"Where did we come from", "There was no one on earth, how was the first woman and man born?" ”
Since humans began to learn to think, perhaps such questions have been lingering in the minds of human beings and have become the mysteries of our thinking for thousands of years.
Both archaeologists and philosophers explain this problem in terms of their own worldview. Ancient scientists have also been making different interpretations of the origin of human beings. To answer these questions, we must first confront the origin of species, and when it comes to the origin of species, we have to talk about Darwin's theory of evolution. Ever since Darwin's microscope took people from the macroscopic world to the microscopic world, our entire world has changed dramatically.
Creatures under the microscope
Regarding the origin of human beings, before there was no way to explain it scientifically, different countries had different speculations about the origin of human beings due to their geographical locations and cultural backgrounds.
But in the myths of different countries, the origin of human beings is described in detail. What we are familiar with is the mythical story of the ancients' fantasy description of the origin of mankind.
Mythological drawing of human origins
In the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", it is recorded that the ancient goddess Nuwa created people in the soil and pinched out a beautiful little person according to her own appearance, and these little people had life as soon as they landed, and the structure of human society began to see the beginning.
Subsequently, Nuwa created a marriage system, so that these humans could multiply and pass on their own incense. Nuwa is also recorded by us as the "mother goddess" of mankind. This story has also been passed down on the land of China for a long time.
In addition to Chinese mythology, the mythological stories that we are most familiar with should be nothing more than Christian mythological stories, and among the Christian mythological stories, they are similar to our Nüwa creation.
Nuwa made people to draw
The Creator recorded in Christianity is not a Nuwa, but God, who created Adam, breathed into adulthood, and feared that Adam was too lonely, so he took one of Adam's ribs and made the first woman, Eve.
Adam and Eve were placed to live in the Garden of Eden, a paradise on earth, where Adam and Eve lived carefree lives until the serpent lured Adam and Eve into stealing the forbidden fruit.
The Garden of Eden draws
To punish them, God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. With the widespread spread of Christianity, the myth of God's creation of man has also been widely spread in different countries. Myths give us endless room for reverie.
At the same time, when science and technology are not developed, it has brought us endless imagination space to those who have been tracing back to the roots. However, with the advancement of science and technology, the technology mastered by mankind has become more and more advanced, and mankind has also gone faster and faster on the road of seeking truth.
Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden
The study of the origin of human beings has always been a subject studied by many scientists, which is collectively called "anthropology", and the research history of "anthropology" is only a few hundred years, which is derived from the "anthropology" research topic based on "biology".
The study of biology has also undergone a continuous change of multiple doctrines. According to the existing research content, the first signs of life on the earth's surface are due to the ocean, so most scientists believe that the origin of life is the original ocean.
The organism that first appeared in the primordial ocean was an anaerobic bacteria, and the emergence of anaerobic bacteria created the basis for the emergence of life on the earth's surface. This anaerobic bacteria continuously release oxygen through photosynthesis, and the process of releasing oxygen constantly brings changes to the Earth's atmosphere.
The origin of life is the primordial ocean
Through continuous accumulation, the top of the atmosphere appears in the ozone layer, which can not only block the strong ultraviolet rays, but also help form a relatively warm insulation layer on the earth's surface.
These changes have laid the foundation for the emergence of traces of life on Earth. In the nearly 4 billion years of biological development on Earth, the biological forms on earth in the first 3.5 billion years were only single-celled biological forms.
Until nearly half a billion years ago, the Earth suddenly faced a phase of explosive growth of biological species, which we call the "Cambrian", and the "Ordovician" after the "Cambrian" suffered the first large-scale mass extinction in the history of the earth.
Anaerobic bacteria under the microscope
A beam of gamma rays from 6,000 light-years away penetrated the atmosphere, burning 1/3 of the ozone layer, causing ultraviolet light to hit the Earth directly, and at least 60% of life has since become extinct.
Since then, the creatures on the earth have suffered nearly four mass extinctions, and it was not until the end of the "age of the dinosaurs" that the earth ushered in a new era. The extinction of large dinosaurs and other creatures provided an opportunity for the rise of mammals.
