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A number of other changes have also characterized the evolution of humans, among them an increased reliance on vision rather than smell (highly reduced olfactory bulb); a longer juvenile developmental period and higher infant dependency; [180] a smaller gut and small, misaligned teeth; faster basal metabolism; [181] loss of body hair; [182] an ...
The last common ancestor between humans and other apes possibly had a similar method of locomotion. 12-8 Ma The clade currently represented by humans and the genus Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos) splits from the ancestors of the gorillas between c. 12 to 8 Ma. [31] 8-6 Ma Sahelanthropus tchadensis
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.
Cave paintings (such as this one from France) represent a benchmark in the evolutionary history of human cognition. Victorian naturalist Charles Darwin was the first to propose the out-of-Africa hypothesis for the peopling of the world, [39] but the story of prehistoric human migration is now understood to be much more complex thanks to twenty-first-century advances in genomic sequencing.
Human evolution is the evolutionary process that led to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, beginning with the evolutionary history of primates—in particular genus Homo—and leading to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, the great apes.
The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa is a popular science book about the evolution of modern humans written by British geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer. The book is largely based on the "out of Africa" theory of human origins. Oppenheimer uses information from various disciplines including genetics, archaeology, anthropology and ...
Language is central to the communication between humans, and to the sense of identity that unites nations, cultures and ethnic groups. [359] There are approximately six thousand different languages currently in use, including sign languages, and many thousands more that are extinct .
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]