I believe that everyone asked their mothers such a question when they were young: "Mom, where did I come from?" And my mother always replied, "You came out of your mother's belly." Although our mother gave us the answer, we always didn't believe it when we were young, because we always felt that we should jump out of the cracks in the stone like Sun Wukong.
So where do we come from? The Bible says that God created man after creating the heavens and the earth and all things, so Westerners have always believed that they were created by God. But since Darwin's theory of evolution came out, the world has begun to recognize that man evolved from ancient apes. Thus the legend of God's creation of man is self-defeating.
How did we humans evolve from apes to today? What important things have happened in the course of our evolution? What kind of hardships have we experienced?
The book "Hardcore Hominids" shared today will tell us all the answers. In addition to giving us a full understanding of why humans stand out in evolution, this book also gives us a real understanding of how powerful humans really are.
The author of the book, He Yezi, holds a Master of Laws degree from Peking University, and she has done great research in the fields of humanities and natural sciences. This book is her representative work, in which she presents the 7 million years of human evolutionary history in witty language, telling us about the arduous journey of human beings from ordinary animals to the masters of the earth.
Well, after introducing the book and the author, next, I will interpret the book for you from 3 dimensions.
On the first day, let's understand where humans really come from;
The next day, I will share with you how human beings survived and what kind of hardships we have experienced in the process;
On the third day, we will talk about the various civilizations created by human beings in the process of evolution, so as to understand the greatness of human beings.
Okay, next, let's officially get into today's learning. First, let's look at where humans come from.
13.8 billion years ago, with a loud bang, the universe was born and time officially began. Slowly, 4.6 billion years ago, the Earth was born.
In the long years, the ocean appeared, the rocks appeared, the creatures were born, and the earth finally had living creatures that could be seen with the naked eye, at this time amphibians and invertebrates began to show their faces, and the flora and fauna flourished.
19 million years ago, the emergence of an ice age exposed the ancient Mediterranean Sea to land, thus providing transportation for African animals to come to Eurasia. Some ancient apes living in Africa, attracted by the humid and dense tropical forests of Europe, migrated along this land bridge to Eurasia, where the Earth is full of "apes" at this time.
About 8 million years ago, the dry and cold climate caused the forests of Eurasia to gradually recede, and grasslands began to spread. The life of the African ancient apes living at this time was extremely difficult, the ancient apes relied on fewer and fewer forests to survive, and the fruits that could be eaten gradually became in short supply.
In order to fill their stomachs, they began to eat nuts, seeds, bark, and grass roots, but most of these foods were underground, and the ancient apes had to go to the ground to find something to eat in order to eat. In this way, some ancient apes learned to walk on two feet, and they freed up two hands to catch food. This is the first upright walk of mankind, which is a very great thing.
These great ancient apes, named the "Chad Shakhs", were all found from the Dechara Desert, and they are the earliest known humans.
There are six Chadian Shakh people found so far, but some of them can be seen, only one young man named "Tumai", what does this relatively watchable young man look like?
Due to the severe weathering caused by being exposed in the desert for too long, The forehead of Toumai's head became very flat, and the bridge of his nose was sunken, appearing to have a small mouth and brain. However, his brain is really small, just like the current capacity of a Coke, less than a quarter of the current human brain capacity.
From either angle, Tumai looks like a brother to a chimpanzee, and although he doesn't look so handsome, he looked like this 7 million years ago.
After the Chadian Shah, another ancestor on the stage of human evolution, the Tughan primitive, appeared.
Compared with the Chadian Shah, only 5 of the original Tugan people have been found, and their fossils add up to only 13 pieces, either with broken jaws and teeth, or with broken arms and thighs, and scientists can't even piece together a complete image.
At that time, it was rampant by the ferocious saber-toothed tigers, and it was good that those who had been chewed by them could be left with these bits and pieces.
Without skulls, scientists had no way to reconstruct the appearance of the Tugan primitives, so they had to deduce that they looked similar to the Chadian Shakhs. But judging by the structure of their teeth, they seem to eat a wider range of foods, and in addition to fruits, leaves, seeds, nuts, meat has become part of their diet.
Judging from their thumb fossils, the tugan primitive seems to have better gripping ability. They are able to grasp what they want more precisely, in addition to the fingers showing their "humanity", their slender thigh bones are also an important credential for them to join the human family, because they spend more time on the ground and stand longer, so they walk faster than the Chadian Shakh.
History entered 5.8 to 5.2 million years ago, when the evolutionary drama of human beings changed protagonists and it was the turn of the earth apes to play.
The Kardabadi ape was born in the Area of Alpha in Ethiopia. Only 20 of their fossils have been found, all of which are fragments of teeth, finger bones, toe bones, etc., and they are most famous for their teeth.
Their upper canine teeth are very prominent, somewhat similar to today's female chimpanzees, which indicates that they are in an early position in the history of human purchases; their front teeth are smaller than the chimpanzees' front teeth, which means that they have a lot of hard and rough things in their food, and they are not picky eaters, which means that they have stronger adaptability.
As the descendant of the Kardabati ape, the Ramida ape was lucky, and scientists found 7 relatively complete fossils, the most complete of which was "Miss Adi". She had arms over her knees, her pelvic bones wide and flat, her spine long and curved, and at first glance it looked as if she had transplanted a chimpanzee head and limbs into a human body.
Although this appearance does not look very good, the long arms can make her more flexible in the tree, the wide and flat pelvis is more conducive to lowering the center of gravity of the body, and the curved spine is more conducive to her flexible shock resistance. In addition, Adi has a pair of small short legs and flat feet, although there is no way to walk as fast as we are now, but she is closer to humans than chimpanzees.
The appearance of Miss Adi has allowed archaeologists to find that the ancestors who were originally in the stage of separation of apes were really not chimpanzees, but human-like, non-human, ape-like non-apes. So, in the past, we thought that what chimpanzees looked like, our ancestors were wrong.
After a long period of survival exercise, the ancient ape that practiced walking skills for many years evolved into humans and became the ancestors of our human beings, while the part that did not dare to go down to the ground and continue to climb in the trees evolved into chimpanzees.
Therefore, our human evolution is not fundamentally different from chimpanzees, everyone was a chimpanzee, and they are trying to adapt to the environment, but the direction is different.
Okay, that's it for today, so let's review it together:
First of all, we talked about the ancient apes that in order to survive, the ancient apes began to leave the trees to go to the ground in search of food, so some ancient apes learned to walk, which is the beginning of the human learning to walk upright, and these ancient apes were the earliest humans "Chad Shakh".
Next, we talked about the "Tugan proto-people", which are more capable of surviving than the "Chadian Shah" because they are no longer mainly vegetarian, but have learned to eat meat, so their hands and feet evolve better and walk faster.
Finally, we talked about another ancestor in the history of human evolution, "earth ape", who used to think that chimpanzees looked like our ancestors were wrong, but in fact, our ancestors looked like human non-humans, like apes and non-apes.
In the next issue, I will continue to explain to you how human beings have survived thousands of years of evolution.