After years of vicissitudes, carrying the ancient flood, after hundreds of millions of years of ecological evolution, to the end of the Cenozoic Neo-Archaic Period, the ancestors of mankind finally embarked on a journey, that is, the master of this blue planet. However, like other species, the evolution of ancient ape-humans also showed a forked development vein, like a complex tree-like map.
After entering the Quaternary Period (the third Cenozoic Epoch, which continues to this day), due to the continuous fluctuations in the Earth's orbit and the greenhouse gas imbalance caused by the Earth's biosphere, the glacial and interglacial periods began to alternate more frequently. As a result, the overall climate and sea level of the entire planet have fluctuated greatly, which in turn has led to the continuous prosperity, migration, evolution and extinction of species. Ancient apes were also affected by climatic factors such as the ice age, constantly migrating and evolving, and eventually forming the appearance of modern humans and becoming the overlords of the earth. As mentioned earlier, the evolution from ancient apes to modern humans is complex and diverse, so let's comb through the evolution from Australopithecus to late Homo sapiens!
<h1>From Australopithecus to Artisans</h1>
In the 1920s, while teaching in South Africa, Australian professor of anatomy Dart inadvertently discovered a fossil tooth and named it Toyn Boy. Because the teeth retain some similar ape features, they also appear some human features, so they are considered by Professor Dart to belong to humans. However, people at that time were reluctant to admit that their ancestors were ancient apes (Australopithecus was not strictly human, but it was the closest ape to humans), and because of the existence of racial discrimination in Europe and the United States, they were also reluctant to admit that humans originated in the barren land of Africa. Therefore, the place of the Toyn Boy in the history of human evolution at that time was not recognized. Later, with more and more archaeological excavations, by the end of 1973, another international expedition excavated some ancient ape fossils at the bottom of the Alpha Valley in Ethiopia, completely determined that these ancient apes were upright walking, and named them "Lucy". In this way, including Ton Boy and Lucy, scientists collectively referred to as "Australopithecus".
Australopithecus is the first person on Earth to appear, and they are the first form of the transformation from ape to man, dating back about 3-2 million years. With the change of living environment, Australopithecus is also evolving, and has evolved into the "tree dweller", Lady Rudao and chivalrous people who are addicted to the same kind. Among them, tree-dwelling people are distributed in southern Africa, living between 2 million and 800,000 years ago, and some individuals prefer to live on trees and get their name. Although tree-dwellings belong to a human species and make up for an important link between Australopithecus and humans, they are not capable humans (members of the evolutionary chain of modern human direct ancestors), and the two belong to the two branches of Australopithecus evolved.
Shuju people do not belong to the category of capable people, but scientists usually classify Madame Rudo, who was discovered in Kenya in East Africa in 1972, as a broad category of capable people. The Noh is the first group in evolutionary history to be identified as a human, evolving from Australopithecus and others about 250 years ago and has been able to use tools skillfully. It was suggested that the immediate ancestors of capable humans should have been Lady Ludor, who was larger and more similar to apes, but later, with the accuracy of the study, it was found that Lady Ludor was much later than originally judged. Also long misunderstood is the relationship between capable people, craftsmen and Homo erectus.
It has long been believed that nominos are the ancestors of craftsmen, and craftsmen are the ancestors of later Homo erectus. However, as more and more archaeological studies have shown that there is a considerable period of coexistence between capable people and craftsmen, and between craftsmen and Homo erectus. Therefore, perhaps the craftsmen were branches that were separated from the descendants of the Nohs between 1.9 million and 1.8 million years ago, and the homo erectus was also a branch from the descendants of the craftsmen. The emergence of craftsmen is of great significance to the history of human evolution, and it is from the beginning of craftsmen that the first ancient people began to migrate out of Africa.
<h1>From craftsmen to Heidelbergers</h1>
Soon after the craftsmen split off from the elite group, they embarked on the journey of "out of the Great Migration of Africa" and gradually evolved into pioneers. The pioneers, though brief, were indeed a crucial step in the evolutionary journey of mankind. It was only long before the transition of craftsmen to pioneers that a group of craftsmen had separated from them. Some of them migrated to Georgia in what is now Transcaucasus, becoming ancient Georgians (later evolving into the Totawijk and Sibrano lineages); the other part was the famous Homo erectus. This branch of Homo erectus migrated more distantly, and has come to East and Southeast Asia, and it is precisely because of their existence that they give evidence to the "Asian origin of human beings", but this part of the ancient human race is not a direct descendant of modern humans. However, Homo erectus lasted for a long time, and the Javanese apes, Yuanmou people, Nanjing ape people, Lantian people, Wushan ape people, Peking ape people, Kui people, etc. all belonged to this branch, and continued until the 17th and 18th centuries (Indonesian folklore, the story of their activities is still circulating at this time) Solo and Flores people also belonged to this branch.
