Human Evolution
The human lineage diverged from the common ancestor with chimpanzees about 5–7 million years ago. The genus Homo evolved by about 2.3 to 2.4 million years ago from Australopithecines. Several species and subspecies of Homo evolved and are now extinct. These include Homo erectus, which inhabited Asia, and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, which inhabited West Eurasia. Archaic Homo sapiens evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago.
The dominant view among scientists concerning the origin of anatomically modern humans is the "Out of Africa" or recent African origin hypothesis, which argues that Homo sapiens arose in Africa and migrated out of the continent around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, replacing populations of Homo erectus in Asia and Homo neanderthalensis in Europe. This theory has largely displaced an alternative multiregional hypothesis which argues that Homo sapiens evolved as geographically separate but interbreeding populations stemming from a worldwide migration of Homo erectus out of Africa nearly 2.5 million years ago. Although scientists have generally replaced Homo erectus with Homo sapiens as the favored common ancestor of modern humans, it has recently been shown with DNA evidence that non Homo sapiens Neanderthal genomes may have contributed about 4% of non-African heredity, and the recently discovered Denisova hominin may have contributed 6% of the genome of Melanesians.
Read more about this topic: Race And Genetics
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or evolution:
“Catholics think of grace as a supernatural power which God dispenses, primarily through the Church and its sacraments, to purify the souls of naturally sinful human beings, and render them capable of holiness.... Protestants think of grace as an attribute of God rather than a gift from God. It is a shorthand term signifying Gods determination to love, forgive, and save His human children, however little they deserve it.”
—Louis Cassels, U.S. religious columnist. The Catholic-Protestant Differences, Whats the Difference?, Doubleday (1965)
“Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distanced objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)