When and where did the first person on the planet appear?

Where did the first person on our planet appear? This issue has been of concern to scientists since the time of Charles Darwin. No less the question of where the first person appeared is also of interest to many curious townsfolk. However, this topic is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. The point is that if you start to understand it in order to answer the question about where the first person appeared, it will be found out that there is still no definitive and generally accepted opinion among archaeologists or anthropologists. Whom to consider as the person? Which of the links in the evolutionary chain suddenly became a man, leaving his own parent on the step of the monkeys? Evolution is not One-step act, and long and very slow transformations. The second difficulty with the question of where the first person appeared is in the criteria themselves - how to separate a person, by what criteria? On the straight-legged, opposing the thumb, on the use of tools or still on the volume of the brain? Let's try to sketch an extremely brief picture of the way Homo sapiens.

Where did the first people appear?

The answer is in Africa, apparently. According to estimates of modern researchers, the lines of modern anthropoid apes and immediate ancestors of humans were divided approximately 8-6 million years ago. It was then that the first upright hominids appeared on the planet. The earliest of their fossil representatives is the creature of the Sahelantra. He lived about 6-7 million years ago and already walked on two legs. Of course, it's hardly possible to call it only on this basis The oldest man. The rest of his features were still similar to the monkeys, but the fact that they had already descended from the branches significantly changed their way of life and directed evolution into the right direction. Behind the sahelanthrope followed orrorinum (about 6 million years ago), known to all Australopithecus (about 4 million years ago), paranthrope (2.5 million). This is not all the links found by archaeologists and dated by this long interval, but only some representatives of the chain. It is important that each of these hominids had certain progressive features in comparison with their predecessors. The first hominids, who were already really close to the modern type of people, became Homo habilis (skilled man) and Homo ergaster (working), which appeared 2.4 and 1.9 million years ago. Like all previous links, these ancestors of today's people lived in Africa - the cradle of mankind. And, finally, indisputable people are Homo sapiens, which appeared only 40 thousand years ago. It is interesting that this kind of man appeared also in Africa, but at the same time Europe was already inhabited by people! People who, according to modern scholars, have appeared in Europe, However, eventually disappeared from the face of the Earth and are not direct descendants of modern mankind, but only a dead-end branch of evolution. We are talking about the famous Neanderthals, who died out for reasons that were not completely clear about 25 thousand years ago.

Where did the first people appear? History of the origin of the oldest civilizations

Whatever it was, it was the intelligent man who was destined to eventually settle out of Africa on all continents of the planet. Since that time people have not undergone any significant biological changes. However, the so-called Neolithic revolution became an important event . This is the process of transition from the appropriating economy to the reproducing one, that is, the emergence of agriculture and cattle breeding. New forms of management proved to be much more effective, allowing the tribes to significantly increase their numbers, create an excess product of labor, launching social stratification. Ultimately, these processes led to the emergence of the first civilizations and states that arose in the Mesopotamia.