolution, and if it is a direct drastic change, human beings may be directly extinct.
Humans originally ate fruit on trees, but because of the reduction of forests, humans were forced to get down from the trees and start eating the roots of some plants, such as tudou or sweet potatoes.
Because the original dense forest has become a sparse forest, humans have become upright walking in the process of going from one forest to another, which is convenient for both hands to pick the fruits and young leaves of the tree at any time, and it is more energy-saving to walk upright to see farther and more energy.
As the forest becomes more and more sparse and the population increases, humans have to start hunting in the process, but humans have neither sharp claws nor the speed of tigers and leopards, and humans must cooperate in order to be able to hunt animals, and make simple sticks and stones and other tools, and must compete with animals for endurance.
So humans evolved consciousness, language, and developed brains. So the fundamental reason why humans evolved from australopithecus to the current human beings is to hunt
The evolutionary route of humans is roughly like this, Australopithecus, Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, early Homo sapiens, modern man (late Homo sapiens)
Note that there is an overlap in the timing of their existence, with dogs as a column. One day, the Chihuahua gene mutation suddenly gave birth to a Erha, and the Erha independently reproduced a Erha family, but it does not mean that the Chihuahua disappeared, even if he disappeared later. For example, modern science proves that Neanderthals, the representatives of modern and early Homo sapiens, have lived together for about 40,000 years and have exchanged about 4% of each other's genes, while the African natives who have never left Africa do not have these genes, the most famous of which is the depression gene.
Australopithecus and today's chimpanzees are almost the same, capable people are a little capable people can make simple stone tools, the legendary Paleolithic belongs to them, they can also build simple shacks to live, Homo erectus is 90 degrees completely straight meaning, early Homo sapiens including Neanderthals, Denisovans and other more intelligent guys, late Homo sapiens both modern people, today's human direct ancestors, if they put on clothes and stand next to you you you will not feel strange people.
About 1 million years ago, the ice age hit the northern hemisphere with increasingly arid climates, and East Africa eventually changed from a savannah to an endless pure savanna. Humans had to start the first large-scale exodus from Africa, and they gradually went to Europe, the Middle East and Asia in a camped manner and evolved separately, and later all became extinct.
The second human exodus from Africa was 500,000 years ago, and early Homo sapiens evolved around the world.
The third mass exodus of mankind from Africa was about 70,000 years ago (modern humans). Other descendants of human descendants who left Africa for the third time, that is, early Homo sapiens, disappeared in the process of the third outflow of Africa, including saber-toothed tigers and mammoths. Late Homo sapiens scattered everywhere gradually evolved into the four kinds of humans that now dominate the earth, black, white, yellow and brown.
Why in history human beings have only gone out of Africa three times, there is a famous Sahara pump hypothesis, the Sahara is today's Sahara Desert cover area, the Sahara hypothesis believes that the Sahara region is alternately dry and wet climate, when he is dry, this road is not passable, when it is wet, human beings three times out of Africa just in time for his wet time.
To be continued, please pay attention.