At the same time that these craftsmen left Africa, the craftsmen who remained in East Africa evolved into pioneers and then into Heidelbergers. When the Homo erectus who left Africa was devastated by the onset of the Earth's climatic ice age, the time for the Heidelbergers came. Unlike the ancient human races that preceded them, the Heidelbergians had a large brain volume of about 1100 to 1400 milliliters, which is comparable to the average of 1350 milliliters for modern humans. It can be seen that the Heidelberg people are already a stage of human evolution that is quite similar to the brain power of modern humans.
<h1>From Heidelbergians to late Homo sapiens</h1>
Similar to the "Great Migration Out of Africa" (ancient Georgians and Homo erectus) that appeared in the late artisan period, the earth once again ushered in the warm era of the interglacial period during the Heidelberg period. At this time, the Sahara region due to the equatorial air heating rise particularly violently, the subtropical high pressure pushed to the northern latitudes, prompting the Sahara to usher in a large amount of precipitation to form sahara rainforest or grassland, which created convenient conditions for the emigration of Heidelberg people (another theory is that the Heidelberg people had already crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach the Eurasian plate during the ice age).
The Heidelberg people, distributed in Europe, Asia and Africa, evolved into three different types of paleoanthropology. Among them, the European Heidelberg people eventually evolved into Neanderthals; the Asian Heidelberg people continued to migrate, such as the Jinniushan people, Changyang people, Dali people, Tongzi people, Maba people, Xujiayao people and Dingcun people belonged to the descendants of this branch, they were collectively known as Denisovans. Because of the homogeneity of time and direct lineage, people tend to confuse Dan and Ni people, and it is equally easy to confuse early Homo sapiens. While the European Heidelberg and Asian Heidelbergers walked on the ice and cut through the thorns, the Heidelbergers who remained in Africa evolved into Rhodesians and continued to evolve into the elder Homo sapiens. The discovery of Homo sapiens the Elder has changed the misconception of the archaeological and paleontological communities that neanderthals and Denisovans were classified as early Homo sapiens.
Although the elder Homo sapiens is the direct ancestor of the late Homo sapiens, the African Homo sapiens group has once again opened a new round of "great migration out of Africa" due to environmental changes and survival competition. In the late migration of Homo sapiens, although there was fierce competition between the Neanderthals and the Danes (the three who belonged to the Heidelberg people, Homo sapiens did not have absolute superiority in both brain and physical strength), and even many battles broke out. Eventually, however, in a series of conquests and fusions, the Ni and Danes tended to die out, but some of their genes were thus integrated into our bloodline. According to studies, problems such as type 2 diabetes, depression, addiction, and blood clots are closely related to Neanderthal genes; as for Denisovan genes, the most significant feature for humans today is obesity.
After entering the late Homo sapiens stage, groups closely related to modern humans such as cromagnons (the earliest late European Homo sapiens), Liujiang people (often considered to be the common ancestors of yellow people), Peak Cave people, and Omo people (representatives of late African Homo sapiens) finally appeared.
In summary, we can clearly find that in the long evolution of human beings, it is not a continuous and interlocking development, but like the evolution of other species, it has shown an extremely complex tree-like form. Among them, Neanderthals and Denisovans do not belong to the early Homo sapiens, although they have developed a certain differentiation and reproductive estrangement from Homo sapiens, but because of the same origin of Heidelberg people and there is a part of the gray area, so that modern humans carry some of the Genes of Neanderthals and Danes, which shows the complexity of human evolution from Australopithecus to the present.
With the evolution and development of Homo sapiens, human footsteps have set foot in Australia and reached the Americas through the Bering Strait about 20,000 years ago. From the northernmost cold Alaska to the southernmost pampas savannah where the beasts collapsed, Homo sapiens took only 2,000 years to complete the bloodbath of the Americas, becoming the most widely distributed species in the world, and the human age has come!