At this point, mammals have officially entered the stage of history, and the apes among mammals have shifted from crawling to upright walking, after tens of millions of years of evolution and development, until today they have embarked on the top of the food chain.
Dinosaur extinction simulation diagram
Through the excavation and study of fossils, archaeologists have determined that humans evolved from ancient apes, but how did they evolve? Many scientists have repeatedly delved into this issue.
The European scientist Lamarck was the first to propose a theory. Lamarck believes that the evolution of species follows the principle of "use in and out", that is, in the long-term survival process, as long as changes are made through adaptation to the environment, they can be inherited for a long time.
Lamarck used the example of giraffes, arguing that the reason why the giraffes we see now have slender necks is because in the survival of giraffes, due to the lack of food, giraffes must constantly use their necks to reach the leaves on the tree.
The giraffe's long neck helps it eat leaves from high places
In this process, the giraffe's neck also becomes a long neck in long-term use, and the long-necked giraffe can also pass on the long-neck gene to the next generation.
Lamarck believed that the traits of species could change with the environment, and that the changed traits could also be passed on to offspring along with genes. But it didn't take long for Darwin to overturn Lamarck's theory.
giraffe
Because traits that are changed through the environment cannot be inherited, Darwin also proposed the concept of "natural selection, survival of the fittest". In Darwin's view, he believes that if there were two kinds of giraffes with long necks and short necks a long time ago, then the giraffes with short necks disappeared behind them.
It was because in the process of competing with the long-necked giraffe for food, it could not eat food, so it was eliminated. Darwin's view is that in the process of evolution, only organisms that adapt to the environment can survive with the natural environment, and organisms that do not adapt to the environment will be eliminated.
Darwin proposed "survival of the fittest"
Darwin's view was also confirmed in subsequent scientific discoveries. However, Darwin's theory still has limitations in some areas, for example, there are no fossils in the evolutionary or transitional stages that can support this idea in the site.
Scientists generally believe that the origin of human beings originated in the Cenozoic Era. Scientists believe that there should be 17 species of creatures on Earth that have been human, but only one has adapted to the Earth's environment and survived, that is, "Homo sapiens".
As a subordinate of the human family, the Noh is the earliest known human ancestor who can make stone tools, because according to the research of scientists, the Noh is the earliest human being who has the characteristics of a human and can walk upright to use and make tools.
Homo sapiens imagines a diagram
British biologist Darwin believed that species are variable and organisms are evolved. And his doctrine also set the tone for evolution. Today, archaeologists believe that humans originally originated from ancient apes based on excavated fossils about the origin of human species and clues about the ruins of civilizations.
After a long period of evolution and adaptation to the environment, the ancient apes gradually learned to make and use simple tools. The earliest ancient human site found so far is australopithecus in eastern Africa.
Australopithecus lived in the pristine African savannah, when Australopithecus mainly walked on two legs, but they needed to roost in trees. The environmental factors of the primitive world are uncertain, and about 2.5 million years ago, a strong cold air current hit the grassland.
Ancient ape simulation diagram
This current not only caused Australopithecus to change from grasslands with sparse trees to forests full of shrubs, but also caused a large proportion of Australopithecus to die because they could not adapt to the climate.
A small number of Australopithecus survived certain defenses, and these Australopithecus had to change from tree-dwelling to land-based habitat because of this change, and it was this surviving group of australopithecus that gradually evolved into Capable Humans.
That is, from a person who can only make simple tools to someone who can make tools at will. Capable people are also the earliest human animals we have discovered so far. We learn from this that there is no such thing as "the first man and woman".
The human group is evolved and multiplied by the ancient ape group, and is not the "fruit" of continuous fertility and reproduction after the combination of a single pair of men and women. With the change of history, the earth with a history of hundreds of millions of years has also left us humans with many unsolved mysteries.
With the progress of science and technology, more and more civilization sites that can answer our doubts have been unearthed, and the wise human beings who have turned to evolution have eliminated creationism and turned to evolution, and I believe that in the near future, we can use our scientific and technological technology to gradually crack the code of human origin and truly understand the whole mystery of species evolution.
Australopithecus imaginary diagram