Lead
Everyone on the planet has an ancestor or a pair of ancestors who gave us life.
The figures of the ancestors have gradually faded into obscurity, but myths about the origin of human beings are circulating in all corners of the world.
There are some differences in the myths and stories of human origins in different cultures, but they are essentially depicting the origin and development of human beings.
So how did the first man and woman on earth come into being?
What is the difference between mythology and modern scholarship?
1. The difference between mythology and modern scholarship.
Humans in different countries and regions are exploring their origins, so each has its own mythology.
For example, Nuwa mends the heavens mentioned in the Chinese "Classic of Mountains and Seas", Adam and Eve mentioned in the Western "Book of Genesis", the giant Yumir mentioned in the "Ragnarok" in Northern Europe, and Brahia mentioned in the Indian "Vedas".
But whatever the myth, it describes how the first man and woman on earth were born.
Although these myths differ in terms of culture and background, there are some commonalities between them.
That is, there are usually two characters, one male and one female, and the male is usually the first to appear, and the female is the male helper.
In some regions, there are more characters in the mythology, but there is usually a couple.
In many myths, the most common is that a woman is born from a male part, such as the biblical belief that Eve was born from one of Adam's ribs.
In order to create human beings, Nuwa created men and then women in an orderly manner from top to bottom, and Nuwa's behavior was very avant-garde at the time, because most myths believe that men were the first to be created, and women were born from somewhere in men.
Looking at the time of the creation of human beings in mythology, there are many myths that mention that before the creation of human beings, gods such as gods or Nuwa created other creatures, some were dinosaurs, and some were fish.
Many myths mention that humans and other creatures were shaped by clay, and in many myths, it is mentioned that clay was shaped by God or Nuwa herself.
But these myths are very different from the conclusions of genetics and genetics.
Genetics has found that human beings do have a certain "relationship" with soil, and among all living things on earth, only human cells have minerals, which also makes human cells more like soil than the cells of other organisms.
In addition, the study of genetics has found that the genes of all organisms on Earth have a similar structure, and they are all made up of DNA, which is made up of base pairs.
And there are only four base pairs, whether it is mammals or fish, insects, bacteria, their DNA is made up of these four base pairs, so different races have similar genes between them.
2. The origin of the class.
From the point of view of modern science, the origin of the universe can be traced back to about 13.8 billion years ago, when the entire universe was in a state of high temperature.
As time passed, the matter in space became thinner and thinner, the temperature dropped to absolute zero, and the various particles gradually separated.
In the universe, the combination of protons and neutrons is very stable, so at the beginning of the Big Bang, protons and neutrons already existed, but later a rich number of elements were formed in the universe, including hydrogen and helium.
When the matter in the universe begins to gather, nebulae and stars are formed, and in the interior of stars, hydrogen will undergo nuclear fusion in a high temperature and high pressure environment, and atomic nuclei will collide with each other, resulting in heavier elements.
These elements are usually metallic elements, and with the explosion of stars, these elements are released into the universe, so the metallic elements on Earth are also derived from the explosions of these stars.
When the time for the star to burn is over, matter will float around the universe, and when this matter comes together, new galaxies will be formed, and Earth is a planet in our solar system.
In the solar system, the mass and density of the sun is the largest, so around the sun, the matter is in the form of gases, and over time, the gas will condense into particles, and the particles will condense into solids, and eventually the planets will be formed.
After the formation of the earth, the surface of the earth was still dominated by volcanoes and lava, but as the temperature of the earth gradually decreased, the lava gradually solidified, and the surface of the earth began to become hard, which is the formation of the earth's crust.
After the formation of the earth's crust, the earth was still hot, but over time, the temperature of the earth gradually decreased, and eventually the current earth was formed.
On Earth, there is water and air, so the ancestors of mankind were born in the ocean.
The earliest living organism was a very simple bacterium that had only one type of cell, so it was called prokaryotes.
Prokaryotes then differentiated into more complex cells, which have a nucleus, so they are called eukaryotes.
In the process of cell evolution, multicellular organisms have also gradually formed, which are composed of multiple cells and can be divided into plants and animals.
In animals, they are divided into chordates and invertebrates, and in chordates, they are divided into vertebrates and cartilaginous fish, and cartilaginous fish are divided into vertebrate fish and jawless fish, and vertebrate fish are divided into bony and tenacious fish and radial-finned fish.
In the radial-finned fish, four-legged fish gradually appeared, which is amphibians, which are divided into tailless amphibians and tailed amphibians, tailless amphibians gradually evolved into reptiles, and reptiles are divided into reptiles and double-holes.
Reptiles are divided into bowed reptiles and bowless reptiles, bowed reptiles are divided into main dragons and pyrosaurs, and pygmysaurs are divided into ornithopods and sauropods, sauropods gradually evolved into mammals, and mammals are divided into marsupials and placental animals.
Among the placental animals, they are divided into carnivorous and cetaceans, which eventually gave rise to primates, which gradually evolved into humans.
3. The origin of mankind.
The origins of humans can be traced back to about 2 million years ago, when the ancestor of humans was a species of Homo erectus in Africa.
The lifestyle of Homo erectus is different from that of the ancestors, Homo erectus is a hunter, while the ancestral race is a gatherer, and the brain capacity of Homo erectus is larger than that of the ancestral race, so they are more intelligent and more likely to flee when faced with danger.
The Homo erectus has a raised nose bridge between its eyes, and the length of its chin gradually becomes shorter, which is related to the patriarchal society.
In the origin of human beings, the emergence of a patriarchal society has gradually formed a society in which men and women are equal, and in this process, the status of men will gradually rise, and the status of women will gradually decline.
In a patrilineal society, a man will gradually form a family, he will educate his sons, let them inherit his business, and will also protect his son's women so that they can have more sons.
Different from patrilineal society, matrilineal society refers to a society dominated by women, in the origin of human beings, matrilineal society continues to evolve into a patrilineal society, and compared with matrilineal society, the emergence of patrilineal society has gradually formed a family and clan in human society, and the son will inherit the father's surname, while the status and rights of the mother will be restricted.
In the process of human origin, both humans and Homo erectus were related by blood, so the ancestors of humans were very complex and could not be represented by two people.
In 1999, a Swedish scientist conducted a study on the origins of human beings, and based on the results of genetic testing, it was found that all humans on Earth could be traced back to a common ancestral group.
This group of common ancestors is known as the nearest common ancestor, or MRCA for short.
The MRCA dates back to about 2,000 years ago, and they lived in the Sahara Desert in Africa, when the desert was very barren, so the population of the MRCA was not large, only about 1,000 people.
epilogue
The origin of human beings can be traced back to Africa, and the people of this MRCA later diverged into different races, some stayed in Africa, and some went to other continents, so now the races of people on each continent are different.