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[f] The English word human is from the Latin humanus, the adjectival form of homo. The Latin homo derives from the Indo-European root * dhghem, or 'earth'. [221] Linnaeus and other scientists of his time also considered the great apes to be the closest relatives of humans based on morphological and anatomical similarities. [222]
Early humans were social and initially scavenged, before becoming active hunters. The need to communicate and hunt prey efficiently in a new, fluctuating environment (where the locations of resources need to be memorized and told) may have driven the expansion of the brain from 2 to 0.8 Ma. Evolution of dark skin at about 1.2 Ma. [39]
[15] [16] The Moon's gravitational pull stabilised Earth's fluctuating axis of rotation, setting up regular climatic conditions favoring abiogenesis. [17] 4404 Ma Evidence of the first liquid water on Earth which were found in the oldest known zircon crystals. [18] 4280–3770 Ma Earliest possible appearance of life on Earth. [19] [20] [21] [22]
The oldest human skeletal remains are the 40ky old Lake Mungo remains in New South Wales, but human ornaments discovered at Devil's Lair in Western Australia have been dated to 48 kya and artifacts at Madjedbebe in Northern Territory are dated to at least 50 kya, and to 62.1 ± 2.9 ka in one 2017 study. [26] [27] [28] [29]
Modern humans spread across Europe about 40,000 years ago. Early Eurasian Homo sapiens fossils have been found in Israel and Greece, dated to 194,000–177,000 and 210,000 years old respectively. These fossils seem to represent failed dispersal attempts by early Homo sapiens, who were likely replaced by local Neanderthal populations.
If an earlier civilization existed on Earth millions of years ago, we might have trouble finding evidence of it -- but that doesn't mean it didn't exist.
Human history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers.They migrated out of Africa during the Last Ice Age and had spread across Earth's continental land except Antarctica by the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago.
The only human fossils found before the discovery of Java Man in the 1890s were either of anatomically modern humans or of Neanderthals that were too close, especially in the critical characteristic of cranial capacity, to modern humans for them to be convincing intermediates between humans and other primates. [108]