The question of where humans originated has been a pressing question for a very long time. There are many explanations, mythical, scientific and religious, but nobody can know exactly where we came from for a few reasons. One is that our fossil record is sparse, and modern-day technology cannot compensate for this. Another is that there are ethical concerns, such as what humans would do with this knowledge and whether we are trying to "play God". Still, this question will not go away and this essay will attempt to cover some aspects of a powerful study.
The event that ultimately initiated human evolution was the fragmentation of the rainforest in East Africa, around 10 million years ago. This occurred when the Arabian Plate and the African Plate began to move apart, resulting in a fissure.
just below the Red Sea, called Great Rift Valley. Land to the east of Rift Valley was in rain shadow, so food became sparser. Early apes had adapted to the rainforest, however, and did not have an efficient way of travelling long distances to get food because they hadn't needed this skill in the rainforest. In Rift Valley, apes slowly adapted to walking longer distances on two legs to get food. Some of them evolved into the first bipedial ape - Australopithecus afarensis, which evolved about 3.75 million years ago. This animal had the basic form of a human, with only small differences in the mouth, hands, feet and head, but its brain was still closer to the size of the ape brain. Then, 2.6 million years ago there was a pattern of global cooling that saw not only many new antelope species, but also the first large-brained bipedial ape - .
Homo habilis. They were the first of the genus homo, the same genus that humans are classified under. They evolved further into Homo erectus and then into more modern forms of human.
The theory of evolution was first put forward by Charles Robert Darwin. After dropping out of medical school in 1827, he trained to become a clergyman, and after his graduation in 1831, he was taken aboard the English survey ship HMS Beagle on the recommendation of Henslow, a naturalist he had met during his study.
